Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 1974"

Who is a tourist?: a conceptual clarification1

Abstract: Who does not know a tourist? Tourism is so widespread and ubiquitous in our day that there are scarcely people left in the world who would not recognize a tourist immediately. Indeed, the stereotype of the tourist, as the slightly funny, quaintly dressed, camera-toting foreigner, ignorant, passive, shallow and gullible,is so deep-seated that it tends to dominate not only the popular imagery but also some serious writing on the subject.̂ The tourist in our day has become a cultural type with apparently clearly recognizable traits; hence few contemporary sociologists who deal with the subject have bothered to define the tourist role carefully, and some have not even attempted to define it at all.* But the unrefiective acceptance of the common-sensical stereotype of the tourist harbours some inherent dangers. The principal manifestations of contemporary tourism are indeed well-known and easily recognizable; but they do not comprise the whole range of touristic phenomena. Indeed, one of the more interesting features accompanying the contemporary tourist boom is the extraordinary proliferation of diverse forms of tourism, ranging from short excursions to round-theworld trips, from sea-side vacations to veritable expeditions into almost unknown parts of the world, for example Antarctica or Greenland,^ from organized and routinized mass-travel to leisurely, individualized exploration or drifting off-the-beaten-track.*^ In addition to fully-fiedged tourism, there exist many traveller roles which possess a 'touristic component' of varying strength; prominent examples are the Italian or Irish immigrant who pays a visit to the *old country', the young professional engaging in 'touristry', that is in a search for jobs which will give him an opportunity to see the world while working,̂ the pilgrim who combines devotion with some 'religious tourism',^ or the person who 'takes the waters' at a spa, ostensibly to improve his health but actually to enjoy himself.̂ Such a 'touristic component' is also present even in a short pleasure trip,^\" an outing or a picnic. Instead of a clearly bounded phenomenon, tour-

Wine Alley: The Sociology of a Dreadful Enclosure:

Abstract: Sociology, since the days of the Chicago School at least,has recognised that there are neighbourhoods in cities which many people know to be dangerous; these are the functional equivalent of the unexplored areas covered by the olden-days cartographer's rubric: Here be Dragons. To the Chicago School these were 'areas of social disorganisation', but a more recent term for these forbidden territories is 'dreadful enclosures'.^ The author of this term, American sociologist E. V. Walter, observes: 'In all parts of the worldj some virban spaces are identified totally with danger, pain, and chaos . . . certain milieux gather reputations for moral inferiority, squalor, violence, and social pathology, and consequently they objectify the fantasy of the dreadful enclosure.'^

Social class variations in health care and in the nature of general practitioner consultations.

Abstract: O of the fundamental principals of the National Health Service was 'to divorce the care of health from questions of personal means or other factors irrelevant to it' (H.M.S.a. 1944). The extent to which this has been achieved is still debated nearly thirty years later. In this paper we take a critical look at the data and arguments used by some of the people who have taken part in this debate, and examine further data which are relevant to it. We discuss some of the mechanisms which can affect the distribution of care and incidentally present some new data about social class variations in the nature of general practitioner consultations.

The health service consumer: a sociological misconception

Abstract: I T has become fashionable in the last decade to speak of patients as health service consumers, a fashion to which I have succumbed (Stacey 1974). More careful analysis suggests, however, that the term 'consumer' is of limited value in understanding the status and role of the patient\"; that it is an economic term which implies a theoretical model of the health service which is quite inappropriate and which conceals as much as it illuminates. Deriving from economics it has now become a social actor's termand is a political term, in the sense that it has been used by certain social actors to legitimate alterations in the power structure. 'Health service consumer' is inappropriate terminology to describe a sociological conception of the patient. An analysis of the 'Dilemmas of participation: the case of the health service consumer' (Stacey, forthcoming) led me to this conclusion, the case for which I now wish to argue more directly. The notion of a patient as a consumer has arisen, it seems, from two sources. The first is the application of an economic industrial model to the health service; the second is from the consumer movement. The term is therefore located in two distinct developments, both with specific historical referrents. The nub of my argument is that the health service can better be seen as a process of continuing interaction between patient and health care professionals and workers than as an industry or other predominantly economic activity. There is a sense in which the health service is an economic enterprise of course. The N.H.S. is the largest British employer and only Shell and B.P. have a larger turnover.\" Not only is the health service much more than economic enterprise, in so far as one does think of the health service as an industry, a patient can be said to be a producer as much as a consumer of that elusive and abstract good: health.

