British Sociology Research Articles

Рождение социологии спорта и Лестерская историко-социологическая школа

The paper describes the origins of sports sociology in Great Britain within the “Leicester School” of Historical Sociology of Norbert Elias, explaining the causes for the strong influence of the ideas of Elysianism on the present-day international sociology of sports. The overall development of the historical and sociological “Leicester School” of the 1960s and 1970s, its influence on the sociology of Great Britain, as well as the role of Elias and Ilya Neustadt in its formation are shown. The contemporary historical and sociological tradition of social analysis, inspired by the ideas of Elias and called the ‘sociology of process’ or ‘figurative research’, is described. Its key features are indicated: focus on relations–in–progress, relativism, studies of phenomena in their dynamics, the collection of historical materials, comparative analysis, and interdisciplinarity. The seminal works of Eric Dunning and Elias on sports sociology are considered, in addition to the early development of this field of studies. It is noted that both authors viewed sport and leisure activities as a means to understand society and proposed a sociological interpretation of sport as a tool for the civilizational process. Their work was based not only on a theoretical framework, but also on extensive historical research. This contributed to the early acceptance of the ideas of Leicester School during the establishment of international sports sociology in the 1960s. The paper is based on an informal interview in 2010 with Eric Dunning, the founding father of the British Sociology of Sport, co-author and student of Norbert Elias.

Caste and its implications for sociologies of inequality

The concern to think about the place of caste as a conceptual category – within, and in relation to, broader sociological understandings of inequality – was the primary motivation of the British Sociological Association Presidential event on ‘Caste and its Implications for Sociologies of Inequality’ held at the London School of Economics in late autumn 2023. It sought not only to engage with caste sociologically but also to ask the question of what a consideration of caste could bring to sociological thinking more generally.

THE ISSUE OF THE UK’S PAKISTANI COMMUNITY ACCULTURATION

The article is dedicated to the analysis of a number of features inherent in the UK’s Pakistani community, which manifest in the social and cultural life of the country, based on the research conducted by British sociologists in the time span from 2010 to 2024. The article examines the approaches British Pakistani people take in respect to their identity, emphasizes the importance of personal contacts and the creation of their own self in spaces which are used to exchange experience and which are not directly related to the home and business environment. The emphasis is placed on the complexity and mosaicism of the UK’s Pakistani diaspora members’ identity, as well as on the importance of using art as an instrument of intercultural dialogue. There is a prospect of even greater divergence of British Pakistanis’ points of view in the future, however, the general trend of their acculturation is positive, and at the moment their activity both in the media (television, radio) and in everyday life has slightly increased compared to previous decades.

A Critical Encounter: Jean Floud’s Appraisal of Karl Mannheim

ABSTRACT This paper examines Jean Floud’s assessment of the work of Karl Mannheim, against the background of the development of British sociology of education in the 1940s and 50s. She compared his approach with that of Durkheim, concluding that both adopted a focus on social statics rather than dynamics, this reflecting their conservative political orientations. Some aspects of Floud’s critique are questionable, but other points she makes are telling. The issues in dispute here are ones that continue to be of importance in the sociology of education, and in social science more generally.

(How) should environmental sustainability be a part of physical education? Analysing Swedish teachers’ voices through a Bernsteinian perspective

ABSTRACT Teaching outdoors is an obligatory part of physical education (PE) in most countries; therefore, PE holds great potential to contribute to learning about nature, the environment and environmental sustainability (ES). This paper reports the investigation of whether Swedish PE teachers perceive ES as part of their subject, and if so, how do they implement it? Drawing on 60 PE teachers’ answers to five opened questions (53 written answers and 7 oral interviews), and using British sociologist Basil Bernstein’s concepts of classification and codes, this study have asked the following research questions: 1. What influences the position and legitimisation of ES in PE? 2. How does the subject culture of Swedish PE influence the introduction of ES? The result from the study shows a complexity regarding the strength of the boundaries that surround ES in PE and what this complexity might offer in terms of enablers and constraints. The result also displays a strong connection between outdoor education and its potential for teaching ES. Various options are discussed with regard to where (in what content areas in PE) and how to implement ES.

