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Our research on integration and regulation in organizations is based upon concerns we share about the way organizations adapt or, rather, fail to adapt in our society. We have observed situations in many kinds of organizations where most people are aware that values are not being served, concerns are not being met and issues are not being resolved, but where either no action is taken or, if it is, it fails to achieve desired results. We call these situations social deadlocks and our long-term normative interest is to see whether they can be broken.[1] Although this paper is addressed to methodological aspects of our work, we hope to demonstrate how the design of our research project and the concepts and methods we use are guided by these concerns. Starting with a very brief outline of three of the cases, we then identify a number of common themes and concepts as the key research interests. Some of the problems of pursuing these interests are raised in terms of problems of definition, the collection of evidence and of inference. We argue that attempts to deal with these problems lead us to adopt a particular focus, design and approach for research. The paper then moves to a description of our methods and to some of the problems of analysis and explanation associated with the contextualist style of research we have adopted. Finally, we go back to the cases to demonstrate how our concepts and theories are refined by the research process, which is essentially a dialectic between emergent and imposed frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the integration of a greater awareness of reproductive conduct into sociological theory and research. Instead of conceiving the relationship between demography and sociology as one where sociological concepts are used to illuminate demographic concerns, the paper works towards the development of a demographic perspective in sociological understandings of modern society and its historical development. The argument will be for the notion of the 'reproductive self', with a greater emphasis on understanding human identity as stretching over time and generations, rather than as self-contained, timeless and autonomous. The paper will show that such a conception of human identity enables us to improve our understanding of a range of theoretical issues, including the relation between social structure and action and the rationality of human action, as well as revealing the historical roots of a number of long-term trends which are usually treated as changes typical of the second half of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is written with a degree of irony: it treats a sociological approach as if it were a client presenting itself for psychoanalysis, and argues that using Melanie Klein's developmental theory the approach can be seen as a manic psychosis -- a defence against entering the depressive position. It is suggested that sociologists find it difficult to recognise the limitations of their discipline -- the depressive position -- one reason being that we do not actually exercise power over anybody; social constructionism enables us to convince ourselves that the opposite is true, that we know everything about how people become what they are, that we do not have to take account of other disciplines or sciences, but we can explain everything. The paper ends by suggesting that its own argument can be treated as a psychoanalytic version of a manic psychosis and that a non-psychotic theory is one which knows its own limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provoke debate, the paper, after fifteen years, repeats and expands on an analysis of the use of empirical data and the role of quantification in articles published in some major British journals of sociology. The earlier paper argued that the training of undergraduates, and the influence and example of their teachers, tends to orient them, well before graduate education begins, towards particular kinds of research topic and, where empirical data are used, approaches employing no quantification or very simple techniques. It suggested this would be a self-reinforcing process unless there were far-reaching changes in undergraduate curricula which were unlikely to come about. It predicted that the divide between these aspects of British sociology and that practised in North America and many parts of Europe would widen further. British sociology has become somewhat more empirical over the past fifteen years, with the bulk of this expansion in the qualitative area. The more sophisticated quantitative approaches are not much more in evidence than before. This raises a number of questions which should be a matter of debate. It is worrying that the debate does not seem to be taking place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seen as a corrective to the continuing preoccupations of the sociology of social movements with progressive organisations and movements, this paper offers an analysis of the defensive crime prevention initiatives emerging in the suburbs of South Manchester (and, undoubtedly, elsewhere) as a vital contemporary social movement, taking a very specific organisational form. The paper also attempts to show how the movements taking place around crime ought to be linked, analytically, to other local suburban initiatives on Quality of Life issues and, in particular, following Molotch and Logan's pioneering work on the political economy of post-industrial cities, to interest-governed campaigns around the positioning of the larger city in national and international competition. The angry commitment informing all such connected social movements in the suburbs is ignored by progressive social movement analysis at its own peril. