British Sociology Research Articles

Элитаристский дискурс справедливости: современные концепции и Россия

<p>В статье на примере концепций двух влиятельных авторов второй половины XX в. — социологов Майкла Янга и Дэниела Белла — анализируется идея меритократии — власти наиболее достойных, наиболее заслуженных.</p><p>Рассматриваются основные идеи знаменитой книги (антиутопии) М. Янга «Возвышение меритократии». Охарактеризованы основные этапы становления меритократического общества в антиутопии Янга. Показано, что основная проблема меритократии в изображении британского социолога — ее морально-этические изъяны, которые приводят в результате к классовому конфликту и последующему кризису и падению меритократии. С точки зрения автора статьи, более привлекательным выглядит социальный идеал, обрисованный Янгом, в рамках которого «общество талантов» понимается не как сугубо технократическое, а как подлинное общество равных возможностей.</p><p>Показано, что Д. Белл считает меритократию неотъемлемым атрибутом постиндустриального общества, однако учитывает критику этой идеи в работах М. Янга и Д. Ролза. Поэтому подлинная меритократия у Белла — это «справедливая меритократия», сочетающая равное уважение всех с отличием некоторых (наиболее достойных).</p><p>Изучены взгляды на проблему меритократии в современной России. Автор опирается главным образом на анализ российской ситуации у отечественного элитолога Г. К. Ашина. Он показывает, что элитные трансформации в постсоветской России, значительно изменив некоторые важные характеристики элиты, не изменили главного — ее морального облика.</p><p>В заключение автор указывает, что меритократия обязательно должна сочетаться с развитыми демократическими механизмами, для того чтобы избежать отчуждения народа от власти.</p>

Realities and Perceptions of Methodological Teaching and Debates in Post-War British Sociology: New Evidence from Peel (1968) and Wakeford (1979)

This article contains the first systematic analysis of the undergraduate sociology methods course syllabuses collected by John Peel in the late 1960s and John Wakeford in the late 1970s. It outlines the major trends in methods teaching in the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the teaching of quantitative methods in this period. But the broader aim of the analysis is to explain how the debates surrounding the rise of feminist sociology and the critiques of ‘positivism’ in the 1960s and 1970s affected methods teaching in British sociology. The article argues that despite their limited influence on the contents of the methods curriculum, these debates had another, more subtle but pervasive, impact on how methods were perceived in the sociology community and which methods could be justifiably seen as important and which as irrelevant.

Beyond drink, drainage and divorce? What the Sociological Society did for British sociology

This article improves upon our current understanding of the Sociological Society’s contributions to the development of sociology in Britain. It challenges the assessment of the Society’s legacy made by Philip Abrams in 1968 and the more recent conclusions reached by scholars who contributed to a debate published in The Sociological Review in 2007. The article is built on original findings garnered from empirical research undertaken at The Sociological Review’s archives in Keele. It shows that, despite achieving some results in its attempts to introduce a particular type of sociology into Britain, the influence of the Society in establishing, both institutionally and intellectually, a sociological tradition was largely unsuccessful. A limited legacy, however, does not mean that the history of the Society is of little importance in the history of sociology in this country; on the contrary, as this article attempts to highlight, the Society deserves a critical examination precisely because of its limited legacy.

Social inequality in the Zigmunt Bauman’s sociologicaltheory

The article is devoted to the concept of social inequality of the British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017). The transformation of the views of the sociologist into the problem of social inequality is traced. The article also analyzes the influence of Z. Bauman’s work on modern sociological theory, and identifies a range of basic topics and questions. Based on the biographical and methodological criteria in the work of Z. Bauman, several periods are singled out.The Warsaw period (Poland) is characterized by the influence of Marxism and consideration of social inequality through a class approach. Publications published in Polish did not arouse the interest of the sociological community, but served as a starting point in the work of Z. Bauman. In the Leeds period (Great Britain), the British sociologist significantly reconsiders the methodological foundations of his theory. The key concepts of the second period are «“fluid” modernity», “access”, “consumption”. The notions of “class” and “labour” are replaced by “new poor” existing in unstable communities and forced to construct their own identity through consumption. The important component of this transformation is the process of individualization. Access to displacement, production of culture, information, lack of property as an aggravating factor is distinguished by modern elites.Later, the author actively uses the concept of “postmodern”, and also refers to such categories as “narrative”, “reflexivity” and “identity”. From the objective characteristics of social position, the author turns to an analysis of the perception of the situation in social relations by the subjects of social relations. To describe this subjective assessment Z. Bauman introduces the concepts of “told lives” and “lived stories”. Social inequality is maintained, constructed and reproduced through a set of attitudes prevalent in modern societies. The information revolution does not improve the situation of the poor, but leads to further deterioration of the situation, deepening inequality and exclusion. Nevertheless, “fatality on freedom” allows, according to Z. Bauman, to argue that social inequality is not the only possible fate of mankind.

