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This paper focuses on private equity in the UK and is set in the context of debates about transformations in the City of London. The article focuses on a particular concept of trust as expressed by senior members of the private equity sector. The argument developed is based on interviews with five senior founding partners of private equity firms who talked to us about their background and education, their understanding of how private equity worked and the basis for successful money making and their relationships with those inside and outside the organization. All interviewees strongly asserted the need for absolute trust between senior partners as an essential condition for the successful operation of their business. At the same time, their description of trust in this context was that while it is deep, it is also easily broken, and that once broken, the breach cannot be forgiven. We call this 'brittle trust': asserted to be simultaneously strong while extremely fragile. The paper argues, drawing on Diego Gambetta's work on the Sicilian Mafia, that this concept of 'trust' reflects a particular understanding of the practice of private equity as a high risk, tough and unforgiving business that nevertheless requires high standards of personal integrity. The study allows us to understand something more about the social ideals that were built into this financial sector by its founders, which we argue formed a crucial part of the transformation of the financial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was originally planned as an abstract of the introduction to a book on the coordination of the social sciences. It was written out in its present form as a contribution to the discussions at the conference on the same topic, held at Oxford, England, in October 1922. Unfortunately it arrived just too late for use at the conference; but it was kept in hand. The task of preparing the paper for the printer has not been altogether easy; for the author is now in India, and it has been impossible to consult him on a number of points, some of them important. The author has not hesitated to make slight changes in choice and order of words, and arrangement of matter, where he seemed to see clearly that improvement was possible. In some other respects slight changes have been necessary to meet printing difficulties. The author trusts, however, that the ideas, which the author is earnest to place before his readers, have in no way been obscured by these changes. It is impossible to foretell how far a contribution on such original lines will have authority with the sociologists of to-day.

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]

Age identities are a product of negotiation between acquaintances and intimates. The negotiation takes place against a background of assumptions about appropriate ways of moving through the life span. This study of ageing in the context of an English church shows how organisational needs must be taken into account in understanding the ageing strategies of participants. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in the south of England in 1985-6. The analysis draws on the literature of social gerontology which is mainly American. It is part of a larger ESRC-funded study of the social construction of old age in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the take-over by a global corporation (Royal Doulton) of a family-owned and run pottery factory in Longton Stoke-on-Trent, known as ‘Beswick’, and the subsequent re-structuring of production, this paper explores the way in which women pottery workers make social distinctions between the ‘rough’ and ‘posh’, ‘proper paintresses’ and ‘big heads’ which cut into and across abstract sociological notions of class. Drawing on ethnographic data I show that for these working class women, class as lived is inherently ambiguous and contradictory and reveal the ways in which class is gendered. I build on historical and sociological studies of the pottery industry, and anthropological and related debates on class, as well as Frankenberg's study of a Welsh village, to develop my argument and draw analogies between factory and village at a number of levels. My findings support the view that class is best understood not as an abstract generalising category, but in the local and specific contexts of women's working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to a sociology of knowledge via an autoanalysis of a marginalised member of the British upper-middle class, who moved first from the South to the North of England and then from England to Scottish society as an immigrant: a 'stranger who stayed'. Written in the first person, Bridget Fowler's reflections move between different religious and political worlds, focusing especially on her reception of conflicting sociological theories and her own development through these. Influenced by five exceptionally learned and lucid sociologists – John Rex, Herminio Martins, Raymond Williams, Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Lovell – she has spent her sociological career contributing to the demystification of power in various forms. In particular she has focused on the significance of secular culture – notably literature – in creating hegemonic domination. She has also analysed the role of symbolic revolutions in social transformation, avoiding in this respect falling either into idealism or simplistic class reductionism. Arguing that sociological theory still needs to teach Marx, Weber and Durkheim, these founding figures should not be seen as creating – in social scientific terms – a unified architectural construction, but should be read with and against one another; further, they need also to be combined with other, more contemporary, influences. Finally whilst noting the existential salience of movements around identity – nation, gender, sexuality and disability – she argues that the discipline must continue to reach out 'beyond the fragments', to address social totalities more broadly, including wider issues of social space and structures of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a speech by the president of the Sociological Society Edward Brabrook, during its annual meeting in London, England. The president addressed few words on the occasion of the annual meeting of the society. He paid tribute to physician J.H. Bridges, one of the most efficient member of the society. The production of three volumes of sociological papers, and of the first volume of quarterly "Sociological Review" were further discussed. In the first volume, published in 1904, V.V. Branford, honorary secretary and founder of the society traced the origin and the use of the word sociology. The twofold method by which the study is to be pursued was broadly defined. In the second volume its relation to the philosophy of history and its relation to ethics were stated, while the third volume fitly closes with the paradox of H.G. Wells, that sociology is not a science. The other sections discussed in the speech were progress report of the "Sociological Review," various meetings of the society in the past, finance, eugenics, civics, education and social economy.

