Showing papers in "British Journal of Sociology in 1983"

Goodwill and the Spirit of Market Capitalism

Abstract: This article focuses on the predominance of obligated relational contracting in Japanese business. Consumer goods markets are highly competitive in Japan, but trade in intermediates, by contrast, is for the most part conducted within long-term trading relations in which goodwill give-and-take is expected to temper the pursuit of self-interest. Cultural preferences explain the unusual predominance of these relations in Japan, but they are in fact more common in Western economies than textbooks usually recognize. The growth of relational contracting in labour markets especially is, indeed, at the root of the rigidities supposedly responsible for contemporary stagflation. Japan shows that to sweep away these rigidities and give markets back their pristine vigor is not the only prescription for a cure of stagflation. The Japanese economy more than adequately compensates for the loss of allocative efficiency by achieving high levels of other kinds of efficiency. Relational contracts are just a way of trading off the short term loss involved in sacrificing a price advantage, against the insurance. As for relational contracting between enterprises, there are three things to be said. First, the relative security of such relations encourages investment in supplying firms. Second, the relationships of trust and mutual dependency make more for a rapid flow of information. Third, a by-product of the system is a general emphasis on quality.

Female Power and Male Dominance on the Origins of Sexual Inequality@@@The Black Woman Cross Culturally

Abstract: List of tables and figures Preface Introduction Part I. Plans for Sex-Role Behaviour: 1. Scripts for female power 2. Scripts for male dominance Part II. Constructing Sex-Role Plans: 3. The environmental context of metaphors for sexual identities 4. Plans for the sexual division of labor 5. Blood, sex, and danger Part III. The Women's World: 6. The bases for female political and economic power and authority 7. The decline of the women's world: the effect of colonialism Part IV. The Dynamics of Male Dominance and Sexual Inequality: 8. The bases for male dominance 9. Why women? Part V. Conquerors of the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey: Epilogue Appendixes Notes Bibliography Index.

Intergenerational class mobility and the convergence thesis: England, France and Sweden†

Abstract: In two papers previously published, we have compared rates of intergenerational class mobility among the adult male populations of England, France and Sweden (Erikson, Goldthorpe and Portocarero 1979, 1982). The empirical results reported in these papers have been taken as a basis for evaluating current arguments concerning mobility patterns within western industrial societies and, in particular, for testing two different versions of the thesis which claims that these patterns display an essential similarity. The earliest and simplest version of this thesis is that due to Lipset and Zetterberg, which holds that the actually observed – or, as we would wish to say, the absolute – rates of mobility between broadly defined classes tend to be ‘much the same’ from one western industrial society to another (Lipset and Zetterberg 1959). The data presented in the first of our two papers stood in some opposition to this claim. While our results could lend support to the idea of there being a ‘family resemblance’ among the class mobility patterns of England, France and Sweden, each of these countries was at the same time found to have a fairly distinctive ‘mobility profile’ when intergenerational movements in class position were examined on the basis of a ninefold class schema. Inflow rates, or patterns of class recruitment, showed especially marked cross-national variation. A major factor creating such variation was evidently that of historically-determined differences in the class structures of the three societies, most notably ones associated with the relative sizes of their agricultural sectors and with differing rates of contraction of employment in agriculture in the course of economic development. It is, however, awareness of precisely this possibility of structurally induced variations in absolute mobility rates which distinguishes the subsequent reformulation of the Lipset-Zetterberg thesis undertaken by Featherman,

The Degradation of Work? Skill, Deskilling and the Labour Process

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Deciphering Sociological Research

Abstract: Preface PART 1: DECIPHERING SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH PART 2: RESEARCH REPORTS Appendix: Glossary of Terms Notes References Index

For Weber: Essays on the Sociology of Fate

Abstract: Introduction Marx and Nietzsche PART ONE: MARXISM Logic and Fate in Weber's Sociology Weber and Structural Marxism Weber and the Frankfurt School PART TWO: RELIGION Religious Stratification Theodicy, the Career of a Concept Weber on Medicine and Religion PART THREE: DEVELOPMENT Feudalism and Prebendalism Weber and the Sociology of Development Weber's Orientalism PART FOUR: CAPITALISM Family, Property and Ideology Weber and the Sociology of Law Weber and Late Capitalism

