Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 1987"

‘Showing them you love them”: gift giving and the dialectic of intimacy

Abstract: One of the tasks for a critical social psychology is to describe the contradictory social matrix of intimacy in capitalist societies. That is particularly necessary in order to understand the social experiences of women, since they continue to have the principal responsibility for expressive functions. The present paper is concerned with the structuration of intimacy through the giving of gifts. It is suggested that this is a useful vantage point from which to explore the extent of the autonomy of the private family. Gift giving is described as a means through which individuals communicate the values which they assign to their significant others. It is suggested that the intersubjective signs of value employed in gift transactions are affected by the characteristics of an industrial capitalist society. The symbolic process therefore demonstrates the limits to the autonomy of familial culture.

Aesthetics and digital image processing: representational craft in contemporary astronomy

Abstract: This paper examines whether ‘aesthetic’ considerations play a part in contemporary scientific work, and focuses on a scientific field undergoing rapid transformation through the introduction of digital imaging and image processing technologies. Interviews with astronomers at two image processing laboratories indicate that they orient explicitly to the ‘aesthetic’ judgments of their audiences when preparing images to promote and popularize their research. Although they acknowledge no such ‘aesthetic’ pretensions for their ‘scientific’ work, further analysis shows that a more ancient aesthetic, that of perfecting nature through a crafting of resemblances, is deeply a part of routine image processing work.

Language and ideology: a framework for analysis

Abstract: This essay re-examines the concept of ideology and the relations between language, ideology and power. Two basic concepts of ideology are distinguished, a ‘neutral’ conception and a ‘critical’ conception, and the latter conception is developed and defended. To study ideology, it is proposed, is to study the ways in which meaning serves to sustain relations of domination. The analysis of language is thus central to the study of ideology, since language is one of the principal mediums through which meaning is mobilized in the social world. This reorientation of the study of ideology enables one to criticize certain misleading assumptions and provides a basis upon which one can pursue problems of interpretation, justification and critique.

Visions of power: ideology and practice in the American garage sale

Abstract: In this article, we examine ideological statements reflected in, and to a small extent created by, people's participation in garage sales.1 Although the article touches upon the economics of garage sales, its focus is on ideology, about how people understand what they are doing when they buy and sell, and how this relates to their more general perception of the social world and their position in it. The way people discuss their participation in garage sales tells a great deal about how they understand their worlds: patterns of work and consumption, claims (especially by women and the aged) that their daily activities have more dignity than is normally afforded them within society, a felt need for moral and practical networks. The expression of ‘oppositional culture’in the statements garage sale participants make to describe their lives is certainly underdeveloped. It is not free of the dominant ideology, cannot be the basis of class-conscious political practice and in present form poses little danger to any social institution (except perhaps department stores). Still it does contain, in shadowy form, seminal statements in contradiction to what is generally regarded as the dominant ideology. We will call these emerging elements ‘prefigurative cultural formations’, as in vague form they connote emergent social values. Further, we will argue that these prefigurative cultural formations are grouped into discrete ideological claims that we call ‘Visions of Power, each of which speaks to the empowerment of subordinate groups. We will discuss four specific Visions of Power: reclaiming control of one's work, creating a sense of social justice, beating the system, and feeling oneself a part of a nurturing community. Before attempting to demonstrate the utility of these concepts in understanding forms of belief reflected in garage sales and other informal economic activities, we will briefly explore our approach to ideology, and will attempt to situate it within the contemporary debate on the nature of ideology.

Masculinity and male dominance

Abstract: The problems with established sociological and socio-psychological conceptions of masculinity are discussed, and it is argued that object-relations theory can provide a clearer understanding of masculinity. An ideal type of the development of masculinity is built up in contrast to similar ideal types of human development and the development of femininity as portrayed by recent feminist writers. The status of the ideal type is then discussed, drawing out its implications for the relationship between psychoanalysis and sociological analysis, and for the nature of social change.

‘Doing Things with Words’: Sociology and ‘Family Policy’ Debates

Abstract: In examining ‘family policy’, previous work on ‘family ideology’ is developed to demonstrate that ‘traditional family sociology’ has been ‘doing things with words’. In this area sociology, far from being innocuous, has had real impact upon society and may well have been oppressive and deeply reactionary.

