Journalists in the UK have always been ambivalent about what form of occupational control to pursue. Although resistant to the structures of the conventional profession, they have embraced the idea of 'professionalism'. As the formations traditionally associated with Anglo-American professions become relevant to fewer and fewer employees and increasingly subject to external regulation it is more relevant, we suggest, to investigate how the discourse of 'professionalism' as a set of values and identities can be mobilized by employers as a form of self-discipline. Journalism, notable for its powerful occupational mythology, provides a vivid example of how this process has eased the imposition of radical changes to the organization of work. Now, ironically, recent changes in the occupation's social composition and training may mean that journalists, who have always cherished a self-image as socially marginal, will aspire to conventional professional respectability.

The persistence of social disparities in educational achievement in contemporary societies is a matter of concern to social theory. Sociology of education has distinguished between the primary and secondary effects of socialization in order to construct explanatory theories of inequality of educational opportunity. Empirical evidence from the recent OECD PISA research is analysed to suggest that causes of the primary effect are the most important. The case is made with close reference to Goldthorpe's attempt to provide a rational action model of social disparities in education. An approach informed by scientific realism is held to offer a more adequate explanation.

The paper explores the mutuality of values, claims and social relations in the process of social change. Values are not separable from social relations but are embedded in the shaping and reshaping of social difference and interdependence. The paper focuses on developments around the turn of the twentieth century, and analyses changes in the relative social positioning of children and adults, and women and men, shifting patterns of interdependence, and linked values and ideas about difference. The reconfiguring of generational and gender relations was integral to the first fertility decline, to transformation in family life and societal divisions of labour, and to the embedding of particular values and claims regarding gendered difference, identities and gender appropriate roles. Analysis of these developments reveals the mutuality of 'cultural' and 'material' processes and holds lessons for interpreting social change today.

Recent research on social capital has explored trends in membership in voluntary organizations. However, there is currently little robust evidence on such trends in the UK since the 1970s, nor is there any analysis of whether participation bridges social divisions or accentuates them. This paper explores trends in participation in England and Wales since 1972 using data from the Social Mobility Inquiry of 1972 and the British Household Panel Survey of 1992 and 1999. We are concerned with social exclusion mechanisms in social capital generation in Britain over the three decades. Using binomial and multinomial models to 'unpack' the effects of socio-cultural factors on civic participation and on different types of associational membership, we test the thesis of across-the-board decline in social capital by Putnam (2000) and that of rising levels of middle-class social capital versus consistent low levels of working-class social capital by Hall (1999). The results show significant socio-cultural-gender differences, a relative stability of middle-class participation, and a rapid decline in the working-class access to social capital. We challenge the established accounts of both theses.

The paper addresses several debates surrounding the reproduction of socio-economic inequality: (i) the persistent inequality thesis, which maintains that despite the increases in educational participation socio-economic inequalities in education have not declined; (ii) the related thesis of maximally maintained inequality, which proposes that socio-economic inequalities decline only when participation levels for the most privileged socio-economic group approach saturation levels; (iii) the meritocracy debate on the importance of ability vis-à-vis socio-economic background and changes in its influence over time; and (iv) the effect of policy changes on socio-economic inequalities in education. These issues are addressed using data from six Australian youth cohorts born between 1961 and the mid-1980s.

Cet article est une reponse de l'A. aux critiques formulees par C. Hakim a son egard dans les colonnes d'un precedent numero de la presente revue. L'A. et son contradicteur divergent quant a la place laissee au choix et aux preferences dans les decisions de carrieres professionnelles des femmes meres de famille

This paper examines the pattern of educational homogamy in Ireland and Britain. Using contemporary data on recent marriages from the early 1970s through to the mid-1990s, we show that these two countries share a broadly similar pattern of educational homogamy, which is quasi-symmetric in character, with no tendency for women to marry up over and above that which can be attributed to the gender difference in educational attainment. In the 1970s, the strength of homogamy was much weaker in Ireland than in Britain. But we discern a clear inter-country difference in how the net strength of homogamy has changed over time. While it has declined in Britain since the 1970s, in Ireland the strength of homogamy has first increased and then levelled off. Our findings are inconsistent with the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic development and homogamy reported by Smits, Ultee and Lammers (1998) - an argument premised on secular change in the criteria of spouse selection. Instead, our results are better understood in terms of Mare's (1991) life course argument that homogamy is inversely related to the time-gap between school departure and first marriage.