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a re-reading of the Foucauldian analysis of professional accounting firms given by Grey in his 'Career as a Project of the Self...' (Sociology, 28,2). It argues that Grey's paper provides an exemplar of the 'desocialising' tendencies observed in some Foucauldian analysis and attempts to illustrate this desocialisation through placing Grey's data in an Eliasian rather than a Foucauldian framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reacts to Ian Craib' response to papers by Stevi Jackson and by Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden devoted to emotions in the May 1993 issue of Sociology. First, Craib suggests that sociological commentary on the emotions is as crass and insensitive as psychoanalytic discussions of society, and that a sociology of emotions might restrict rather than extend people's understanding of emotional life. Secondly, the present authors relate that although they recognize that Craib's main charge is directed at the two specific papers mentioned, he is nonetheless in danger of treating these as representative of the sociology of emotions more generally. They note that Craib is guilty of a methodological sin: namely that one cannot simply generalize from two case studies to the field as a whole. The present authors' next point concerns the issue of stereotypes--a criticism which is especially directed at Duncombe and Marsden's paper. The present authors relate that on the one hand they agree with Craib that stereotypes are not particularly helpful in characterizing (post)modern social life. Fourthly, Craib asserts that whilst sociological concepts such as work, power or equality might be extremely useful for thinking about the economy, or political or social structures, it still has to be established that they are appropriate for talking about emotional life.

This article presents a research in British Departments of sociology. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, a set of quantitative indicators of research outputs and research inputs is constructed for all sixty-seven British sociology departments that were assessed in the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise so that individual departments can see how their own research profile compared with that of other departments during the assessment period. Secondly, this paper examines the statistical relationship between the research ratings awarded to departments of sociology and the various indicators of research inputs and research outputs that can be constructed from the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise database. Specifically, the aim is to discover the extent to which variations in the research rating between departments of sociology can be explained by these research input and research output indicators. This paper has shown that some interesting and potentially useful research indicators can be constructed at department level from the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise. In particular, it is possible for individual departments of sociology in Great Britain to compare their own research activity across a range of research output and research input indicators with the research activity of other departments.

This paper critically examines the constructivist, relativist trend in the sociology of science and exposes its internal contradictions. It concludes that such a sociology has fabricated a science without nature. This has obscured the importance of nature in science, has glossed over the manipulation of nature, and has, therefore, muddled one of the most significant features of the contemporary world. The paper argues in favour of transcending such pre-ecological sociology by incorporating into the analysis the unique learning curve of science, which results in both its utility and its danger, and by explicitly examining the embeddedness of social action in the processes of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically reviews some recent contributions to the debate about the nature of race and racism. It questions the analytic and empirical divorce between race and racism for which Floya Anthias and others have argued. It suggests that disconnecting race and racism while insisting on the retention of a concept of race could well give rise to a view that race is, after all, a valid scientific concept denoting a real biological division of the human species. This paper argues, instead, for a focus on race as a social relationship rather than a category of human being. It suggests that race and racism are inextricably linked and that, moreover, recently discovered new racisms depend for their power on the continued influence of biologically determinist modes of conceptualising human difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class analysis has recently been criticised from a variety of standpoints. In this paper we argue that much of this criticism is misplaced and that, as a research programme, the promise of class analysis is far from exhausted. The first part of the paper clarifies the nature and purpose of class analysis, as we would understand it, and in particular distinguishes it from the class analysis of Marxist sociology. The second part then makes the case for the continuing relevance of class analysis, in our conception of it, by reviewing findings from three central areas of current research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues the need for a sociology of management which relates the micro-sociology of management activities to the economic performance of the firm and to debates about power relations and the distribution of wealth. The substance of the paper is a study of a medium-sized British company in the computer components industry. The research focuses on the relationships between development engineers and managers, and analyses the structural reasons for the failure to innovate. In particular it shows that management, in attempting to pursue an instrumental rationality, undermined the achievement of their own objectives. The contradiction between the logic of short-term instrumental controls and the espoused organic, human resources model of management produced a damaging pattern of workplace relations characterised by distrust and defensiveness. The result was a motivational crisis over the management of innovation, which contributed to the eventual failure of the business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper which follows takes the form of a dialogue between a sociological voice and an unidentified, questioning voice. The two voices explore some of the tasks involved in, and difficulties generated by, the attempt to apply social science to practical issues. The discussion focuses on the area of health economics and, particularly, on recent efforts to provide measures of the quality of life that can be used to solve administrative problems within the NHS. Beginning from close examination of a particular text, the sociological voice claims to reveal some of the background assumptions of health economics as a social practice and to identify some of the ways in which the production and application of economic knowledge are socially contingent. The sociological voice also contrasts the textual form of the present paper with the 'scientific' format