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This paper gives a history of the Oxford Ethnography Conference. Over more than three decades, a regular conference of sociologists of education and ethnographers has met and produced a series of academic writings. The paper describes some of the interrelationships between developments that occurred within the conference and external changes to the academic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore how we may best understand the relationship between teacher identity and national culture. Using Raymond Williams' concept of 'structure of feeling' as a starting point, it is suggested that creative cultural forms of representation of teachers may complement social scientific studies to give a more complete and richer view of these matters. The paper focuses on England and Scotland, and has three substantive parts. First, consideration is given to the depictions of teachers in fictional literature from Scotland and England. Second, consideration is given to the range of methodologies that are deployed by sociologists in their consideration of teachers. Thirdly, the author draws on his own studies of teachers in both countries, to assess whether these throw any further light on questions of identity and culture. The concluding discussion argues that the complexities of the interplay between history, culture and identity are such that any single approach is unlikely to provide a broad understanding and therefore it is desirable to draw from different forms of enquiry in seeking to make sense of teacher identity in a national context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to observe the investor relations (IR) process from the perspective of media sociologists. Design/methodology/approach – The focus of the piece is the changing role of the financial news media in equities markets. It is based on two lengthy periods of research into the part played by communications in investment in the London Stock Exchange. The research looked at three sets of participants and three stages of the communications process: financial public/IR and the IR function, financial journalists and news reporting, and professional investors and their evaluation processes. Much of the work involved semi-structured interviews with over 100 high-level participants. Findings – The findings suggest a slow decline in the importance of financial news media in the investment process. However, financial news also continues to play a significant role in trading in the city and can, at times, still have a powerful impact on investment patterns. Consequently, all sides – companies, IR practitioners, analysts and investment managers – continue to target and consume it. Originality/value – The paper introduces readers to theories and research methods used in the adjacent research field of media and communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on attempts to understand how the curriculum and pedagogy can help to reduce inequalities in the outcomes of schooling between those from higher and lower socio-economic backgrounds. In the 1970s, the author was involved with Michael F.D. Young and others in the development of the so-called ‘new’ sociology of education. Much of this work entailed laying bare the assumptions underlying the school curriculum and demonstrating how the selection of school knowledge was implicated in the reproduction of social inequalities. During the 1980s in England the curriculum was overtly politicised by the Thatcher government but the interests of sociologists of education moved increasingly away from the sociology of school knowledge to focus instead on the sociology of education policy. This paper identifies a recent tendency on the part of sociologists of education to return to the ‘knowledge question’. In particular, it examines Young's own role in this and his attempts to revisit and revise of his earlier position. Contemporary developments in curricular policy in England and Northern Ireland are then outlined and discussed. Finally, the paper considers whether the work of Basil Bernstein, particularly his concepts of classification/framing and recognition/realisation rules, might help us to address one of the prevailing political problems of many modern education systems — the systematic failure of socially disadvantaged pupils to perform well at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces Edward Shils’ transition, during World War II, from enthusiasm to harsh criticism of Karl Mannheim, the Hungarian-born sociologist of knowledge. While serving in London, Shils drew upon a direct and explicit intellectual assault on Mannheim by fellow emigrés to England. Even while Shils maintained regular contact with Mannheim, Shils was exposed to an often vituperative dismissal of Mannheim’s work by Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, in the pages of the London School of Economics (LSE) journal Economica. After the war, when both Popper and Shils joined the LSE faculty—Hayek’s affiliation dated to 1931—Shils’ encounter with their critiques was deepened. And in these early postwar years, Shils became close friends with yet another emigré Mannheim critic, Michael Polanyi. Combined, these sustained and sophisticated criticisms helped wrest Shils from his interwar, Mannheim-friendly intellectual coordinates. The implications for Shils’ later propagation of the “mass society theory” label are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that sociological engagement with the 2011 summer unrest in England has thus far overlooked an important aspect of the 'rioting': the troubling by 'rioters' of the communitarian publics and moral geographies which constitute marginalised city-space. In response to this knowledge gap, this paper seeks to argue that the unrest was transgressive of governance logics which construct inner city 'communities' as spatialised units housing ethno-class legacies and sociations; environments in which remoralised urban citizenships are increasingly being located by policymakers and urban managers. A key goal of the paper is to briefly unpack and situate these projects within repertoires of urban management within the neoliberal city. Another goal is to reflect on media and policy responses to the 'riots' to illustrate the existence and reinforcement of these projects, evinced by the popular construction of 'rioting' as contravening ordered community practice. By mapping the representation and vectoring of community within these narratives either as a fallen or resurgent entity, the paper contends that they provide important insights into the contested socio-moral management strategies increasingly brought to bear on the urban poor. The paper also considers foregrounding such urban strategies as context to be crucial for a sociological framing of the unrest and the repudiation of depoliticised victim-blaming accounts. The paper also briefly reflects on the periodised, networked and disparate practices of the 'riots' to stress the dangers of boxing unrest, or indeed rest, within narrow spatial or behavioural boundaries or essentialised causal categories. Amongst other things, the diffuseness and multi-scalar nature of the 'riots' revealed the deficiency of this normative reading of the registers of urban citizenship. In this sense, the paper suggests that some academic commentary on the 'riots' has been in danger of reinforcing the same localised and residualised cartographies of citizenship generated by communitarian governance strategies at a time when sociologists should be exposing and resisting such articulations. In developing this discussion therefore, the paper seeks to challenge the formulations and boundaries of 'community' as conceptualised by urban governance strategies driving the functional reproduction of neoliberal marginalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits sociological studies of Liverpool between 1956 and 1964 to challenge the prevailing emphasis on affluence in histories of post-war Britain. Vulnerability to poverty continued to shape working-class life, and the sociologists and their respondents drew on class to account for this. However, while the researchers used class as a social description, their respondents suggested that class was a dynamic social relationship within which they operated a degree of agency, albeit mediated by gender and locale. Their agency was not only facilitated by the development of a post-war welfare state, rather than by personal affluence, but also relied on older household economic strategies that highlight continuities with the pre-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a narrative conversation with issues of gender and masculinity within the Jamaican culture within the socio-political milieu studied by Jamaican sociologist Orlando Patterson. It narrates the author's experience of growing-up in a mother-headed household that offered keen insights on the issues of gender and masculinity. The article also shares how the author met his father in London, England and how the occasion became an opportunity to reconstruct positive masculinity.