Explaining perceptions of class and racial inequality in England and the United States of Americae

Abstract: Through an exploratory analysis of small matched samples in England and the USA, I propose and test the propositions that people's perceptions of the extent of class and racial inequality in their society arise from tl) their differential placement in the stratification system, t2) their acceptance or rejection of dominant ideologies about inequality, t3 ) their differential educational experiences, and t4) the historical conditions prevailing when their attitudes were being formed. The results suggest that Americans may be more perceptive than the English of both class and racial inequality and may also be more divided on the question of how much inequality exists. In both countries, however, consciousness of inequality may fail to materialize at the most basic level: Many people do not perceive their society to be particularly unequal in the first place, and hence never get beyond this stage to evaluate inequality as unfair, recognize that something can be done about it, and take action to reduce it. A growing body of empirical research focuses on the various elements that make up what might broadly be termed 'class consciousness'. It includes studies of the images that people have of the class structure, their views of their locations in it,l their perceptions of the extent and character of the inequality that exists between different classes,2 and their judgrnents as to the justice or injustice of class inequality.3 In this paper I attempt to add to the work on class imagery and perceptions by proposing and testing the proposition that people's perceptions of class and racial inequalities arise from tl) their differential placement in the stratification system and the experiences that derive from that, t2) their acceptance or rejection of dominant ideologies about inequality, t3) their differential educational experiences, and t4) the historical conditions prevailing when their attitudes were being formed.

The career of causal analysis in American sociolo t gY

Abstract: The visibility of causal terminology in American sociology, from 1895 to the 1960s, has varied according to changing philosophies of science and patterns of scientific communication. Successive generations differed in their receptivity to the diffusion of causal concepts from traditions other than sociology. After briefly reviewing the status of causality in the pre-sociological period, causal terminology is observed across four successive cohorts of sociologists. The first generation, 1890 to 1910, spoke freely of 'causes' until the second generation, in command of method using English statistics until the 1930s, made talk of causes anathema. Following theorists called for a return to causal interpretations which commenced in the 1950s as new methods attuned to the prevailing philosophy of science were imported to sociology from other disciplines.

Is Everyone Equal before the System of Grades: Social Background and Opportunities in China

Abstract: This paper examines how parents' social position influences their childrens' educational achievement in China. In 19 7 7, the government instituted a three-tiered examination system to choose students for junior high school, senior high school, and the university. The carefully laid out rules prevent much of the corruption which undermined the system of the early 1970s. But the system perpetuates and accentuates inequality by selecting a disproportionate numb er of students from the intellectual and cadre families. Given the close family units and differences in social stratifications in China, social background influences educational achievements in ways similar and yet different from the west. It is not so much the economic advantage but the encouragement and coaching of the educated parents that give these children the edge. These children do better in the examination than those from the peasant/ worker families and, in turn, the examination system gives them further privileges and opportunities, widening the gap between them and others.

Social usages of the public drinking house: changing aspects of class and leisure.

Abstract: Different categories of drinking houses, it is claimed, are historically related to different kinds of users and usages. Industrialism, however, entrenched the ubiquitous pub amidst the song, sin and insobriety of the poor and the new working-class urban proletariat. The public house thus became a focus of social freedoms and sexual licence, as well as a locus of more formal elements of rational recreation. Yet the public house was subject to social controls of a ferocious kind and not simply licensing constraints, and some discussion is developed in examining the class basis of recreation and leisure controls. Attention finally turns to viewing the public house as an intermediate context in a relational sense, in an historical sense and in a time sense, and one deserving further sociological attention. Historically, different types of public drinking houses have generally developed out of distinct categories of social usage. The inn developed from the coaching tradition of providing refreshment and lodgings for travellers. Such houses tended over time to foster recreation and itinerant entertainers and to be a focus of not just wealthy travellers but plyers of wares and trades-but always perhaps within the context of a dominant use by the relatively wealthy. Such drinking houses catered for catholic drinking tastes-spirits, wines and beers. The taverns were originally concerned with selling wine, the availability of wine itself being boosted by the cultivation of vines in the medieval monasteries. Such taverns, by the late eighteenth century, were virtually indistinguishable from inns and met the needs of the casual drinker, catering for a wide range of users. The alehouse was the traditional village drinking house; it had none of the accommodation or the formal entertainment patterns of the inn. It was effectively the local community drinking and meeting place and was

