Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 1992"

The Concept of Social Movement

Abstract: Recent developments in social movement research have evidenced a greater underlying consensus in the field than one might have assumed. Efforts have been made to bridge different perspectives and merge them into a new synthesis. Yet, comparative discussion of the concept of ‘social movement’ has been largely neglected so far. This article reviews and contrasts systematically the definitions of ‘social movement’ formulated by some of the most influential authors in the field. A substantial convergence may be detected between otherwise very different approaches on three points at least. Social movements are defined as networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities. It is argued that the concept is sharp enough a) to differentiate social movements from related concepts such as interest groups, political parties, protest events and coalitions; b) to identify a specific area of investigation and theorising for social movement research.

The vegetarian option: varieties, conversions, motives and careers

Abstract: This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study of the dietary beliefs and practices of a ‘snowball sample’ of seventy-six vegetarians and vegans. The dynamics of the process of conversion are examined, along with respondents' accounts of their motives and of the impact of their dietary stance upon their relationships with kin, friends and colleagues. The study's findings, which appear to indicate the central importance of ethical considerations for this particular response group, are set in the context of broader debates concerning the sociological dimensions of the selection or avoidance of specific food items.

Child abuse and the bureaucratisation of social work

Abstract: Child abuse became a public issue in the early 1970s. The alleged failure of social workers and welfare agencies to prevent children being killed by their parents and caretakers led to changes in the practice and organisation in child abuse work. The way public inquiries and government departments framed the problem of child abuse produced solutions which were essentially legalistic and bureaucratic. No longer was the aim to rehabilitate poorly functioning families, but to protect children from dangerous parents. But in order to achieve this aim, it was first necessary to identify the factors that would allow child protection agencies to recognise which families were dangerous and which were not. Once these factors were identified, it was possible to develop administrative systems that would facilitate the collection and analysis of information obtained during the investigation of suspected families. These systems allowed welfare agencies to identify ‘high risk’ cases. During the translation of the problem of child abuse into a set of judicial and bureaucratic procedures, therapeutically orientated professional practices found themselves out-manoeuvered. The translation witnessed the production of social workers as ‘passive agents’, a new cognitive perspective on the problem of child abuse, and a contribution to the bureaucratisation of child care practice.

Management Consultants: Systems Development, Power and the Translation of Problems:

Abstract: This paper aims to shed light on the exercise of power during the development and implementation of organisational information systems. Considering the use of Information Technology (IT) to help solve organisational problems, we employ the concept of the ‘sociology of translation’ to theorise the process by which the organisational problem is constituted and for which the appropriate IT solution is proposed. Discussing the nature of the power relationship between external management consultants in IT and client or user organisations, the paper considers the role of symbolic resources such as managerial discourse, and the differential access to IT knowledge and skills, as important aspects of power in that relationship.

Soil, blood and identity

Abstract: Modern nations are products of nationalism, and can be defined only as such, rather than by their own distinctive traits – which anyway vary over an extremely wide range. Nationalism was, sociologically, an attempt made by the modern elites to recapture the allegiance (in the form of cultural hegemony) of the ‘masses’ produced by the early modern transformations and particularly by the cultural rupture between the elites and the rest of the population by the ‘civilizing process’, whose substance was the self-constitution and the self-separation of new elites legitimizing their status by reference to superior culture and knowledge. In the same way in which the modern state needed nationalism for the ‘primitive accumulation’ of authority, nationalism needed coercive powers of the state to promote the postulated dissolution of communal identities in the uniform identity of the nation. In the practice of both, there was an unallayed tension between the ‘inclusivist’ and ‘exclusivists’ prongs of the nation-sta...