La sociologia come vocazione: il pubblico e la professionalizzazione sostanziale in Michael Burawoy

The paper illustrates an assessment of theoretical reflections on the concept of public sociology made by Michael Burawoy during a long period of research, occurring between the beginning of the 2000s and the most recent times. In the first place, assumptions concerning the definition of public sociology are presented. Thus, innovative elements compared to the previous interpretation of the term made by Herbert Gans are stressed. The focus is consequently shifted towards epistemological questions raised by necessity/willingness of practicing a reflexive science deeply engaged with publics. Secondly, it is argued how the thought of Max Weber represents an essential reference point to frame the relationship between expertise and audiences. Finally, some conclusive considerations are exposed with respect to the overall intellectual trajectory of the British sociologist.

Understanding the Tourist Gaze in John Urry's Sociological Theory

Tourism as a mass phenomenon began to be actively studied by sociologists in the second half of the 20th century. A special place among the sociological approaches to this phenomenon of the specified historical period is occupied by the concept of tourism by British researcher John Urry, one of the most prominent representatives of modern sociological theory. The scientist considers tourism in the context of social and economic changes taking place in Western societies after the end of World War II: significant economic growth, very high rates of urbanization, increased consumption, improved transport infrastructure, transformation of social attitudes. The main work, which outlines the key provisions of the concept of the tourist gaze, is the publication "The Tourist Gaze". Subsequently, this book has been updated twice, taking into account new social trends, phenomena and processes. The author explores the concept of tourism by J. Urri using general scientific methods of cognition, as well as genetic, comparative historical and other methods that reveal the specifics of the scientist's approach. The author's special contribution to the research of the topic lies in the fact that the theoretical and methodological foundations of John Urry's concept of tourism were identified, its specificity and the evolution of the scientist's views were demonstrated. The article examines the key elements of this theory, reveals its heuristic potential, and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the British sociologist's research approach. Despite the criticism presented, the approach developed by John Urry, his conceptual apparatus and analytical tools indicate the high importance of his works for modern sociological theory. The concept of the tourist view remains relevant, which is confirmed, in particular, by the presence of followers who continue to make a significant contribution to the expansion and deepening of the theoretical and empirical analysis of tourism, based on the ideas proposed by Urri.

Tourist mobility: sociological theory and implementation practices

The article analyzes the connection between the sociology of tourism and the general sociological theory of mobility, which leads to an understanding of modern tourist mobility not as a process of revealing the will of individuals to learn about different cultures, but as a system of social constructions that exist in the form of tourism practices and are focused on maximizing profits for global tour operators. The methodology. The method of the propositional analysis is aimed at identifying logically based semantic units with the aim of selecting and synthesizing reliable knowledge expressed in texts written on issues of sociology of tourism and the general sociological theory of mobility. Scientific novelty is in clarifying the concept of tourist mobility and tourist practices; in revealing that they are largely the result of commercially oriented social construction carried out in the interests of global tour operators; in demonstrating that commercial and non-commercial tourist mobility entail incompatible social consequences. Conclusions. The article is devoted to current problems of modern sociology of tourism in its connection with the general theory of mobility (one of the founders of which was the British sociologist John Urry) that complemented the “old” theory of social mobility by the doctrine of the movement of people, goods, capital, information, etc. in geographical space. Now society has come to be understood as a mobile structure consisting of many mobile practices (including tourism) that can be aimed at either developing essential strength of people or control over their consciousness and behavior.

Внутренняя колонизация России и формирование нации: в контексте земельных взаимоотношений русских с калмыками в конце XIX – начале XX в.