The Organisation of Pupil Participation

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is largely descriptive: to give an account of an aspect of the order diat the tochers in one school seek to impose on classroom interaction.^ Analysis of that order is essential for any satisfactory account of pupil actions. The explanation of pupil orientations in terms of 'backgrouiKi' or even 'subculture' is premature without detailed attention to the organisation of the school and particularly to the nature of the 'teaching' in classrooms. Attention to teachers' classroom activities is also important for any account of schools as 'socialising' agencies seeking to mould pupils in terms of a particular version of cultural competence. It is in relation to some such notions of competence and achievement that pupils are judged by teachers to be 'bright', 'stupid' etc. Assessments of a person's intelligence are based on evaluations of his performances at particular activities and in particular circumstances. Whatever the claims of ±ose doing the assessment, it is essential to investigate the conditions under which those who are being evaluated must act if they are to be seen as 'intelligent', and the conception of intelligence in terms of which they are being judged—the activities that are taken as crucial and the criteria of 'success' or 'intelligent attempt' that are applied. Schools are agencies assigning particular importance to certain activities and able to a considerable degree to impose a particular definition of achievement on pupils. My focus in the present paper is the way in which the teachers in a particular school work to organise pupil participation in classrooms and the relevance of that organisation for the 'intelligence' pupils are required to show. The nature of the knowledge which the teachers present, in terms of which pupils must display their 'intelligence', is an equally important topic, but, like the overall organisation of the school, will have to be left to another paper.

General practitioners 'trouble' and types of patients.

Abstract: I N observing the everyday life of medical care an investigator will encounter words and phrases used by medical staff and patients to describe each other. Nurses may talk about 'difficult' patients (Stockwell; 1973). General practitioners are able to class patients as 'good' or 'bad' (Robinson; 1971). Patients may talk ofa 'thorough doctor' or a 'quack'. In the United States some patients are referred to as 'crocks' (Roth; 1973). Kansas medical students readily identified a 'crock' as a patient who does not have a 'disease', who may cause problems for students and from whom they can learn little. A 'crock' is distinguished from an 'interesting case' a patient who can give a clear history, who has evident pathology, who can improve through treatment, and on whom students can learn (Becker et al, 1961). Less direct evidence of such categorisation (because the findings are in the words of the investigators rather than the investigated) comes from studies ofdoctors' attitudes towards patients. Semantic differential techniques have shown that medical students prefer organically ill patients to emotionally ill patients (Stroller & Geertsma, 1958). Medical students display more favourable attitudes towards physicians than towards patients (De Brabander & Leon, 1968) and they rate patients in order ofpreference from the actually ill, the chronically ill, the emotionally ill, down to the 'crocks' (Reynolds & Bice, 1971). Indications will also be found in the features of patients which are of special concern to medical people. Doctors are concerned about patients calling for 'trivial' consultations (Cartwright, 1967; Ferris, 1965; Mechanic, 1970) and that patients 'nowadays tend to demand their rights rather than ask for help or advice' (Cartwright, op.cit.). The true work of physicians is seen as saving endangered lives, therefore those who can be cured are better than those who cannot (Becker et al, op.cit.). The language used in medical studies of patients' use ofprescribed drugs indicates an ideal image ofpatients as passive, obedient and co-operative (Stimson, 1974). Doctors have been reported to derive satisfaction from exercising 'rational control', making proper diagnosis and achieving effective