The affluent home owner: labour market position and the shaping of housing histories

Abstract: This article draws on research designed to explore aspects of social stratification within owner occupation. The research reconstructed and compared the housing, employment and family histories of two groups of home owners in two contrasting localities in Bristol. This article focuses on the top end of the owner occupied market, a neglected area in the sociology of housing, and explores the connections between bargaining power in the labour market and the shaping of housing histories. It is argued that core workers in the labour market exercise choice in the housing market within a framework of job determined constraints. These constraints are accompanied by a range of subsidies and benefits which are unavailable to the majority of households. As a consequence it is suggested that this group's housing histories are shaped by qualitatively distinct processes which go beyond the single fact that their earned incomes are relatively large.

Darts, Drink and the Pub: The Culture of Female Drinking:

Abstract: Sociologists and anthropologists have paid little attention to women's role in the pub. This article, based on fieldwork reseach, sets out to describe the use of two pubs by two different groups of...

The structure of sociotechnical engineering – a review of the new sociology of technology

Abstract: Concorde and Dissent: Explaining High Technology Project Failures in Britain and France Elliot J. Feldman, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, £19.50, xvii + 201pp. The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got its Hum Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.). Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1985, £22.00, paper £8.95, viii + 327pp. Networks of Power: Electriflcation in Western Society, 1880-1930 Thomas P Hughes, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1983, £33.90, xi + 474pp.

Recentering the World: The Quest for ‘Elective’ Centers in a Secularized Universe:

Abstract: The various ‘quests for meaning’ of the ‘decentralized’ contemporary Western youths are interpreted as so many attempts to ‘recenter the world’ around new ‘elective centers’. Rather than being centers of the contemporary world into which the individual is born, such centers are located outside it, and freely chosen by the seekers. Four such elective centers are discussed: (1) traditional religious conversion, (2) the occult, (3) science fiction, and (4) tourism. Each of these elective centers is first briefly described and then analysed in a comparative framework, focused on six principal questions: (a) the social and cultural conditions which engender the contemporary ‘quest for a center’, (b) the nature of elective centers, (c) mechanisms of election and rejection of alternative elective centers, (d) extent of involvement with elective centers, (e) elective centers and the wider social framework, (f) the institution-building potential of the elective centers.

On the art of representation: notes on the politics of visualisation

Abstract: This paper considers how technologies of representation are used by writers about acid rain research to re-present that research to non-scientists. The processes by which such technologies suppress what they purport to represent and replace it with novel and more docile elements which are often visual is described. Visual technologies for combining and further simplifying these elements are considered. Finally, the analogy between political and visual representation is drawn out, though the specificity of visual technologies is emphasised.

The Allocation of Money in Cross-Class Families:

Abstract: This paper examines the patterns of income allocation in cross-class families; that is, in families in which the wife is employed in higher level white-collar or professional employment, and the husband in manual work. Following the work of Jan Pahl (1982 and 1983) families are categorised according to their system of money management. The majority of families here employ either a ‘one purse’system based upon joint family funds, or an independent system based upon separate bank accounts. In addition, couples who use an ‘allowance’system, a shared system, or a variant of the independent system with only one-earner are discussed. Whenever possible, qualitative reports from the families interviewed are drawn upon. The paper reveals ways in which gender-specific behaviour may be observed through the study of families’allocative systems. In particular, the wives’propensity to assume responsibility for food shopping, regardless of the couples’sources of income or allocative pattern chosen, is demonstrated. In addition, however, the source of income – specifically cash payments to the husbands – is seen to have an independent effect upon the couples’perceptions of money within the family. The paper concludes with speculation as to why the majority of these affluent families employ a system of joint family funds.

The nature of ‘schools’in the sociology of knowledge: The case of the ‘Chicago School’

Abstract: The nature of ‘schools' as a metascientific construct is reviewed. Tiryakian's (1979a) increasingly popular construction of a school of sociology is examined and the case of ‘The Chicago School’ is considered in detail. The efficacy of a ‘schools’ approach to understanding the nature of the growth and development of scientific knowledge is called into question. It is suggested that schools, as used in the literature, tend to be convenient groupings of practitioners rather than metascientific categories and that they fail to adequately engage knowledge transformative processes.

