Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 1998"

Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Economics:

Abstract: Even as the market seems triumphant everywhere and its laws progressively and ineluctably impose themselves worldwide, we cannot fail to be struck by the lasting topicality of the following wellknown quotation from D. North: 'It is a peculiar fact that the literature on economics ... contains so little discussion of the central institution that underlies neoclassical economics-the market' (North, 1977).) How can this surprising shortcoming be explained? How can this self-proclaimed failure of economic theory be accounted for? By distinguishing the thing from the concept which refers to it, the marketplace from the market, the English language suggests a possible answer. While the market denotes the abstract mechanisms whereby supply and demand confront each other and adjust themselves in search of a compromise, the marketplace is far closer to ordinary experience and refers to the place in which exchange occurs. This distinction is, moreover, merely a particular case of a more general opposition, which the English language, once again, has the merit of conveying accurately: that between economics and economy, between theoretical and practical activity, in short, between economics as a discipline and economy as a thing. If economic theory knows so little about the marketplace, is it not simply because in striving to abstract and generalize it has ended up becoming detached from its object? Thus, the weakness of market theory may well be explained by its lack of interest in the marketplace. To remedy this shortcoming, economics would need only to return to its object, the economy, from which it never should have strayed in the first place. The matter, however, is not so simple. The danger of abstraction and unrealism which is supposed to threaten every academic discipline-and which time and again has been exposed and stigmatized,

An essay on framing and overflowing: economic externalities revisited by sociology

Abstract: When reviewing the conditions required for the existence of markets, no concept is more useful or appropriate than that of 'externality'. The concept of externality is effectively central both to economies and to economics. So an attempt to clarify its significance and scope represents a suitable point of departure for renewed efforts at co-operation between sociologists and economists. Rather than highlighting the limitations and weaknesses of the concept with a view to attacking the limitations and weaknesses of economic theory, I intend to show just how useful it is as a tool for understanding the dynamics of markets, drawing upon sociology as an additional resource. I shall approach this task from the perspective of the sociologist of science and techniques. This will allow me not only to highlight the role of investment-in particular technological-in the emergence of economic agents that are capable of strategies and calculation; it will also serve as an incentive to take the 'performative' role of the sciences-and hence also of economics and sociology-more seriously. I shall start by putting my economist's hat on in order briefly to remind my fellow sociologists of the various ways in which the concept of externality can be defined, together with its practical and theoretical implications. This will lead on to a discussion of the various mechanisms upon which the concept is predicated. I shall then touch first upon what I shall here refer to as 'framing/overflowing' and upon the various issues associated with the identification, measuring and containment of such overflows. I shall subsequently focus my attention on the role played by the technosciences in the proliferation of overflows, highlighting the active role of the social sciences-alongside the natural sciences-in the identification and management of externalities. Finally, I shall draw one of the most

Home, Home Ownership and the Search for Ontological Security:

Abstract: The central focus of this paper is the notion that the home can provide a locale in which people can work at attaining a sense of ontological security in a world that at times is experienced as threatening and uncontrollable. The paper builds on and develops the ideas of Giddens and Saunders on ontological security and seeks to break down and operationalise the concept and explore it through a set of empirical data drawn from interviews with a group of older New Zealand home owners. The extent to which home and home life meets the conditions for the maintenance of ontological security is assessed through an exploration of home as the site of constancy in the social and material environment; home as a spatial context in which the day to day routines of human existence are performed; home as a site free from the surveillance that is part of the contemporary world which allows for a sense of control that is missing in other locales; and home as a secure base around which identities are constructed. The paper also argues that meanings of home are context specific and thus the data need to be seen in relation to New Zealanders’ long standing pre-occupation with land and home ownership. The paper concludes by speculating on how meanings of home may be changing.