Capitalism without Classes: The Case of Classical Rome

Abstract: Rome during the last two centuries of the Republic and the first two of the Principate was an unequivocally capitalist society in the sense that it was based on the private ownership of property and the transaction of social relations through the market. But despite this, classes in the sense of distinctive groups or categories defirled by their relation to the means of production never constituted its structural basis. After a summary of some of the institutional impediments in the way of class-formation, it is argued that these should themselves be seen as symptoms of the pre-existing dominance of coercive and ideological over economic sanctions and that the rise of a market economy and the massive influx of wealth after the Punic Wars did not alter, but were on the contrary absorbed into, the existing pattern of social and political relations and the conflicts within it. In conclusion, it is suggested that if, contrary to factj Rome had been genuinely socially and politically democratic in the fourth and third centuries BC then it would have evolved into a class-based system.

Religious sects and the concept of deviance: the Mormons and the Moonies.

Abstract: Religious sects have been studied sociologically as social movements, minorities and deviant groups. The perspective of the sociology of deviance has principally been adopted in attempts to understand those instances when a sectarian group has aroused public hostility. This is interpreted as a reaction to the activities of the religious movement which have become publicly defined as deviant. The escalation of such a hostile public response towards religious, and other 'deviant', groups has sometimes been accounted for in terms of the so-called deviance amplification model. The model has often been used in conjunction with its conceptual cousin, 'the moral crusade', to account for the arousal and intensification of hostility towards various minorities.l If the origins and escalation of hostility have been accounted for in these ways, the consequences of such an adverse public reaction for a religious movement's development have been examined with only oblique reference to the sociological notion of deviarlce. The long term careers of religious groups, notably those defined as sects, have more commonly been considered in the context of the transition from sect to denomination. Such a transition is said to involve, inter alia, the weaning of the sect away from radical, and by implication deviant, practices. If one takes a societal-reaction approach to deviance, then it follows that the hostile response of the public might be expected to affect the nature and speed of this transition. Both deviance amplification and the sect-to-denomination models can offer important insights into the role of public hostility in the life of a religious movement-but only with due appreciation of their limitations. The aim here is not to dismiss these forms of explanation in favour of new, more radical and esoteric principles, but rather to demonstrate the need to take a broader perspective. Specifically, we suggest the need to look more closely at the internal dynamic of the situation which engenders hostility. Such a situation needs to be seen as one

Discrimination in Northern Ireland: A Rejoinder

Abstract: Since O'Hearn misrepresents and oversimplifies my thesis let me restate it, before replying to the specific issues he raises. I argue that, contrary to most interpretations, the Northern Irish disturbances of 1968 were caused by Catholic Nationalism rather than by discrimination against Catholics. I do not claim that there was no discrimination against Catholics; what I argue is that the extent and severity of this discrimination have been greatly exaggerated.l Rather than being systematic there was remarkable variation between local councils and between firms in how Catholics were treated. Some councils and some firms were very biased while others appear to have been basically non-sectarian in their policies. Given this variation it is obviously a mistake to treat the most blatant instances of discrimination as though they were typical. It is methodological nonsense to say 'if we are to explore seriously the question of gerrymandering we must go beyond general statistics to the analysis of particular cases.' Any introductory text in research methods will stress that you cannot generalize from case studies. If we want to describe the general situation we must utilize general statistics. What is the relevance of his second table? The details of the ward system whereby Londonderry was gerrymandered have been widely publicized. My question was whether Londonderry was typical. The facts, which my researchdiscovered and which O'Hearn does not dispute, suggest that Londonderry was a very unusual case. In only 7 out of 67 urban and rural districts, were Catholic majorsties controlled by Protestants. O'Hearn says that this does not take into account population size so let us look at how many people were affected. As the data show the number of Catholics affected was just over 100,000; the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Northern Ireland lived in areas where local elections resulted in democratic outcomes. Why were a handful of Catholic areas gerrymandered? Any plausible explanation should take account of the historical context. The Londonderry gerrymander took place during a period of armed