Showing papers in "Sociology in 2002"

Mobility and Proximity

Abstract: In this article I discuss just why travel takes place. Why does travel occur, especially with the development of new communications technologies? I unpack how corporeal proximity in diverse modes appears to make travel necessary and desirable. I examine how aspects of conversational practice and of `meetings' make travel obligatory for sustaining `physical proximity'. I go on to consider the roles that travel plays in social networks, using Putnam's recent analysis of social capital. The implications of different kinds of travel for the distribution of such social capital are spelled out. I examine what kinds of corporeal travel are necessary and appropriate for a rich and densely networked social life across various social groups. And in the light of these analyses of proximity and social capital, virtual travel will not in a simple sense substitute for corporeal travel, since intermittent co-presence appears obligatory for many forms of social life. However, virtual travel does seem to produce a strange...

Critical moments: Choice, chance and opportunity in young people's narratives of transition

Abstract: The `Inventing Adulthoods' study seeks to document transitions to adulthood reported by over 100 young people living in five contrasting communities in the UK over a five-year period. A principal a...

The Normalization of ‘Sensible’ Recreational Drug Use Further Evidence from the North West England Longitudinal Study

Abstract: Five key dimensions of normalization are identified: availability/access; drug trying rates; usage rates; accommodating attitudes to ‘sensible’ recreational drug use especially by non users; and degree of cultural accommodation of illegal drug use. A review of recent UK research is provided for each measure.The NW England Longitudinal Study continues to monitor normalization based on the recapture of 465 young adults (in year 2000) of a cohort previously surveyed/interviewed across their adolescence (1991 to 1995).The availability of drugs remains high with over 90% having been in drug offer situations. Accessibility is highest for cannabis, followed by ‘dance drugs’, with cocaine showing the steepest climb. Drug trying rates have risen incrementally from 36 percent at 14 to 76 percent at 22. At 18 over half reported past year drug use and at 22 the rate is unchanged (52 percent). Past month use at 32 percent has declined slightly. Males are now slightly more likely to be drug-involved on all measures. Socio-economic differences are not significant. Cannabis dominates recent usage (average three episodes a month). Half the abstainers have friends who have used cannabis. Nearly two thirds of abstainers held tolerant or approving attitudes of drug takers. Half held different views about different drugs, with cannabis use being most tolerated.The

Young people's time perspectives: from youth to adulthood

Abstract: The article examines three bodies of theory: individualization, the lifecourse, and concepts of time. It interrogates these theories with respect to the following questions: how young people speak about the future; and the bearing of young people's situations and time perspectives upon the way they envisage the transition to adulthood. It draws upon empirical research from a five-country European study, in particular material from focus group discussions conducted with young people in two west-European countries, Britain and Norway. It analyses variations in young peoples' ways of thinking about their future lives, and proposes, as a basis for further research, three ideal typical models.

Looking for the Good Soldier, Švejk: Alternative Modalities of Resistance in the Contemporary Workplace

Abstract: This article continues the current trend in Sociology of exploring and re-evaluating concepts of workplace resistance We agree with Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) that much of the critical literature

`Risk is Part of Your Life': Risk Epistemologies Among a Group of Australians

Abstract: Much has been written by important sociocultural theorists about the role played by risk in late modern societies, and some, like Beck and Giddens, have ventured to contend that industrial society is turning into `risk society'. Little empirical research has been conducted, however, that has sought to examine the speculations of grand theories about `risk society'. This article discusses findings from an Australian interview-based study that sought to elicit the participants' understandings of the notion of risk. Three major issues from the interviews are examined: the ways in which the participants defined `risk', the risks they nominated as most threatening to themselves and those they saw as threatening Australians in general. The findings reveal that the `risk society' thesis was supported in some ways. Other findings, however, challenged this thesis, including the participants' critique of government's role in protecting its citizens from risk, the ways in which many of them represented risk-taking a...

Beck's Sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment

Abstract: The German sociologist Ulrich Beck has elaborated a highly original formulation of the theory of risk and reflexive modernization, a formulation that has had a significant impact upon recent sociol...

Shadow Times: The Temporal and Spatial Frameworks and Experiences of Caring and Working

Abstract: In this article we explore temporal and spatial frameworks for analysing the experience of combining caring for children with participation in paid work. We highlight the pressure to undertake paid...

