Showing papers in "British Journal of Sociology in 2000"
TL;DR: The work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is used to analyse the convergence of once discrete surveillance systems and transforms the purposes of surveillance and the hierarchies of surveillance, as well as the institution of privacy.
Abstract: George Orwell's 'Big Brother' and Michel Foucault's 'panopticon' have dominated discussion of contemporary developments in surveillance. While such metaphors draw our attention to important attributes of surveillance, they also miss some recent dynamics in its operation. The work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is used to analyse the convergence of once discrete surveillance systems. The resultant 'surveillant assemblage' operates by abstracting human bodies from their territorial settings, and separating them into a series of discrete flows. These flows are then reassembled in different locations as discrete and virtual 'data doubles'. The surveillant assemblage transforms the purposes of surveillance and the hierarchies of surveillance, as well as the institution of privacy.
1,699 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a grounded theory of the network society is proposed, and the specific interaction between network morphology and relationships of production/consumption, power, experience, and culture, in the historical making of the emerging social structure at the turn of the Millennium.
Abstract: This article aims at proposing some elements for a grounded theory of the network society. The network society is the social structure characteristic of the Information Age, as tentatively identified by empirical, cross-cultural investigation. It permeates most societies in the world, in various cultural and institutional manifestations, as the industrial society characterized the social structure of both capitalism and statism for most of the twentieth century.
Social structures are organized around relationships of production/consumption, power, and experience, whose spatio-temporal configurations constitute cultures. They are enacted, reproduced, and ultimately transformed by social actors, rooted in the social structure, yet freely engaging in conflictive social practices, with unpredictable outcomes. A fundamental feature of social structure in the Information Age is its reliance on networks as the key feature of social morphology. While networks are old forms of social organization, they are now empowered by new information/communication technologies, so that they become able to cope at the same time with flexible decentralization, and with focused decision-making. The article examines the specific interaction between network morphology and relationships of production/consumption, power, experience, and culture, in the historical making of the emerging social structure at the turn of the Millennium.
1,148 citations
TL;DR: The concept of social care serves to shift the centre of analysis from specific policy domains so that instead of focusing on cash benefits or services in isolation it becomes possible to consider them as part of a broader set of inter-relating elements.
Abstract: Care is now a widely-used concept in welfare state research, firmly established in the literature by feminist analysis. We believe that the concept as it has been used and developed to date has limitations that have hampered its development as a general category of welfare state analysis. In essence we argue that the political economy aspects of the concept have remained underdeveloped. The main purpose of this article is to elaborate a care-centred concept – which we name social care – that countenances and develops care as an activity and set of relations lying at the intersection of state, market and family (and voluntary sector) relations. We are especially concerned to examine what the concept of social care can tell us about welfare state variation and welfare state change and development. The article works systematically through these themes, beginning with a brief historical sketch of the concept of care and then moving on to elaborate the analytic potential of the concept of social care. In the latter regard we make the case that it can lead to a more encompassing analysis, helping to overcome especially the fragmentation in existing scholarship between the cash and service dimensions of the welfare state and the relative neglect of the latter. The concept of social care serves to shift the centre of analysis from specific policy domains so that instead of focusing on cash benefits or services in isolation it becomes possible to consider them as part of a broader set of inter-relating elements. In this and other regards, the concept has the potential to say something new about welfare states.
817 citations
TL;DR: In the second age of modernity, globalization changes not only the relations between and beyond national states and societies, but also the inner quality of the social and political itself which is indicated by more or less reflexive cosmopolitization as an institutionalized learning process as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: ‘Second age of modernity’ is a magical password that is meant to open the doors to new conceptual landscapes. The whole world of nation sovereignty is fading away – including the ‘container theory of society’ on which most of the sociology of the first age of modernity is based upon. In this article I propose a distinction between ‘simple globalization’ and ‘reflexive cosmopolitization’. In the paradigm of the first age of modernity, simple globalization is interpreted within the territorial compass of state and politics, society and culture. This involves an additive, not substitutive, conception of globalization as indicated for example by ‘interconnectedness’. In the paradigm of the second age of modernity globalization changes not only the relations between and beyond national states and societies, but also the inner quality of the social and political itself which is indicated by more or less reflexive cosmopolitization as an institutionalized learning process – and its enemies.