A sociology of hackers

Abstract: Illicit computer intruders, or hackers, are often thought of as pathological individuals rather than as members of a community. However, hackers exist within social groups that provide expertise, support, training, journals and conferences. This article outlines this community to establish the nature of hacking within ‘information societies’. To delineate a ‘sociology of hackers’, an introduction is provided to the nature of computer–mediated communication and the act of computer intrusion, the hack. Following this the hacking community is explored in three sections. First, a profile of the number of hackers and hacks is provided by exploring available demographics. Second, an outline of its culture is provided through a discussion of six different aspects of the hacking community. The six aspects are technology, secrecy, anonymity, membership fluidity, male dominance and motivations. Third, an exploration of the community's construction of a boundary, albeit fluid, between itself and its other, the computer security industry, is provided. This boundary is constructed through metaphors whose central role is to establish the ethical nature of hacking. Finally, a conclusion that rejects any pathologisation of hackers is offered.

Recombinant property in East European capitalism

Abstract: In contrast to the problematic of transition, this paper sees social change not as the passage from one order to another but as rearrangement in the patterns of how a multiplicity of social orders are interwoven. From that perspective we see organizational innovation not as replacement but as recombination. The fmdings of field research in Hungarian firms. data on ownership of the largest Hungarian enterprises, and interviews with key policy makers in government. banking. and industry indicate the emergence of new property forms that are neither statist nor private, in which the properties of private and public are dissolved. interwoven. and recombined. Recombinant property is a form of organizational hedging, or portfolio management. in which actors are responding to extraordinary uncertainty in the organizational environment. For enterprise actors the question is not simply, "Will I survive the market test?" but also, under what conditions is proof of worth on market principles neither sufficient nor necessary to survive. Recombinant property is an attempt to have resources in more than one organizational form-or similarly-to produce hybrid organizational forms that can be justified or assessed by more than one standard of measure. The clash of competing organizational principles that characterizes post-socialist societies produces new organizational forms; and this organizational diversity can form a basis for greater adaptability. At the same time, however, this multiplicity of ordering principles creates problems of accountability. Accompanying the decentralized reorganization oj assets is a centralization of liabilities. Both processes blur the boundaries between public and private. On the one hand, privatization produces the criss-crossing lines of recombinant property; on the other, debt consolidation transforms private debt into public liabilities. Whereas in the state socialist economy paternalism was based on the state's attempts at the centralized management of assets, in the first years of the post-socialist economy paternalism is based on the state's attempts at the centralized management of liabilities. *Research for this paper was supported by grants from NCSEER (the National council for Soviet and Bast European Research), IRIS (Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector). and the Project on Corporate Governance of the World Bank/Central European University. My thanks to Ronald Breiger, Rogers Brubaker. Uszl6 Bruszt, Cluistopher Clague, Ellen Comisso. Paul DiMaggio, Geoff Fougere, Istva.n Gabor, Peter GedeOl}, Gemot Grabher, Szabolcs Kemeny, Ja.nos Kollo, Jmos KonJ.ai. Janos Lukacs, Laszl6 Neumann, Claus Offe, Eva Pal6cz, Akas Rona-Tas, Monique Djokic Stark. Marton Tardos, and Eva Voszka for their criticisms of an earlier draft. Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism

Masculinity and Child Care: The Reconstruction of Fathering

Abstract: In this article we focus on a group of fathers who use parental leave and how they include care-giving in their construction of masculinity. The fathers shape their own masculine form of care-work differently from the mothers’ interaction with the child. Both mothers and fathers, however, take part in the process of reproducing masculinity as the norm by giving masculine care higher status. Care-giving activities are adopted by the hegemonic form of masculinity with its strong connection to paid work.