normally employed by economists and most other applied social scientists. S/he may be read as asserting that the dialogic character of the present text is in some way more suited to a more collaborative use of social science expertise in the realm of practical action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Pinch and Clark's recent article on the strategies of market pitchers for managing local economic reasoning. We suggest that their research is illustrative of the lack of seriousness and relevance to social issues of a small proportion of sociological studies. In developing this argument, the paper considers the methodology, ethical issues and substantive content of the article. We conclude by noting that, whilst the study of the work of market pitchers is clearly an important research topic, such study should have regard to local social and economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a reanalysis of the British, French and Swedish mobility data first presented by Erikson et al. (1979). A descriptive model is specified and used to identify precisely where the differences in the relative openness of the three societies are located. In doing this the paper seeks both to synthesize previous findings and to extend our knowledge of the mobility processes at work in the three societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a brief examination of neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian arguments it is demonstrated that the class nature of the new middle class has yet to be established. The paper goes on to show that as well as differences arising out of material conditions (i.e. class differences), inequalities based on expectations of entitlement or norms are also significant in capitalist society. Weber's treatment of status has not encouraged an adequate understanding of the concept, and an alternative is outlined. The paper then argues that the differences between the so-called new middle class and the working class are reasonably understood on a number of criteria as differences between status groups which form part of a single class. Not only does this approach remove a number of difficulties from accounts of the salariat, it also helps explain the different political alignments of social collectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of developments in the area of role theory which took place in West Germany between 1958 and 1980. We differentiate three periods. The first is characterized by a discussion of Dahrendorfs Homo Sociologicus, of which we highlight only the essentials. This discussion took place in the early `60s. For the second period, in the late '60s - early 70s, the role theory discussion went into a different phase as a result of the so-called `positivism debate' in German sociology. The various points of view explored in this discussion seem to have converged since the mid '70s; the contours of an integrated role theory are becoming apparent. The paper closes with an overview of both positive and negative sides of the developments outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How people refer and how they infer are key empirical questions for the sociology of knowledge. In the present paper, I suggest that in the course of social interaction much referring activity is self-referring, and much inference self-validating. This occurs to the extent that our inductive inferences become permeated with feedback-loops or `bootstraps': I offer a simple general form of representation to assist in thinking about bootstrapped induction. In the second half of the paper I indicate some of the interesting consequences of the existence of bootstrapped induction: I cite the self-fulfilling prophesy as a special case where the induction is destructive, but emphasize the role of bootstrapped induction in constituting stable institutional forms. Finally I raise the question as to how far the bootstraps can be eliminated from patterns of inference: I suggest that this problem might be best attacked by sociologists of natural science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Braverman and his followers have been useful and influential in reviving a sociology of work. However as well as stimulating debate, the Braverman model has also created impediments to further analysis. This paper discusses some of these limitations and argues that, in part, they result from a particular reading of Marx which neglects crucial Marxian categories. In part, they result from weaknesses and ambiguities in Marxian theory. The second part of the paper focuses on the concept of control, and makes a plea for a revival of interest in the pre-Braverrnan sociology of the workplace. It is suggested that such work conjoined with that of recent theorists provides a more adequate basis for theory of capitalist labour processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier work (Hope, 1974, 1975a) demonstrated 'no change' in social mobility between the Glass inquiry of 1949 and the Oxford inquiry of 1972. However the mobility investigated was that known as exchange mobility (other synonyms being pure, perfect, fluidity and circulation mobility), which is defined as departure of observed mobility from perfect mobility. When the man in the street speaks of mobility he usually means something much more specific, namely mobility up or down a vertical hierarchy. The present paper investigates the meaning of perfect mobility by disaggregating the model for it into discrete, additive components, and it shows how the vertical dimension may be represented in a mobility analysis by just one of the many degrees of freedom which are associated with exchange mobility. Implications for comparative analysis, and also for investigation of the relations between vertical and class mobility, are discussed. The theoretical developments of this paper stem from the apparently novel observation that the `additive model' of status inconsistency analysis is formally identical with the `perfect mobility' model of social mobility analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concern of this paper is to locate certain troubles and contradictions within Lucien Goldinann's avowedly sociological programme for the investigation of culture. It will be seen that these turn, generally, upon Goldmann's insistence on maintaining a central methodological position for the category of the subject and, more particularly, upon his conception of the subject as individual (rather than collective) subject. Part of these methodological troubles