Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 2000"
TL;DR: In this article, a study of mothers' involvement in their children's primary schooling was carried out to explore some of the class and gender processes embedded in parental involvement in education and the relationship between educational success, emotional capital and emotional wellbeing.
Abstract: This article utilises the concept of emotional capital in order to explore some of the class and gender processes embedded in parental involvement in education. Drawing on fieldwork from a study of mothers' involvement in their children's primary schooling it examines mothers' emotional engagement with their children's education. Understandings of mothers' involvement in their children's schooling are enhanced by including an analysis of the emotions, both positive and negative, that infuse mothers' activities. The article tentatively concludes that the relationships between educational success, emotional capital and emotional wellbeing, and the extent of overlap and difference between them, could provide new ways of understanding how a range of disadvantages which cross class barriers are being manufactured in the contemporary educational marketplace.
372 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the reasons why video and other visual representations have been largely ignored in sociology, whilst the possibilities of video as an empirical source have been sidelined by sociologists.
Abstract: This paper explores the reasons why video, and other visual representations have been largely ignored in sociology, whilst the possibilities of video as an empirical source have been sidelined by c...
165 citations
TL;DR: Based on two empirical studies of senior executives, the authors examines key aspects of Bourdieu's theory of the reproduction of social class structures in the European business elite, to what extent it applies.
Abstract: Based on two empirical studies of senior executives, this article examines key aspects of Bourdieu's theory of the reproduction of social class structures. In the European business elite, to what e...
151 citations
TL;DR: The claim that locality, kinship, and social class are no longer the basis of ties that bind and of limited significance for identity in late modernity, remain seductive, despite their critics as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The claims that locality, kinship, and social class are no longer the basis of ties that bind and of limited significance for identity in late modernity, remain seductive, despite their critics. Those who remain rooted are then presented as inhabitants of traditional backwaters, outside the mainstream of social change. This article presents young people's reasons for leaving or remaining in a rural area of Britain, the Scottish Borders. Young people's views about migration and attachment demonstrate a contradictory and more complex pattern than that of detached late-modern migrants and traditional backwater stay-at-homes. These stereotypes have some resonance in local culture, for example in disdain for rootless incomers lacking real sympathy with ‘the community’ and in the common accusation of the parochial narrow mindedness of locals who have never been elsewhere. However, such stereotypes emerge from complex social class antagonisms and cross-cutting ties to locality. Many young people's ties contradic...
131 citations
TL;DR: The authors outline a critique of "decorative sociology" as a trend in contemporary sociology where "culture has eclipsed the social" and where literary interpretation has marginalized socio-economic groups.
Abstract: In this paper we outline a critique of ‘decorative sociology’ as a trend in contemporary sociology where ‘culture’ has eclipsed the ‘social’ and where literary interpretation has marginalized socio...
131 citations
TL;DR: For instance, King as mentioned in this paper argued that the traditional separation between Methodological Individualists (who held that social reality could be reduced to the doings and beliefs of 'other people') and Methodological Collectivists (which held that'social facts' were irreducible, but nonetheless real and influential) should not be continued, but rather that its very terms should be superseded.
