Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 2008"

On sociology and STS

Abstract: This paper starts by exploring the development of Science, Technology and Society (STS) in the UK in the late 1960s, emphasising its interdiciplinary roots, and comparing and contrasting it with the concerns of Sociology. It then turns to more recent developments in STS, outlining the importance of material semiotics to important traditions within the discipline including those influenced by actor network theory, feminism, and postcolonialism. It notes, in consistency with the Foucauldian approach, that material semiotics implies that knowledge traditions are performative, helping to create the realities that they describe. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this performatibity for the politics of research methods and for the future character of social science research.

The Japanese Hikikomori Phenomenon: Acute Social Withdrawal among Young People:

Abstract: Although rare in the west, in Japan and in some other advanced countries on the Asian-Pacific rim, there is a popular perception that there has been a significant increase in the numbers of young people who withdraw socially for protracted periods of time (referred to by the Japanese term ‘hikikomori’). This paper describes the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan, considers evidence relating to its prevalence and examines views about the causes. I argue that the tendency to think of hikikomori as a homogeneous group characterised by psychological malaise is misleading and that withdrawal and disengagement can also be linked to changing opportunity structures. The collapse of the primary labour market for young people and the growing prevalence of a precarious secondary sector has led to a situation in which traditional and deep-rooted norms are undermined and young people forced to find new ways of navigating transitions within a highly pressured and rigid system. Under these circumstances, acute withdrawal often represents an anomic response to a situation where tradition no longer provides adequate clues to appropriate behaviour rather than as a malaise reducible to individual psychologies.

Money, power and spending decisions in intimate relationships

Abstract: Drawing on British data from the 2002 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) module on ‘Family and Changing Gender Roles’, this paper is an exploratory attempt to assess the extent to which newly emerging ‘individualised’ patterns of money management in intimate relationships, are coming to be associated with shifts towards greater equality between partners, in terms of who has the final say over large expenditure decisions, and the implications this has for overall satisfaction with the relationship and happiness with life in general. Our findings show that while in general, keeping money partly separate was associated with a relatively high level of male control, which was more visible to female respondents than male control in other systems, a minority of (sometimes) higher earning, cohabiting women with partly separate finances, were able to make autonomous decisions about spending, possibly by using their own personal spending money. However, the analysis also indicates that when either men or women made autonomous decisions about spending, both male and female respondents were less satisfied with family life, as well as with life in general, than those who made joint decisions.

Art work or money: Conflicts in the construction of a creative identity

Abstract: The identity projects of novice creative practitioners must take account of the economy of art work It has been suggested (McRobbie, 2002a) that in the contemporary cultural industries in the UK,

Re‐invigorating democracy?: White middle class identities and comprehensive schooling

Abstract: Recent research on social class and whiteness points to disquieting and exclusive aspects of white middle class identities This paper focuses on whether 'alternative' middle class identities might work against, and disrupt, normative views of what it means to be 'middle class' at the beginning of the 21st Century Drawing on data from those middle classes who choose to send their children to urban comprehensives, we examine processes of 'thinking and acting otherwise' in order to uncover some of the commitments and investments that might make for a renewed and reinvigorated democratic citizenry The difficulties of turning these commitments and investments into more equitable ways of interacting with class and ethnic others which emerge as real challenges for this left leaning, pro-welfare segment of the middle classes Within a contemporary era of neo-liberalism that valorises competition, individualism and the market even these white middle classes who express a strong commitment to community and social mixing struggle to convert inclinations into actions

Social capital as social relations: the contribution of normative structures

Abstract: This paper presents a framework for social capital that highlights the normative structures through which it is manifested. The primary focus is on the ways that norms structure the relationships in which social capital is embedded. To this end, we introduce four types of normative structures which condition social capital: market, bureaucratic, associative, and communal. A field site in Japan is used to illustrate how different aspects of social capital interact. This case analysis also serves to make an important distinction between the availability and use of social capital. The central arguments are that 1) social capital is organized in different ways by the normative structures in which it is embedded; 2) there are important interactions between these different aspects of social capital that are often overlooked by simpler frameworks; 3) a useful distinction can be made between available social capital and used social capital; 4) access to social capital can be used to analyze power relations; and 5) distinguishing different aspects of social capital makes areas visible that are overlooked by other understandings of social capital. We conclude by identifying the utility of our perspective for informing public policy and guiding future research.