The Making of an Industry: Electricity in the United States

Abstract: Although economic sociology has enjoyed a strong resurgence in recent years, it has focused on relatively low or high levelsof aggregation. One central concern has been what determines the actions of individuals and firms, and another the role of government and largescale interest groups in the governance and evolution of the economy. With some notable exceptions (eg, Hirsch, 1972; Campbell, Lindberg and Hollingsworth, 1992; Dobbin, 1994; Roy, 1997), few have paid close attention to middle levels of aggregation such as industries. Problems of industrial organization have largely been left to economists, who treat industry boundaries as resulting unproblematically from the nature of the product, the state of technology at a given time (as summed up by production functions), consumer demand, and the attempt to reduce production and transaction costs. Sociologists have reacted to some general arguments on the subject of organizational form, especially those of Chandler (1962, 1975, 1990) and Williamson (1975, 1985), and to some of the other standard assumptions. But these critiques, whatever their merits, have been largely defensive; they have followed and responded to economic arguments rather than setting the agenda with a distinctively sociological position about industry and organizational form. A substantial sociology of industry must be a persuasive alternative based on serious research about particular industries and their evolution, rooted in a coherent view of how people and organizations form and co-operate in such a way as to produce those goods and services that consumers demand. We do not dispute the convenience of defining industries as sets of firms that produce the same or related products. But we argue

Rethinking social divisions: some notes towards a theoretical framework

Abstract: This paper attempts to provide a framework for theorising the social divisions of gender, ethnicity and class in terms of parameters of differentiation and inequality which lie at the heart of ‘the social’. The paper argues that there are common parameters to the social divisions of gender, ethnicity, ‘race’ (and class) in terms of categories of difference and positionality. The paper explores the distinctive ontological spaces or domains of gender and ethnos and argues that their study must be undertaken in local and specific contexts paying attention to their articulation. The articulation of the different social processes at the experiential, inter-subjective, organisational and representational levels produces specific social outcomes. Finally, a schematic outline of some of these articulations is presented.

Money in the household: some underlying issues of power

Abstract: This paper addresses criticisms of a number of papers (Vogler and Pahl, 1993, 1994; Vogler, 1994) in which we attempted to explore the relationships between money, power and inequality within marriage. Subsequent criticisms have mainly centred around the concept of power that we used in those papers. It has been suggested that we either lacked a theory of power (Rottman, 1996) or that our conceptualisation of power as control over decision making was too limited (Shove, 1993). I would argue however, that while it was not made explicit in our original papers our findings point towards a more general theory of power in the household, namely to a modified version of Lukes' three dimensional model of power. While we initially conceptualised power as control over decision making (Lukes' first dimension of power) our findings also show the importance of ideological and cultural factors (Lukes' third dimension of power) as both a cause and a consequence of the allocative systems couples use to organise money wit...

Living Together and Eating Together: Changes in Food Choice and Eating Habits during the Transition from Single to Married/Cohabiting:

Abstract: In 1995 we recruited twenty-two heterosexual couples from Edinburgh and Glasgow to examine the changes which took place in their eating habits and food related activities when they began to live to...

The beer talking: four lads, a carry out and the reproduction of masculinities

Abstract: Discourse analytic research on masculinity has produced some interesting and insightful understandings of male-bonding talk and/or talk around alcohol-related activities. These and other contributi...

The margins of accounting

Abstract: This paper calls for attention to the margins of accounting. It argues that such a focus helps us to understand the formation and transformation of accounting, its permeability to other bodies of expertise, and how accounting has been made up out of ideas and practices drawn from elsewhere. Accounting, it is argued, is an assemblage of calculative practices and rationales that were invented in other contexts and for other purposes. To draw attention to the margins of accounting is to emphasize the fluid and mobile nature of accounting. Practices that are now regarded as central to accounting will have been at the margins previously, and practices that are at the margins today may be at the core of accounting in the future. The notion of costs for decision-making, discounting techniques for investment appraisal, and cost accounting as a way of governing the factory, provide the illustrative material.