766 citations
TL;DR: The contribution of the field of science and technology studies to mainstream sociology has so far been slim because of a misunderstanding about what it means to provide a social explanation of a piece of science or of an artifact.
Abstract: The contribution of the field of science and technology studies (STS) to mainstream sociology has so far been slim because of a misunderstanding about what it means to provide a social explanation of a piece of science or of an artifact. The type of explanation possible for religion, art or popular culture no longer works in the case of hard science or technology. This does not mean that science and technology escapes sociological explanation, but that a deep redistribution of what is a social explanation is in order. Once this misunderstanding has been clarified, it becomes interesting to measure up the challenge raised by STS to the usual epistemologies social sciences believed necessary for their undertakings. The social sciences imitate the natural sciences in a way that render them unable to profit from the type of objectivity found in the natural sciences. It is argued that by following the STS lead, social sciences may start to imitate the natural sciences in a very different fashion. Once the meanings "social" and "science" are reconfigured, the definition of what a "social science" is and what it can do in the political arena is considered. Again it is not by imitating the philosophers of science's ideas of what is a natural science that sociology can be made politically relevant.
713 citations
TL;DR: These so-called 'workplace studies' address the ways in which tools and technologies feature in work and collaboration and consider their implications for understanding of organizational conduct, social interaction and new technology.
Abstract: Despite the substantial body of literature concerned with the ways in which digital media are transforming contemporary society and institutional life, we have relatively little understanding of the ways in which new technologies feature in day to day organizational conduct and interaction. There is however a growing corpus of empirical research which places the situated and contingent character of new technologies at the heart of the analytic agenda, but as yet, these studies are relatively little known within sociology. They include ethnographies of command and control centres, e nancial institutions, the news media, and the construction industr y. They address the ways in which tools and technologies, ranging from paper documents through to complex multimedia systems, feature in work and collaboration. In this paper, we discuss these so-called ‘workplace studies’ and consider their implications for our understanding of organizational conduct, social interaction and new technology.
233 citations
TL;DR: This paper focuses upon the emergence of the night-time economy both materially and culturally as a powerful manifestation of post-industrial society and the identification and promotion of liminality.
Abstract: This paper focuses upon the emergence of the night-time economy both materially and culturally as a powerful manifestation of post-industrial society. This emergence features two key processes: firstly a shift in economic development from the industrial to the post-industrial; secondly a significant orientation of urban governance involving a move away from the traditional managerial functions of local service provision, towards an entrepreneurial stance primarily focused on the facilitation of economic growth. Central to this new economic era is the identification and promotion of liminality. The State's apparent inability to control these new leisure zones constitutes the creation of an urban frontier that is governed by commercial imperatives.
201 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine some of the major challenges facing urban sociology at century's end given its traditions and lineages, which arise out of the intersection of major macro-social trends and their particular spatial patterns.
Abstract: The article examines some of the major challenges facing urban sociology at century's end given its traditions and lineages. These challenges arise out of the intersection of major macrosocial trends and their particular spatial patterns. The city and the metropolitan region emerge as one of the strategic sites where these macrosocial trends materialize and hence can be constituted as an object of study. Among these trends are globalization and the rise of the new information technologies, the intensifying of transnational and translocal dynamics, and the strengthening presence and voice of specific types of socio-cultural diversity. Each one of these trends has its own specific conditionalities, contents and consequences for cities, and for theory and research. Cities are also sites where each of these trends interacts with the others in distinct, often complex manners, in a way they do not in just about any other setting. The city emerges once again as a strategic lens for the study of major macrosocial transformations as it was in the origins of sociology. Can urban sociology address these challenges and in so doing once again produce some of the analytic tools for understanding the broader transformation?