Social networks and student activism: on the politicising effect of campus connections

Abstract: In the first part of this paper I present original survey data which suggests that the transition from further to higher education, or more specifically the process of becoming a university student, has a politicising effect upon some students. In particular, university students are more likely that their 6th form counter-parts to have engaged in some of the forms of protest activity associated with social movements. This holds even during periods when levels of social movement mobilisation are low both on and off campus. In the second part of the paper I review several of the key theoretical explanations of student politicisation to be found in the social movements literature. Having criticised these theories and noted that they are challenged by my survey findings, I outline an alternative which focuses upon campus-based social networks. University campuses, I suggest, facilitate the formation of a critical and connected mass of previously politicised actors who then use their further networks to recruit political novices into activism. It is this recruitment activity, which is greatly enhanced by the network structure of campus life, which explains the politicising effect of campus life. Moreover, insofar as new recruits go on to become recruiters this forms part of a self-perpetuating dynamic of politicisation.

Middle class identities in a neoliberal age: tensions between contested authenticities

Abstract: This paper explores in-depth interviews on aspects of middle class identity in a neoliberal age, taking the case of Chile's rapid and stark transition to a neoliberal economic model which was impos...

Not all that was solid has melted into air (or liquid): a critique of Bauman on individualization and class in liquid modernity

Abstract: Whilst theories of individualization are usually perceived as posing a severe challenge to the oft-disputed concept of class, the recent work of postmodernist-turned-liquid-modernist Zygmunt Bauman in this vein has generally escaped the attention of faithful class analysts keen to defend their object of study. Indeed, in places Bauman has been mobilised to critique the cognate ideas of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, despite the fact that the intellectual affinity between the three is patent and has been rightly flagged by others. This paper seeks to remedy the treatment of Bauman thus far by tracing his precise views on class as they have developed over his extended career and clarifying his current position on its decline in the face of the sweeping individualization brought by liquid modernity. It then provides a critique of his views by pulling out the contradictions and errors besetting them and, in the process, attempts to render less credible his claim that class is no longer a significant sociological tool.

Branding consultants as cultural intermediaries

Abstract: Advertising agencies are frequently the focus of sociological studies investigating the ways in which commodities are imbued with meanings, and the impacts of these efforts on consumer activity. However, advertising agencies face increasing competition from other symbolic intermediaries, of which branding consultancies are some of the most successful. This paper explores the nature and significance of branding by focusing upon three key themes: first, its history and relationship to the design industry; secondly, its everyday practice and efforts to translate brand values into material, as well as visual, form; and thirdly, the forms of knowledge drawn upon in its decision-making processes, and their relationship to its broader power and influence. These themes are addressed through a combination of historical analysis and empirical material drawn from interviews with branding professionals, and are framed with reference to the literature on cultural intermediaries

A sociological comparison of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain

Abstract: Comparisons of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment (the latter also known as ‘Islamophobia’) are noticeably absent in British accounts of race and racism. This article critically examines some public and media discourse on Jewish and Muslim minorities to draw out the similarities and differences contained within anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment. It provides a rationale for focusing upon the period of greatest saliency for Jewish migrants prior to the Second World War, compared with the contemporary representation of Muslims, and identifies certain discursive tendencies operating within the representations of each minority. The article begins with a discussion of multiculturalism, cultural racism and racialization, followed by a brief exploration of the socio-historical dimensions of Jewish and Muslim groups, before turning to the public representation of each within their respective time-frames. The article concludes that there are both hitherto unnoticed similarities and important differences to be found in such a comparison, and that these findings invite further inquiry.