Visualisation and Social Reproduction: Opening One Eye While Closing the other … A Note on Some Religious Paintings

Abstract: Religious paintings offer an excellent testing ground to compare the various kinds of displacements or translations. The paper focuses on two such displacements: the repetition of the message of Jesus versus the movement of immutable mobiles allowed by perspective. These two regimes offer completely different definitions of what it is to ‘represent’ something: to the re-presentation of the Presence is opposed the accurate representation of distant places and times. In between 1450 and 1520 these two regimes of displacement first merge, then collide, and later go their separate ways. Religion on the one hand, and Science on the other ignore each other. Going to Heaven, and going through the Sky are two different movements of representation that generate different space-times.

Skills, Control, and the Mass Professions:

Abstract: Since members of the mass professions are employed mainly by large organisations in the public sector, they are increasingly ‘managed’. What is happening to their skills, their control over their own work, and their professionalism, are matters of concern as revealed by recent disputes. These are precisely questions at the heart of the labour process debate relaunched by Braverman. The insights generated by this stream of writing, already profitably applied beyond blue collar work to clerical occupations may be extended to embrace elements of the service class. There the notion of indetermination goes beyond the notion of discretion. Changes in public ideology have effects analogous to those arising from technological innovation in manufacturing. Yet professionals, whilst attending to technological aspects of their work, typically ignore the wider social issues. In this respect they are vulnerable to deskilling and erosion of control over their work.

Warfare, social theory and West European development

Abstract: This paper explores the intellectual reasons for the failure of sociology to give sufficient attention to warfare and military organisation as central problems in social theory. These reasons are to be found in the dominance of liberal functionalism and Marxism as paradigms in the development of sociology. A reorientation of social theory is called for and it is suggested that writers in the neo-Machiavellian tradition provide an important corrective to sociological orthodoxy in respect of the role of war and military organisation in social life. The paper goes on to show that these factors are crucial components in an adequate account of one of the most important problems raised by sociology: why did hegemonic capitalism develop originally in the West and not elsewhere. Thus, ironically, those factors which sociology has tended to ignore are actually the key to solving one of its central problems.

Women's Work: The Role of Grandparents in Inter-Generational Transfers:

Abstract: This article surveys the role of grandparents in providing a continuing level of material support in 61 households with dependent children in an inner city area. It concludes that assistance is structured by gender, income level, household financial organisation, residential proximity, need and ideology. In terms of the provision of continuing support to households with young children, grandparents are important but grandmothers give more assistance than grandfathers and they direct it where it is most needed. It is important for grandmothers to have access to paid work. The ideology of assistance is differentiated by class. In professional families the married couple is the unit of transfer but for working class families the solidarity of female relatives, in particular, of daughters and mothers and mothers-in-law, is more important.

Disciplinary Pluralism: Four Models of Private Justice in the Workplace

Abstract: This paper develops a typology of four different models of discipline that operate in the workplace. These models are derived from a systematic analysis of the literature using a framework develope...

Played by Their Own Play: Fission and Fusion in British Circuses:

Abstract: This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in a British circus between 1975 and 1979.’ It focuses on the dynamics of the frequent disappearance and reappearance characteristic of travelling circus ...

Community and urban movements

Abstract: Empirically and theoretically, this paper considers the link between the urban community, as a social base, and the emergence of urban movements. It examines whether different urban communities lead to different urban movements, specifically whether cohesive communities lead to powerful movements. Using an Australian case study, the first part of the paper tests this relationship empirically. The findings given raise doubts about whether cohesiveness is a necessary pre-condition for widespread mobilisation, as well as questioning the theoretical validity of ‘urban community’ and ‘community’ as sociological concepts. There is an apparent need to discard these concepts when referring to contemporary Western societies and a concomitant need to develop concepts which more appropriately identify the social organisation of urban households and residential areas. The second part of the paper discusses these theoretical issues. It presents an argument on the way household and residential organisations change as t...

Moral reform and the anti-abortion movement.