Another discipline for the market economy: marketing as a performative knowledge and know‐how for capitalism

Abstract: How does the market economy work? On the one hand, orthodox economists have long argued that market equilibrium depends on the automatic adjustment of supply and demand; on the other hand, heterodox economists (Williamson, 1985; Arthur, 1989), but also historians (Chandler, 1977; Tedlow, 1990) and sociologists (Prus, 1989) have tried to show that supply and demand are socially constructed (Granovetter and Swedberg, 1992), that managerial practice shapes the contours of the market. Our objective in revisiting this debate is not so much to radicalize the classical opposition between the two camps but, paradoxically, to outline their common ground. Firstly, the arguments of both groups are always rooted in an examination of supply and demand and of their 'natural' or contingent aspect; secondly, their propositions always entail a separation of science (economics) from practice (management) in order to investigate the complex correspondences between the one and the other. Discussing the foundations of this endless dispute seems to be a good way to resolve it. In order to understand the market economy, one can look somewhere else, and ask other questions: does the functioning of markets rely on instances other than supply and demand? does the functioning of markets rest on processes other than those of science (economics) and/or practice (management)? In asking those questions, one discovers that, between economics and

In place of geometry: the materiality of place

Abstract: About the book: This book introduces contemporary writing about difference through the idea of the labour of division. The contributors see divisions as artefacts that are not only produced in representations of the social but are performed as a continuous labour. Ideas of Difference will appeal to anyone working on identity, organizing, materiality, ethics or spatiality. In reversing the traditional 'division of labour'. the book puts the issue of difference in question. The issue is not so much that differences are reproduced through social constructions, but of identifying the work that social construction allows in creating, consuming and switching 'divisions'. Divisions are no longer seen as fixed, or natural, but are implicated in performing difference.

Markets as cultures: an ethnographic approach

Abstract: The approach to the markets as cultures supposes at least three fields of studies: constitutive rules and roles; local rationality; dynamics of authorities and changes. The paper deals with each of the fields. The methodological issues of the study the markets as cultures are discussed after that. The author supports his statement by giving examples of his own ethnographic studies of the stock exchange, bond market and futures markets on the Wall-street.

Anyone for Tennis? Social Class Differences in Children’s Responses to National Curriculum Mathematics Testing

Abstract: Mathematics is a central part of the school curriculum. Alongside studies in the dominant language of a society, success and failure in the discipline play an important role in the distribution of opportunities to children and young people. Until fairly recently, in England and elsewhere. success in primary school mathematics was achieved by demonstrating a capacity to memorize, reproduce and use relatively simple algorithms. However, in recent years, there has been considerable change in primary school mathematics with an increasing stress being laid, at least rhetorically, on understanding, investigation and the application of mathematics in realistic settings. It seems likely that such changes, in so far as they affect the form and content of National Curriculum assessment, will produce changes in who succeeds and who fails, i.e. in selective processes within schooling. The paper draws on preliminary results from an ESRC project which is examining National Curriculum assessment in mathematics for 10-11 and 13-14 year-old children in relation to class, gender and ability. The paper examines the ways in which children from different sociocultural backgrounds approach assessment items which embed mathematics in supposedly realistic contexts. Early data from the Key Stage 2 sample of 10-11 year olds will be presented which shows that there does seem be a social class effect in the response of children to realistic items - one which leads to some working class children failing to demonstrate competences they have. The paper uses quantitative and qualitative methods, relating its findings to Basil Bernstein's account of sociocultural codes - in particular his theorizing of the social distribution of recognition and realization rules for reading educational contexts - and to Bourdieu's theorizing of habitus

Towards an immature sociology

Abstract: Sociological theory displays a tendency to depict the social world in terms of completed ‘beings’. The social, thus depicted, is a world of powers to ‘finish’ (such as the power granted to conventi...

'Boys own’ stuff: masculinity and the management of further education

Abstract: The connections between men, masculinity and management remain understated if not largely concealed, despite a critical spotlight being increasingly cast on masculinity by many academic and other w...