Household Strategies: Their Conceptual Relevance and Analytical Scope in Social Research

Abstract: The article considers the idea of `household strategies' as a concept that takes into account the motivations and agency of actors in society, as a method of analysis through looking at the intersection of different economies in household behaviour and as a unit of analysis, with a focus on households rather than individuals. Although the concept of household strategies has been criticized in each of these dimensions, it has nevertheless remained an important empirical tool of investigation in different parts of the world. Indeed, household strategies have become perhaps even more salient under conditions of social change such as post-Communism or post-Fordism. The danger of an over-emphasis on agency implied by this approach can be counteracted by considering structural factors that have emerged in empirical studies and which constrain the creation and deployment of household strategies. However, such constraints are not just objective but also culturally defined. Seen in this way, household strategies c...

Cancer Heroics: A Study of News Reports with Particular Reference to Gender

Abstract: Media portrayals of women with cancer emphasize women’s emotionality in the face of life-threatening disease. For some sociological commentators, this weakens women in an exercise of patriarchal control by medicine and the media. The present study, of news reports of people with cancer in the media of several anglophone countries, compares portrayals of men and women. Media representations of the emotions of people with cancer are found to emphasize women’s skills in the emotional labour of self-transformation, something which is particularly prevalent in reports of breast cancer activism. In men, cancer is more commonly portrayed as a test of pre-existing character. Both sexes, in these representations, are offered paths to the common goal of a self-willed victory over cancer and the limitations of the body.This media-orchestrated fantasy about human powers resonates with broader analyses of heroic projects of self-identity in late modernity, in which women’s advertised expertise in the management of emotions plays an important part.The imagined superpowers of people with cancer also involve a denial of disappointment that parallels the supposed efficacy of prayer and religious observance in traditional societies.

Globalization or Internationalization? Foreign Footballers in the English League, 1946-95

Abstract: This article challenges the idea that globalization is an inexorable free market process that fundamentally changes the nature of economic competition. Using evidence on hiring practices from the English football league (1946‐95) it presents a case study of a labour market where globalization might reasonably be expected. In finding that the market is characterized by a process of internationalization, the article goes on to show how this process is influenced by a range of economic, social and political factors that have distinctly national or British origins. More specifically, it argues that the recent expansion in overseas recruitment is shaped by the risk averse way in which employers deal with that which makes labour unique as a commodity: its variability and plasticity. Consequently, English clubs tend to draw heavily on those foreign sources that most resemble local sources in terms of climate, culture, language and style of football (for example, Scotland, Ireland, Australia and northern Europe, especially Scandinavia). Accordingly, the article concludes that radical notions of labour market globalization are fundamentally flawed since they fail to account for the ways in which labour market behaviour is socially embedded.

Boundaries of `Us' and `Them': class, mobility and identification in a new town

Abstract: Whether social class shapes identification (senses of belonging to specified social groups) is subject to much debate. This article examines the boundaries of identification described by three groups living in a Southern English new town. The three groups systematically differed in their volumes of economic, cultural and social resources, and patterns of geographical mobility. Members identified themselves as belonging within each group through interpretations of shared social practices and orientations toward everyday life. Boundaries drawn between `Us' and `Them' by all three groups were based on generic social categorizations of class and expressed through socio-economic, cultural and moral frameworks of status evaluation. However, identifications were asymmetrical because two groups, the closest in terms of resource volumes, differentiated from one another despite employing the same frameworks for evaluating status. Internal differences were also apparent in the third group; those who had lived in the...

Interviewer and Interviewee Relationships Between Women

Abstract: In this research note, I readdress the discussion of relationships in women interviewing women initiated by Ann Oakley in 1981. On examining existing feminist literature on interviewing relationships, I seek to further explore the differences of power relationships between women interviewers and interviewees. Based on my own experience of interviewing peers – academic mothers in both China and the UK – I argue that both the interviewer and interviewee’s perceptions of social, cultural and personal differences have an impact on the power relationship in the interview, which is not simply an issue of quality of the interview, but the dynamics between the interview pair.