The Aetherius Society: A Case Study in the Formation of a Mystagogic Congregation:

Abstract: Amuch underdeployed concept from Weber's typologies of religious virtuosi has been that of the mystagogue. His own examples, as befitted his broad historical and comparative scope, were drawn from ancient or oriental sources. I have been unable to locate any systematic application of this concept in the literature since Weber, however, and thus a descriptive and analytical account of a more recent example may prove profitable. A new magico-religious group, the Aetherius Society, provides suitable raw material for the deployment of Weber's concept. I engaged in participant observation with this group at a wide range of its lectures, services, pilgrimages and social gatherings in England over the course of some eighteen months and also systematically examined the literature of the society. This paper seeks to explore the emergence of the founder of the Aetherius Society, Dr. George King, as a mystagogue. Of particular interest is the manner in which he was able to secure a monopoly of the means of revelation and to overcome the constraints on institutionalisation which typically face movements founded on the systematic manifestation of charismatic gifts—e.g. pentecostalism or, more appositely, spiritualism. These aspects are explored in the context of a description of the Aetherius Society, its leadership and membership, and an analysis of the factors which led to its emergence, modified its development, and limit its appeal.^

Dialectical and categorical paradigms of a science of society

Abstract: D ebate with Marxism has given sociology much and not the least valuable outcome has been the critical scrutiny of basic presuppositions which might otherwise have gone unquestioned. We can see the importance of this in Gouldner's The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, which is brought to focus by the conflict he finds between Marxism and Academic sociology, generating both the crisis and his own critical detachment.' The purpose of this paper is to depict an analogous conflict at the level of basic methodology and thus to achieve critical detachment from the methodological tenets of Western sociology. In contrasting 'dialectical' and 'categorical' paradigms of a science of society, I hope to show that sociologists have strategic choices to make about basic methodology, where so often choice is thought not to exist, and to make it apparent that the choice is moral and not merely technical. A dialectical approach in sociology is not often enough seen for what it is: an alternative to the dominant orthodoxy in sociological method. Indeed the very use of the term 'dialectic' tends to invite the sidetracking of the main issues by arousing premature demands for precise definition or philological projects. Papers such as Schneider's 'Dialectic in Sociology', which identifies seven meaning clusters in the uses of the term 'dialectic', undoubtedly have their value, but carry with them the attendant disadvantage that the set of usages discovered is often made to appear as an arbitrary collection.\" In consequence the importance of their functioning as a coherent sub-set in a universe of discourse is unrecognized. This is particularly so when the demand arises to legislate for the superiority of one usage over the others. The result is to destroy a complex structure of meaning which has emerged over centuries.

Accident and emergency departments: illness and accident behaviour.

Abstract: Introduction T H E behaviour of patients seeking medical care following an accident is often different from that following any other illness. Crude statistics show that the pattern of accident behaviour in Great Britain is changing rapidly, causing problems in the organisation and management of Accident and Emergency Departments particularly in hospitals in urban areas. Between 1961 and 1972 the annual average number of new patients per thousand population rose from 105 to 171 (D.H.S.S., 1973; Scottish Home and Health Department, 1973; Welsh Office, 1973). An increasing number of patients were seen only once at the hospital, with the result that the average number ofattendances per new patient fell from 2.5 to 1.6 over the same period. To throw light on this situation, Morgan et al. (1974) designed a survey to describe the medical and social characteristics of patients attending Accident and Emergency Departments of three Hospitals in the Newcastle-upon-Tyne area. Particular attention was paid to the factors affecting a patient's decision as to the kind of medical care he sought in the event of an accident or emergency. This paper will discuss the professional-client interaction when patients seek direct care in hospital for injury or non-traumatic conditions and the implications for any future re-organisation of Accident and Emergency Departments,

Some Sociological Aspects of ‘Nursing Research’:

Abstract: O ne of the more remarkable features of the recent development of nursii^ as an occupation in the United Kingdom has been the mushrooming of 'nursing research', that is to say research carried out by nurses upon their own occupation. The evidence for this can be seen in the growing number of nursing researdbi fellowships and the setting up of a Nursing Research Unit. It is my contention that such work displays many of the features described by Straus and Freidson for sociology in medicine. As such, it poses an interesting problem for the sociology of medicine. Why should these developments be taking place at this time, in this manner, by these people? Before discussing this, however, it is necessary to outline the main differences between die sociology of medicine and sociology in medicine. This distinction was first drawn by Straus. He argued that: ' . . . the sociology of medicine is concerned with studying such factors as the organisational structure, role relationships, value systems, rituals and functions of medicine as a system of behaviour and that this type of activity can best be carried out by persons operating from independent positions outside the formal medical setting. Sociology in medicine consists of collaborative research or teaching often involving the integration of concepts, techniques and personnel froni many disciplines . . . Teaching activities and research in which the sociologist is collaborating with a physician in studying a disease process or factors influencing the patients' response to illness are primarily sociology in medicine.'^

Problems in the selection of occupational titles

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the ways in which sociologists select the occupational titles which they desire to scale according to the meanings people give them. Studies of the perception, cognition and evaluation of occupational titles have often taken considerable pains over the sampling of persons who are requested to judge the set of stimuli under investigation.^ But in contrast to the care taken over the selection of judges by explicit and probability-based procedures, it appears that the sampling of occupational titles is usually managed as a rather ill-specified compromise between: desires for 'comparability' of the occupational titles with those used by previous sociologists and in census classifications; desires to limit the size of the list in some way; and desires to use a set of titles that will be representative of occupations as they occur in the particular theoretical domain that is under investigation. Each of these sets of desires is associated with a problem, so that the selection of occupational titles may be considered to involve the problem of comparability, the problem of operational feasibility^ and the problem of representativeness. In the remainder of the paper these problems are considered one by one, and it is argued that further research in the area should proceed on two distinct though parallel paths.

Strategy and Job Choice after Redundancy: A Case Study in the Aircraft Industry

Abstract: In this paper we wish to argue that the individual's attitude towards his work and the problems he faces in redundancy are structured to a great extent by the relationships that he experiences at his workplace and in his worklife. This structuring of experience is important to his subsequent actions and cannot be ignored or dismissed, as it has been by the more traditional labour market approach with its emphasis on workers' reactions to 'objective' market conditions and medianisms.^ We found that the response to redundancy and the subsequent jobsearch of our sample of redundant workers could be most usefully understood in terms of the groupings formed on the basis of the technological/organisational system operating in a particular firm and, more generally, in a particular industry. These groupings act as a useful means of indicating the structures of perceptions and expectations held by our sample; in terms of which they evaluated the redundancy and planned their action to achieve their ends. We are not intending to put forward a theory of job search; we are simply attempting to raise some of the issues and difficulties, in an analysis which centres on perceptions and expectations rather than on 'objective' market conditions as determinants of behaviour.^

On a materialist critique of urban sociology

Abstract: T he object of this article is to clarify and comment on a critical discussion of urban sociology undertaken by the French sociologist, Castells. This clarification seems desirable because some of the terminology used may be unfamiliar to the English-speaking reader and because the discussion is spread over two different articles which are not explicitly related together by the author. In the first section below I attempt to elucidate some of the unfamiliar concepts; in the second, I present Castells's argument in summary form; and, finally, I discuss a number of questions arising from it.

The reorganisation of the National Health Service: some sociological aspects with special references to the role of the community physician.