Alternatives to the Culture of Consumerism, or the Charm of Skeptical Solitude

The paper focuses on the elaboration of an opposition to the consumer commodity market which is recognised as a sovereign by British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. For Bauman, consumerism is an archetype of loneliness, and besides the question of alternative to consumerism, there shows up the question of communication. Odo Marquard insists that a modern man experiences inauthentic loneliness and, in fact, he lost an ability to be alone in a positive sense. Loneliness gives us a perfect distance for a sober evaluation of reality and ourselves. In this article skeptical loneliness, among other forms of positive loneliness, is considered as freedom from all dogmas and the wishes of consumers, and as an opposition to a sovereign in the form of the consumer commodity market.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Media: Key Narratives, Future Directions

AbstractLesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have become a familiar presence on the media landscape. For more than half a century, scholars have examined the importance of this recognition. In this article, I extend the work of British sociologist Ken Plummer to argue that key narratives have endured in discussions of LGBTQ media. These narratives include the victim, the community, the militant/queer, and the assimilationist. In addition, this paper points toward new directions for analysis and discussion; I argue that future research should take a more nuanced approach by examining overlaps and tensions among these stories.

A Systematic Literature Review of Reviews on the Effectiveness of Chlamydia Testing.

Chlamydia trachomatis is the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infection, causing significant morbidity and economic burden. Strategies like national screening programs or home-testing kits were introduced in some developed countries, yet their effectiveness remains controversial. In this systematic review, we examined reviews of chlamydia screening interventions to assess their effectiveness and the elements that contribute to their success to guide public policy and future research. We assessed English material published after 2000 in PubMed, the Cochrane Library, the British Nursing Index, Medical Database, and Sociological Abstracts, in addition to World Health Organization Global Health Sector Strategies, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control guidelines, and the Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews. Systematic reviews that focused on chlamydia screening interventions were included. Using the socioecological model, we examined the levels of interventions that may affect the uptake of chlamydia screening. A total of 19 systematic reviews were included. Self-collection in home-testing kits significantly increased screening among girls and women 14-50 years of age. At the organizational level, using electronic health records and not creating additional costs facilitated testing. At the community level, outreach interventions in community and parent centers and homeless shelters achieved high screening rates. At the policy level, interventions with educational and advisory elements could result in significant improvements in screening rates.

Socjologia farmaceutyków jako „subpole” socjologii medycyny

Celem artykułu jest nakreślenie obszaru badawczego w ramach socjologii medycyny, który socjologowie brytyjscy nazwali socjologią farmaceutyków. Zawierają się w niej: 1) procesy medykalizacji i farmaceutykalizacji, 2) społeczny kontekst tworzenia regulacji dotyczących leków, 3) praktyki marketingowe przemysłu farmaceutycznego, 4) oczekiwania społeczne dotyczące innowacji farmaceutycznych, 5) konsumpcja leków. W artykule omówiono powstanie i rozwój socjologii farmaceutyków oraz dokonano przeglądu badań mieszczących się w tym obszarze. Przedstawiono także argumenty dowodzące użyteczności terminu „socjologia farmaceutyków” w badaniach nad społecznymi konsekwencjami korzystania z leków oraz procesem farmaceutykalizacji.

Notas comparativas sobre o desenvolvimento de duas tradições sociológicas nacionais

Esse trabalho tem o objetivo de delinear algumas características da sociologia alemã da década de 1920 através de uma perspectiva comparativa que contrastará o sucesso da sociologia alemã com o fracasso da sociologia britânica. Utilizaremos para tanto as explicações e as categorias explicativas expostas no artigo Why do disciplines fail? The strange case of British sociology, de Reba N. Soffer (1982). Pretende-se aqui explorar de forma mais apurada a comparação proposta pela autora entre a sociologia britânica entre sua fundação em 1903 e a década de 1950 e a sociologia alemã, mais especificamente da década de 1920, que possui algumas características diferenciadas da geração dos pioneiros, mais utilizada pela autora como base de sua comparação.