The article is dedicated to the relations between Russian peasants and Kalmyks at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. “Life of the Kalmyks of the Stavropol province before the publication of the law on March 15, 1892” by the Orthodox missionary and ethnographer Ya.P. Dubrova [5] is the basis of the work. The analysis was carried out on the method­ological basis of decolonial theory (V. Mignolo, E. Dussel, A. Quijano, M. Tlostanova), as well as the theory of internal colonization of Russia (V. Morozov, A. Etkind). The first paragraph provides an overview of the academic research on the topic. Core provisions and approaches are identified. The problem of insufficient consideration of the aspect of ethnic differences in the theory of internal colonization of Russia is highlighted. The second paragraph examines the national policy of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. The mechanisms for constructing colonial hierarchies between the higher and lower classes, as well as ethnic Russians and foreigners are shown. The theory of na­tionalism by the British sociologist B. Anderson provided the way to classify social phe­nomena as signs of official and civil-republican nationalism. Fragments of Dubrova’s book are presented and analyzed, demonstrating the problems of relations between Rus­sian peasants and Kalmyks in the Russian Empire. The third paragraph presents an analy­sis of Soviet-era nationality policies. Within the framework of the concept of Soviet modernity by M. David-Fox, the preservation of the subaltern position of Russians is shown. At the same time, the status of ethnic Russians as a “savior people” is demon­strated – the most important plot of the Soviet colonial matrix. Finally, conclusions are presented.

«Ускользающий мир» и «текучая современность»: образ социальности в британской постнеклассической социологии

The content of the article is focused on analyzing the problems of reflecting social instability and searching for vectors of development in contemporary British postnonclassical sociology. The issues of class inequality, di-chotomy of freedom and order, egalitarianism and elitism, past and future, local and global dimensions are highlighted and analyzed. It is emphasized that contemporary British postnonclassical sociology is seriously influenced by the factors of social instability, total risks, and the lack of a distinct positive image of a desirable future. Bauman’s “liquid modernity” is presented. Common postulates of the theories are revealed, such as instability of the present and unpredictability of the future, frustrated and loneliness of personality in modern society. Differences in the accents of constructing the model of modern sociality by these scientists are noted. Conclusion dwells upon the fact that British postnonclassical sociology, represented by its two most prominent representatives, is clearly oriented towards the search for integration of the poles of the dichotomies under study, which is manifested in Giddens’ category of trust and Bauman’s category of dialog. This testifies to the gradual penetration of the axiological component into the paradigm of modern sociology.

Historical Perspectives on British Sociology’s Future: An Interview with John Scott

John Scott’s career as a sociologist spans more than 50 years, during which time he has written or edited more than 40 books among a total of more than 200 publications. The breadth of his interests and his service to the discipline in various roles including as President of the British Sociological Association and chair of the Sociology sub-panel for the Research Assessment Exercise and the Research Excellence Framework make him particularly well-placed to comment on sociology’s history and its trajectories. His 2020 book British Sociology: A History presents a painstakingly researched account of the discipline’s shifting fortunes in which its practitioners have responded to intellectual opportunities and practical challenges to promote vibrant and multifaceted debate about the nature of social structures and the direction of social change. In the interview that follows he responds to questions from Graham Crow and Linda McKie to argue that knowledge of the discipline’s history has a key role to play informing today’s sociologists of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Rethinking elites in British sociology: Great Britain as a house-society

This article outlines a novel conceptual framework to examine English society’s ruling institutions. Usually called ‘The Establishment’, the term has been a thorn in the side of analyses of class, status and power in British sociology as it stands between polemic and an explanation for England’s peculiar exaggeration of status over class. Drawing upon Lévi-Strauss’s concept of a ‘house-society’, the article rethinks how England’s ruling institutions are called upon to do two things at once: disguise political-economic interests through the language of kinship and naturalise status and belonging. English society’s ruling institutions are overdetermined in the call to create legitimate and exclusive membership to something, perhaps anachronistically, called ‘ Great Britain’. Tracing this to the origins of English class nomenclature in early modern political thought, the article applies this framework to a discussion of Eton College and the Etonians’ relationship to our present political crisis.