The article focuses on the lecture "The Obstacles to Eugenics" delivered by C.W. Saloeby during the meeting of the Sociological Society in London, England.

The goal of rethinking the social meaning and uses of education. historicizing its organized firms. and seeing educational knowledge as fully cultural has required a long detour. The current revitalization, which is believed that the critical sociology of education returns to the entire discipline flourished largely not in sociology but in educational fields like curriculum. It first appeared not in the U.S. but abroad particularly in England. It did not draw sustenance from the center of' American sociological discourse but was nurtured at its periphery in European structuralist and cultural theory. The result of a combined historic exclusion and current valuation is the danger of an apparently truncated narrative and a false impression that there is no developmental history or tradition of the work presented in this article. These papers can be said to represent a third generation in critical sociology of education. They follow the first ideology critique and general theory phase and then the more education-centered. but still diffuse structuralist derivations of the middle period.

In this article I engage with the theoretical opening provided by Barry Buzan’s From International to World Society? I present an argument for five functional categories, which should be able to encompass all the institutions identified by English School scholars throughout history. Their introduction should point the way towards a sounder analytical framework for the study of what Buzan believes should be the new subject of the discipline of International Relations (IR). This subject is defined as second-order societies, meaning societies ‘where the members are not individual human beings, but durable collectivities of humans possessed of identities and actor qualities that are more than the sum of their parts’, and where the content of these societies, and the key object of analysis, is primary institutions. The purpose of the five functional categories is to break down this ‘social whole’ and provide a set of lenses through which to potentially analyse international societies throughout history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article draws on recent theoretical developments within sociology which have proposed new ways of looking at and understanding class. Drawing on two contemporary examples, namely the Gambling Bill and the recent 'riots' at Ikea in Edmonton in north London, the article demonstrates some of the ways in which class operates subjectively within the practice of everyday life. Using these examples, I show how class continuously informs identity and how, by looking at a range of contemporary cultural consumption practices, it is possible to gain a sense of how boundaries surrounding rights to middle-class identity are constantly tightened and refined. By presenting a range of responses to these consumer practices, I show how representations of the working class are often problematic and leave important questions about the everyday performance of class unanswered. The article thus offers an alternative understanding of class to those that have often positioned the working class as a dangerous deviant mob, as romantic rebels or simply as victims of an oppressive capitalist state. It concludes by arguing in favour of a renewed sociology of class and for ensuring that class features more prominently on the sociology of consumption agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the 'Ethno-inquiries', founded by Edward Rose, and the analytic affinities with Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks established in the formative development of Ethnomethodology. The article introduces the Ethno-inquiries approach to sociological interviews. Using a project that captured ordinary, oral accounts of the 1996 bombing of Manchester, England, this article shows how the epistemological and methodological attitude of the Ethno-inquiries towards talk -- recognizing the linguistic constitution of the social world, avoiding methodological irony, letting informants rather than analysts organize topics -- affords fine-grained analyses of ordinary actions within extraordinary events. This article discusses important aspects of interviewing including data gathering and the nature of 'interview data', the selection of interviewees and getting the story. A series of vignettes demonstrates the enabling potential of this analytic attitude towards people's accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article acknowledges the support of various individuals for Between Nature, an interdisciplinary conference held at Lancaster University in Lancaster, England in July 2000. Hosting academic papers, visual arts, performances and installations, the conference explored the interface between ecology and performance. The event came about through productive collaborations with colleagues in the Department of Theatre Studies at Lancaster.