Abstract: Every social theorist or investigator has a social ontology. This may be quite implicit but it is also unavoidable because we can say nothing without making some assumptions about the nature of social reality examined. Philosophers of social science, until about fifteen years ago, used to represent the basic parting of the ways as the division between Methodological Individualists (who held that social reality could be reduced to the doings and beliefs of 'other people') and Methodological Collectivists (who held that 'social facts' were irreducible, but nonetheless real and influential). Some certainly still hold to these traditional generic positions.^ Thus Anthony King has recently come to the defence of 'interpretive sociology' and of its methodologically individualist ontology, though it is not entirely clear whether he is defending 'interpretivism' alone or the ontological position in general, which is shared by such disparate exponents as Rational Choice theorists. However, for many of us working on the allied problem of 'structure and agency' or the links between microand macrophenomena, it seemed that the old debate should not be continued, but rather that its very terms ought to be superseded. We were more concerned with how structure shaped interaction, and interaction, in turn, re-shaped structure, than with promises of reductionism or for that matter 'constructionism' which merely seemed to place a 'big etcetera' alongside micro-sociological propositions.\"* Undoubtedly we found the reductionist charter incoherent in its very individualism. As Bhaskar wrote, 'the real problem appears to be not so much that of how one could give an individualistic explanation of social behaviour, but that of how one could ever give a non-social (ie, strictly individualistic) explanation of individual, at least characteristically human behaviour! For the predicates designating properties special to persons all pre-suppose a social context for their employment. A tribesman implies a tribe, the cashing of a cheque a banking system. Explanation, whether by subsumption under general laws, advertion to motives and rules, or redescription (identification), always involves irreducibly social predicates'.^ From a very different point of view, Giddens also set reductionism aside because 'the same structural characteristics participate in the subject (the actor) as in the object (society). Structure forms \"personality\" and \"society\" simultaneously'.^ Equally, we felt no better aided
126 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the role of music in shaping consumer agency, including in-store conduct, purchase behavior subjectivity, identity, and material culture, social action and subjectivity.
Abstract: Despite the philosophical tradition from Plato onward, sociologists have not yet explored in full music's role as an active ingredient in social formation. This project has been left to environmental psychologists and market researchers who are more interested in ‘what’ music can cause than in exploring its mechanisms of operation and the implications of these mechanisms for the constitution of social agency. This paper draws upon ethnographic research in and around High Street retail outlets to examine music's role in shaping consumer agency – in-store conduct, purchase behaviour subjectivity, identity. Exploring music in this way illuminates the interface of material culture, social action and subjectivity. Music is used by retailers to signal target clientele and brand image and to structure the temporal dimensions of the retail to environment over the day, week and year. It is also used to structure in-store conduct. It is more important in relation to younger shoppers and to ‘browsers’. Some stores r...
90 citations
TL;DR: The importance of death in the motivation of human conduct and the significance of the sequestration of death for sociological theory has been discussed in this article, where the authors argue that sociological studies that illuminate modern strategies for coping with death also contribute to its sequestration as they routinely naturalise the contemporary commonsense understanding of death as something negative that must be coped with.
Abstract: The paper argues for the widely unacknowledged importance of death in the motivation of human conduct and the significance of the sequestration of death for sociological theory. Sociological studies that illuminate modern strategies for coping with death also contribute to its sequestration as they routinely naturalise the contemporary commonsense understanding of death as something negative that must be coped with. The (negative or morbid) representation of death, it is argued, should be re-cognised as a social product, not reproduced in sociological studies as something that is seemingly innate to the human condition. Otherwise, a commonsense representation of death as unequivocally negative is reinforced rather than scrutinised; and alternative understandings of the significance of mortality for analysing everyday life and human emancipation are suppressed.
80 citations
TL;DR: The authors combines the approaches of actor-network theory and post-structuralism to consider how a household technology has interacted with patterns of gender hierarchies over time, and combine the actor network and poststructuralist approaches to consider the relationship between two major inn...
Abstract: This article combines the approaches of actor-network theory and poststructuralism to consider how a household technology has interacted with patterns of gender hierarchies over time. Two major inn...
62 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the social movement known in Italy as the movement of the centri sociali, which is a legacy of the particularly troubled, if compelling, Italian 1970s.
Abstract: This paper discusses the social movement known in Italy as the movement of the centri sociali. The empirical material presented relies heavily on the centri sociali operating in Milan. Such material offers the opportunity to revisit issues related to social movement theories. In part one, a brief overview of these theories is sketched, and concepts suggested by both resource mobilisation theorists and new social movements theorists are presented. Attempts to unify the two approaches are also briefly reviewed. In part two, the origin of the centri sociali is traced. Some of the motives and practices inspiring the movement are described as a legacy, though re–elaborated and re–contextualised, of the particularly troubled, if compelling, Italian 1970s. The methodology used for the empirical work undertaken is then presented.