Blood’s ontologies-entangled: Qualitative inquiry into the enactment, representation, and organizational modes of coordination of blood’s multiplicity in a Belgian blood establishment

Since British sociologist Titmuss authoritatively conceived blood donation as an altruistic ‘gift relationship’, blood establishments have adopted blood’s highly symbolic status as a core professional belief. However, important developments since the 1970s have resulted in blood’s bio-objectification, making blood a renewed object of concern. Because different versions of this bio-object are simultaneously present and interfere with one another, we ask how the organization renders this multiplicity workable? Studying how ontological versions are enacted in a specific blood establishment and how the organizational model of a blood establishment functions as a mode of coordination, we develop a praxiographic appreciation of blood in the context of a specific Belgian blood establishment. We show how the organizational mode of coordination allocates versions of blood in specific departments along functional and chronological dimensions. Blood remains the object of a gift relationship but is accompanied by blood’s enactment and representation as the object of suspicion, management, research/biology, and a blood economy. Furthermore, the organizational mode of coordination also allocates personalized and depersonalized enactments according to the level of contact with the donor population. This reflects a third dimension: (de)personalization of blood. Whereas the organizational mode of coordination is successful in rendering blood’s multiplicity workable, at times, it causes suboptimal practices. Moreover, we showed how sometimes a focus on intra-departmental modes of coordination is necessary to understand how blood’s multiplicity complicates the practices of the blood establishment.

Ethnography is not qualitative

ABSTRACTThis article looks back at several of the classic ethnographies in British sociology of education and shows that quantitative work played a significant part in many of them, and that quantitative results were part of the evidence used to support claims and arguments put forward by the authors. The article then examines some more recent ethnographies and shows that quantitative research within them has dwindled. It is then claimed that the artificial division between quantitative and qualitative research in education has made research poorer, and that the categorisation of ethnographic research as qualitative has been detrimental to ethnography. Some ways in which more quantitative work could (and often should) be included are then suggested.

From job creation and qualification schemes to activation strategies: the history of Germany’s labor market policy

ABSTRACTWith the implementation of the activation approach, formulated by the American political scientist Lawrence Mead and the British sociologist Anthony Giddens, the labor market policy has been reformed in Germany and many other industrialized countries, since the mid-1990s. A fundamental component of the realignment is that welfare payments are tied more strictly than previously to the acceptance of employment. While in the U.S.A., the new labor market policy is characterized by the ‘workfare’ motto, in Germany, the foundations of the activation are formulated with the guiding principle ‘support and demand’. Nevertheless, due to the shortage of public funds subsidies were cut sharply in recession phases but not increased adequately during the periods of economic recovery. As a result, the promotional elements of the activation concept are far outweighed by enforcement measures, leaving the unemployed to accept less attractive non-standard work. However, even with favorable economic conditions, even a relatively small number of atypical employees successfully made the transition to regular full-time employment. Therefore, in order to facilitate career advancement additional support would be required, which will not end with the recruitment.

Woodward’s aegis: a critical biography of Joan Woodward

PurposeThis paper aims to offer a critical biography of Joan Woodward, often considered the founder of contingency theory. This paper examines Woodward’s background to develop a more complete understanding of the factors that influenced her work.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on insights gained from personal correspondence with two colleagues of Woodward, one who recruited her to the Imperial College where she conducted her most prominent work and one whom she recruited while at the college. In addition, Woodward’s original work, academic literature, published remembrances and a plethora of other secondary sources are reviewed.FindingsBy connecting these otherwise disparate sources of information, a more complete understanding of Woodward’s work and its context is provided. It is argued that Woodward’s education, training, brilliance, values, the relative weakness of British sociology and the need to improve the economy helped to make Woodward’s work both original and practical.Originality/valueThe originality of this work is to examine the work of Woodward through the lens of critical biography. Despite Woodward’s contributions, Woodward remains an underappreciated figure. The purpose is to provide her contribution against the backdrop of the British industrial and educational sphere.

A PRESENÇA DE ANTHONY GIDDENS NA PRODUÇÃO CIENTÍFICA DA EDUCAÇÃO FÍSICA BRASILEIRA: ENTRE A REFLEXÃO E O DESLIZE

O objetivo deste artigo é mapear a presença do sociólogo Anthony Giddens na produção científica do campo da Educação Física (EF) brasileira e analisar de que maneira suas contribuições teóricas aparecem na área. Este texto apresenta a descrição que Giddens faz sobre a sociedade moderna reflexiva e suas reconfigurações relacionadas ao agente/estrutura. Feito isso, o texto se ocupará de realizar um levantamento bibliográfico nos principais periódicos da área a fim de analisar aqueles artigos que referenciaram Giddens. Aponta, por fim, que: 1) há pouco diálogo entre a EF e o sociólogo inglês e 2) a maioria dos textos produzidos pela área não utiliza Giddens de maneira reflexiva, cometendo, assim, deslizes teóricos.