Norbert Elias (1897–1990) achieved international recognition as a major sociologist only towards the end of his long life. As a German Jewish refugee in England, he did not even gain a secure academic post (at the University of Leicester) until he was 57. Apart from his magnum opus, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation [The Civilizing Process], which was published obscurely in 1939, all his other books and most of his essays were published after his formal retirement. These personal recollections date from that last highly productive part of his life, when he gradually attracted an extensive international following. They depict his foibles, some endearing, some that seemed perversely to stand in the way of his growing reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of values in England and the U.S. In his studies of cultural evolution, U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons suggested that, in the modern era, core Western values were essentially unified and stable. The evidence Parsons used to substantiate his claims was selective and the empirical literature comparing values in England and the U.S. disagrees as to whether value similarities or differences are predominant. Consequently, hypotheses concerning the unity, diversity, and stability of value patterns in these two countries are explored using three distinct cross-national data sets. Although a direct comparison of the data sets is impossible because the value concepts and operational definitions used by each method differed, the data lead to remarkably consistent and unambiguous conclusions. On the level of general value patterning, England and America do seem to have significant value unity. Strong cross-national agreement in value priorities in general was indicated in all data sets considered--the adult interview data on personal values, the student questionnaire data on social values, and the content analysis data on value themes in dominant culture magazines.

The article presents information on sociologist E.P. Thompson's "The Poverty of Theory," related to British Marxist historiography and works of sociologist L. Althusser. In political theory, in the history of science, in urban sociology and elsewhere, Aithusser's immediate disciples have produced sustained analyses. Elements of the Aithusserian language have been assimilated with varying degrees of success into a number of areas and periodicals in Britain, and inform ambitious studies such as that by sociologist A. Cutler. Some Althusser's concepts have nevertheless become assimilated across a broad swathe of social sciences. Yet there has been no substantial penetration into the field of historical analysis except some the work like the work of historiographical critique connected with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, England. No substantive piece of concrete historical analysis however rests even upon narrowly appropriated elements of the Althusserian system. Sociologist E.P. Thompson's "The Poverty of Theory," is a sustained polemic by a well-known historian against Aithusser's philosophical work, its assimilation and its implied threat both to a Marxist historical practice in general and, in particular, to the crucial interconnections of theory and practice on which it rests. Aithusser's work has been centrally organized around a reading of sociologist Karl Marx and the alleged trajectory of his whole oeuvre.

Interviews Anthony Giddens, sociologist and director of the London School of Economics in England. Reaction to comments on his book “The New Rules of Sociological Method”; Origin of the term structurization first mentioned in his book “The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies”.

Relates the memoirs of Irving Melody, a sociologist specializing in science and theory in Durham, England. Interests of Irving in phenomenology and history; Distinctive characteristics of Irving; Impact of Melody's broken marriage relationship on his life; Creation of the history of human sciences group; Works of Melody on human sciences.