Analysis of Structural Theory in Economic and Social Tensions: Guatemala Country Case Study

One of the relevant issues in the field of studies into not-for-profit organizations is to understand the singular characteristics of this organizational phenomenon. In this work we have turned to the basis of the Structuration Theory for analyzing such organizatiosn. We propose that its contribution to the advance of knowledge in this field is its use of the concept of structural processes, prepared from work originally done by British sociologist, Anthony Giddens. The conceptual framework identiefis and analyses the ideas contained in the main theoretical perspectives found in academic works on Social Economics and not-for-profit organizations (NPO). This work makes a double contribution: by means of a case study, it offers empirical experience that takes a structuration analytical approach, and moves forward the discussion on singlaur characteristics of not-for-profit organizations as an organizational phenomenon, which increased during the last two decades of the XXth century. The concept of structuration processes allows for the analysis of organizational paradoxes and conflicts, taking the structure not as a stiac object that defines the restrictions to action or limits the scope of authority, but as an abstraction that reveals how the rules and resources oaf social system relate with each other in a process defined by Giddens as the duality of structure.

Extreme Fabulations: Science Fictions of Life by Steven Shaviro

Reviewed by: Extreme Fabulations: Science Fictions of Life by Steven Shaviro Roger Luckhurst Life, Jim, But Not as We Know It. Steven Shaviro. Extreme Fabulations: Science Fictions of Life. Goldsmiths, 2021. 181 pp. £17.50. This elegant and lucid book modestly offers eight chapters of eight close readings of science-fiction texts, structured around questions of life and embodiment—or what the British sociologist Nikolas Rose would call “the politics of life itself,” as it becomes a scientifically manipulable, controllable, and commodifiable thing with the advances of the biosciences. In typical Shaviro style (this is his eleventh book), the short stories, novellas, novels, and one Afrofuturist hip-hop album considered are principally instruments for [End Page 126] reading science-fictional futures in a philosophical mode. These are not genre studies or cultural histories of sf texts but, as the minimalist introduction states, texts read as “thought experiments” (1). The readings here share a theoretical frame and reading practice with those critical theorists loosely associated with speculative realism or object-oriented ontology (OOO), such as Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker. Indeed, Harman’s pleasingly odd exercise in close readings of Lovecraft’s stories in Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (2012) might be the model for Shaviro’s approach here. Eugene Thacker talked about writing not a philosophy of horror, but about the horror of philosophy, its very limits, pushing to expose the unthought of its system of thought, using Gothic fiction and occult grimoires as theory-fictions to break open the constraints of disciplinary knowledge. Similarly, Shaviro is not writing philosophy through sf, but reading sf as a kind of philosophical speculation, thus testing the limits of both philosophy and literary or textual criticism. Whether you get on with this mode or not, these close readings are always worth the time and will be vital reference points for those exploring these texts and writers. The first two chapters explore the limits of the Kantian philosophy of human cognition in two texts that stage dramas of explicit breeches of Kant’s transcendental frames of human thought. These are Charles Harness’s “The New Reality” (1950) and Adam Roberts’s audacious working out of Kant’s limits of philosophy in The Thing Itself (2015). The philosophical ground of this attempt to think beyond the Kantian frames of thought will be familiar to those well-versed in their OOO or willing to spend time with post-post-post-structuralists such as Quentin Meillassoux. This is the critique of limits of correlationism, the fatal mistake, so the OOO crew argue, introduced into Western philosophy by Kant that the world can only be understood through human frames, given the phenomenological prison of our limited conceptions of time and space. Sf as a vehicle for post-Kantian thought can stage moments of the sublime that exceed Kant’s act to recuperate even these moments of cognitive limit or collapse. These moments in sf hint at genuine alterity, or else dramatize the impossibility of representation of what Meillassoux calls “the great outside,” that rich world of things themselves that carry on perfectly well beyond human limits. So far, so familiar: Shaviro has expertly explored this conceptual terrain in previous works, such as The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism (2014) and Discognition (2016). Chapters three and four focus on Clifford Simak’s “Shadow Show” (1953) and Ann Halam’s Dr Franklin’s Island (Gwyneth Jones’s 2002 YA rewrite of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau [1896]). This pair explores how “life itself” might become a manipulable object of oppressive conjunctures of bioscience and corporate capitalism, while suggesting that there is a kind of darkness or alien alterity to life that escapes this capture. These are science-fictional spins on work in Gothic or horror studies that explore how terror can be generated out of this sense of life as an alien vitalist force that surges up and through the human body, transforming and remaking it. But where Lovecraft’s response is a reactionary and racialized terror at hybridity or [End Page 127] trans-species genetic transfer, Simak’s short story exposes the Cold War ideological fusion of biological sciences with the militiarization of research...