Death in High Modernity: The Contemporary Presence and Absence of Death:

Abstract: It is no longer the case that death is a taboo subject either in society generally or in sociology in particular. Although many writers (eg. Gorer, 1965; Aries, 1981) have argued that death is a taboo in western modernity, it is increasingly accepted that the recent explosion of academic and popular interest in the subject of death rules out such an argument (Mellor and Shilling, 1993; Walter, 1991). There is now a vast body of literature on death which has been developing over the last decade, and this trend looks set to continue. This cannot indicate a reluctance to talk about death. In relation to specifically sociological literature on the subject we can observe similar developments. Walter (1991) argues that 'British sociologists have kept death at anns' length' but this is increasingly untrue, as this present collection of papers exemplifies. In a sense, then, death is very much present in contemporary Western societies. Nevertheless, although death is not a forbidden subject, it remains a hidden one in the sense that it is generally sequestrated from public space (Blauner, 1966; Mellor and Shilling, 1993). There is a danger that the development of collections of papers such as this one might result only in the creation of a 'sociology of death' specialism within sociology generally, mirroring this hiddeness of death. I suggest that this danger ought to direct our attention to the more widespread sequestration of death from the public domain, the absence of considerations of death from social life. Consequently, a sociological consideration of death must reflect upon, and attempt to explain, the apparent contradiction between the absence and presence of death in contemporary society. Building upon ideas offered by Giddens (1991) and developed by myself and Chris Shilling elsewhere (1993), I will argue that a

Pleasure, Pressure and Power: Some Contradictions of Gendered Sexuality:

Abstract: The AIDS epidemic has encouraged public discussion of safer sex, but heterosexual young women have to negotiate sexual relationships with men in situations in which sex is defined largely in terms of men's needs and which lack notions of a positive female sexuality or female desires. Analysis of data from the Women, Risk and AIDS Project is interpreted to show both the range of pressures on young women to engage in sexual practices which are risky, violent or not pleasurable, but also the possibilities for young women to empower themselves in sexual relationships. Women's control over sexual safety is undermined by the dominance of male sexuality and women's compliance in satisfying men's desires. Empowerment is a contradictory and contested process requiring both critical reflection (intellectual empowerment) and the transforming of sexual experiences (experiential empowerment), but some young women are able to put into practice ways of negotiating safe and pleasurable sexual encounters with men.

Social Death in Britain

Abstract: The causes of human death, the social distribution of death and the social organisation of dying have all changed dramatically during the last century in the industrialized societies. Since the nineteenth century, the percentage of deaths arising from shortterm infectious diseases has fallen sharply, while the significance of long-term degenerative diseases has greatly increased (OpeS, 1985). Whereas, in the last century, the mortality rate was particularly high among children and continued at what we would regard as a high level throughout adult life, the incidence of death is now heavily concentrated among the elderly. Thus average life expectancy is now much longer. For the majority of people, death approaches slowly over years of gradual decline and its final advent is supervised by qualified personnel in systematically organised settings where technical facilities for prolonging life are to hand. Similarly, disposal of the dead, like the process of dying, has become rationally organised. Unlike the 1800s, when burial was universal and in many areas posed a serious threat to the health of the living, two thirds of human corpses in Britain today are hygienically destroyed by burning. To a considerable degree, death and dying have been taken under human control (Walter, 1990). This brief outline of the changing profile of biological death in our society is well documented and its main features are unlikely to be challenged. There is, however, another hidden profile of social death which is more difficult to observe and is less frequently discussed. Biological death and social death resemble the

Social Change, the middle class and the emergence of ‘new social movements’: a critical analysis

Abstract: Most recent analyses of New Social Movements (NSMs) by British sociologists have concentrated on broad social changes or the middle classes as the key explanatory factors. This paper criticizes recent contributions to the analysis of NSMs which emphasize the development of ‘post-Fordism’ and ‘disorganized capitalism’, and recent attempts to understand NSMs as a reflection of ‘middle class’ interests or values. An alternative theoretical approach is outlined which places at the centre of the analysis the social relations in which NSMs are grounded, and which NSMs seek to transform. In this alternative account the middle classes play the role of ‘traditional intellectuals’, that is, they provide the key social resources for mobilization of NSMs and all social movements.