is seen to be connected with Goldmann's use of a metaphor connecting Piaget's individual/environment distinction with the distinction between social groups and history. To this degree, the paper is generally concerned with the severance of sociological studies of culture from psychologistic and belletrist preoccupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This second and concluding pan of the paper deals with a third problem area; the relationship between values and explanation. It is discussed by examining Myrdal's distinctions between valuations and value premises and between theoretical and practical research; Stretton's conception of the role of the `valuing skill' in all kinds of socio- historical research; and Maclntyre's arguments concerning categories and accounts that combine either evaluation and description or evaluation and explanation. Like the first part of the paper, it is illustrated by studies in the history and sociology of revolutions. Again, the main aim is methodological clarification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two consecutive issues of Sociology an analysis is offered of the relationship between values and analysis. By analysis is meant three fundamental stages and characteristics of socio-historical research, viz., identification, description and explanation. In examining these analytical stages and characteristics different expressions for the dimensions of values are elucidated and the various possibilities for the intrusion of values are discussed. The first part of the paper focuses upon the relationship between values and identification and description; the next is concerned with the relationship between values and explanation. Throughout the paper the relationship between values and the three analytical stages and characteristics is illustrated by reference to studies in the history and sociology of socio-political revolutions. This paper cannot claim to be an exhaustive analysis but it does seek to clarify the relationship between values and analysis and, in so doing, to provide some insight into the study of revolution. The latter is, however, a by-product of the analysis. The main aim is to provide methodological clarification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the clinical perspective on mental handicap which under- pins most research and professional practice in the field does not help us to explain or understand how mentally handicapped people are valued and treated in their day-to-day dealings with others. Using material gathered in interviews with the parents of mentally handicapped children, the paper plots the unfolding of the idea of subnormality and traces the gradual transition in the child's status as he drifts from normal baby to handicapped infant. It shows how subnormality emerges as a social state, which can be defined in terms of the qualities and capacities which are ascribed to or withheld from mentally handicapped people. In this sense, it is suggested that the social roles allocated to mentally handicapped people are created and shaped from the social meanings imputed to the diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and criticise, from the standpoint of certain subsequent developments both in Marxist theory and in the state of intellectual dispute in sociology, one of the most eloquent and much-discussed statements of the situation in the sociology of the late sixties: Alan Dawe's 'Two Sociologies'.[2] I shall argue that Dawe does correctly identify two major tendencies in sociological thought, but that these tendencies are not, as Dawe seems to have supposed, either mutually exclusive, or jointly exhaustive of the theoretical space open to social theorising.[3] I shall try, in other words, to argue that Dawe's 'two sociologies' are better understood as variant forms of one sociology, and also that fundamental alternatives to this 'one sociology' exist and are beginning to be explored. Further, I aim to show, within the limits of a paper of this length, that there are fundamental defects in each of the variant forms of sociology which Dawe identifies, and, finally, that the links Dawe supposes to exist between epistemologies ('meta theory') and traditions of substantive enquiry are misconceived in his paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to present, by means of a case study, a method for the study of cultural phenomena--in particular the drama, It is not concerned with the purposes or functions of the drama in general or of particular dramas, nor is it an enquiry into the ultimate status of the arts in society. The paper is simply concerned to demonstrate how it was that one form of drama was eclipsed and superseded by an entirely new one.
should be recognised that there exist presently close limits to what a sociologist is able to say concerning such phenomena as the drama, dependent upon his particular theoretical posture. A neo-Durkheimian such as J. S. R. Goodlad[1] is, fairly predictably, concerned to demonstrate that the popular drama is a device for the explication of the social structure, the inculcation of morality, the expression of emotion at repressed items in culture (catharsis), and the reproduction and consideration of conflicts inherent in society. The Marxist, Lucien Goldmann[2], however, stresses the determinacy of the class-moment and the status of a valid work as the expression of a world view. 'Simationalisms' of considerably less subtlety than the Lukacs-Goldmann tradition exist, which usually tend toward nominalism.[3]
But whether we take the drama to be pulled into being by the weight of need the social organism has of it, or to be thrust up from the bowels of the substructure, it seems possible to discuss the drama, its form, and the relation of its form to the agencies producing it, in such a way as to be its mechanic rather than its philosopher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a constructionist model of nation-ness, this paper argues that given the changes in the balance of class forces in the contemporary Irish Republic, Ireland has been re-imagined as a normal, modern, metropolitan nation-state. These discursive constructions require their backward and 'traditional' other; the GAA is regularly invoked as a signifier of such traditionalism. In the representational struggle between tradition and modernity, cultural nationalism is seriously misread and scapegoated. In order to facilitate a re-reading, the paper advocates a theoretical intervention involving a critical postmodernism which can