Showing papers in "Sociology in 1978"

K is mentally ill: the anatomy of a factual account

Abstract: The paper analyses an interview describing how K came to be defined by her friends as mentally ill. The method of analysis assumes that the structure of the conceptual scheme `mental illness' which the reader uses in recognizing `mental illness' is isomorphic with that organizing the text and hence is discoverable `in' it. The full text of the interview is presented as the data. The analysis explicates the interpretation of the text as a method of reading. The text is found to provide instructions for its interpretation and for the authorization of its facticity. K's mental illness is to be located in the collection of instances of K's behaviour which the interview records. How is behaviour to be described as `mentally ill type' behaviour? It is suggested that the interview as a whole organizes a `cutting-out' procedure whereby K's behaviour is presented as making sense neither to her friends nor to the reader of the text. The procedure involves showing for each instance of her behaviour as well as for th...

Accusations: The Occasioned Use of Members' Knowledge of `Religious Geography' in Describing Events

Abstract: The data analysed here are taken from the transcripts of the Scarman Tribunal hearings (into Violence and Civil Disorder in Northern Ireland in 1969): in this extract a senior police officer is cross-examined about events in which he was involved. In directing the cross-examination the counsel can be heard to draw attention to reports about these events, and to draw certain inferences from the descriptions contained in those reports. On the basis of those inferences the counsel can then be heard to accuse the witness that his action during these events was in some way defective. The descriptions which comprise the reports overwhelmingly employ place names, where these can be used to identify the religion of persons involved, and, in a variety of ways, to thereby document those persons' actions and the character of events. The analysis explores the use made of conventional knowledge of religious geography as an interpretative resource, through which certain descriptive work can achieve a characterization o...

Women's Work and Theories of Class Stratification

Abstract: Most stratification studies exclude from the scope of their analysis the study of inequalities based on the division of labour between women and men. In this paper an attempt is made to identify am...

The Sociology of Health and Illness: Its Present State, Future Prospects and Potential for Health Research

Abstract: This paper describes the origins and development of the sociology of health and illness in Britain and shows that these were rooted in practical concerns, rather than deriving from sociological theory or general sociology. Medical practitioners and researchers, health administrators, patients and the feminist movement have been influences encouraging sociologists to turn their attention to health and illness. The present state of the subdiscipline is one of great activity, but little theoretical or methodological unity. The contribution to the subject of Parsons, Freidson and Mechanic, the marxists, the British post-Fabians, empiricists and phenomenologists are discussed, as is the contribution of the subdiscipline to health and health policy research. In considering the future of the subject, a sociology of health and illness rather than of medicine is proposed and the inevitable moral and political implications of sociological activity in this area are exposed. The need to face the implications of suffe...

Trends in Class Mobility

Abstract: Using data from the 1972 Nuffileld enquiry, trends in class mobility in England and Wales are investigated on the basis of birth cohort comparisons. In the case of absolute mobility rates—i.e. those actually observed in terms of a schema of class positions—trends over time, notably towards increasing upward and decreasing downward mobility, are clearly indicated, and have been favoured by the pattern of secular change in the occupational division of labour. However, in the case of relative mobility rates, as expressed in the form of `disparity ratios' and `odds ratios', stability is far more apparent than change. A log-linear model representing the hypothesis of `constant social fluidity' is shown to fit the empirical data rather well; and the application of more elaborate models suggests that any changes in relative mobility rates that have occurred have been ones in the direction of decreasing fluidity, where mobility over the full extent of the life-cycle is considered.

What's in a `Nyem'?

Abstract: We can note that while Strict* tokens for each member of the set, e.g. [yes or yeah] and [no] are quite acoustically distinct, one from the other, a range of 'lax* pronunciations of each can result in objects which are almost identical, one to the other, e.g. 'nuh' and 'yiih', 'neh* and 'yeh', etc. Also we can find sounds like 'mnyeh,' 'neuh,' 'nyem', etc., which are used for both affirmative and negative. The result is that the token itself may not be usable to decide which member of the set is being produced. It appears that for the most part such tokens are no problem. On the occurrence of one of them, a hearer can decide which member of the set has been produced, and, as in the following fragment (line 5), can produce a sequentially appropriate next utterance.

Crime at Work: The Social Construction of Amateur Property Theft

Abstract: We argue that the theft of goods from work and their subsequent resale might usefully be considered in a social anthropological frame: as the transferring of goods from our economy's dominant market exchange sphere to what we call the illegal amateur trading sphere.We show that pecuniary reward is alien to the amateur sphere and that a wide range of social features which belie normal market principles characterize the transactions. These features `personalize' relationships and `dematerialize' transactions which become part of a flow in the relationships involved.Exchange relationships in non-individual societies, are easier to understand because they have several clear spheres of exchange each with institutional forms, moral values and vocabularies. But understanding these relationships in our society is obscured because of the apparent dominance of the market exchange sphere. The natural insulation between different spheres is breached by general purpose currency—money—and market terms pervade all forms...

From Normal Baby to Handicapped Child: Unravelling the Idea of Subnormality in Families of Mentally Handicapped Children

Abstract: This paper argues that the clinical perspective on mental handicap which underpins 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.

Industrial Paternalist Capitalism and Local Labour Markets

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to identify those structural conditions which are conducive to the rise and maintenance of industrial paternalist capitalism within Britain. Following Newby's discussion of the nature of deference industrial paternalism is defined as the specific form taken in Britain by economic and political structures in which the unequal distribution of resources is legitimated by tradition. A key factor in the maintenance of such systems of traditional authority is the nature of the owners of local productive capacity. Two features are emphasized; the extent to which local assets constitute the bulk of all capital owned by the local bourgeoisie and the existence of historical links between such owners of local capital and the area. Empirical measures of the nature of local labour markets are used to identify those areas of the country which contain the structural features most likely to support industrial paternalism. It is suggested that such areas can be characterized as relatively isolated...

Sociology and the Irony Model

Abstract: The central point is that Schutz's idealization of reciprocity, the matching of subjective intentions in the public world of interactive behaviour, necessarily involves agents in an ironic process....

Some Problems in Locating `Practices'

Abstract: The paper seeks to criticize the account of language and meaning implied by and underlying the metatheory of ethnomethodology in the work of Garfinkel. In doing so it focuses on the notions of `indexicality' and the `practices' by which its repair is achieved. The notion of `indexicality', in at least some of its statements, is shown to depend on a familiar, but probably erroneous, account of `meaning', which holds that `meaning' is deeply connected to `experience'. Other theoretical approaches which share this assumption about meaning are shown, by the example of the empiricist approach to language, to lead to similar specifications of `members' problems' and the necessary repair of indexicality. It is suggested that in involving the knowledge gained in `experience' in accounting for how members understand language, Garfinkel renders the meaning of terms indefinitely problematic through scepticism about that knowledge. This illuminates several issues. First, it suggests that far from being an approach to...