Social identities, class identity and political perspectives

Abstract: There has been considerable controversy over the extent to which class is a salient social identity, and the importance of other social identities. Marshall and his colleagues (1988) argue that class identity remains a salient frame of reference in people's daily lives while Saunders (1989; 1990) and Emmison and Western (1990) argue that class identity is not as strong as they claim, and the importance of other social identities cannot be denied. However, proponents and opponents in the debate are agreed that the salience of social identities depends upon the context in which they are found which cannot be fully explored in highly-structured interviews. Drawing on data from a ‘qualitative re-study’ of the Affluent Worker series, it will be argued that people have many different identities, including a strong class identity, which co-exist at the same time. That said, their class identity is the most important influence on the formation of political perspectives. This finding concurs with the Essex team an...

The Denial of Death and Rites of Passage in Contemporary Societies

Abstract: This chapter explores two questions which are central to the development of the sociology of death, dying and bereavement. The first question relates to the denial and associated medicalisation of our understanding of death-related issues. It will be argued that this process is relatively recent and has resulted in the removal of death and dying from the community and to its relocation in the hospital or similar institution. The second question of relevance relates to the role which rituals in general and rites of passage in particular play in contemporary society. It will be argued that death-related rituals are still widely performed but, outside of certain specific and relatively rare circumstances, such rituals have themselves been removed from the community and have been relocated in the private world of individuals who have been bereaved. As Aries (1983) has indicated, the contemporary situation is one in which:

Dock strikes and the demise of the dockers' ‘occupational culture’

Abstract: Throughout the post-war period dockers have vied with coal miners as Britain's most strike-prone occupational group. The dockers' ‘occupational culture’ was believed by many to be a principal facto...

Sociologists Never Die: British Sociology and Death:

Abstract: British sociology is not well represented in the vast and growing literature on death. One exception is medical sociology's research into the social aspects of dying but other sub-branches of sociology have been strangely quiet about our mortality. This chapter briefly reviews British sociological theory, sociology of religion, community studies, the body, deathwork, gender, ethnicity, gerontology, teaching, and social policy. Some possible explanations are reviewed. Finally, there are indications of a recent renaissance of interest, among some British sociologists, of which this book forms a part. Two future scenarios for the sociology of death are sketched. I start with two observations. One, this Sociological Review Monograph is the first collection of papers devoted entirely to the subject of death and written by a wide range of British sociologists not just medical sociologists. Two, the editor has had little difficulty in finding papers. What does this mean? Is there a brand-new British sociological interest in death and dying? Or are we only now recognising an interest that has been there for a while but has not been identified as such? In this chapter I will explore how this monograph fits, or fails to fit, within British sociology. First, I will argue that, though death and dying have been widely discussed in certain circles for some time, British sociology with the major exception of medical sociology has been somewhat late on the scene. Second, I will suggest some hypotheses for this lack of sociological interest. Third, I will discuss the prospects. Leaving aside the period of the Gulf War, every week for the past three or four years has seen articles in the serious dailies and Sundays on hospices, bereavement, undertakers, the cost of funerals and so forth. This interest is but the most recent

Review Article: How to become an Internationally Famous British Social Theorist:

Abstract: The publication of three books, within a span of less than three years, comprising over 40 chapters, including two 'rejoinders' by the man himself, is a sufficient demonstration that the 'diffusioneffect' of Anthony Giddens's work had reached a fresh peak at the end of the 1980s. Indeed, Anthony Giddens is no longer simply a social theorist but has clearly become a substantive topic, a phenomenon of and in the sociology curriculum. These three books represent sophisticated resources for those specialising in the sociology of Giddens. There is plenty in these three books to provide ammunition for countless pieces of critical evaluation in the time honoured canon of the assessment code. Given the phenomenon, this review will address the constitution, nay the structuration, of the substantive topic itself. What is it that makes, and how is it that Giddens is, possible?