164 citations
TL;DR: The establishment and uses of CCTV within the location of Liverpool city centre are charted to contextualize CCTV within contemporary 'partnership' approaches to regeneration which are reshaping the material and discursive form of the city.
Abstract: This paper is concerned to chart the establishment and uses of CCTV within the location of Liverpool city centre. In doing this the paper seeks to contextualize CCTV within contemporary 'partnership' approaches to regeneration which are reshaping the material and discursive form of the city. Thus CCTV schemes along with other security initiatives are understood as social ordering strategies emanating from within locally powerful networks which are seeking to define and enact orderly regeneration projects. In focusing on the normative aspects of CCTV, the paper raises questions concerning the efficacy of understanding contemporary forms of 'social ordering practices' primarily in terms of technical rationalities while neglecting other, more material and ideological processes involved in the construction of social order.
152 citations
TL;DR: The temporal gaze in socio-environmental theory can take many forms. Time may be added to existing approaches without disturbing the status quo of theory and methodology as discussed by the authors, or focus may be on the time-space of socioenvironmental existence or typologies constructed of the complexity of socio environmental time.
Abstract: The temporal gaze in socio-environmental theory can take many forms. Time may be added to existing approaches without disturbing the status quo of theory and methodology. Alternatively, focus may be on the time–space of socio-environmental existence or typologies constructed of the complexity of socio-environmental time. Finally, phenomena, processes and events may be conceptualized as timescapes. Through the focus on genetic modification of foods, the paper demonstrates the pertinence of this timescape perspective for social theory and socio-environmental analyses. A thorough-going temporal gaze is important because a) such reconceptualization forms an integral part of rethinking the social sciences' relationship to nature and environmental matters; b) the implications at the level of theory tend to be glossed over and ignored; and c) it is central to changing practice at the level of public and personal action. The paper thus uses a timescape perspective to set out substantive and conceptual issues that present some of social theory's challenges for the new millennium.
133 citations
TL;DR: This article examines the development of European consciousness among a specific network of Manchester United fans and finds an increasing recognition that Manchester United and the city of Manchester must compete autonomously with other major clubs and cities in Europe.
Abstract: Through European club football, we can begin to detect the outlines of a new Europe of competing cities and regions which are being disembedded from their national contexts into new transnational matrices. Focusing on a specific network of Manchester United fans, broadly located in the city of Manchester, this article examines the development of European consciousness among this group of individuals. This consciousness does not consist of a European supranationalism but rather of a new emphasis on the locale of Manchester and an increasing recognition that Manchester United and the city of Manchester must compete autonomously with other major clubs and cities in Europe.
TL;DR: The service class fault line appears to lie within class I and II of the schema rather than between them and the intermediate classes which suggests a revised, smaller service class would better capture the reality of the contemporary British occupational structure.
Abstract: In this paper we examine new empirical evidence on the coherence and magnitude of the main classes in the Goldthorpe class schema. Particular attention is paid to issues that have recently been a source of academic dispute: the coherence and size of the service class and the distinction between the service class and intermediate classes. Using recently available British data collected by the Office for National Statistics we examine: (i) the extent to which measures of class-relevant job characteristics are empirically discriminated by the categories of the schema; (ii) the structure of a ‘contract type’ dimension of employment relations conceived of as a categorical latent variable; and (iii) the association between this latent variable and both the Goldthorpe class schema and a related measure–socio-economic group (SEG). We find that the data are consistent with the existence of a three category latent ‘contract type’ variable largely corresponding to the notions of service, intermediate and wage-labour contracts explicit in discussions of the theoretical rationale for the Goldthorpe schema. We further find a substantial degree of fit between the latent ‘contract types’ and the schema. However, the service class fault line appears to lie within class I and II of the schema rather than between them and the intermediate classes which suggests a revised, smaller service class would better capture the reality of the contemporary British occupational structure.