What is Segregation? A Comparison of Measures in Terms of ‘Strong’ and ‘Weak’ Compositional Invariance

Abstract: Measures of inequality form the backdrop to a variety of sociological investigations, allowing the description of gaps in opportunity by occupational class, gender or ethnicity, for example, and of trends in these differences over time and place. These preliminary descriptive patterns can then be explored in more detail to uncover their socio-economic determinants, leading to the reduction of inequality. However, it has become clear from the ‘index wars’ dating back to at least the 1930s that measuring inequality is not a simple issue. To some extent the results obtained in an investigation and, therefore, the definition of further problems to be explored, are dependent on the precise nature of the measures used. This paper concentrates on measures of segregation. It considers a number of the methods available to the analyst concerned with the patterns of spread of socio-economic disadvantage between institutions. It focuses on measures of evenness and exposure, rehearsing the relative advantages of each ...

Collective terminology to describe the minority ethnic population: the persistence of confusion and ambiguity in usage

Abstract: A wide range of terminology is used, often interchangeably, to describe the minority ethnic group population as a whole and major segments of it.While some terms have been extended to give clarity, as in ‘Asian, Black and other minority ethnic’, much in this lexicon remains cumbersome or ambiguous in usage. Further, white minority groups such as the Irish frequently get omitted in the category shuffle, creating ‘injustices of recognition’. Imprecision in terminology can equally apply to ‘pan-ethnic’ terms like ‘Asian’ and ‘Black’, the specific terms having the potential to describe quite different populations in the absence of explanation about the concept being measured and method of assignment. The use of terminology that is precisely defined and acceptable to those being described is advocated.

Neither Busybodies nor Nobodies: Managing Proximity and Distance in Neighbourly Relations

Abstract: This article reflects on empirical findings from research into neighbour relations conducted in a small town on the south coast of England. Competing accounts exist of the changing nature of relations between neighbours, and of the sources of pressures for relations with neighbours to combine privacy and sociability. The empirical findings reported on here shed light on the reasons behind people's involvement with or detachment from neighbours, in the process revealing their conceptions of a `good neighbour'. The article argues that it is a skilful accomplishment for neighbours to establish and maintain a workable balance between `keeping one's distance' and `being there when needed'. Little evidence was found of face-to-face relationships between neighbours conforming to the stereotypes of intrusive `nosy neighbours' or people who reclusively `keep themselves to themselves'. The article concludes that analyses of neighbouring relationships need to capture the interplay of forces which allow individuals g...

Critical moments: choice, chance and opportunity in young people's narratives of transition to adulthood

Abstract: The `Inventing Adulthoods' study seeks to document transitions to adulthood reported by over 100 young people living in five contrasting communities in the UK over a five-year period. A principal aim of the study is to identify `critical moments' in young people's biographies and to explore how these moments are implicated in processes of social inclusion and exclusion. This article reports on an analysis of the first of three rounds of one-to-one interviews. We begin by mapping young people's critical moments, exploring the relationship between the social and geographical location in which they live and the kinds of events that they report as having particular biographical significance. We suggest that the character of these `critical moments' is socially structured, as are young people's responses to them. The argument is illustrated by case studies that show the interaction of choice, chance and opportunity in three young people's lives.

Thank Heaven for Little Girls: `Girl Heaven' and the Commercial Context of Feminine Childhood

Abstract: This paper is based on a critical analysis of a chain of retail outlets called `Girl Heaven', aimed primarily at 3-13-year-old girls, described variously as `a piece of retail folklore' (Lumsden, 1...

Narratives of Identity in Modern Management: The Corrosion of Gender Difference?

Abstract: This article examines two dominant theories about the contemporary relationship between identity and work — corrosion of character and reflexive modernization. Both of these models treat the experiences of men and women in the new capitalism as essentially the same. We examine this assumption in the light of our recent study of managers in large companies. Our survey data shows little difference between the career orientations and experiences of men and women. We then test this against the career narratives of 136 managers. Again, we find that men and women use the same ‘new capitalism’ narratives to describe their careers and work lives. However, whereas for men these narratives fit with their stories of domestic life, this is not the case for the women. Faced with a substantial disjunction between them, women generally reject one or other narrative identity. We argue that our findings highlight substantial theoretical flaws in both the corrosion of character and reflexive modernization models.