Detecting Topical Divides and Topical “Bridges” Across National Sociologies

The purpose of this paper is to describe the topical structure across national sociologies and detect the topic clusters contributing to the intellectual divide of the discipline. I employed a hybrid methodological style consisting of latent semantic analysis, topic polarization index and simple correspondence analysis to extract and map the topical divides across American and British sociological journals. The textual data were drawn from 11,793 abstracts published in 4 American, and 4 British journals in a 40-year period. My analysis revealed divisive publication preferences across the American and British journals. Topics associated with theory, methods, race, health, social class, crime, income inequality, aging, suicide, social networks, social movements and social status, appeared to contribute the most to the intellectual divides across American and British sociologies. The polarizing publication preferences on the core topics of theory and methods support former findings claiming that there is a fundamental epistemological divide across the two national sociological traditions. American journals tend to publish papers with an emphasis of methodology, while British journals show preference on papers with a theoretical focus. Finally, my findings revealed that core sociological topics relevant to social institutions such as marriage and family, labor, education, and stratification such as gender, immigration and occupational mobility contribute to the intellectual fusion of American and British sociologies.

Z kartos vertybinis portretas – vartotojiškos visuomenės atspindys

Šiame straipsnyje dėmesys skiriamas Z kartos jaunuoliams ir jų vertybinių orientacijų ypatumams. Pirmoje straipsnio dalyje analizuojama vartotojiškos visuomenės esmė, akcentuojant tokias jos sudedamąsias dalis kaip vertybės ir vertybinės orientacijos, vartotojiškumas, asmens tapatumas. Antroje straipsnio dalyje pristatomi 2016 m. atlikto tyrimo rezultatai. Šiandien esame vartotojai vartotojiškoje visuomenėje. Ypatingas vaidmuo vartotojiškoje kultūroje tenka Z kartai (gimusiems po 1995 metų). Atlikti tyrimai rodo, kad šiems jaunuoliams šiandien būdinga dezorientacija, apatiškumas, blaškymasis tarp priimtinų ir kitų jiems primestų vertybių, o vartojimas tampa vienu iš svarbiausių individualaus gyvenimo stiliaus pagrindų. Pasak britų sociologo A. Giddenso, vartotojiškos visuomenės nariai vertina individualizmą, bet jie taip pat vertina priklausymą tam tikrai grupei – siekia būti panašūs į kitus. Vartotojiška visuomenė turi savitą kultūrą, kuri teikia naujų potyrių ir malonumų. Mūsų tyrimas atskleidė, kad nors Z kartai būdingi vartotojiškos visuomenės bruožai, ji yra nevienalytė. Jaunimo gyvenimiškai pozicijai daugiausia įtakos turi vertybiniai prioritetai, sukauptų kapitalų bagažas. Ne visi, pasak lenkų sociologo Z. Baumano, turi išteklių, kad būtų tie, kurie renkasi, t. y. ne visi gali būti vartotojai.