deconstruct, and ultimately move beyond, the disabling binary oppositionalism which permeates these contestations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that 'Irishness' has not been sufficiently problematised in relation to gender and ethnicity in discussions of Irish national identity, nor has the term 'Irish women' been ethnically problematised. Sociological and feminist analyses of the access by women to citizenship of the Republic of Ireland have been similarly unproblematised. This paper interrogates some discourses of Irish national identity, including the 1937 Constitution, in which difference is constructed in religious, not ethnic terms, and in which women are constructed as 'naturally' domestic. Ireland's bourgeois nationalism privileged property owning and denigrated nomadism, thus excluding Irish Travellers from definitions of 'Irishness'. The paper then seeks to problematise T. H. Marshall's definition of citizenship as 'membership in a community 'from a gender and ethnicity viewpoint and argues that sociological and feminist studies of the gendered nature of citizenship in Ireland do not address access to citizenship by Traveller and other racialized women which this paper examines in brief. It does so in the context of the intersection between racism and nationalism, and argues that the racism implied in the narrow definition of 'Irishness' is a central factor in the limited access by minority Irish women to aspects of citizenship. It also argues that racism not only interfaces with other forms of exclusion such as class and gender, but also broadens our understanding of the very nature of Irish national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological analysis of Irish sexuality has been notable for its absence. This paper examines the contribution which Foucault's theory, of sexuality as a discourse of truth and apparatus of power makes toward elucidating key issues in the history and contemporary field of Irish sexuality. Although Foucault provides good insights into the constitution of a hermeneutics of the self within different ethical regimes, his analysis of sexuality is inadequate when it comes to explaining how sexuality operates in everyday life and the individual struggle to attain power and position in social life. In this respect, the paper turns to the work of Bourdieu and examines the field of Irish sexuality, in relation to his concepts of habitus, practice and capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decivilising processes are what happens when civilising processes go into reverse; both terms are used here in a specific technical sense derived from the work of Norbert Elias (The Civilising Process, 2 vols., 1978/1982, orig. 1939). The first part of the paper briefly sketches aspects of the theory of civilising processes necessary for identifying symptoms of their reversal. It is inferred that true decivilising processes would be marked by breaking links and shorter chains of social interdependence, associated with higher levels of danger and incalculability in everyday life, the re-emergence of violence into the public sphere and a decline in mutual identification, reduced pressures on individuals to restrain the expression of impulses (including the freer expression of aggressiveness), changes in socialisation and personality formation, and increasing fantasy-content of modes of knowledge. The second part of the paper examines evidence relating to four candidates for the label `decivilising process'. The debate about the `permissive society' suggests that this was `decivilising' in a very limited sense: it involved a `highly controlled decontrolling of emotional controls'. Evidence of an upturn in violence in contemporary United States and British society is examined next; the data of Gurr, Stone and Dunning suggest the long- term trend was until recently downwards. The Holocaust and other instances of mass murder are discussed next. Finally, it is proposed that the clearest cases of decivilising processes would be those where trends could be observed over at least three generations; evidence should be sought in the collapse of complex societies (such as the Roman Empire) and episodes such as the Thirty Years War and its aftermath, and the so-called `Wild West'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the theoretical framework developed in the first paper ('Unfulfilled Systemic Functions of Social Mobility: A Theoretical Scheme'), we analyse the Polish case. We argue that the contribution of collective mobility to politico-revolutionary legitimation processes has been minimal and the contribution of individual mobility to the economic development and to economico-reformist legitimation processes has also been negligible. Our research strategy has been to demonstrate that many aspects of mobility processes taking place in Poland are incompatible with conditions that we have listed in the first paper as conducive to the formation of legitimation beliefs and the sustenance of economic efficiency. Specifically we demonstrate that (1) because collective mobility of the working class and the peasantry encompassed several changes in their economic and cultural positions but did not include major changes in their political position, it could not contribute to the politico-revolutionary legitimation and (2), because individual mobility did not occur according to the qualificational/occupational principle of allocation, promotion and remuneration, it could not contribute to the economico-reformist legitimation nor could it sustain effective utilisation of human resources in economic development. We conclude that the chance to use mobility for the systems's benefit has been wasted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a small set of interlocking definitions, this paper presents a generally applicable conceptualization of social structure developed from recollections of Merton's late-1950s formulation. A brief review of the literature supports the view that the proposed conceptualization provides sociological researchers with a relatively simple and logically consistent overall framework, generally continuous with past theorizing, in which to place their own findings. The paper pays particular attention to how social structures are related causally and epistemologically to more micro-level psychological and more macrolevel sociocultural phenomena. Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence suggest a decrease in the likelihood and speed of change as we move from psychological- to social structural- to sociocultural-level phenomena. Although they require proof in each instance, these postulated differences in the relative speed with which psychological-, social structural-, and sociocultural-level phenomena tend to affect each other provide a new and potentially useful tool for unraveling the knotted causal connections among these different-level phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that organizations with a particular social network structure are more effective than most organizations in responding to crises. Further, it is argued that the effective structure does not occur naturally, but must be designed consciously and carefully. A theory is developed based on well-founded principles of social science, most notably work on formal structure, conflict, friendships, and organizational crises. The paper concludes with an experimental test of one of the four propositions deduced from the theory. Six trials of the experiment found significant support for this proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the opening of a discursive space within the etiquette literature in the United States during the 19th century and how women used this space as a vehicle of empowerment. It identifies two major strategies of empowerment. First, the use or appropriation of existing discourses that can help redefine the "other" within an hegemonic space. Second, and more importantly, the transformation of that space in shifting the lines by which differentiation is produced to begin with. Admittedly, these strategies are neither unique nor the most important in the history of women's empowerment. But this paper argues that the new discourses formulated by women helped forge a new space within which women ceased being the "other," and helped give body to a concept of womanhood as defined by a group of women, regardless of how idiosyncratic that group might have been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a critical examination of the papers by Colomy and Brown, West, and Ostrow. Each is considered in terms of how the author's work connects with topics addressed by Goffman and with his own theoretical and methodological approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies neural network technology, a standard approach in computer science that has been unaccountably ignored by sociologists, to the problem of developing rigorous sociological theories. A simulation program employing a "varimax" model of human learning and decision-making models central elements of the Stark-Bainbridge theory of religion. Individuals in a micro-society of 24 simulated people learn which categories of potential exchange partners to seek for each of four material rewards which in fact can be provided by other actors in the society. However, when they seek eternal life, they are unable to find suitable human exchange partners who can provide it to them, so they postulate the existence of supernatural exchange partners as substitutes. The explanation of how the particular neural net works, including reference to modulo arithmetic, introduces some aspects of this new technology to sociology, and this paper invites readers to explore the wide range of other neural net techniques that may be of value for social scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1980's, a transition to democratic politics occurred in two very different parts of the world: state socialist Eastern Europe and dependent capitalist Latin America. This paper asks, "why'? Why did regime change occur in the 1980's and why in the semiperipheral zone of the world system? Why, for instance, was there no regime instability on a similar scale in the core or the periphery? This paper proposes an answer that links convulsive political restructuring to the downturn phase of long Kondratieff-like economic cycles of the world-economy. Specifically, the generalized downturn that the world-economy entered in the 1970s is seen as the beginning of a Kondratieff B-Phase of economic difficulty, the political response to which is mediated by a state's zonal position in the larger world system. More powerful core nations respond by acting outwardly, in an effort to control the external environment through mechanisms such as the formation of economic blocs, like moves toward Europe an economic cooperation in 1992, and North American free-trade negotiations, Semi peripheral nations, being more constrained and weaker, act inwardly, changing their regimes to better deal with economic hardships. Finally, peripheral nations, weakest and most constrained, take little or no political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to clarify the relationship between explanations of the role of the state in Britain. and theoretical traditions in the analysis of sport. It characterises the role of the state as dominated by four chronologically ordered rationales, traditional pluralism, welfare reformism, anti-managerialism, and neo-liberalism. The paper traces the material conditions which have mediated state-sport relations and which have also provided the context for theoretical accounts of the nature of sport. British sociology of sport is characterised as falling predominantly into four major traditions, British empiricism, cultural studies, feminist studies, and figurational sociologies. Although these form no oneto-one relationship with changing state rationales, each of the traditions has contributed to a critical reflection on the role of the state, and state policies invariably reflect some of the implicit premises of these sociological critiques. The paper seeks to identify some of these snarea premises anti to nighlignt the strengths and weaknesses of the theoretical traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of the article describes men's experiences from the perspective of women and the second part presents an interpretation of the sport experience from a male's perspective. The relationship between the two parts, which are critical of masculinity yet simultaneously sympathetic to men, are complementary rather than contradictory. As such, the paper represents a contribution to the emergence of a new conception of women's and men's studies. The article's methodological framework is drawn from the field of women's studies and centres on the recollection and interpretation of one's own life history. The first part of the article is about how masculinity in boys is constructed with the help of sport. It presents selected recollections by male university students about how the cultural