Capital Theory and the Dynamics of Elite Business Networks in Britain and France

Abstract: Post-print version. Final version published by Wiley; available online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

What's in a name? An exploration of the significance of personal naming of ‘mixed’ children for parents from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds

Abstract: This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their children's personal names? The limited literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to which the personal names that ‘mixed’ couples give their children represent an individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith affiliation of ‘mixed’ people, positing various forms of ‘pro’ or ‘post’ collective identity. We draw on in-depth interview data to show that, in the case of ‘mixed’ couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also wanted names that symbolised their children's heritages. This could involve parents in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important to address process, and that the processes we have identified for ‘mixed’ parents reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some gendered features.

Central bankers in the contemporary global field of power: a ‘social space’ approach

Abstract: In the context of the financialization of the global economy, and the importance of financial elites (see Savage and Williams in this volume) the role of central banks has become particularly important. The financial crisis of August– September 2007, (the ‘sub-prime mortgage crisis’) has given a new illustration of the growing functional importance of these central banks, which are in charge of monetary and financial stability through their particular daily interventions on the markets. As ‘lenders of last resort’ in case of declining confidence between banks or financial actors and, more generally, ‘custodians of monetary stability’ as they are often described, central bankers determine the general level of confidence in the set of monetary and financial instruments which have developed in recent years, and contribute highly to the production of macroeconomic decisions, and financial dynamics. Behind the opaque walls of central banks, well known to be very secretive institutions, particular social agents appear to be a new economic and political elite. Their role, action and beliefs have become determinant for the reproduction of the economic and social order as a whole. This specific ‘financial’ elite is related to the state bureaucracy (from which it frequently emanates), to the political field and to the dominant actors of the financial markets. In Europe, the creation of the European Central Bank (ECB) has objectified this process by putting the so-called ‘independent’ governing council of the ECB at the centre of monetary policy but also of macroeconomic policy in general. In the very recent period, European central bankers have been put under political pressure by French politicians, condemning the high level of interest rates and above all the over-evaluation of the Euro, resulting from the specific actions of the ECB. In this situation, knowledge of the social trajectories which lead to the position of central banker in different parts of the world is a first step to understanding the social reality behind the emergence of these new global elites. It will help for example to determine the degree of homogeneity of this group and its internal structures; this knowledge will also give an understanding of the social ‘embeddedness’ of monetary and macroeconomic decisions, otherwise seen as structural macro-conditions without any social content. In this sense, the sociology of central bankers is a specific contribution to economic sociol-

Viewpoint: Keeping a close watch– the rise of self‐surveillance and the threat of digital exposure

Abstract: Digital technologies have given rise to increased occurrences of self-surveillance and forms of ‘virtual vigilantism’. This has progressed from key moments such as the video recording of the Rodney...

Embodying autonomy in a Home Telecare Service

Abstract: increasing ageing population. 2 Telecare, actually, has now turned into a technical solution broad enough to manage many different kinds of problems, from health problems to social problems, and is adaptable enough to take into account individual and very contextual necessities (see Koch, 2006), enabling elderly people to maintain their independent lifestyle as long as possible (see Milligan et al., 2006). Despite a wide variety of contexts of application and technological

‘You've Gotta Learn how to Play the Game’: Homeless Women's Use of Gender Performance as a Tool for Preventing Victimization:

Abstract: As a masculinist space, ‘the streets’ present a variety of dangers to homeless women, a fact that has received too little attention within the social science literature. This study utilizes data drawn from interviews with homeless women and service providers in Edinburgh, San Francisco, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa, to explore the complex survival strategies that homeless women develop to prevent criminal victimization. Through women's words, we see that gender is understood strategically as performance. Four gender performances are identified and discussed: the ‘femininity simulacrum’, the ‘masculinity simulacrum’, ‘genderlessness’ and ‘passing’. We discussed how each of these performances is employed in the pursuit of safety and security in frequently violent and chaotic social spaces.