Abstract: The activities of 2 main pressure groups in the decade of the 1970s--the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) and the LIFE organization--and the evidence they submitted to the Lane Committee established in 1971 to examine the working of the Abortion Act and the Select Committee formed to discuss James Whites Amendment Bill in 174 are reviewed. Official campaign literature public statements on the part of leading anti-abortion activists national press reports and parliamentary debates on the issues have helped to provide some insight into the ideological stance of the anti-abortion movement in England and Wales during the 1970s. Fieldwork was undertaken which included nonparticipant observation at local branch meetings of SPUC and LIFE the completion of a self-administered questionnaire by 64 group members and semi-structured interviews with 25 local campaign leaders and group activists. The subsequent analysis presents anti-abortion protest as an example of moral crusade by focusing on Gusfields notion of cultural fundamentalism and his analytical distinction between assimilative and coercive reform. Some participants in the anti-abortion campaign accept that a small number of abortions may need to be performed for genuine medical reasons and do not adopt the extreme position that abortion should be prohibited. This group does demand a change in the law to prevent mass abortion on demand. Both LIFE and SPUC have a clearly recognizable moral reform dimension. The analysis of the campaign literature and the study of a small sample of campaign activists revealed that pressure group members share a common concern about the erosion of moral standards. To adopt the terminology of Gusfield the anti-abortion movement can be construed in part as a movement of cultural fundamentalism which favors the reestablishment of traditional values and seeking an end to the moral uncertainty endemic in modern society. As the anti-abortion movement is primarily concerned about amending existing legislation a coercive strategy of reform prevails. The analysis makes it evident that the anti-abortionists in their emphasis on fundamental values seek to promote a traditional sexual morality but also are trying to establish what they believe to be the moral superiority of the traditional nuclear family. Due to the fact that no abortion amendment bills have been proposed on which to focus their campaign in recent years the anti-abortionists have increasingly focused on the enforcement of existing legislation in an effort to reduce the number of abortions and publicize their moral stance.

The election campaign as a liminal stage – negotiations over meanings

Abstract: The paper deals with the role and significance of election campaigns through a consideration of the relevant literature in political science, communication and anthropology. The current interpretation of elections as ritual and drama is altered by focusing on V. Turner's concept of liminality. As liminal periods, it is claimed, election campaigns are an active arena for social construction of political worlds. They take an active part in moulding political cognition and thus produce long-term effects. Perceiving elections in this conceptual frame focuses the empirical concern on the different actors participating in moulding old or new social meanings, the way challenging alternatives are presented, negotiated, included or excluded, the way events as well as symbols became meaningful. It reveals the contested as well as the taken-for-granted, unquestioned and thus reinforced political symbolic world.

Class, culture and morality: a sociological analysis of neo‐conservatism

Abstract: In Britain, as in many other western countries, there emerged in the mid-1970s a variety of business associations, policy and research institutes and political leagues, committed not only to the restoration of a Conservative government, but also to a much broader refurbishing of conservatism. A network of organizations, individuals and ideas grew up that became identified as the New Right. The New Right, which clearly has an international character, was generated by economic and political crises, but it was nurtured by a variety of resentments and discontents whose roots lay in structural and cultural changes that had developed over the whole post-war period. Drawing, in part, upon interviews with leaders of the organisations that did most to mobilize opinion behind the New Right in Britain, the article examines the major changes – particularly those in class structure and in culture – to which the new conservatives were reacting. It explores the major ideological strands – libertarian, neo-liberal and conservative - and looks at the attempts by the New Right to use these to produce changes not only in economic policy but in the cultural and moral fabric of society.

Exploitation in the new Marxism of collective action

Abstract: The ‘new Marxism of collective action’is a term Lash and Urry have recently used to describe a new intellectual current in Marxism which seeks to apply rational choice theory, and particularly game theory, to key Marxian concepts like collective action, class, revolution and exploitation. This current is seen as part of a general shift within social science away from structure towards agency. This paper focuses on a concept which Lash and Urry's outline ignored: namely, exploitation. Granting the concept this attention is useful for a number of reasons. Firstly, by summarizing the general debate on the concept, both within the new Marxism of collective action and outside, the paper allows the discussion of exploitation to be placed in the context of the more general debate between structuralist and humanistic versions of Marxism; especially in the context of the debate about whether there can be a Marxist theory of ethics and injustice. Secondly, by outlining how the concept is understood by advocates of the new Marxism of collective action, the paper accords the concept the central status which advocates reserve for it. In consequence, the paper identifies differences between advocates of the new Marxism of collective action with respect to how exploitation is to be understood, which suggest that the intellectual current is not as homogeneous as Lash and Urry imply. Moreover, the paper stresses that the differences between them with regard to exploitation are more than just unhelpful disagreements over matters of definition, but represent fundamental disagreements about the validity of Marx's original formulations in contemporary society.