processes which reproduce masculinity in men is realized in the case of sport. The methodological basis for the second part of the paper is drawn from the tradition of textual analysis which has become increasingly influential in Finland in the areas of sociology, literature and politics. The article's second part deals with the deconstruction of masculinity in relation to the sportsman. It is a story of a man who has himself unfolded the power relations of sport in the context of his life history, his society and a theoretical frame of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those organizations which make up the Canadian Sport delivery system have been somewhat neglected as a focus for researchers in the sociology of sport. This paper suggests a number of reasons as to why this situation has arisen. It also suggests that in Canada there are a number of issues about organizations that are implicit, if not explicit, within the sport literature. Focusing specifically on the issues of bureaucratization, gender, leadership, professionalization, dependence on government and organizational change, this paper highlights completed work and suggests how approaches found in organizational sociology and organizational theory could help inform further studies on these topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the amateur ideal to assess whether it is possible in today's sportsworld. The first section presents the defining characteristics of the amateur. The second reviews the dominant themes in the sport literature regarding the amateur ideal: (1)amateurism as a mechanism of class hegemony; (2) amateurism as exploitive ideology; (3) amateurism as an anachronism; and (4) amateurism as a citadel of purity. The final section of the paper examines amateurism in the contemporary context. The argument is that elite amateur sport has moved beyond the amateur ideal to become corporate sport. At another level, however, amateur sport thrives. Questions are raised that should guide future research on these true amateurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper updates and extends previous analyses of the sociology of sport in the United States. It provides a chronology of major events in the history of the field as well as a description of the social context in which the field emerged and grew. Then a review of data from both sociology and physical education leads to the conclusion that the sociology of sport in the United States continues to lack full legitimacy and a critical mass of members in both disciplines. In fact, there are reasons to conclude that the continued numerical growth of those calling themeselves sport sociologists has peaked and will not change significantly in the immediate future. Finally, a content summary of papers published in the first 14 issues of the Sociology of Sport Journal reveals the priorities given to research topics and research methodologies among those Americans doing some of more significant work in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a critical overview of current concepts and analytic practices in stress research and considers how they can be changed to make the research more consistent with core sociological interests. An overarching concern of the paper is the analytic use of basic information about people's social and institutional affiliations and statuses. It is important that such information be treated not simply as data that need to be controlled statistically; we must examine the bearing of these data on each domain of the stress process: the exposure to and meaning of stressors, access to stress mediators, and the psychological, physical, and behavioral manifestations of stress. The conceptualization and measurement of stressors should move away from their focus on particular events or chronic strains and should seek instead to observe and assess over time constellations of stressors made up of both events and strains. Moreover, the effects of the mediators—coping and social support—are evaluated most fruitfully in terms of their effects in limiting the number, severity, and diffusion of stressors in these constellations. Finally, sociological stress researchers should not be bound to outcomes that better serve the intellectual interests of those who work with biomedical and epidemiological models of stress, nor should the research be committed exclusively to a single outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When I began my psychiatric residency training in Boston in the late 1950s, sociologists and other social scientists were active members of many major academic departments of psychiatry. Collaboration between psychiatrists and sociologists and anthropologists was widespread and had considerable influence on theory and clinical practice. NIMH had established its Laboratory of Socio-Environmental Studies under the leadership of John Clausen. Sociologists and anthropologists were active in policy-making and research activities at NIMH and at many foundations. The influential works of Stanton and Schwartz (1954), Hollingshead and Redlich (1958), and Greenblatt, Levinson, and Williams (1957) reflect this period of collaboration. Over the subsequent three decades, the relationship between sociology and psychiatry changed considerably. Now relatively few academic departments of psychiatry have social scientists on their full-time faculty. Interaction between psychiatrists and social scientists, in many instances, has become adversarial. This adversarial quality, I believe, is reflected in the paper by Mirowsky and Ross. Their paper illustrates a genre of social science criticism of psychiatry which challenges the scientific validity of the concept of mental illness and raises important issues in measurement. Mirowsky and Ross, however, go beyond the scientific issues; they offer a social criticism of recent changes in psychiatry which they perceive to be the "legacy of nineteenth-century epidemiology and microbiology." Mirowsky and Ross are correct in their perception that significant shifts have occurred within psychiatry over the past decade. Yet their historical reconstruction of those changes and their understanding of the scientific basis for current research and clinical practice are seriously limited; they reflect their ideological commitment more than an appreciation of the increased sophistication of recent theoretical discourse and empirical research in psychiatry. In my commentary I will attempt to correct this imbalance by reconstructing the recent history and by explicating