Showing papers in "Sociology in 1987"
TL;DR: The use of vignettes in the author's current survey of beliefs about family obligations is described in this article, and the potential of the technique for eliciting survey data of a normative kind is discussed.
Abstract: This research note describes the use of vignettes in the author's current survey of beliefs about family obligations, and discusses the potential of the technique for eliciting survey data of a normative kind. Comparisons are made between different ways of using vignettes in British and American surveys concerned with beliefs and norms.
992 citations
TL;DR: In this article, comparative historical analysis of industrial societies reveals not one but at least five viable strategies for the institutionalization of class conflict, here called liberal, reformist, authoritarian monarchist, Fascist and authoritarian socialist.
Abstract: Marshall's theory of citizenship is criticized for being Anglocentric and evolutionist. Comparative historical analysis of industrial societies reveals not one but at least five viable strategies for the institutionalization of class conflict, here called liberal, reformist, authoritarian monarchist, Fascist and authoritarian socialist. In explaining their origin and development emphasis should be placed upon the strategies and cohesion of ruling classes and anciens regimes rather than upon those of the rising bourgeois and proletarian classes (as has been the case in much previous theory). In explaining their durability emphasis should be placed upon geo-political events, especially the two world wars, rather than on their internal efficiency. If Marshall's third stage of citizenship is a reasonably accurate description of contemporary Europe, this is primarily due to the military victories of the `Anglo-Saxon' powers.
378 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the effects of the later stages of comprehensive reorganisation in Scotland and found that standards of attainment rose, particularly among females, and that women were more likely to achieve higher levels of education.
Abstract: This study examines the effects of the later stages of comprehensive reorganisation in Scotland. Nationally representative samples show that standards of attainment rose, particularly among females...
126 citations
TL;DR: The authors developed a framework through which the location of women in the occupational structure can be ''thought through'' and argued that approaches which derive their inspiration from women's empowerment can be considered.
Abstract: This paper attempts to develop a framework through which the location of women in the occupational structure can be `thought through'. It is argued that approaches which derive their inspiration fr...
79 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined patterns of economic activity in the families of origin of economically active 16-19 year olds and found that unemployed young people are much more likely than their working peers to have another member of their family out of work, both in the parental and sibling generations.
Abstract: Data from the 1980 and 1981 General Household Surveys are used to examine patterns of economic activity in the families of origin of economically active 16-19 year olds. It is shown that unemployed young people are much more likely than their working peers to have another member of their family out of work, both in the parental and sibling generations; there is also an association between youth unemployment and economic inactivity in the family. Logistic regression shows that family employment characteristics contribute very importantly to the prediction of individual youth unemployment when many other variables associated with unemployment are controlled. Reasons are considered for supposing a causal link between parental and youth unemployment. The findings have implications for how the burden of unemployment is shared in Britain and for the attitudes of some groups of young people towards work.
63 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the changes in relationships between parents and children in family farming businesses under contemporary relations of production are discussed, where the family farm is today more effective as a management unit than as a labour unit.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with changes in relationships between parents and children in family farming businesses under contemporary relations of production. The family farm is today more effective as a management unit than as a labour unit. Farmers seek to expand the family business through the incorporation of children into an extended family. To this extent, family form and relationships between close kin are clearly articulated with market forces. However, the increasing capitalization and commercialization of family farming do not necessarily mean a lessening significance of kinship links. Rather, such processes serve to redistribute kin ties in new concentrations so that they have become more important in the management of a viable business and less significant between farmers in an agricultural industry.
56 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that diametrically opposed class experiences have significant effects on dynamics in the family unit and that issues in the division of labour in the home and access to cultural capital are clearly affected in class.
Abstract: A revised version of the conventional approach of classifying families in social class analysis recently surfaced in Sociology. Two-partner families are classified according to the class position of the main bread-winner, usually male. This approach discounts the importance of the other partner's work experience within the family. The special case of the cross-class couple is used to illuminate significant problems in the conventional approach. Swedish data from 1980 brings into question several of the assumptions of the conventional approach. Do women actually have a weaker attachment to the world of work? Are most families actually class homogeneous as the unitary family classification system would lead one to believe? Using evidence from a qualitative study of cross-class couples, this paper argues that diametrically opposed class experiences have significant effects on dynamics in the family unit. Issues in the division of labour in the home and access to cultural capital are clearly affected in class...