Abstract: T HE restructuring of the N.H.S. currently under way is intended to achieve an integrated service in which the three arms of the medical care system will come together to provide a holistic approach to perspectives on health and illness with the overall objective of improving patient care. In a number of government publications (H.M.S.O. 1968-72) considerable emphasis has been placed on improvements in managerial and administrative efficiency, for achieving these objectives. The philosophy underlying Management Arrangements for the Reorganised Health Service is best summarized by a phrase taken from Appendix IV of the White Paper, ' ... there should be maximum delegation downwards, matched by accountability upwards' (H.M.S.O. 1972c). Nevertheless, ' ... accountability in the Health Service is not easily determined, because consultants and general practitioners are primarily accountable to their patients' (H.M.S.O. 1972a:17), and 'both general practitioners and consultants exercise clinical autonomy and are consequently their own managers' (op. cit. :68). In practice there may develop some discontinuities, even active conflicts, between the principles of managerial efficiency, accountability, and clinical autonomy. As well as the focus upon managerial efficiency and accountability upwards and downwards the plans for reorganisation include the emergence of a new speciality, community medicine, whose members will be drawn mainly from the ranks of public health practitioners previously employed by local authorities. While general guidelines have been laid down for the development of the speciality the full range of the community physicians' responsibilities will probably emerge as the incumbents develop

To have or to have not - promotion and prevention of childbirth in gynaecological work.

Abstract: Acknowledgements The research on which this paper is based was funded by the Social Science Research Council, whose support I would like to acknowledge. I would like to thank Alan Davis, Robert Dingwall, Gordon Horobin, Phil Strong and Barbara Thompson for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and the gynaecologists who so kindly granted me access to their clinics, but who must remain anonymous.

Statistics of Inequality

Abstract: For some years it was generally assumed that class distinctions were gettii^ less in England and Wales and that in the welfare state the killing poverty of the 1930s had been eliminated. However, the Registrar General's Decennial Supplement shows that the difference between the death rates for the different social classes has increased over the period from the early 1930s to the I96os,^ The Registrar General allocates social class on the basis of the last full-time occupation of the male. Married women are classified by their husband's occupation. The five occupational classes used by the Registrar General are: Qass I, Professional, approximately 4 per cent, of all classified; Qass II, Intermediate, approximately 15 per cent, of all classified; Qass III, Skilled occupations, approximately 52 per cent, of all classified; Class IV, Partly skilled, approximately 21 per cent of all classified; Class V, Unskilled, approximately 9 per cent of all classified in 1961. The death rates are generally given as crude death rates—the number of deaths per 1,000 or per 100,000 population as appropriate; or as Standardised Mortality Ratios (S.M.R.s)—^which correct for differences in age structure. The Standardised Mortality Ratio is the actual number of deaths as a percentage of the number expected. If the differences between social classes are of interest, then the number expected if there were no differences between classes is used. If change over time is considered, the number expected is calculated by applying the death rates for the different age groups at a standard period to the age structure at the time considered. Also, since some diseases are specific to women and other causes of death are more likely to affect men, the S.M.R. is calculated separately for each. Overall the Standardised Mortality Ratio has decreased since 1930. 1950-52 is taken as the standard period (S.M.R.=100) and the S.M.R.

Labourism and class consciousness: the ‘class ideology’ of some northern foremen

Abstract: The material presented here stems from three years fieldwork in a chemical complex in the South of England during the period 1970 to summer 1973.' The site contains several plants and is owned by a large international corporation, here called 'ChemQ)'. The subject matter is what is quite deliberately called the 'class ideology' of a small number of process foremen. The method employed represents something of a departure from the almost standard techniques'employed in modern studies of working class 'consciousness'.'̂ It is suggested here that some dominant strands and conjunctions in these foremen's (part radical, part reactionary-sounding) rhetoric may be beneficially regarded as one particular manifestation of Labourism, rather than as a deviation from this.^ The broader purpose of the paper is, in some small way, to add a further dimension to the study of working class ideology and to enter a qualification to criticisms of the major British studies of working class consciousness which claim these studies have under-emphasised its radical potential.^

Perceptions of structure in N.H.S. hospitals.