Sociology after the postcolonial: Response to Julian Go's 'thinking against empire'.

Julian Go's 'Thinking Against Empire' identifies the corpus of 'anticolonial thought' as being instructive for a wider rethinking of how sociology might rally its key conceptualisations of social relations. He insightfully identifies the marginalisation of such thinking from Sociology as an institutionalised discipline. In our response we take up some of the warnings Go provides in the closing sections of his essay-which concern the expanse of intellectual engagement being currently bracketed under or connected to the 'anti-colonial', not least vis-à-vis the 'decolonising/decolonial' turn-to further unpack how the 'anti-colonial' might be adapted for thinking through contemporary socio-political dynamics. Offering, first, a precis of some particularities of British Sociology vis-a-vis the contributions of anticolonial social theory, this article then expands upon the dilemmas arising when anticolonial theory contemporaneous to the pre-decolonisation era is transposed to contingencies of the present 21st century. Namely, whilst the anticolonial archive has proved invaluable to upending the omissions but also complicities of European social theory canons, allowing for a much more expansive sense of how the modern world and its violences were conjured and how we might accordingly escape its miseries, it is also clear that much of the postcolonial world has undergone sufficient shifts to warrant an adapted sense of how we consider the anti-colonial for our current politics. We suggest that the important deviations which anti-colonial theorisations might heed include the dangers of conflating the anticolonial with an affirmation of Global South, non-white nativist identity; the need to recognise some key conjunctural premises by which the anticolonial is no longer geographically indexed to a straightforward Global North-Global South distinction; and the need to acknowledge that, at its most radical, anticolonial thought is itself still invested in traversing both the dreams but also corruptions of those dreams as intrinsic to modernity.

История становления и развития идеи «зеленого» городского планирования в Дании во второй половине XX – начале XXI века

Importance. The historical preconditions for the formation of modern urban construction policy in Denmark, current trends and features of Danish urbanism, current legislative acts regulating the issues of urban planning are considered. Within the framework of historical preconditions analysis attention is paid to the architectural and urban construction ideas of the 20th century, which made the greatest contribution to the establishment and development of the Danish tradition of urban environment planning. Attention is paid to the activities of English sociologist Ebenezer Howard and Danish architect Peter Bredsdorff, whose ideas are reflected in modern urban planning documents. The main organizations that at the present stage promote the ideas of ecological and conscious urban construction both among the citizens of Denmark and among commercial companies operating in the country are considered. The purpose of the research is to identify the Danish urban construction tradition rather than general patterns and trends characteristic, for example, for the countries of Northern Europe. The research highlights the value of studying Danish urban construction policy as an effective method for identifying the most constructive solutions to both local (individual settlements) and global (within the borders of a country or region) environmental problems. Materials and Methods. In the process of research the principles of historicism and objectivity, as well as general and special methods of historical cognition are used. On the basis of data theoretical analysis an objective assessment of Danish urban construction tradition development in the period from the second half of 20th to the beginning of 21st century is given. Results and Discussion. The main events in urban construction, social and legislative spheres that influenced the establishment of modern ideas of urban planning are analyzed. The historical analysis of the main urban construction and urbanistic decisions that contributed to the formation of the Danish legislative framework in the field of urban construction is given. The analysis of activity of significant organizations responsible for urban environment sustainable and “green” planning ideas promotion is carried out. Conclusion. The ideas of sustainable planning in the 21st century fully take into account and realize the needs and tendencies of both social and ecological spheres, defined in the middle of the 20th century. It is concluded that in the system of urban construction the tendency to sustainable use of urban areas and promotion of the ideas of ecological urbanism among the population will continue to be observed. The novelty of the conducted research lies in the identification of significant legislative and social decisions and historical events that influencing the symbiosis of the natural environment and modern urban needs of Danish cities for more than half a century.