The violence of materialism in advanced industrial society: an eco-sociological approach

Abstract: The main argument to be developed in this article is that such phenomena as war, vandalism and urban ‘terrorism’are not isolated events, but reflect the values and beliefs embedded in the deep institutional structure of advanced industrial societies. It will be argued that in such societies, however politically patterned, there is a universal, and virtually unequivocal, acceptance of economic growth and expansion as the prime objective to be pursued. As such economic expansion depends on advances in scientific and technological knowledge the control and manipulation of nature is given full legitimacy. This attitude towards nature is seen as a central feature of the industrial culture as a whole and reflects the dominance of material over other human values. And it is the asymmetry between these value systems which predisposes the industrial culture to violence and instability: in short it gives ideological support to the use of violence in the resolution of problems, whether these be of a political, social or economic nature. It will be contended that there is a clear need to go beyond the traditional marxist analysis of capitalism in order to show how the institutional structure of advanced industrial societies plays a part both in stimulating and reproducing the ideology of violence notwithstanding considerable differences in the political arrangements in such societies. It follows from this that what is required is a broad theory of industrialization, rather than specifically of capitalism. As Illich argues

Northern Ireland 1968–1988: enter an art historian in search of a useful theory

Abstract: Publications and museum or art-gallery displays have tended to separate the visual images related to the Northern Ireland troubles into illustrations of history, works of art and media imagery. These distinct categories to some degree reflect the growing specialisation of art workers in Europe from the late eighteenth century onwards. But in the context of the Northern Ireland conflict visual images patently cut across such distinctions. Fine art works have direct political and therefore historical impact; media images use and are used by the producers of popular emblems; visual styles are held in common by all categories of imagery. The perpetuation of the separate history illustration/artwork/media picture categories when dealing with Northern Ireland imagery is therefore attributed to the formal and informal training of British and Irish historians and art historians. An alternative theoretical basis for examining the images related to the Northern Ireland conflict is suggested, in which those images are seen as parts of visual language codes, whose constant use and re-use simultaneously adds further layers of meaning to them, ensures their real impact on social, political, economic and religious developments, and modifies the overall visual language of their producers/users. This approach is related to the work of German and Austrian art-historians and their successors, American media studies focusing on the links between institutional organisation and visual style, anthropological analyses of ritual symbols and recent sociological use of linguistic theory.

Technological knowledge, curriculum and occupational role potential*

Abstract: This paper examines technological curricula in terms of their potential to be realized in occupational roles. The more the curriculum is oriented towards roles (as opposed to skills or pure knowledge), the greater the probability that it will be articulated in the labour market and the greater its efficacy and legitimacy. The concept of role has been analytically divided into six components: value commitment, normative, communicative, interactive, role intelligence and proficiency components. Theoretically, the more components are present in a given curriculum, the higher the probability that a given occupational role will be effectively articulated. However, their presence is a necessary but insufficient condition for effective role performance; their integration is of equal, if not greater importance, and the latter is meaningful only when the social context of the articulation is taken into account. It was found that the role components do not appear in a balanced manner in technological curricula investigated in Israel, and some hardly receive any attention. Those that are present are weakly linked to actual economic contexts. Thus, it appears that students in technological education, are socialized to minimal role articulation; ie, they are more likely to implement decontextualized tasks than to assume integral occupational roles.

Pictures from the subsoil, 1939

Abstract: In this paper, an anatomy is given of the ambiguous representations of the subsoil produced by the Schlumberger Company during the 1930s. In ‘normal’ scientific work, ambiguities are carefully conc...

Community, the private and the individual

Abstract: Attempts are being made to associate a supposed ‘return to the private’ with a parallel phenomenon of a ‘return to community’. Both terms, private and community, are central to sociological theory, but are surrounded with confusion and a profusion of historical referents which confirms their importance but obscures their significance. This review of the literature and of the various problematics for which the ‘private sphere’ is a key concept concludes that it is civil society which determines the modalities of discussion as well as the actual degree of autonomy of the ‘private’, and thus that an approach from the side of the ‘private’ (or of ‘community’) can be of only restricted value.