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]

This article seeks to develop multi-layered reflections on men in England, Finland and Ireland. It connects autobiographical memories, the politics and the problematic of men, studies on men, and men's situation in three countries and societies, and their postcolonial contexts. In each case, personal, political and academic connections with the countries concerned are explored and interlinked. Though postcolonial studies have been developed mainly by those who are members of or in an ambiguous relation to social categories that have been marginalised by colonialism and imperialism, these perspectives are drawn on to interrogate and deconstruct the dominant. Postcolonialism figures in different ways in the three countries, providing multiple means to deconstruct men, the unified, coherent, individual and collective male subject. `Men', the mystified/mythologised One(s), are made material Other(s). Studying men needs to be less ethnocentric, less national(istic), and more fully located in transnational contexts. INSETS: England Memory I: Woolwich, Chariton, Greenwich.;Finland Memory I: post-war television beyond the Empire.;England Memory III / Ireland Memory II: Oxford….;England Memory V: Finding men problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a case study of the social and physical construction of an 'Irish' community in an English town. It asks how or why members of this community migrated and how they construct contemporary images of 'home'. The article draws on semi-structured interviews and conversations with members of the contemporary Irish community in Huddersfield, including Irish-born and second-generation Irish respondents. We find that their sense of Irish identity is complex, encompassing the totality of social experience, much of which is influenced by often competing interpretations of social and political relationships and understandings of history. What constitutes Irish identity in Huddersfield is determined not just by these factors, but also by the ways in which individuals are socialised as members of different families, neighbourhoods, workplace or other social interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on events and meetings held related to the field of sociology. The first joint meeting was held in conjunction with the S.E. Union of Scientific Societies, and the Regional Association on April 22, 1921, at the rooms of the Linnean Society, Burlington House, London. Joint meetings with the Regional Association were also held on May 12, 1921 and June 2, 1921. Discussion on "Co-operation in Social Studies" and "Municipal Survey of Sheffield" was done. Also, a meeting on the study of "La Science Sociale" was held on June 29, 1921 where discussion on "Comment la Route crée le Type social" was done. Also, lectures on Civics an Sociology was given during May and early part of June and discussion on "Education in Its Wider Aspects and on its Various Levels," was done on July 12, 14, 19 and 21 respectively. Furthermore, a meeting on June 14, 1921 in the rooms of the Royal Society was held where there was a discussion on "The Non-Co-operation Movement in India."

One remark made more frequently by sociologists than by their gibing critics that sociology has not yet come to that development which commands from its adherents wholehearted agreement as to the objectives to be aimed at, the field to be limited, and the methods to be used. Not only is this lack of unanimity characteristic of the science as a whole, when viewed apart from national boundaries, but also even within each country there is still to be found great diversity of opinion as to the major concepts and abstractions of this field of inquiry. England seems to offer the one exception. It is not that English sociologists have consciously developed an agreement and so are working as a unified group for the advancement of their science, for they seem to be less aware of disagreement and of the controversial aspects of the situation than most workers in the field. It is rather that there seems to be a fairly general acceptance of the idea that there is something called a sociological point of view which can be applied to economics, anthropology, religion, or what not, but that point of view is infinitely elastic and does not cry to be defined nor elaborated into a separate discipline.

This article discusses the results of a survey for the Southampton, England which aims to construct a series of indices of social conditions for the various districts of the Town and to measure the distribution of income by classifying the population into income grades. The construction of this particular index was the largest of the tasks, and the method to arrive at it will be described in some detail. Some of social condition indices such as the infant mortality rate per ward and the census figures of persons per room, were already in existence. Others were made from data collected for the Southampton Civic Survey. These include, house density per acre of housing land, population per acre of housing land and public open space per person. The method used for ascertaining income distribution was that of the mass interview, while enquiry method was confined to families with dependent children, or strictly , children of all ages up to school-leaving age. The study selected infant mortality rate as representative of health conditions. The wards at Town, Saint Mary's, Notham and Trinity make distinctly the worst showing, in health, overcrowding, and with one exception, house density.

This article addresses the social and educational aspects of the Homecroft Movement in England. Homecrofting is a certain system of combining land cultivation with working-class housing. An actual model of a Homecroft settlement can be seen in its beginnings on a very small scale on the National Homecroft Association's land near Cheltenham, where a colony of 10 houses are provided by private capital for the sake of giving a concrete demonstration of the plan. Every family is to have its detached house and croft. The house is two-storied, has five apartments, is built substantially with cement blocks, and is in every way superior to what an unskilled labourer's wage would usually enable him to have. Yet it is intended that the ordinary wage-earning worker should find it possible to live there. As additional economic resource is put into his hands from which to find the rent. The croft is fitted out for providing the family with food. The sociological interest of these endeavours lies in the fact that the success which has already attended them may reasonably be expected to grow. In endeavouring to make the system economic, the principle followed was that of beginning with the likeliest land and people, with a view to advancing towards the less likely step by step, as methods became more completely mastered and experience grew.