Finally, the discussion moves back to social movement theories, against which the movement of the centri sociali is analysed. Here, the utility of some aspects of both resource mobilisation and new social movement theories will be underlined, thus adding a modest, tentative, contribution to previous attempts to elaborate a synthesis between the two approaches.
61 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a study of 36 museums in London and the South East of England is presented, where the authors analyse their responses to the visually impaired visitor and reveal how such a figure not only introduces a problem of access but is also mobilised by the museum so that access can be addressed as a museum issue.
Abstract: Based on a study of 36 museums in London and the South East of England, the paper offers a deconstructive reading of 'access' and its spatial practices by analysing their responses to the visually impaired visitor. Within any discursive space we find aporial, non-discursive moments that introduce ambivalence into an otherwise seemingly ordered and known arrangement. Such forms of presence have been described, amongst other things, under the heading of the figural (Lyotard). In the discursive space of the museum, a space of seeing and conservation, the visually impaired visitor figure tacks its way into the museum as such a figure that we can call (after Mark C. Taylor) an underdetermined not. Through such a figure we can consider the (dis)ordering effects that this ambivalent form of presence can have. The study reveals how such a figure not only introduces a problem of access but is also mobilised by the museum so that access can be addressed as a museum issue. Museums have changed from previously being indifferent to dis/ability needs to now existing in a state of being in-difference with them. This idea reveals the way in which museums shift the (often haptic) challenge that such a figure makes to the (scopic) signifiers of the museum by responding to them through the less troublesome regimes of what is signified. Access in this case is neither granted nor denied but endlessly deferred.
TL;DR: This article developed a framework for understanding social identities by linking together ideas from two disciplines which are normally pursued separately from each other, namely, sociology and psychoanalysis, drawing on the work of Craib (1989, 1994, 1998a) Bion (1961) and Scheff (1994a) in psychoanalysis and Mann (1986, 1993a, 1995, 1997) in sociology.
Abstract: This paper attempts to develop a framework for understanding social identities by linking together ideas from two disciplines which are normally pursued separately from each other namely, sociology and psychoanalysis. Drawing on the work of Craib (1989, 1994, 1998a) Bion (1961) and Scheff (1994a) in psychoanalysis and Mann (1986, 1993a, 1995, 1997) in sociology, the main argument is that social identities such as national identity are not just the result of sociological factors such as social classification, boundaries and processes of identification, they also have an important emotional dimension which coexists with but cannot be reduced to the social. In order to understand the persistence and indeed strengthening of nationalism and national identities in the contemporary world, we need to take account not just of changes in the inter-relationships between economics, politics and culture at the global level, but also of the ways in which they may now be coming to inter-relate with the kind of unconscio...
TL;DR: In this article, a three-year study into the self-organized groups for women, black members, disabled members and lesbians and gay men which have been enshrined in the constitution of the UK's public sector union UNISON is presented.
Abstract: This article is an offshoot of a three year study into the self–organized groups for women, black members, disabled members and lesbians and gay men which have been enshrined in the constitution of the UK’s public sector union UNISON. The argument is that self–organization has become a significant axis around which trade union democracy is being reconstituted in the late twentieth century. However, our understanding of this phenomenon has been obscured by the ascendancy of mainstream union perspectives over self–organized perspectives, which has unfortunately been compounded by academic researchers. A re–conceptualization of self–organization proceeds in three stages. First, it is contextualized politically and theoretically in terms of trade union histories, new social movements and models of a diversified democratic polity. Second, it is re–signified by attending to its actual unfolding over the past two decades and the self–understandings of its activists. Third, is problematized with reference to exogenous pressures towards bureaucracy and oligarchy, and endogenous pressures towards essentialisms and exclusions.
TL;DR: The authors argued that one way in which one can address the transitory characteristics of the single homeless population is to consider the transient nature of the individuals in the community, rather than the transient characteristics of individuals in general.
Abstract: An emerging literature has recently attempted to address the transitory characteristics of the single homeless population. In this paper I contribute to this focus by arguing that one way in which ...