School Attendance and Truancy: A Socio-Historical Account:

Abstract: This paper considers ways in which truancy, as a form of social exclusion, has its origins in the history and politics of compulsory education. Despite widespread concern expressed about declining ...

The Acceptable Face of Human Grieving? The Clergy's Role in Managing Emotional Expression during Funerals:

Abstract: The needs of bereaved people have become a theoretical and practical focus among the members of groups such as counsellors, clergy, academics, doctors and social workers, many of whom share the view that the unmet needs of bereaved people can bring difficulties in grieving and therefore in readjustment. While death ritual in non-Western societies often provides an important rite of passage, both for the surviving family and the deceased, many contemporary Western funerals appear not to play so central a role within the social and emotional re-orientation of people who are bereaved. This chapter explores material gathered during a study of the approach to Christian funerals common among Sheffield clergy and their congregations. It argues that if clergy seek to help bereaved people to engage in grieving, this goal may be at odds with conventional approaches to the funeral in the West. 'Uncontrolled' emotional expression is seen by clergy as something difficult to accommodate when they are proceeding with a structured liturgy. When the dominant Western beliefs or metaphors of emotion are examined, it becomes apparent that emotion is commonly understood to be a natural and uncontrollable entity which is contained within the body, a model which underpins the views expressed by clergy during interviews. The therapeutic 'release' of emotion is therefore desired as a way of avoiding the dangers of 'pent up' feelings. However, what interview material reveals is a paradox which stems from the dominance of this model of human emotion. As natural forces, contained within the body, emotions are feared to be potentially unmanageable within the context of highly structured Western funerary ritual, in that they are understood to be unamenable to control. These beliefs about the nature of emotion are questioned through comparison with other

Awareness Contexts and the Construction of Dying in the Cancer Treatment Setting: ‘Micro’ and ‘Macro’ Levels in Narrative Analysis:

Abstract: 'Dying' as a socially constructed process in chronic illness makes its initial, definitive appearance for the dying individual in the treatment situation. For both the sociologist and the patient, awareness of dying is a central concern, for there can be no dying in the social sense without awareness (to whatever extent) of dying. The redefinition of illness in terms of incurability or terminality is an ambiguous medical process in many cases, and this ambiguity poses definitional problems for the dying person and for the sociologist researching dying, just as surely as it does for the clinician. Definition of dying occurs in micro-interactional contexts, between professionals and patients, but these interactions are shaped partly by discourses and goals belonging to (and shaping) macro-institutional and organisational contexts. It is argued here that narrative analysis of patients' accounts of diagnosis and prognostic discussions with clinicians can and should explore the construction of dying on both micro and macro levels. Methodological emphasis on the presence of both levels in narratives of 'private' experience allows for consideration both of the personal experience of individuals and of the larger discourses which belong to the organisation of medical work and to biomedicine generally. Intersecting of 'micro' and 'macro' influences and perspectives can be viewed in terms of 'local worlds' (Kleinman, 1992; Gregory and Longman, 1992) and their intersection with 'social worlds' via their sub-worlds (Strauss, 1978). Reference is made in this chapter to the narratives of a man with terminal lung cancer, to illustrate some of the 'voices' belonging to both local and social worlds, and operating in accounts of personal experience.

Ocean cruising: a sailing subculture.

Abstract: Just after dawn, an English couple in their 30's haul up their anchor and motor across the stillness of Suva harbour. The hurricane season is approaching and they are embarking on the 2–3 week trip to Bay of Islands New Zealand for the southern summer. Three months earlier, as their yacht lay aground on the fringing reef of uninhabited Suvarov atoll, they wondered if they'd ever reach New Zealand. But, with the help of other cruisers and lucky tides their steel 36 footer was clear and safe in under 24 hours. What was to be a one year trip around the north Atlantic was now happily way off course in the South Pacific and likely to remain so for some time. That is just a glimpse of one small aspect of ocean cruising, the subculture of interest here. However, throughout the paper the ethnography of cruising is developed further. A model is proposed to show how individuals come to share the subculture ideology and then to participate in the lifestyle. Subsequently, I will place ocean cruising in the context of subculture theory by expanding the ethnography and relating cruising to other subcultures.