Abstract: Introduction I T would be quite wrong to claim that the British hospital has been neglected as a unit of study. We have a brilliant historical analysis of the emergence of the modern hospital and of the influence of its antecedents (Abel Smith 1964); we have a series of investigations of continued relevance today which sought to monitor developments in hospitals following nationalisation in 1948 (Acton Society Trust 1955-8); a seminal enquiry into organisational structure and morale resulted in the ongoing work sponsored by the DHSS under the title of the Hospital Internal Communications Project (Revans 1964; Wieland and Leigh, 1971; Revans, 1972); and, ofcourse, there is the influential work of a team of researchers from Brunel University attempting to restructure hospital organisation using concepts taken from studies of industrial management (Rowbottom et al, 1973). Valuable as it is in its own right, none of this amounts to a sociology of the hospital in the sense of a cumulative and advancing understanding of the nature of hospital organisation. It does not provide an empirically based study of variations in structure and work arrangements nor does it offer a theory concerning the determinants and consequences of such variation which shows signs of arriving at a real understanding of performance outcomes. Our reliance on American materials both for conceptual ideas and empirical findings is marked, and while such reliance is frequently accompanied by disclaimers concerning the distinctiveness of a nationalised health service, the point is rarely given any detailed elaboration (Cf Glaser 1963). These two points, lack of empirical materials and the reliance on American studies, provided the starting point for the research reported in this paper. A further factor hindering enquiry into hospital organisation, however, is the persistence of dichotomised ideal-type models of organisation. Terms such as 'bureaucracy' and 'professional orgahisation' are frequently employed and the temptation is to ask which of these provides the best fit for hospitals. The latter notion in particular has gained some currency of late. It is the argument of this paper that we must face more directly the internal complexity of

What's wrong with the new criminology?*

Abstract: This paper seeks to develop an argument about the nature of the sociology of deviance, and in particular with several aspects of a recent work—The New Criminology: For A Social Theory of Deviance by Taylor, Walton and Young. ̂ It is not my intention here to provide a judicious and balanced review of this book; instead, my aim is frankly polemical. However, as I believe that this book raises succinctly and honesdy a wide variety of conceptual and theoretical issues, I hope that it will be understood that this paper, in striving to proffer some alternative proposals for a social theory of deviance, is not intended to detract from the serious merits of the book with which it debates. The most striking facets of the book are, primarily, its speculative —even moralising—character, sustained with a series of unempirical, rhetorical formulations and, secondly, the persistent tensions between a commitment to a voluntaristic conception of human action (comprising, of course, criminal and other deviant activities) and a quasideterministic programme of structural sociology. There are no sustained discussions of method, of how inferences may be drawn from data, nor of how theoretical propositions in the sociology of deviance are to be warranted. Instead, the dominant tone is a moral, political one, veneered with a rhetoric of dialectic. We read that what is required 'in the study of deviancy as in the study of society at large . . . is a sociology that combines structure, process and culture in a continuous dialectic.'^ Quite what this would look like in concrete, research terms is unclear—it is even more unclear whether any such programme could yield theoretical propositions that remain conceptually coherent and empirically well-founded. I hope to give these remarks some substance in the following discussion.

Issues in general practitioner authority in the National Health Service.

Abstract: Introduction S ICAL explanation of the content of patientphysician relationships has been based on the sick role concept, with its accompanying paradigm of deviance and social control. This widely used conceptual scheme, promulgated originally by Parsons (1951), views the ill person as deviant and the medical practitioner as an agent of social control in dealing with the deviance. It is the obligation of the sick to seek expert help in order to get well, and thus to defer to professional authority in receiving and accepting information and instructions on how to end their deviant state (Coe, 1970; Butler, 1970). Authority in this context is defined as the patient's grant of legitimacy to the professional's exercise of power. The relationship with the physician is assymetrical; the patient is in a dependent and the physician a superordinate status (Suchman, 1965). It is the 'competence gap' between doctor and patient which justifies both the professional's authority and the client's trust, confidence and norm of obedience (Parsons, 1970). Although the objective of care is to return the patient to an active, independent status, he is obligated in the model to become temporarily submissive and to accept the doctor's right to tell him what to do. The sick role concept has been criticized from a number of perspectives. It appears to be applicable to acute episodes, but fails to account for chronic illness behaviour (Kassebaum & Baumann, 1974). Variations with respect to the nature of the practice setting and structure, e.g., solo versus group, or prepaid versus fee-forservice, are not accounted for (Freidson, 1961). The role of physician in conditions which may not be defined as sickness, such as pregnancy and preventive medicine, or in certain aspects of primary care, is not easily explained in terms of the model. Conflict aspects resulting from patient health education which narrows the competence gap are not considered (Bloor & Horobin, 1975). The extent to which patients evaluate and weigh physicians' instructions in deciding whether or not to comply is not included in