TL;DR: The paper concludes that a new type of transformation--hybridization--is emerging as a consequence of German companies' growing integration into a global economic system.
Abstract: The German business system has been regarded as a particularly tightly coupled system, with embeddedness of even multinational companies (MNCs) in their home base as particularly deep. A study of the impact of companies' changing internationalization, if not globalization, strategies is therefore especially suited to test competing claims about their effects on the German business system. Are we experiencing an erosion of this system, an adaptation in a largely path-dependent way, or even a greater specialization and stronger crystallization of the German business system?
To investigate these questions, the paper examines a small number of German MNCs in their domestic and international context. More particularly, the work focuses on whether and how their emergent globalization activities affect the reproduction or erosion of the three institutional complexes which shape the factors of production: the financial system; the innovation system; and the industrial relations system. The paper concludes that a new type of transformation – hybridization – is emerging. It is regarded as a consequence of German companies' growing integration into a global economic system.
TL;DR: It is argued that despite the broad consensus concerning the problems facing children born today, the social representations of men and women who grew up in different epochs exacerbate the value clash between generations.
Abstract: In this paper, I explore the way in which people view how the world has changed since they were growing up. This is done both quantitatively and qualitatively, using open-ended responses from the British Household Panel Survey. The theoretical perspective draws on Mannheim's insight that generational location predisposes individuals to characteristic modes of thought and experience and Moscovici's contention that generations may have distinctive social representations. The data largely support the generational hypothesis. The ten most frequent changes mentioned are unemployment, lack of safety, lack of discipline, increased pressure, moral decline, increased crime, drugs, environmental problems, and family breakdown. These social representations of how the world has changed are significant predictors of child-rearing values, especially for women. More generally, I argue that despite the broad consensus concerning the problems facing children born today, the social representations of men and women who grew up in different epochs exacerbate the value clash between generations.
TL;DR: This paper adopts a regulation framework to chart the emergence of neo-Fordism as a flexible accumulation regime and mode of social regulation and makes visible the differentiated gender effects of work transformation in each country.
Abstract: This paper adopts a regulation framework to chart the emergence of neo-Fordism as a flexible accumulation regime and mode of social regulation. Neo-Fordism relies on old Fordist principles as well as incorporating new models of emergent post-Fordisms; old and new social relationships, in their particular combination, specify the trajectory of national variants. It is argued that Fordist bargains institutionalized the terms of a compromise between labor, capital and the state. These bargains embedded a male-breadwinner gender contract compromising women's positions and standardardizing employment contracts around the needs, interests and authority of men. A focus on compromises and contracts makes visible the differentiated gender effects of work transformation in each country.
TL;DR: In this article, the current situation and the future prospects of sociology are assessed by spelling out the trajectory over the past century of sociology's predominant assumptions about the character and direction of the social world and of its own task of cognition.
Abstract: The sociology of the next century is likely to differ from that of the twentieth century. The current situation and the future prospects of sociology are assessed by spelling out the trajectory over the past century of sociology's predominant assumptions about the character and direction of the social world and of its own task of cognition. Sociology is located in three spaces of identity: a space of disciplines, a stage of everyday practice, and a space of imagination and investigation. From the cosmological, epistemological, and spatial trajectories some indications of a new, very different future of sociology are given. Finally, a way of preserving and developing the legacy of first century sociology is presented, in the form of nodes of knowledge, central to a ‘typical’ sociological approach to the social.
TL;DR: Both a revision of the concept of socialization, and lines for an empirical research programme are proposed in accordance with Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems.