The dirty history of feminism and sociology: or the war of conceptual attrition

Abstract: In the telling of the inscription of feminism into sociology, both space and time intervene. Institutionally some departments appear to be at the vanguard of feminist thought, others, as if feminism never happened. These uneven manifestations tell a story about people, place, power and struggle. Even feminism itself operates on different temporalities: while many feminists now 'forget' to address 'woman' as an object of their research, using instead debates from feminist theory about gender, life itself or relations, others continuing to generate important information on where women are and what they do. The gap between these two positions of object/no object is vast. Yet the perception of objects/subjects and their recognition through citation is central to the achievement of feminism within academia and this is where the struggle continues, as this paper shows. By showing how feminism has impacted upon sociology in a variety of ways: institutionally, theoretically, methodologically, politically, practically, it unearths how many different struggles on many different fronts continue. Rather than accepting the defeat or dilution of feminism this paper shows how feminism has inscribed some of the darkest and deepest recesses of sociology. But also how this is an achievement reliant upon repetition and attrition.

Elizabeth Bott and the formation of modern British sociology

Abstract: This paper examines the contribution of Elizabeth Bott's Family and Social Network to the elaboration of modern British sociology. I show that although Bott is often identified as one of the key figures in the emergence of social network analysis, this misunderstands her contribution. I show how her work drew strongly on key aspects of the research programme of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and that it was her use of the in-depth interview, allied to an interest in probing class identities, which was to be seminal. This case study is used to show how a focus on the practical inscription techniques mobilised by social scientists can give a radically different perspective on the discipline than approaches which focus on schools of thought or ‘great men’.

‘It's like saying “coloured” ’: understanding and analysing the urban working classes

Abstract: This paper draws on data from a qualitative project exploring the engagement of working class families in London with childcare. It is a first attempt to throw some light on our usage of the term ‘working class’, and consider what forms ‘working class-ness’ takes in relation to our respondent families. We discuss some recent sociological literature on the working class(es) in order to understand the emphasises and focuses of other research. We emphasise the heterogeneity of the working class(es), the differences in attitude and experiences based on place, gender, occupational status, education, age and family membership. Then we consider our respondents in relation to their strategies and exercise of agency, their engagement with the labour market, and their embedded-ness in social networks. We conclude that one way of understanding the lives of urban working class families is to consider the extent to which they ‘manage or struggle to cope’, a focus which emphasises process, activity and the differential degrees of agency which the respondents are able to exercise.

SPSS as an ‘inscription device’: from causality to description?

Abstract: This paper examines the development of SPSS from 1968 to 2008, and the manner in which it has been used in teaching and research in British Sociology. We do this in order to reveal some of the changes that have taken place in statistical reasoning as an inscription device in the discipline over this period. We conclude that to characterise these changes as a shift from ‘causal’ to more ‘descriptive’ modes of analysis is too simplistic. Such a shift is certainly apparent, but it meshes in complex ways with a range of other – just as important – changes, that together mark a phase-shift in the functioning of sociological quantification.

Editors' Introduction: Reinscribing British Sociology: Some Critical Reflections:

Abstract: Why should anyone care about the history of sociology in Britain in the twentieth century? Surely, if sociology is to make a case for itself for our own times, this must be on the basis of what it can offer to this century, and to a world whose geographical scope, heterogeneity, modes of interaction and transaction far exceed the limited imagination of those British social thinkers of the last century who were still working within the confines of an old colonial power and whose centrality to global history and social progress was in any event a myth? Should we not leave that history to the antiquarians? There is certainly a case for doing so. After all, there is no reason why we should subject ourselves to the historicist prejudice of holding that the present or future of sociology is somehow determined by its past. Historical investigation should not bind us to history. Nor should we use historical studies to free ourselves from history, as suggested by some poststructuralist understandings. Instead, we prefer to see the past as a kind of laboratory, which we can make use of in the present to explore various kinds of creativity and inventiveness. For we should not accept another common prejudice and believe that the social sciences, even in their most empiricist moments, are not capable of creative insight and original thought. This is why we think we might learn something from an interrogation of the recent past of British Sociology, provided we do not conduct this as either a celebration or a critique. Perhaps we could relate to that past in the mode of diagnosis, if not aetiology and prognosis. And in that way, we might be able to tease out some of the originality that inhabited all those false-starts, creative beginnings and episodes of conceptual, empirical and institutional conflict that make up this history – we might learn something about what makes social thought productive, and what does not.

Family Comes First or Open All Hours?: How Low Paid Women Working in Food Retailing Manage Webs of Obligation at Home and Work

Abstract: This paper draws on qualitative findings from a study exploring work-life balance issues amongst female employees within food retailing. Whilst female employment is fundamental to this sector, ther...

The Importance of Survival Units for Norbert Elias's Figurational Perspective:

Abstract: In this paper, we argue that Norbert Elias's concept of survival unit is a distinctive part of the development of his figurational sociology and one of the most consistent contributions to relation...

The corporate elite and the transformation of finance capital: a view from Canada

Abstract: Since 1905, when Otto Jeidels published the results of his research on the relationship of the big German banks to industry, the overlapping elite affiliations of corporate directors have been an issue of recognized importance for social scientists and political activists alike. In Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism (1975 [1917]), one of the formative texts of the 20th-century revolutionary left, Lenin quoted Jeidels’s study extensively, presenting the coalescence of different forms of capital under the control of the most powerful corporate directors as a criterial attribute of advanced capitalism:

Some sociologies of education: a history of problems and places, and segments and gazes

Abstract: This paper focuses on some of the significant ‘moments’ and ‘problems’ and ‘characters’ and places which mark out a history of the sociology of education. It further explores some of the historical conjunctions of knowledge and practice to which the sociology of education contributed in its uneasy relations with schools and teachers and education policy. Three sets of tools and sorts of analysis, drawn from the work of Bernstein, Foucault and Bourdieu, are deployed to explore some of the turmoil and conflict which has characterised the sociology of education at different points in its history focusing on three of these. They are, the 1930s/1960s (Political Arithmetic), the 1970s (the New Sociology of Education) and the 1980s ‘flight to policy studies’ and particularly one aspect of this which produced the notion of ‘school effectiveness’. The paper suggests some of the ways in which the sociology of education has played its part in the government and the detailed management of the population, through the changing construction of an unrelenting gaze (focused initially on families) and the concomitant development of a body of expert professional knowledge (teacher education) and, latterly, the management of the institutions of management (schools) and of the professionals themselves (teachers).

Populating sociology: Carr-Saunders and the problem of population

Abstract: Research programmes in the social sciences and elsewhere can be seen as ‘set-ups’ which combine inscription devices and thought styles. The history of inscription devices without consideration of changing and often discontinuous thought styles effectively takes the historical dimension out of the history of thought. Perhaps thought styles are actually more important than the techniques of inscription that arise from them. The social sciences have relied upon multiple modes of inscription, often using, adapting or extending those invented for other purposes, such as the census. But the strategic prioritisation and deployment of specific inscriptions in analysis and argument has inescapably been dependent on particular thought styles; of which by far the most significant over the course of the first half of the twentieth century was eugenics with its specific problem of ‘population’. This paper describes the way that Alexander Carr-Saunders took up the problem of population within early attempts to develop sociology. We ask whether Carr-Saunders can be considered a ‘precursor’ of a sociologist. The history of British sociology takes different shapes – as indeed does the very idea of a history of sociology – depending on how one answers this question.