TL;DR: In this article, a Foucauldian analysis of discourse and power relations suggests that law and the juridical field have lost their pre-eminent role in government via the delegated exercise of sovereign power.
Abstract: A Foucauldian analysis of discourse and power relations suggests that law and the juridical field have lost their pre-eminent role in government via the delegated exercise of sovereign power. According to Foucault, the government of a population is achieved through the wide dispersal of technologies of power which are relatively invisible and which function in discursive sites and practices throughout the social fabric. Expert knowledge occupies a privileged position in government and its essentially discretionary and norm-governed judgements infiltrate and colonise previous sites of power. This paper sets out to challenge a Foucauldian view that principled law has ceded its power and authority to the disciplinary sciences and their expert practitioners. It argues, with particular reference to case law on sterilisation and caesarean sections, that law and the juridical field operate to manipulate and control expert knowledge to their own ends. In so doing, law continually exercises and re-affirms its powe...
TL;DR: In this paper, the popular response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was treated as a manifestation of the cultural public sphere, by which is meant a symbolic space for affective communication and an emotional sense of democratic participation.
Abstract: This article treats the popular response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, as a manifestation of the cultural public sphere, by which is meant a symbolic space for affective communication and an emotional sense of democratic participation. The Diana phenomenon neither produced a ‘revolutionary moment’ nor, however, was it insignificant. Rather, it represented a vehicle for public debate on British identity, the role of the monarchy and, more diffusely, the conduct of personal relations. New Labour and feminist appropriations of Diana are examined in detail and related to a general consideration of the diverse and contested meanings of her life and death.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors ask whether place is significant in understanding the gendering of senior management and how it might be integrated into existing theories, drawing on interviews and focus group discuss.
Abstract: This paper asks whether place is significant in understanding the gendering of senior management and how it might be integrated into existing theories. Drawing on interviews and focus group discuss...
TL;DR: This paper argued that during most of its history, globalisation was in fact associated with the rise of the nation-state and argued that the notion that globalisation has resulted in the decline of the country-state was false.
Abstract: This article examines the notion that globalisation has resulted in the decline of the nation-state. It argues that during most of its history globalisation was in fact associated with the rise of ...
TL;DR: The authors argue that organizational studies' writing on corporate culture and symbolism is predicated on an amnesia about a wide body of older sociological work on "atmosphere", "climate", "personality", and "informal structure".
Abstract: This paper speculates on the emerging divide between ‘organization studies’ – a discipline largely practised in management departments – and the ‘sociology of organizations’. Using organizational culture as a case study, I argue that ‘forgetting’ is a key move in the construction of a discipline. Much organization studies' writing on corporate culture and symbolism is predicated on an amnesia about a wide body of older sociological work on ‘atmosphere’, ‘climate’, ‘personality’ and ‘informal structure’. This disciplinary constitution is productive of knowing, yet it also involves drawing boundaries that enable forgetting. Critically reflecting on the current division of labour in this area, as well as on the costs of amnesia, might encourage more historically informed forms of knowing.
TL;DR: In the 1990s, George W. Bush was not the first to speak of a new world order, but like the others, his words rested on a generally held perception that with the ending of the Cold War something transformational had begun, and that the world (which is to say, the future) would inevitably be different as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Bush was not the first to speak of a 'New World Order', but like the others, his words rested on a generally held perception that with the ending of the Cold War something transformational had begun, and that the world (which is to say, the future) would inevitably be different. Other visions which saw sunlit uplands as lying just ahead had already been offered, most obviously two years earlier when Francis Fukuyama had proclaimed that the 'the End of History' had arrived. While this 'endist' concept of a universal order was aptly summed up as 'liberal democracy ... combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos', such talk of the end of History and a differently ordered world did seem to capture for many people a desirable potential for change (Horsman and Marshall, 1994: 70). This was not least because the future now imagined was both opposite to and better than that previously available, in which History endlessly stayed the same, frozen in the Cold War. Ten years later, after the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo and with Saddam surviving in power long enough to see Bush's son (just about) elected President, the world no longer seems quite so novel or so ordered. Instead, the favoured descriptor for what has happened/is happening/might happen is 'globalization' and, as Anthony Giddens, one of its foremost theorists, argues, it most of all lacks a discernible order:
TL;DR: In this paper, the car waiting with its headlights on, at dawn, as the man places the newspaper on the front steps, makes me uneasy, and I tell myself I have reached an age, the age of unreliable menace.