Abstract: In 1984, Niklas Luhmann published Soziale Systeme in which he applies the idea of autopoiesis (= self-production) to social systems. Abstracted from its biological connotations, the concept of autopoiesis leads to a sharp distinction between different kinds of autopoietic organization, i.e. between life, consciousness and communication. According to Luhmann, the relationship between social systems and human beings cannot be adequately analysed except by taking into account that they are environments for one another. If this theoretical background is accepted, the concepts and theory of socialization need to be revised. Luhmann takes issues with classical notions such as internalization, inculcation, or 'socialization to the grounds of consensus' (Talcott Parsons). After a historical overview of social systems research and general systems theory, it is indicated how communications trigger further communications and realize the autopoiesis of social systems. In the second part of the article, the distinction between social systems and psychic systems is used to discuss issues crucial to socialization theory. Both a revision of the concept of socialization, and lines for an empirical research programme are proposed in accordance with Luhmann's theory of social systems.
TL;DR: The analysis suggests that residential and educational segregation of Palestinians protects them from direct competition with European Jews, whereas Asian-African Jews have to compete with this dominant group in schools, as well as in the labour market.
Abstract: The relative standings of four ethnic groups - Muslim Palestinians, Christian Palestinians, Asian-African Jews, European Jews -were compared, using mobility data from 1974 and 1991. The findings show that despite the lack of government support and the prevalence of inexorable discrimination against Israeli Palestinians, they have narrowed the gap with Asian-African Jews in both education and occupational prestige. This finding demonstrates that ideological and political hegemony is not always effective in improving the socio-economic standing of preferred minorities (Asian-African Jews), and that social and economic structures may counterbalance the anti-Palestinian nationalist ideology. The analysis suggests that residential and educational segregation of Palestinians protects them from direct competition with European Jews, whereas Asian-African Jews have to compete with this dominant group in schools, as well as in the labour market.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show the declining effectiveness of the sociological classics to make sense of the dramatically changing economy and society, and make various recommendations for future sociology to be empirical and both diachronically and cross-sectionally comparative in order to comprehend those dramatic changes that currently surround us as sociologists.
Abstract: This article shows the declining effectiveness of the sociological classics to make sense of the dramatically changing economy and society. However, the various ‘post-something’ analyses of such transformations, especially the post-modern emphases on language and discourse, are also shown to be inadequate. In their place the author advocates the use of various leitmotifs to establish certain constants, in order then to be able to describe and determine various patterns of variance. The article makes various recommendations for future sociology to be empirical and both diachronically and cross-sectionally comparative in order to comprehend those dramatic changes that currently surround us as sociologists. Sociology should establish such ‘constants’ and worry less about being ‘theory-less’.
TL;DR: This paper examines the relationship between social movements and the police through an analysis of the Civil Rights Movement which emerged in the late 1960s in Northern Ireland by questioning some of the assumptions contained within social movement theory, and their applicability to divided societies such as Northern Ireland.
Abstract: In this paper we examine the relationship between social movements and the police through an analysis of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) which emerged in the late 1960s in Northern Ireland. Following della Porta (1995) and Melucci (1996) we argue that the way in which episodes of collective action are policed can affect profoundly both levels of mobilization and the orientation of social movements. We also submit that the symbolic and representational dimensions of policing can be a significant trigger in the stimulation of identification processes and collective action. The paper concludes by questioning some of the assumptions contained within social movement theory, and their applicability to divided societies such as Northern Ireland.
TL;DR: In this article, the roots of sociology and its links with historical optimism are analyzed and wide-ranging recommendations as to how sociology should be developed into a re-unified, historical social science on a truly global scale.
Abstract: Analysis is provided of the roots of sociology and its links with historical optimism. Particular focus is placed by such a sociology upon the origins of modernity and problems of urban disorder. Sociology's golden age was in the immediate postwar period. But since the 1960s, ‘globalization’, the sciences of complexity and cultural studies have transformed the context for sociology (especially transforming the so-called ‘two cultures’). The article concludes with some wide-ranging recommendations as to how sociology should be developed into a re-unified, historical social science on a truly global scale.
TL;DR: This paper explores recent arguments about the marketization of female labour, in the context of a wider analysis of the role of concepts like 'the market' and 'individualization' in sociological accounts of change in employment relations, and offers an alternative, moral economy, perspective.