Who are We? Problematising National Identity:

Abstract: While the concern with ‘identity politics’ has grown in recent years, there are few studies of the ways in which people order and negotiate their national identities. The study reported here focuses on the identities used by members of the arts and landed elites in Scotland in the assertion of perceived cultural differences between Scots and non-Scots. These two groups have good reason to be sensitive to the problematic and negotiated nature of national identity in a changing cultural and political context in Scotland. The raw materials of national identity, in particular, birth, residence and ancestry, are used by individuals in these groups to make claims which are sustained by and through social interaction in the course of which various ‘identity claims’ are made and received in various ways.

Habitus and Cultural Capital in the Field of Personal Finance

Abstract: Key concepts drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu – in particular, habitus and cultural capital – which have been widely used to analyse the fields of education and the arts, are applied here to the sociologically neglected field of personal finance. The cultural project to promote marketization has not created an informed public of sovereign consumers rich in cultural capital. On the contrary, the development of commodified mass-market financial products and services implies a lowering of the threshold not just of economic but also of cultural capital needed for their acquisition. Financial scandals, such as the widespread misselling of personal pensions in the UK from the mid-1980s , typically involve in Bourdieu’s terms an ‘objective complicity’ between a wide variety of stakeholders – including the government, employers, financial service providers, industry regulators, and financial advisers – and private investors whose habitus and lack of cultural capital prepare them for co-operation in their own exploitation.

Rationalising knowledge : IT systems, professional identities and power

Abstract: This paper explores the impact of a new IT system on the knowledge claims and occupational boundaries made by professional groups within a hospital laboratory setting. Within organizational setting...

The Visibility of Social Systems

Abstract: The role of the senses in social life is a neglected theme in social analysis. Despite the philosopher Whitehead’s (1938) early call for systematic study of the ‘organization of the sensorium’ in human communication, it is only recently that this has been taken up as a serious challenge by the human sciences. Much of this work has focused on the dominance of vision, especially in modern social systems subjected to ‘bureaucratization’ and the processes of formal organization more generally. As Rorty (1980) has reminded us, modern thought has privileged the eye as the sense organ by which we may represent the world to ourselves most effectively. Yet it was not always like this. The historian Lucien Febvre (1982), in a study of sixteenth century social life, comments on the underdevelopment of sight in that period: ’Like their acute hearing and sharp sense of smell, the men of that time doubtless had keen sight. But that was just it. They had not yet set it apart from the other senses. They had not yet tied its information in particular in a necessary link with their need to know’ (p.437). Consequently, they lived in a fluid world ’where nothing was strictly defined, where entities lost their boundaries and, in the twinkling of an eye, without causing much protest, changed shape, appearance, size….’(p.438). The stabilization of the world required a specialized training of the visual sense and its elevation over the other senses. The process of stabilization called for quantification and calculation and this necessarily involved the eye: ‘The passage from the qualitative to the quantitative is essentially linked to advances in the predominance of visual perception’ (Rey quoted in Febvre, 1982, p.432).

Trouble with Gender

Abstract: This paper is a critical engagement with some of the writings of Judith Butler who is perhaps best known for popularising the idea of gender as performative. Here we trace the origins of the notion of performatives in the work of J.L. Austin. We outline Butler's extended definition of performative gender and comment on its relationship to earlier sociological accounts. We follow her development of the idea through the later deployment of Derrida's notion of citationality. We draw attention to potential problems of this usage and to the difficulties of linking it to a psychoanalytic account of subjectivity. We consider her extended example of drag as sharing the impersonatory character of gender and as allegorizing the melancholic character of heterosexual gender identity. We comment on her interest in a theatrical politics that may make trouble for gender. Finally we consider the theoretical burden that these ideas attempt to carry.

Belonging on the Move: Market Rhetoric and the Future as Obligatory Passage:

Abstract: Recent neglect of the concept of belonging may be traced to its subsumption under matters of locality or kinship (concepts that have left its theorising rather static and underdeveloped), as well a...