54 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined how immigrants' proficiency in speaking English, and preference for retaining their native tongue as the language of the home, affect their occupational attainment in the Australian labour market, and found that monolingual English usage is of no benefit in the labour market and that weak English skills harm the occupational opportunities of some groups much more than others.
Abstract: This paper examines how immigrants' proficiency in speaking English, and preference for retaining their native tongue as the language of the home, affect their occupational attainment in the Australian labour market. In particular, it investigates how well three approaches - an assimilationist approach, a Neo-Marxist approach, and an ethnic enclaves approach - account for differences among groups in how important language usage and skill are in occupational mobility. The data are drawn from the 1981 Census public use sample. The findings show that monolingual English usage is of no benefit in the labour market and that weak English skills harm the occupational opportunities of some groups much more than others, a finding that is fully consistent with the ethnic enclaves approach. Generalising from the differences among Australian immigrant groups, the paper provides some hypotheses about language effects among immigrants to industrialised societies more generally, and develops some hypotheses about condit...
45 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a dialogue between a sociological voice and an unidentified, questioning voice is described, where the two voices explore some of the tasks involved in gene editing and difficulties gene editing.
Abstract: The paper which follows takes the form of a dialogue between a sociological voice and an unidentified, questioning voice. The two voices explore some of the tasks involved in, and difficulties gene...
38 citations
TL;DR: This article found that women's class identification is determined at least in part by their own characteristics rather than their husbands', with education being a particularly important variable, and the way in which the middle and working classes are perceived by women in same-class and cross-class marriages.
Abstract: Research into social stratification has tended to concentrate on working-class men; there has been little on the middle classes, and even less on women. This paper looks at the class position and class images of 342 working married women in social grade C1, drawn from a national survey of class images conducted between 1981 and 1984, to assess the extent to which these women's class identification is determined by the occupation of their husbands and the way in which the middle and working classes are perceived by women in same-class and cross-class marriages. It is concluded that a woman's class identification is determined at least in part by her own characteristics rather than her husband's, with education being a particularly important variable.
35 citations
TL;DR: The authors assesses the challenge from ''labour movement theory'' to the conventional ''corporatist'' interpretation of Social Democratic Sweden and argues that the corporatist interpretation of the period from the 1930s to the 1960s stands up well to criticism.
Abstract: This article assesses the challenge from `labour movement theory' to the conventional `corporatist' interpretation of Social Democratic Sweden. It begins by outlining the theoretical debate. It then examines the labour movement's compromise with capitalism and the issues of redistribution, codetermination and economic democracy. It argues that the corporatist interpretation of the period from the 1930s to the 1960s stands up well to criticism. The more radical Social Democratic policies of the later 1960s and after are more consistent with `labour movement theory', but in the end demonstrate the weakness of labour political power in a capitalist society. `Corporatist theory' provides a better starting-point than `labour movement theory', though it must be modified to include the notion of the contradictions of corporatism. The strength of the Swedish labour movement made corporatism possible but when the discontent generated by corporatism threatened the unity of the movement it was this same strength of ...
TL;DR: A wide range of authors regard the following as a set of interconnected changes: family household members increasingly come to have a sense of themselves as a distinctive and sacrosanct unit, which is separated from the wider social world; emotional relationships within the family household become very intense; gender divisions become more acute, with the sharp demarcation between a housewife/mother role and an earner/father role; respect for the rights of the individual is increased - loyalty to oneself may take precedence over loyalty to the family as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: A remarkable variety of academic treatments of family life are in broad agreement as to the processes of development and change occurring within families in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A wide range of authors regard the following as a set of interconnected changes: family household members increasingly come to have a sense of themselves as a distinctive and sacrosanct unit, `the family', which is separated from the wider social world; emotional relationships within the family household become very intense; gender divisions become more acute, with the sharp demarcation between a housewife/mother role and an earner/father role; respect for the rights of the individual is increased - loyalty to oneself may take precedence over loyalty to the family. My aim in this paper is to confront this `classical' corpus of historical and sociological analysis with a particular set of experiential data - oral accounts of growing up in urban Scotland in the early 1900s gathered by me in 1975 - 77 (Jamies...
TL;DR: This article proposes an alternative method of assessing the socio-economic status of families by means of a composite Social Index comprising seven social indicators: occupation and education of the heads of household, housing tenure, type of accommodation, persons per room, car and telephone ownership.