Abstract: This paper explores recent arguments about the marketization of female labour, in the context of a wider analysis of the role of concepts like 'the market' and 'individualization' in sociological accounts of change in employment relations. It will be argued that within sociology there has been a tendency for rapid, large-scale changes in employment relations to be characterized as the breakdown of social influences or structures and as the emergence of atomized, individuated market forces. In the most recent models, change in the nature of gendered positions within employment are presented in terms of a decline of social structuring and social constraint. These emergent accounts hold similarities to classical economics, and to Marx's and Weber's accounts of employment, which also characterized new forms of employment relations in terms of the emptying of their social content and their replacement by market forms. We offer an alternative, moral economy, perspective which foregrounds the continued significance of social relations in the structuring of employment and employment change. We develop the argument through an analysis of gendered patterns of employment and change in family form.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, two main class concepts are proposed: class as life conditions, based on a person's total wealth, and class as exploitation based on an individual's control over assets that produce economic rents.
Abstract: Satisfactory class concepts need to identify the mechanisms that produce the consequences of class membership, be they class conflicts or differences in lifestyles. Using a broad conception of property rights, the article proposes to base class concepts on personal wealth, that is, the assets a person controls. Two main class concepts are proposed: class as life conditions, based on a person's total wealth, and class as exploitation, based on a person's control over assets that produce economic rents. The former concept corresponds to empirical and Weberian class concepts, the latter to Marxist and neo-Marxist class concepts. The article shows that the class concept based on rent-producing assets accounts for recent developments in capitalism.
TL;DR: It is argued that, to a very large extent, from conception through gestation, childbirth and subsequently childhood and adolescence, the social processing and regulation of social members take place in unitary terms and that twins (and higher multiples) are an anomaly in relation to such processes.
Abstract: The principal argument presented here may be simply stated: twin-ship is an irreducibly social phenomenon. (It must be emphasized that this is not to argue that it is an exclusively social phenomenon, although there are those who argue that all human phenomena are inescapably ‘socially constructed’.) My purpose here is to explore the ways in which the different perspectives considered in the previous chapter can illuminate twinship as a social phenomenon.1
TL;DR: This paper draws on world systems and resource dependency theories to show how the changing recruitment practices of English League clubs have deepened the brawn drain from Irish football, thereby compounding its underdevelopment.
Abstract: This paper draws on world systems and resource dependency theories to show how the changing recruitment practices of English League clubs have deepened the brawn drain from Irish football, thereby compounding its underdevelopment. An analysis of the origins, method of recruitment and destinations of Irish players (North and South) who appeared in the English League between 1946 and 1995 shows that English clubs imported large numbers of Irish players throughout the second half of the twentieth century. However, it was the inclusion of Irish teenagers within the youth policies of the largest clubs in the period after the 1970s that marked a break from the traditional pattern of buyer-supplier relations. Instead of continuing to purchase players who had established reputations within the Irish leagues, English clubs began to hire the most promising schoolboys before they joined Irish sides. As this practice spread, it eventually eliminated a valuable source of income: the selling of players to English clubs. Despite this development it would, however, be inappropriate to view the relationship between the Irish and English football industries as a simple zero sum game as Irish clubs benefit from employing highly trained young players who return home after failing to establish careers in England.
TL;DR: The 'social authenticity' and 'informational density' of historical evidence does allow for veridical reconstructions of the past, while the reflexive interpretive protocols of source criticism and the sociology of knowledge can be deployed to provide warrant for discriminating arbitrations between competing theories and narratives.