the rationale behind the current approach to psychiatric diagnostic categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to the papers published as a symposium on postmodernism in the Fall 1991 issue of the journal "Sociological Theory." It argues that postmodernism as a rhetoric and postmodernism as a methodology often diverge among theorists. Further, it contends that theorists' professional locations, including their relative disengagement from undergraduates, may help to account for their attraction to postmodern rhetoric and meta-theoretical gesticulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the dominance of linear models has led many sociologists to construe the social world in terms of a "general linear reality." This reality assumes (1) that the social world consists of fixed entities with variable attributes, (2) that cause cannot flow from "small" to "large" attributes/events, (3) that causal attributes have only one causal pattern at once, (4) that the sequence of events does not influence their outcome, (5) that the. "careers" of entities are largely independent, and (6) that causal attributes are generally independent of each other. The paper discusses examples of these assumptions in empirical work, considers standard and new methods addressing them, and briefly explores alternative models for reality that employ demographic, sequential, and network perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the goals and methods of theoretical sociology. The chief goal of theoretical work is a theory in two parts-postulates and predictions-the key challenge being to minimize the number of postulates and maximize the number and variety of predictions. The paper discusses the distinctive character of the sentences in each part of the theory and, in light of that bipartite structure, the two main activities of theoretical analysis: (i) speculative thinking, whereby the theorist identifies the starting ideas for the postulates: and (ii) formal reasoning, whereby the theorist constructs the postulates and derives predictions from them. To illustrate the features of a theory and the tasks of theoretical analysis, the paper briefly sketches the theory of the distributive-justice force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many concepts in sociology are difficult or impossible to objectively measure. This limitation forces a reliance on subjective measures that typically contain both systematic and random measurement errors. Systematic errors, or "biases," are the focus of this paper Campbell and Fiske's (1959) multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) research design is the best known social scientific procedure for uncovering systematic errors, but the data requirements for classical MTMM designs are too demanding for many areas of sociology in which secondary data are the norm. We show that the benefits of the MTMM design are available under more relaxed conditions. In addition, we illustrate how researchers can examine the determinants of systematic errors and gain insights into the potential for confounding or spurious effects caused by systematic errors. We demonstrate the usefulness of these methods using the subjective measures of liberal democracy used in several recent ASR papers and provide additional examples, including measures of the reputational quality of graduate programs and job evaluations for comparable-worth investigations. We conclude that sociologists can do far more to understand the systematic error present in their subjective variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper unifies two strands of theoretical method in sociology. On the one hand, the structuralist or network program of research involves the fundamental rule that basic data and analytic procedures of sociology must focus on social relations. This leads to theories about structural stability or change, for example, although the network approach generally has been stronger on technique than on explanatory theory. An interest in theoretical explanation is the basis of the second theoretical method, which is drawn from the expectation states theoretical research program: namely, the idea of a dynamic co-causal process involving an unobservable relational construct termed an expectation state and an observable form of social behavior. The paper outlines the basic ideas of each of these two theoretical methods. It then proposes a new theoretical method which synthesizes the two and whose function is to provide a procedure for constructing explanatory models of social structural stability and change. This new method is termed "E-state structuralism." An extended example is provided of how the method is used to construct a theory, first presenting the theory in axiomatic form and then empirically testing it. The subject matter of the theory is the over-time transformation in the structure of dominance relations among a small group of animals. The paper concludes with a review of how the generic method was exemplified in the particular theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the meaning of war as it is articulated in war veterans' life stories and with the intespretive-phenomenological mechanisms through which the war experience is integrated into the course of their lives. The research is based on 63 life stories of Jewish Israeli men (all names are pseudonyms) who fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War as part of their regular military service, in a variety of roles half of them held combat positions and half were support staff The stories were chosen from a clearly defined social group: middle-class, educated and secular men. The analysis of their life stories was derived from a phenomenological conceptual framework. The claim of this paper is that Just as war is institutionalised and normalised into the Israeli macrosocial order, so too the individual integrates and co-opts it into his personal biography. Israeli soldiers do not represent the experience of war as a traumatic experience but rather as a `normalised experience' in their lives, contrary to the findings reported in the general literature about war veterans. The life stories reveal two interpretive-phenomenological mechanisms used by interviewees in normalising the war experience the contiguous (the experience is integrated in the course of life by means of previous social knowledge) interpretation of war and the dual interpretation (the war is simultaneously part of and outside life) of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]