Abstract: Occupational classifications have long been the conventional method of assigning individuals, families and household to social class or socio-economic status positions. This practice has been subject to mounting criticism in recent years, either because of doubts about the validity of scales such as the OPCS Classification of Occupations or because of objections to the use of husbands' occupations to assign their wives and families to a class position. This article reviews this debate, and proposes an alternative method of assessing the socio-economic status of families by means of a composite Social Index comprising seven social indicators: occupation and education of the heads of household, housing tenure, type of accommodation, persons per room, car and telephone ownership. The construction and rationale of the Index are described and its special advantages explained. These include the capability of providing an assessment of the socio-economic status of single-parent families having no relevant occupa...
TL;DR: In this article, the nature of the mortuary as a socio-medical institution and the discourse of pathology which operates within it is examined by examining the manner in which pathology is operationalised in Belfast, and the assumptions and investigative principles of pathology are grounded in social rather than specifically clinical concerns.
Abstract: This paper focuses upon the nature of the mortuary as a socio-medical institution and the discourse of pathology which operates within it More specifically, by examining the manner in which pathology is operationalised in Belfast it demonstrates: (i) how medical interests are frequently fused with those of the wider politico-technological system within which they are ensconced; (ii) how the assumptions and investigative principles of pathology are grounded in social rather than specifically clinical concerns, and (iii) how the subject population on which pathology concentrates is selected in accordance with social as well as clinical characteristics
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors considered whether there is any empirical basis, even in Durkheim's terms, for one of his best known and most significant theoretical statements: that based on the analysis of differential suicide rates between Catholic and Protestant populations.
Abstract: Employing essentially the same method as Durkheim - but with data that, while largely contemporaneous with those he used, are arguably better suited to the task - it is considered whether there is any empirical basis, even in Durkheim's terms, for one of his best known and most significant theoretical statements: that based on the analysis of differential suicide rates between Catholic and Protestant populations. Analysis of data from Prussia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands affords no support for the view that there is less suicide in Catholic than in non-Catholic populations. The apparent differential between them can readily be attributed to a greater tendency within Catholic populations to register suicide as something else - most commonly as either accidental death, `sudden' death, or death of unknown cause. This raises doubts not only about Durkheim's theories concerning suicide but also about other causal theories concerning this phenomenon that rely on a sociological, as contrasted with a psychol...
TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis is made of the basic premisses of Elias's interpretations of ''warrior society'' and the theory of the ''civilizing process' claims to be based on a detailed empirical history.
Abstract: The theory of the `civilizing process' claims to be based on a detailed empirical history. In this essay, an analysis is made of the basic premisses of Elias's interpretations of `warrior society' ...
TL;DR: In this article, a reanalysis of the British, French and Swedish mobility data is presented, where a descriptive model is specified and used to identify precisely where the differences in the relative openness of the three societies are located.
Abstract: This paper presents a reanalysis of the British, French and Swedish mobility data first presented by Erikson et al. (1979). A descriptive model is specified and used to identify precisely where the differences in the relative openness of the three societies are located. In doing this the paper seeks both to synthesize previous findings and to extend our knowledge of the mobility processes at work in the three societies.
TL;DR: The authors examine Oakley's treatment of the traditional textbooks' recommendations for interviewing and conclude that her criticism is a product of her misleading characterisation of them, and her proposed alternative rather less original than has been assumed.
Abstract: In this research note, I examine Oakley's treatment of the traditional textbooks' recommendations for interviewing. Oakley criticises these as a basis for data collection `which cannot and does not work in practice' (Oakley 1981:31). An examination of textbook prescriptions for data collection suggests that Oakley's objection to them is a product of her misleading characterisation of them. Her criticism is therefore misplaced, and her proposed alternative rather less original than has been assumed.
TL;DR: This article argued that the implications of the lack of a capitalist Sittlichkeit (morality or moral order) for social integration may be quite different from those commonly drawn in recent studies and argued that commentators on the left and right alike have oversimplified the relationship between the distributional order of societies, on the one hand, and the specific forms taken by distributional conflicts on the other.
Abstract: This paper challenges the widely held view that novel and fundamental changes in the structure of social hierarchy have altered the basis of distributional conflict in modern Britain. Reference to nineteenth-century developments shows that sectionalism, egoism and privatism are not peculiar to the present economic recession. It is then argued that commentators on the left and right alike have oversimplified the relationship between the distributional order of societies, on the one hand, and the specific forms taken by distributional conflicts on the other. This means that the implications of the lack of a capitalist Sittlichkeit (morality or moral order) for social integration may be quite different from those commonly drawn in recent studies.