Being Modern in China by Paul Willis

Reviewed by: Being Modern in China by Paul Willis Jing Xu (bio) Paul Willis. Being Modern in China. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2019. xii, 196 pp. Softcover $24.95, isbn 978-1-5095-3831-7. "In China's quite special relationship with modernity a future-obsessed society is simultaneously structured by and in continuous dialogue with the past, its forms and grammars, and in particular with its ultra-high-stakes exam system and culture stretching back millennia. Mesmerized modernity meets the Gaokao" (p. viii), argues the British sociologist Paul Willis in his new book Being Modern in China. This book offers a fascinating record of his first encounter with China—through teaching at Beijing Normal University (2014–2017). It weaves together a diverse range of materials: his personal experiences living in Beijing, popular culture representations and government [End Page 161] propaganda materials (e.g., China Global Television Network, English newspaper articles, Internet sources, etc.), his three ethnographic trips (to a Beijing migrant school, an NGO on the edge of Beijing, and a remote mountain village far from Beijing), and his Chinese students'"retro-ethnographies" (as part of their course assignment). Experimenting to break the boundary between academic and popular writing, Willis' account of his China experience, with its poetic and forceful prose, is a great pleasure to read. Deliberately framing this book as "a Western cultural analysis," Willis aims at turning the strange into familiar. China not only excites Willis, but also puzzles him: "You are always a foreigner, taken as a foreigner" (p. vii). As an anthropologist who grew up in post-reform China and had my destiny and identity profoundly shaped by the ruthless Gaokao regime, Willis' cultural commentary inspires me to turn the familiar into strange; it also opens up or reframes interesting questions for China specialists to grapple with, to debate, and to answer. Willis' theoretical entry point is "symbolic order," defined as "a wide pool of resources and symbols which provide material and context for local and situated practices of 'meaning-making'" (p. 2). According to Willis, scholars have focused less on systematically understanding changes in ordinary people's symbolic order, compared to changes in the material order of contemporary China. To what extent this diagnosis is true is up for debate among China specialists. For example, in anthropology within the past decade or so, there has been a surging interest in the transformations of Chinese psychological, emotional, and moral life, the cultural, symbolic resources, and their entanglement with history (Kleinman et al. 2011; Siu 2006; Zhang 2008;to name just a few). In part 1, he argues that contemporary China has a new symbolic order "radically different and more autonomous than what has gone previously" (p. 3). This new symbolic order consists of "three arrows of modernity" (p. 4): (1) the glorified city, a central narrative and symbol of modernity, that instills a longing for urban life in ordinary people's deepest imaginations; this future-oriented, forward-looking attitude is in synergy with physical movement, large-scale rural-to-urban migration structured by ruthless inequalities under the hukou system; (2) a super-charged consumerism that is itself glorified as a symbol for modernity, a medium for a better future in a still developing country, and therefore a paradox: too poor to actually purchase, the majority of Chinese consumers are doing "spectral consumption" (p. 39), a "consumerism of symbolic optimism" (p. 45); and (3) the powerfully invested Internet (especially smartphones): for the state it opens up new powers of surveillance and control, for ordinary people it is a magic means to access new worlds and engage in symbolic self-production. Moreover, all three arrows are operating under a powerful party-state that is tightening its grip while leading the nation to its rightful place on its own terms. [End Page 162] Across these chapters, he intentionally refers to his experience in and expertise on England to compare and contrast. While such a comparison offers fresh, penetrating insights, in each of these three domains, the comparison may simplify important questions. (1)On "the glorified city": how do we understand this central imagery in post-reform era from a longer historical perspective, for example, the symbolic significance...

‘Mining a productive seam? The coal industry, community and sociology’

Recently there have been calls for sociology in Britain to reflect on its longstanding historical attention and focus, something which has been neglected of late. At the same time there is growing interest in the historiography of British sociology and critical reflection on how its early post-war assumptions went on to structure later research, writing and scholarship. Developing both of these insights this article looks at British sociology’s longstanding relationship with the coal industry, its work and especially its communities. From Coal is our Life (1956) through to Coal was our Life (2000) the sector has been an important site of sociological attention. It was an early focus of post-war community studies, becoming home to a residual traditional working class. Later still it was an arena of conflict on the front line of Thatcher’s Britain, before becoming a site on which to study loss and deindustrialisation. This article asks what sociology learnt from the deep coal mining industry and what it might still explore in the future around questions of regeneration and the ‘half-life’ of deindustrialisation.

La scienza possibile: spiegazione e causalità in sociologia secondo J.H. Goldthorpe

This article reviews John H. Goldthorpe’s latest essay Sociology as a Population Science (2016). After outlining the main theses of the book, two major issues arising from the British sociologist’s proposal are discussed: the concept of causality and the boundaries of sociology. On the former, it is argued that Goldthorpe’s critique of the counterfactual approach in sociology is not convincing, particularly as concerns the issue of voluntarism in human social action. On the issue of the boundaries, it is maintained that Goldthorpe’s definition of sociology as a population science regards more its method rather than its substantive content. This leaves unanswered the question of how sociology can be distinguished from neighboring disciplines such as demography and economics, and what would be the mutual benefits from an alliance with them.

Hurricane Katrina and the Effects of Gentrification on African American Communities

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the New Orleans area and entire gulf coast. Although the storm was horrific, that aftermath of the storm was catastrophic. The levee system in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana failed causing widespread destruction of the communities and the displacement of thousands of residents. As a result, many residents were displaced and were unable to return to their communities. British sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification to describe the displacement of lower income class residents by people of higher incomes who come into urban areas and restore the housing and businesses within that community (Aka, Jr.). The purpose of this research is to study the affect of gentrification on African Americans communities, such those in New Orleans ruined by Hurricane Katrina. According to previous studies conducted, deteriorated communities like those in New Orleans after Katrina once reinvested and gentrified displace older residents permanently, but also changes the heritage and culture that once filled their community.