Partners in Power: Governing the Self-sustaining Community:

Abstract: The language of community is widely diffused in both social theory and in public policy. Under New Labour it finds expression in obligations on health authorities and local councils to consult and collaborate with their communities in formulating and providing services. Yet such initiatives often treat community as an already existing entity, a proper noun that refers to a solid and stable reality. This article analyses the contemporary appeal of community and outlines some of the problems of trying to think of `it' in the abstract, as a reified essence. Instead, the article offers a different way of thinking about community, as an assemblage of artefacts - political rationales, expert discourses, administrative technologies and bodies - that constitute `its' manifold components in precise historical contexts. Drawing on Foucault's insights into governmentality, the article traces the discursive ways in which managers utilize these empirical resources in the specific setting of an urban regeneration scheme.

For a Sociology of Transsexualism

Abstract: The aim of this article is to explore the development of theories on transsexualism with a view to advancing a typology of theories of transsexualism. This typology exposes a general shift from concerns with `authenticity' (the transsexual as a `real' woman or man) to issues of `performativity' (the transsexual as hyperbolic enactment of gender). I will argue it is through a displacement of psychology with sociology as the major lens through which transsexualism is theorized that such a shift from authenticity to performativity is effected. The final typology considers the notion of transgression (rendering the modern two-gender system obsolete). The article argues that whilst transgression may be possible, it is not guaranteed by all forms of transsexualism.

Intimate Talk between Parents and their Teenage Children: Democratic Openness or Covert Control?

Abstract: In so far as modern families subscribe to an ideal of democracy, then adolescence is a time in which the democratic ideal in the family becomes an object of explicit focus as parents and teenagers strive towards a renegotiation of their relative positions. Teenagers need to develop their adult identities and a sense of agency, while at the same time, parents who have invested both personally and financially in their children must reconsider this relationship and come to terms with the reality of the returns from that investment. Intimate relations imply both democracy and equality: in what Giddens (1992) calls the ‘pure relationship’, individuals continuously reevaluate the relationship in terms of the satisfactions which it delivers in their ‘project of the self’. This paper argues that the twin ideals of democracy and intimacy necessarily clash in parent-teenager relationships, resulting in a further complication of the negotiation processes already identified in previous research (Brannen, 1999; Brannen et al., 1994; Hofer et al., 1999).While both parents and their teenage children subscribe to the discourse of openness and honesty as the route to both intimacy and democracy, there are tensions within the concept of openness because both parties have opposing goals in the trading of information. For parents, information gain means the retention of power and control, while for teenagers, with-holding information from their parents ensures their privacy, power and identity.

Consumption and Emotion: The Romantic Ethic Revisited

Abstract: This article revisits Campbell's (1987) The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism thesis in the light of new intersections with sociological issues of embodiment and emotions. A variety of themes and issues are raised the persistence of mind/body, reason,emotion dualities in the consumption literature, the importance of disappointment in consumer culture, external factors which mediate the consumption experience, and finally, the interpretation of both Romanticism and romantic interpersonal relationships. A largely disembodied and socially disembedded account of consumption and emotion is on offer here the implications of which extend far beyond the limits of Campbell's thesis to debates on consumer culture and the sociological enterprise in general in making these claims, we highlight the need for a passionate sociology which would in turn integrate embodiment and emotions more fully into the consumption agenda. These key themes are discussed with some sociological pointers for the future in consumption and beyond.

Social Capital and Political Sociology: Re-imagining Politics?

Abstract: This article is concerned with social capital as the concept has been used to further the analysis of political life. Its substantive focus is the work of Robert Putnam and his part in the revival of a civic conception of democracy. The article suggests two strategies for analysing the relationship between social capital theory and conceptions of liberal-democratic government. In the first section the concept of social capital is interrogated in terms of its political imagination. This is pursued by way of a comparison of the assumptions and norms of social capital and political culture theory - the latter being a perspective that shaped post-war political analysis. The second part of the article situates social capital in relation to the Foucauldian literature on government. It asks how we might see social capital in terms of a new kind of territorialization of socio-political relations.