Entering the Labour Market in Britain: The Survival of Traditional Opportunity Structures:

Abstract: This article analyses the career development from age 16 to 20 of representative samples from Kirkcaldy, Liverpool, Sheffield and Swindon who were surveyed by mailed questionnaire in three successive years – 1987, 1988 and 1989. Although most respondents attributed significant power of career determination to themselves, the evidence shows that the young people's career choices had typically been inconsequential for their later achievements. These had depended on their places of residence, secondary school qualifications, and social class backgrounds. The samples' self-concepts and social beliefs were not systematically affected by, but had played a part in determining, their career paths. However, social class origins, on account of their cumulative effects at successive career stages, were the best predictors of the samples' longer-term career trajectories. The evidence from this research shows that the benefits of the new opportunities in post-compulsory education and youth training that were introduce...

The social segregation of the long‐term unemployed in Hartlepool

Abstract: This paper reports on research designed to investigate the nature and implications of the social segregation of the long term unemployed in a Northern UK town suffering high rates of unemployment. The project is designed to test the hypothesis that the social polarisation identified by Pahl (1984), confirmed by this writer's small scale research, and apparent in national statistics, reaches beyond the household to the extended family, and to friendship and neighbourhood contacts. Work history evidence from a sample of 791 married couples is used to establish the importance of informal information flows in shaping employment prospects, and additional material is presented which shows concentrations of unemployment in particular kinship and friendship networks. These data, together with evidence that employed informants are the most effective means of job access, demonstrate that a complex of factors will act together to reduce the chances of the long term unemployed finding work.

A gendered history of the social management of death in Foleshill, Coventry, during the interwar years

Abstract: Since the end of the nineteenth century (in Europe) there has been 'a brutal revolution in traditional attitudes and feelings, (death has) become shameful and forbidden' (Aries, 1975:85). Aries suggests that the change in attitudes was accelerated by the displacement of the site of death between 1930 and 1950. In the United Kingdom during this period the social management of death was largely transferred from the private sphere of the home into the public sphere of the hospital and funeral director. This chapter looks at one particular aspect of this change by focusing on the role of the neighbourhood layer-out within the context of informal care found in the working class community of Foleshill, Coventry, between the two world wars. The research undertaken for this chapter suggests that this working class community could not be defined in terms of kinship relations or shared male work experience, but was characterised by the pattern of informal care organised by the women in response to their shared experience of economic insecurity and poverty, the absence of public welfare and the imperative to maintain their self respect. It seems probable that the caring activity of the neighbourhood layer-out, based on a rationality of care, which was informed by her practical experience of care and personal knowledge of her neighbours, played an important part in the organisation of this informal care. The chapter argues that the increased value and status of male, scientific rationality, associated with professional training and the provision of formal care in the public sphere of the hospital, funeral director and male mortician, was a major factor in the decline of the role of the neighbourhood layer-out. The changes in the social management of death were mediated by the displacement of the site of death and legislation which confirmed

Cremation or Burial? Contemporary Choice in City and Village:

Abstract: Cremation was legalised in England in 1884 but the English preference for cremation is a post-1945 phenomenon. In 1939, 3.8 per cent of English funerals involved cremation, by 1945 7.8 per cent. In 1967, cremations exceeded burials for the first time. By 1991, 70 per cent of funerals involved cremation. The field-work discussed in this chapter was part of a wider study: the first full-length reconstruction of the history of the change from burial to cremation in the English disposal of the dead (Jupp, 1993). The study sought to explain how the funeral rites of passage so conservative in nature had changed, and changed so swiftly. It examined the conditions under which England became the first Western society to adopt cremation so extensively. The investigation is important for sociology for at least two reasons. Firstly, attitudes to the physical body may be interpreted as metaphors of attitudes to wider social arrangements; major changes in the practice of the disposal of the human dead may therefore offer a critical lens to examine aspects of changed attitudes to other social institutions. Secondly, 150 years ago, communal rites surrounding the disposal of the dead were far more complex, involving procedures concerning religion, the community, gender roles and the family. Simpler procedures for the disposal of the dead may offer insights into the changing importance of these social institutions. The overall thesis of this study suggested that one earlier but critical factor in the change from burial to cremation was the transfer from Church to local government of significant responsibilities in the disposal of the dead (Curl, 1980; Brooks, 1989; Jupp, 1990). Other significant factors affecting social attitudes towards dying, death and funeral practices include: changes in