Abstract: Our newspaper is delivered by a middle-aged Iranian driving a Nissan Sentra. Something about the car makes me uneasy the car waiting with its headlights on, at dawn, as the man places the newspaper on the front steps. I tell myself I have reached an age, the age of unreliable menace. The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities. (DeLillo, 1986: 184)
TL;DR: In this article, it is suggested that situations in which children are present often do generate "vulnerability" in all participants not only in the children, but also in the adults.
Abstract: After discussing ways in which the concept of vulnerability is applied to children in psychology and sociology. It is argued that many of these may arise from the mistaken concretisation of essentialising concepts which have sometimes thereby become barriers to, rather than facilitators of, sociological understanding. Fieldwork is presented and analysed concerning the interactions of some London children, and their characterisations of themselves and others, in a variety of home, school and other settings. It is suggested that situations in which children are present often do generate ‘vulnerability’ in all participants not only in the children. In classrooms and elsewhere the attribution and reality of vulnerability moves rapidly between persons as situations develop and change.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated women's perceptions of choice and risk in the field of pensions and concluded that the expansion of choice has passed pension risks onto consumers and thus led to increasing poverty among many women in later life.
Abstract: This paper investigates women's perceptions of choice and risk in the field of pensions. It extends on a paper published in a recent edition of this Journal in which Alan Aldridge applied Pierre Bourdieu's notions of cultural capital and habitus to the field of personal finance. Since the late 1980s the marketisation of pensions has resulted in an expansion of pension options. According to Anthony Giddens the expansion of choice is one of the positive aspects of living in a ‘risk society’. However, the expansion of pension choice has passed pension risks onto consumers. Using qualitative interviews this paper investigates the perceptions of 45 employed women aged 40–59 of the risks associated with choosing a pension. At the theoretical level the paper seeks to demonstrate the need to qualify notions of reflexive decision-making put forward by Giddens by emphasising the role of habitual action in decision-making, as put forward by Bourdieu. The paper shows that material circumstances, cultural capital, extent and quality of pension information and habitus affect perceptions of pension choice and pension risks. The paper concludes that the expansion of pension choice has been, in many ways, negative rather than positive and thus is likely to lead to increasing poverty among many women in later life.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore some dimensions of talk-in interaction within the context of social/care work team meetings and contrast traditional approaches to analyse members stories by illustrating the situated dimension and characteristics of members stories within talkin-interaction.
Abstract: During the course of this paper I explore some dimensions of talk-in interaction within the context of social/care work team meetings. Furthermore, I contrast traditional approaches to analysing members stories by illustrating the situated dimension and characteristics of members stories within talk-in-interaction. In addition, I address some topics relating to the investigation of social/care team work and briefly consider the story as a mechanism for reducing complexity within the locally accomplished parameters of team work.
TL;DR: In this paper, a discussion of the construction of child neglect in a child and family social work team in the UK, based on ethnographic research in the social work office, is presented.
Abstract: The article is a discussion of the construction of child neglect in a child and family social work team in the UK, based on ethnographic research in the social work office. Two influential and contrasting professional discourses on neglect are identified, and it is suggested that the dominant construction of neglect in the team studied is maternal failure to adequately service children's bodies. This construction is discussed in relation to some relevant theoretical insights and in the context of trends in contemporary child protection work.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore a threefold European deficit: a democratic deficit, a deficit in European identity, and a deficiency in the European public sphere, and argue that although interests such as social movements have most leverage at the national level, since this is the level at which the media are largely organized, the emergence of distinctively European issues such as BSE means that national cycles of media attention are becoming increasingly synchronised.