Imagined Communities and Self-identity: An Exploratory Quantitative Analysis:

Abstract: The proliferation of quantitative studies of national and other macro-level we-images points to a growing sociological interest in the contribution of imagined communities to self-identity. However, these studies have tended to present an oversimplified picture of this cultural phenomenon, relying on essentialist, one-dimensional and non-divisible conceptions of the social self. It is the contention of this paper that important clues for clarifying the less developed approaches to self-identity that feature in such quantitative work can be found in Benedict Anderson's landmark analysis of imagined communities. Anderson's treatment of this topic is used to sensitize a survey analysis of self-identification with large-scale geographic units among contemporary Australians. Findings from the investigation highlight a neglect in emerging quantitative research on self-attachment to imagined communities of (i) the plural sources, multi-dimensional nature and divisible character of self-identity, and (ii) the com...

Citizenship, Medical Expertise and the Capitalist Regulatory State in Europe:

Abstract: This article demonstrates how the concept of citizenship can be used to analyse the regulatory state, with particular reference to the safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical products in Western Europe. Empirical evidence on the citizenship dynamics of medicines regulation in Europe, which is drawn from documentary and interview data, is marshalled to interrogate theories of the decline in medical authority and `disorganized capitalism'. It is argued that late modernity has seen a pharmaceutical sector in which consumers have become more active and critically reflexive citizens, but the decline in producer power or in medical authority by the fracturing of expertise (or otherwise) has been minimal. It is concluded that the balance of evidence shows that the sector is highly organized, producer-driven, oligopolous and standardized, rather than disorganized, fragmented and flexible, despite consumers' growing activism and reflexivity.

Talking to manager-academics: Methodological dilemmas and feminist research strategies

Abstract: The paper examines how qualitative feminist research can inform the study of engendered practices in organizational settings. It reviews current debates about feminist research, including Oakley’s (1998, 2000) critique of the ways in which qualitative methods and data are used by feminists. The work of Skeggs (2001) on feminist principles for undertaking qualitative research is also examined. The paper then considers two pieces of research on work and engendered organizations that used mixed methods and data. Finally the paper considers some of the methodological challenges faced by the author in two recent qualitative projects about manager-academics. Using qualitative data, it is argued, does not necessarily restrict the wider policy applicability of the project findings. However, working in teams with those not committed to feminist research can present other challenges, which may also throw light on the phenomena being researched.

`Neither Here nor There': The Construction of Identities and Boundary Maintenance of West African Pentecostals

Abstract: The often taken-for-granted `decline of religion' thesis has frequently led to the failure to recognize the significance of religion in both forging and articulating aspects of identity in the contemporary western context. In addressing such an issue this article seeks to explore the importance of religion in aiding the construction of the identities of West African migrants to Britain through a distinct and innovatory mode of Pentecostalism. While this vibrant form of Christianity has long been understood as a faith relevant to the needs of black ethnic minorities, its changing theodicies and value-orientation have helped the formation of identity and provide meaning to the experiences of a new generation of migrants.

Education, Social Integration and Minority-majority Group Intermarriage

Abstract: This article challenges the well-established finding that persons with higher levels of education are more likely to marry outside their own ethnic group. The empirical research upon which that finding is based has been dominated by studies of groups of either immigrant or low socio-economic status. We revisit the question by examining census of population data on two minorities - Protestants in the Republic of Ireland and the Swedish-speaking Finns - which are indigenous, traditionally of high socio-economic status and have strong communal institutions. For this type of minority, we reject the hypothesis that persons with higher levels of education are more likely to form intermarriages. We explain our finding in terms of the association between level of education and social integration into the minority sub-culture. Our findings also provide insights into the process whereby after national independence the high socio-economic status of formerly politically dominant minorities is maintained.

The Sequestration of Experience: Rights Talk and Moral Thinking in `Late Modernity'

Abstract: Giddens argues that modernity is characterized by the separation of time and space, by disembedding mechanisms and by institutional reflexivity. These characteristics combine with a dynamic pace and scope of change and contribute to modernity's emphasis on institutional control. Internally referential systems exclude those moral and existential issues that threaten `ontological security'. Bauman similarly emphasizes modernity's passion for order and `progress', the fragmentation of social roles and personal identity and rapid technological change. In both these scenarios modernity must necessarily be morally arid. In late modernity Giddens suggests that radical doubt and the threat of meaninglessness encourage the `return of the repressed' and Bauman cautiously indicates that humankind may be willing to struggle with issues of moral responsibility. I would argue that Bauman and Giddens are mistaken in viewing late modernity as a time of moral renewal. Rather, rights talk has come to colonize moral thinkin...