Investigating deathwork: a personal account

Abstract: This chapter is based on reflections of conducting ethnography with undertakers. The research, designed to provide a sociological analysis of the work of the modem funeral director, was prompted by an awareness of funeral rituals as unsatisfactory or inadequate. Funerals organised along traditional lines often appeared to contain ceremonies that were inappropriate and did Dot address the 'real' needs of the bereaved. By contrast, a relative lack of ritual at the funeral could leave a harrowing void. It was this inadequacy or deficiency of significant liturgy that led me to question the place of ritual in this crucial 'rite of passage'. The study, carried out in the East End of London, focussed on the deathwork practices of funeral directors. Exerting a powerful control over the after-death system, they are a key to understanding many of the post-mortem rituals of our society. In virtue of their directing role they liaise with the bereaved and with all other agencies to co-ordinate the funeral. Knowledge of the occupational role of the funeral director key player in the drama and guardian of the body is crucial to developing an understanding of contemporary funeral customs. To understand the motives (Burke, 1945) which inform deathwork practice, I felt it necessary to adopt an ethnographic approach. Ethnography has been defined as the 'science of cultural description' (Wolcott, 1975:112). It interprets group dynamics from an 'emic' or 'insider's perspective' by gaining fluency with the beliefs, values and sets of knowledge characteristic of that community (Fetterman, 1989). The intention is that it may 'aid us in gaining access to the conceptual world in which our subjects live' (Geertz, 1973:24).

Volunteers in the British hospice movement

Abstract: Sociologists have long been interested in how organisations function and there is a large body of research literature in this area, especially with reference to business, commercial or industrial organisations. However, as Butler and Wilson (1990) note there has been little work on organisations in the voluntary sector in Britain and, with the exception of their own work, there is 'an almost complete gap in our research knowledge' of the organisational structures of charities (1990:23). Hospice organisations are interesting because they differ in a number of ways from the formal bureaucratic organisations more typically studied by sociologists. One of the main differences between hospice organisations in Britain and other formal organisations is their great reliance on unpaid voluntary labour. Volunteers perform a variety of tasks including counselling and 'befriending', transporting patients, laundry work and staffing reception points. It should be noted that hospice organisations are not all the same. They vary both in terms of their size and in the nature of their financial support, although the 'independent hospice' is still the most typical form. Some organisations are well established, with a range of services, whereas others are small-scale and relatively informal organisations focusing upon just one type of service, ego day care. This chapter is concerned more with the former than with the latter. The chapter starts by briefly locating the British hospice movement in its social context and considering the main distinguishing factors of hospice organisations. Within this context, the chapter considers the role of volunteers in the British hospice movement, focusing upon potential problems for both volunteers and hospice organisations. For volunteers, there are potential problems in their preparation and training, in their contact with patients,

Death, Inheritance and the Life Course:

Abstract: Our central purpose in this chapter is to address the question of how to conceptualise the social significance of death. We take a particular approach to this large and important question by addressing it from the perspective of inheritance. In order to do so, we make use of some data from our own empirical research on inheritance in the contemporary English context, but the paper is essentially a conceptual one. It is not our purpose to present an overview of findings from our research, rather in this chapter we are using some empirical data to help us refine conceptual questions. I The perspective of inheritance provides a useful approach for conceptualising the social significance of death because it roots the discussion firmly in material questions. These issues are becoming significant for many more people in the UK, since the rise in home ownership in the past four decades has meant that more people have significant assets to bequeath when they die than would have been the case in the past. This raises certain questions about the social significance of death, which come at the topic from a perspective rather different from that often found in sociological literature on death and dying. Much of the classic sociological work on death tends to focus on the process of dying and the rituals and symbols associated with it (Glaser and Strauss, 1965; Sudnow, 1967; Aries, 1981). These are important, of course, but they do not tell the whole story. A death also involves the disposal of the deceased's assets. The significance of these material issues, particularly at the micro level, has tended to be overlooked by sociologists. 3 By contrast anthropology has always treated inheritance as being of central importance in understanding social life, and this theme also has been taken up by historians, especially some who have specialised in European societies before indus-

Nationalism and Community in North West Wales

Abstract: This paper develops an explanation for the simultaneous surge in support of both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary nationalism in North West Wales. Close analysis of the way in which the concept ‘community’ is used within the process of political mobilisation provides the key to this understanding. By demonstrating that a number of social constructions of community co-exist within the same social space (in this instance, North West Wales), the paper contributes an added dimension to the understandings of community current within sociology. The paper identifies four social constructions of community, each relating to a different variant of Nationalist ideology. The capacity within the concept community to legitimate a locality simultaneously as a place of resistance and of conflict is demonstrated to be central to the explanation for the dual rise in nationalist support.

Review Article: Modernity, Postmodernity and the New Middle Ages:

Abstract: I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives . . . The narrative function is losing . . . its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements . . . Thus the society of the future falls . . . within the province of a . . . pragmatics of language particles. There are many different language games a heterogeneity of elements. They only give rise to institutions in patches local determinism. The decision-makers, however, attempt to manage these clouds of sociality according to input/output matrices (Lyotard, 1984: xxiv).

Research note: Monthly strategies for discretion: shopping for sanitary towels and tampons

Abstract: Collected as part of a small-scale qualitative study of socio-cultural aspects of menstruation, interview data dealing with the task of buying sanitary towels and tampons are presented. They reveal...

Pleasing the Students: Teachers' Orientaton to Classroom Life in Adult Education:

Abstract: It is noted that existing sociological research on classrooms has focused too narrowly on compulsory schooling with the result that we have no data showing the rituals and routines of Adult Classrooms or the ways that teachers cope and resolve them. The paper presents fieldnote and interview data from a small ethnographic study of the two Adult Evening classes. The data suggest that in contrast to the teacher of school aged pupils, who seeks control and discipline, ‘pleasing students’ is the major orientation to classroom life of the evening class teacher.Do not say, the people must be educated when after all you only mean amused, refreshed, soothed put into good spirits and good humour or kept from vicious excesses. (Newman, 1873).

Professionals' and parents' perceptions of A&E use in a children's hospital

Abstract: Helpful keywords in accessing literature on the use made of hospital accident and emergency (A&E) departments are ‘misuse’ ‘abuse’ and ‘inappropriate’. While the medical literature is inclined to present patients (and, in the case of children, their parents) as irresponsible, or misguided, social scientists looking at similar data have tended to act as apologists for patients, explaining A&E attendance in terms of poor access to GPs, mistaken beliefs about the relative skills of hospital‐based doctors and GPs and ‘lay’ health beliefs. Both of these approaches see the patient (or parent) as passive recipients of health care, rather than active caretakers of their own or their children's health. On the basis of a study of minor ailments presenting at a children's A&E department, this paper explores the differing views of health workers and parents. It suggests that a view of patients (parents) as largely passive custodians of their own or their children's health is inadequate. Patients (parents) can and do play an active part as providers of primary health care and their decisions to use A&E are not as irrational as health providers sometimes suppose. In this light, attempts to ‘re‐educate’ parents to use A&E in a way which would be more acceptable to health providers is unlikely to succeed. 1992 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review