Abstract: Critics of the interdisciplinary enterprise of historical sociology commonly contend that the narrational accounts of past social phenomena provided by historians are inadequate to the task of theory-building and testing. In support of this negative assessment, opponents will adduce informational deficiencies in the available data (the standard positivist appraisal of historical evidence), or cite the interpretive anarchy that seemingly prevails at the narrative phase of emplotment (the skeptical, postmodernist contention that historiographic texts 'construct' rather than veridically represent the events they artfully contrive to signify). Both of these lines of criticism are unbalanced, and therefore seriously misleading as regards the epistemic foundations of historical-sociological inquiry. The 'social authenticity' and 'informational density' of historical evidence does allow for veridical reconstructions of the past, while the reflexive interpretive protocols of source criticism and the sociology of knowledge can be deployed to provide warrant for discriminating arbitrations between competing theories and narratives. The various epistemological deformations in the study of human affairs that have been encouraged by the old idiographic-nomothetic polarity - chronic ahistoricism within the social sciences, the atheoretical predilections of much conventional historiography - are rectifiable through the consolidation of a fully integrated sociological history, a unified and inclusive historical social science.
TL;DR: The Rise of the Network Society as mentioned in this paper is a seminal work in social theory and has attracted rave reviews from other social theorists, such as Cardoso, Giddens, Touraine, and Touraine.
Abstract: Social theor y has failed intellectually, yet by most academic and popular standards it continues to attract all the trappings of success. Why should this be so? To furnish an answer one must examine the nature of social theory itself, explore the character of its failure and seek an understanding of how, nevertheless, it continues to attract approval. In the latter respect a sociological account of the functions which social theory plays in both intellectual and practical life is required. Rather than targeting social theory in the round we shall critically review aspects of Castells’ volume The Rise of the Network Society (Volume 1 only). Castells’ writings would be endorsed by most social scientists as an exemplar of what is usually termed social theory. That The Rise of the Network Society is successful is beyond all doubt; rst published in 1996 it has already been reprinted four times and attracted rave reviews from other social theorists. Cardoso (a political scientist) describes it as ‘A masterpiece . . . (which) will have an enormous impact on (the) social sciences.’ Giddens (a sociologist) opines that ‘. . . it is a very major work of social and economic theor y’ and nally, Touraine (another sociologist) writes: ‘Castells’ master book rediscovers the highest ambition of modern social science.’ Furthermore, Castells appears to have attracted much attention outside academic circles. He was appointed to the European Commission’s High level Expert Group on the Information Society and, was sought by the Russian political authorities to advise on similar matters. The applause of other social theorists is not perhaps unexpected, it being one of the appurtenances of the calling that much mutual appreciation (and citation) takes place. There is after all a shared interest in the promotion of the genre. If, however, the whole enterprise is shaky, the extra-academic appreciation is more dif cult to comprehend. Perhaps the European Commission and the Russian authorities were spellbound by the possibilities inherent to the following:
TL;DR: Results from a small-scale survey conducted in one form of postmodern space--the shopping mall are reported, suggesting that unsupported assertions about the disorienting effects of postModern space and their associated influence on consumerist activities should be treated with scepticism.
Abstract: There has recently been an explosion of theoretical literature on social space. A central claim in this literature is that postmodern spaces are experienced as confusing or disorienting by human subjects. This claim remains untested. The paper reports results from a small-scale survey conducted in one form of postmodern space - the shopping mail. It suggests that unsupported assertions about the disorienting effects of postmodern space and their associated influence on consumerist activities should be treated with scepticism. Through practice humans are able to develop routines which enable them to competently navigate these spaces.
TL;DR: It is suggested that class positions can themselves be characterized in terms of the opportunities they yield to those occupying them, which enables the clear identification of the kinds of inequality that are and are not addressed by research findings presented in Terms of class categories and odds ratios.
Abstract: Distinguishing between an explanatory and a normative interest in social stratification, this paper considers the relation between class analysis and the value of equality. Starting from the familiar distinction between (in)equality of position and (in)equality of opportunity, and noting the extent to which mobility research focuses on the latter, it suggests that class positions can themselves be characterized in terms of the opportunities they yield to those occupymg them. This enables the clear identification of the kinds of inequality that are and are not addressed by research findings presented in terms of class categories, and odds ratios. The significance of those findings from a normative perspective is then discussed, and their limitations are emphasized - though the paper also explains in what ways they are indeed of normative relevance.