Abstract: This chapter explores a threefold European deficit: a democratic deficit, a deficit in European identity, and a deficit in the European public sphere. It argues that although interests such as social movements have most leverage at the national level, since this is the level at which the media are largely organised, the emergence of distinctively ‘European’ issues such as BSE means that national cycles of media attention are becoming increasingly synchronised. This makes it more likely that a homogenisation of issues and opinion will occur at the European level. This would favour the eventual emergence of a supranational identity. The creation of a European public sphere through the synchronisation and homogenisation of cycles of media attention on contentious ‘European’ issues is a more realistic prospect than direct attempts to create a ‘new European’ identity through public education or the legal system.
TL;DR: This paper examined the political rhetoric employed to legitimate or contest the idea of "going into Europe" in Spain and Britain, paying particular attention to the different ways this decision impacted upon perceptions of national status and sentiments of collective self-esteem.
Abstract: In this chapter, Pablo Jauregui questions the idea that the development of the European Union means Europe is entering a ‘post-nationalist’ era. He suggests that nationalism and Europeanism are not necessarily opposed to each other or mutually incompatible. Taking the two cases of Spain and Britain, Jauregui argues that their specific national self-images and feelings of collective pride have influenced the particular discourses on Europe in those two countries. Drawing in part on the ideas of Norbert Elias, this chapter examines the political rhetoric employed to legitimate or contest the idea of ‘going into Europe’ in Spain and Britain, paying particular attention to the different ways this decision impacted upon perceptions of national status and sentiments of collective self-esteem. In Britain, the idea of going into Europe was associated with a decline in national status and the ‘loss of world power’. In contrast, for Spain entering Europe meant a considerable enhancement of national prestige following the collapse of a ‘backwards dictatorship’.
TL;DR: The article demonstrates how medical categories can provide shelter for older people and suggests that contemporary sociological critique of biomedicine may underestimate how medical categorising, as the obligatory passage through which to access important resources and life chances, can constitute a process of social inclusion.
Abstract: When older peoples’ troubles are categorised as social rather than medical, hospital care can be denied them. Drawing on an ethnography of older people admitted as emergencies to an acute medical unit, the article demonstrates how medical categories can provide shelter for older people. By holding their clinical identity on medical rather than social grounds, physicians who specialise in gerontology in the acute medical domain can help prevent the over-socialising of an older person's health troubles. As well as helping the older person to draw certain resources to themselves, such as treatment and care, this inclusion in positive medical categories can provide shelter for the older person, to keep at bay their effacement as 'social problems’. These findings suggest that contemporary sociological critique of biomedicine may underestimate how medical categorising, as the obligatory passage through which to access important resources and life chances, can constitute a process of social inclusion.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the prospects for a postnational polity in Europe where the territorial base of power is replaced by a system of networks and flows in which the principal resource is knowledge.
Abstract: This chapter explores the prospects for a postnational polity in Europe where the territorial base of power is replaced by a system of networks and flows in which the principal resource is knowledge. The argument depicts a united Europe as a space of flows rather than as a super- or supra-statist entity. Tensions that arise between a Europe of networks and spaces and a Europe of places are examined, partly through a study of the burgeoning European Information Society Project which attempts to harness these developing networks in the service of European integration. Issues relating to the democratic nature of governance without government in the network polity are highlighted to exemplify the difficulties of re-imagining Europe. The rhetoric surrounding the European Information Society expresses the ambivalence within a programme that foresees Europe as a web of discursive spaces while continuing to acknowledge the power of the old imagined communities based upon territory and ethnicity.
TL;DR: In this article, the impact of increasing state regulation of financial advice and its effect in requiring much higher levels of competence and probity, so stimulating professionalisation, though in doing so, pre-empting the traditional role of established professional bodies in securing competence.
Abstract: This paper reviews the impact of increasing state regulation of financial advice and its effect in requiring much higher levels of competence and probity, so stimulating professionalisation, though in doing so, pre-empting the traditional role of established professional bodies in securing competence and probity. Is it still possible at the end of the twentieth century for new professions to emerge? If so, is a new model of the professions in prospect?