Dividing organizations and multiplying identities

Abstract: L'A. envisage les processus de division au sein des organisations. Il s'efforce de montrer comment ceux-ci induisent une multiplication des identites. Il etudie le rapport entre identite et division et examine les phenomenes de subdivision dans le cadre organisationnel en matiere spatiale, fonctionnelle, generationnelle et professionnelle

Knowledge, identity and the middle class: from collective to individualised class formation?

Abstract: This paper highlights a number of strong indications of important changes in the work and labour market experiences of professionals and managers, the core of the ‘new middle class‘ (nmc) in most contemporary class theories. Following an outline of some of these changes, it is argued that several central theoretical strategies shared by class theorists - notably a residual ‘functional essentialism’ and the choice of microfoundations - prevent them from adequately theorising these changes. The paper offers an alternative approach to theorising the contemporary nmc that avoids the reductionism of many existing approaches, and that is grounded in microfoundations focused on the relation of narratively constructed identities to social action. On this basis, an account of the contemporary emergence of a new segment of the nmc, the ‘nmc bricoleur’, is outlined, and its relation to empirical studies of the changing nmc is suggested. The paper concludes with some speculations about the likely future of Anglophone...

Reflexivity, ethnography and the professions (complementary medicine). Watching you, watching me, watching you (and writing about both of us)

Abstract: That reflexivity is a characteristic of high modernity is now a truism, but its ethical and practical implications for field research have not been explored. The article is based on research conducted among complementary medical practitioners, focusing on issues of professionalisation. This research revealed the problematic and permeable nature of boundaries in ethnographic work. For example, in the course of interviews and observation therapists vouchsafed information to us which seemed controversial, even indiscreet. Was this a matter of their own naivety, their failure to demonstrate the mature ‘professionalism’ to which they aspired? Or was it a conscious strategy, conducted in the expectation that we would make such material public without attributing it to them by name? We were obliged to reflect on the nature of our own ‘professionalism’ as researchers, the ways in which private and public selves interact in the course of research. The confessional nature of some ethnographic writing raises further...

Interdiscursivity and Child Welfare: The Ascent and Durability of Psycho‐legalism

Abstract: This paper examines the knowledges affecting contemporary child welfare policy and practice. Using a number of conceptual frameworks, it seeks to challenge the view of some commentators that a new ‘legalism’ and a putative concern with ‘surface form’ has accorded formal psychological knowledge, and hence the ‘psy’ complex, a diminished and waning significance. The paper argues that, although there have been significant changes in child welfare practice, rumours of the waning of the ‘psy’ complex have been exaggerated. A detailed analysis of the way the law thinks, and of policy documents and practice guidance reveals both the complex interdiscursivity of the new ‘legalism’ and the durability of psychological and developmentalist forms of thought.

The impact of organizational form on gendered labour markets in engineering and law

Abstract: It is well known that occupations are differentially gendered and explanations for such gendering usually focus on structure and process in the labour market. However little is known of the fine de...

A noisy road or noisy resident?: a demonstration of the utility of social constructionism for analysing environmental problems

Abstract: Within the developing field of environmental sociology the use of social constructionist approaches has often been criticised for detracting attention from the severity of environmental problems and for failing to contribute to attempts to manage them. While there are is a number of published social constructionist analyses of how various environmental problems have come to prominence, few of these address the criticisms which have been levelled at the approach. This paper attempts to contribute to this gap in the literature by providing a reflective case study of the use of social constructionism to analyse a specific environmental problem - the noise generated by a new road. The case study discussed is of the A27 road between Havant and Chichester. The results illustrate that treating environmental problems as socially constructed is often the most valid approach given that the existence and character of these problems, as well as how best to address them, are often contested. In addition it is suggested that the results of social constructionist analyses can make a practical contribution to the management of environmental disputes.