TL;DR: Storey has criticised the labour process literature for its ''monist'' presumptions; that is, for developing simple generalisations which cannot deal with the diversity and complexity of social control processes within work organisations as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: John Storey has criticised the labour process literature for its `monist' presumptions; that is, for developing simple generalisations which cannot deal with the diversity and complexity of social control processes within work organisations. His argument is weak in three ways. First, he misrepresents the labour process literature by treating it as homogeneous. Monism may be a valid criticism of Braverman, but it is not a valid criticism of certain later labour process writers Storey names. Second, many aspects of his `positive' contribution, which he suggests should take the place of monist presumptions, are easily taken into account within the management strategies variant of labour process theory. Finally, his alternative formulation, the means of management control, has serious flaws.
TL;DR: The evolutionary theme of Parsons's sociology relates his theory of sociocultural evolution to the theory of organic evolution and to the general theory of action systems, and its holistic conception of the part-whole relationship explains Parsons's exclusion of action from his evolutionary theory.
Abstract: The evolutionary theme of Parsons's sociology relates his theory of sociocultural evolution to the theory of organic evolution and to the general theory of action systems. To grasp both relationshi...
TL;DR: The role of deaconesses has been systematically compounded of anomalies which express the otherness of women and their subordination to men as discussed by the authors, which is evident from analysis of the formal structures and informal networks within which their respective roles are located.
Abstract: The order of deaconesses, which survived in western Christianity until the beginning of the eleventh century, was revived in the Church of England in 1862. The role of deaconess has been systematically compounded of anomalies which express the otherness of women and their subordination to men. That deaconesses are subordinate to clergy and dependent on their goodwill is evident from analysis of the formal structures and informal networks within which their respective roles are located. Deaconesses depend on clergy for task allocation, for the settlement of grievances, for participation if any in decision-making, for career development and even for their sense of identity, since it is not other women but clergy who typically serve as role models. During interregna, when a parish lacks an incumbent priest, the restricted nature of the deaconess's role is manifest. Interviews with deaconesses and women lay workers in one English diocese reveal the depth of frustration many of them feel. The recent decision t...
TL;DR: In this article, a complex conception of capital which differentiates circuits of capital within the firm and in the economy as a whole is presented, and the specific way in which these circuits are integrated and the meaning of this for firms is examined through a case study of events within Imperial Tobacco in the 1970s.
Abstract: The labour process debate has failed to analyse systematically the `deus ex machina' in Braverman's original contribution, capital. This paper elaborates a complex conception of capital which differentiates circuits of capital - industrial, banking and commercial - both within the firm and in the economy as a whole. The specific way in which these circuits are integrated and the meaning of this for firms is examined through a case study of events within Imperial Tobacco in the 1970s. The labour process and strategies towards the labour process are seen as only one element in the complex articulation of the circuits of capital within firms and in the economy as a whole. The role of owners and ownership in particular requires greater consideration.
TL;DR: In this article, the first detailed study of lower white-collar workers in Soviet society is presented, which traces the historical development of this social category during the Soviet period, gives a general social profile of the stratum now and locates it in the Soviet system of social stratification Comparisons are made with equivalent strata in Western society, and both divergences and commonalities are identified.
Abstract: This paper provides the first detailed study of lower white-collar workers in Soviet society It traces the historical development of this social category during the Soviet period, gives a general social profile of the stratum now and locates it in the Soviet system of social stratification Comparisons are made with equivalent strata in Western society, and both divergences and commonalities are identified The former are explained by reference to the different economic, political/ideological and cultural factors which have shaped the system of social stratification and movement within it Similarities are seen to be a consequence of the fact that the same division of labour characterises both types of society
TL;DR: In this paper, a new concept emerges in minimax class society where class boundaries derive from an individual's status as a provider of labour and capital and as a consumer, and is formulated in terms of unequal choices in the relations of production, exchange, and consumption.
Abstract: The logical structure of class theory is described in terms of a number of correspondence principles. The theory of class depends upon a concept of exploitation (and justice). The Marxian concept of exploitation is but one possible example of a more general conception. Class boundaries drawn in terms of the Marxian concept (i.e. labouring time and positions in the relations of production) apply when the line between capital and labour is relatively unambiguous. Where this is not the case a new concept is needed, formulated in terms of unequal choices in the relations of production, exchange and consumption. The new concept emerges in minimax class society where class boundaries derive from an individual's status as a provider of labour and capital and as a consumer.