Domestic political violence: some problems of measurement*

Abstract: Concurrent with the widespread interest among social scientists to test their theories about sodal and political processes more rigorously and 'scientifically', a number of authors have, during the past decade, reported cross-national quantitative analyses of domestic political violence. These analyses have attempted to, first, relate levels of national development to the amount and type of violence experienced; secondly, determine the struaural conditions engendering intra-national violence; and, thirdly, assess the major 'dimensions' or types of such political violence. Examples of this literature include Eckstein,' Rummel,^ Tanter,^ I. K. and R. L. Feierabend,* Gurr and Ruttenburg,^ Y. Araujo,® Bwy,'̂ Denton and Philips,* Calvert,® Flanigen and Fogelman,^\" Hudson,\" P. S. and A. L. Schneider,^ ̂ and Morrison and Stevenson.\" Despite the diversity of the specific aims of these papers, they each rely on discovering statistical relationships between various sodal, political and economic variables, and some measure of the magnitude or intensity of violence, often called a nation's 'conflict score'. This has had the consequence of placing a premium on the collection and measurement of data describing the incidence of violent events in as many countries in the world as possible. While much has been written about the problems of the collection and coding procedures involved,'* rather less critical attention has been paid to the measurement techniques, whidi have been reviewed by Tilly and Rule, and Gurr,'^ and may be summarised as follows : (1) Some studies make use of measures of the simple frequency of the inddence of various categories or types of domestic political violence over a given time period (see Eckstein, Rummel, Tanter, Hudson, and Bwy'^). (2) Others construct measures of the physical destructiveness or pervasiveness of an event, either by reference to a single variable

Aren't children wonderful?-A study of the allocation of identity in development assessment.

Abstract: Introduction F RE ID SON has argued that organisations 'create' handicap, for it is their officials who define the parameters of normality and deviance. (Freidson 1972). This is not a particularly novel notion as much of the recent literature on deviance has been concerned to examine the activities of agents ofsocial control in defining, creating and sustaining deviant identities (Lemert 1967; Rubington & Weinberg 1968). However, since Freidson's attempt to import this organising perspective into the field of medical sociology, there seems to have been little empirical work which uses such an approach to look at the ways in which doctors create deviance or neutralise the processes leading to the creation ofa deviant identity. Further, that work which has been done has concerned itself with the processing of adults (Scott 1970; Goffman 1961a) whereas many handicapping conditions can be 'picked up' at birth or shortly after. The study ofthe process of official stigmatisation in children is particularly important as there has been increasing concern within the medical professions to identify all handicaps at the earliest possible age. The introduction of early detection systems such as population screening, at-risk registers and the elaboration of medical criteria for intensive follow-up ofa target population has meant that young children are increasingly subject to systematic inspection for anticipated or unanticipated deviations from medical versions of childhood normality. There are many versions of clinical normality, usually based on statistically compiled attributes ofnormal childhood development\", The application of these tests of developmental normality to a population of children is an attempt to differentiate 'normal' children from deviant ones and their application at an early age hastens the process ofconverting primary deviation into secondary deviation with the attendant elaboration of deviant careers for children found to be abnormal (Lemert op. cit.; Rock 1973). One important difference between these procedures and those used to uncover other forms of deviance such as delinquency is that