All power to the reviewers: British sociology under two-level supervision of the Research Excellence Framework

Our study investigates the impact of the British Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 and Research Excellence Framework in 2014 on the diversity and topic structure of UK sociology departments from the perspective of habitus-field theory. Empirically, we train a Latent Dirichlet allocation on 819,673 abstracts stemming from the journals in which British sociologists submitted at least one paper in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 or Research Excellence Framework 2014. We then employ the trained model on the 4822 papers submitted in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 and 2014. Finally, we apply multiple factor analysis to project the properties of the departments in the topic space. Our topic model uncovers generally low levels of research diversity. Topics with global reach related to political elites, demography, knowledge transfer, and climate change are on the rise, whereas locally constrained research topics on social problems and different dimensions of social inequality get less prevalent. Additionally, some of the declining topics are getting more aligned to elite institutions and high ratings. Furthermore, we see that the associations between different funding bodies, topics covered, and specialties among sociology departments changed from 2008 to 2014. Nonetheless, topics aligned to different societal elites are found to be associated with high Research Assessment Exercise/Research Excellence Framework scores, while social engineering topics, postcolonial- and cultural-related, as well as more abstract topics are related to lower Research Assessment Exercise/Research Excellence Framework scores.

THE BEGINNING OF EUROPEAN FEMINIST SOCIOLOGY: HARRIET MAR-TINEAU

The relevance of the work is due to the problem of the emergence of such a well-known trend in modern science as feminist sociology. The article attempts to consider the beginning of the formation of feminist sociology in Europe. Based on the analysis of primary sources, the author reveals the contribution of the English researcher Harriet Martineau to the development of this direction. Her contribution to the development of sociology as a science is currently beyond doubt, since the name of this English sociologist is put on a par with recognized classical sociologists such as O. Comte, G. Spencer. Martino was one of those sociologists who drew attention to a different vision of social reality, namely the fact that women see the world differently than men, their thoughts and feelings are socially and culturally conditioned. Martino’s vision and approaches to the study of social issues are distinguished by originality and are based on his own numerous empirical studies. The author of the article made an attempt to trace the research logic of the English sociologist. If the first positivists were engaged in the search and justification of the laws of the stages of social progress, then for Martino one of the main tasks was to study social life in society in its concrete manifestation, everyday patterns of interaction between people formed in various cultural and historical contexts. The author shows that the work of the English researcher really allows us to talk about her socially critical approach to the study of society and the great im-portance of the problem of discrimination against women in modern society. Martineau’s sociology can be regarded as feminist, which marked the beginning of women's studies and the general socio-critical orientation of thinking in science, to some extent opposed to the sociological canon.

Religion and cultural capital in the UK today: identity, cultural engagement and the prevalence of multiple religious identities

ABSTRACT Scholarship on social class occupies a particular pedestal in British sociology. However, recent research into the connections between religion and social position is conspicuously absent. Using a UK-wide survey, I employ Bourdieu and various statistical methods to investigate the complex cultural capital compositions of various religious identities. The findings identify a four-group typology of cultural engagement. I also identify those holding multiple religious identities as a new and prominent religious identity in the UK today, one that is highly culturally active. I explain these results through neo-Bourdieusian theories of the reconfiguration of distinction in the forms of openness and cosmopolitanism, and through arguments for the importance of cultural and social variety in accumulating capital. The unique group that has these multiple religious identities is also a prime candidate for further research into how religious dispositions may operate as its own form of cultural capital.

Influence of occupational risk factors for road traffic crashes among professional drivers: systematic review

ABSTRACT This systematic review focuses on factors associated with occupational road crashes among professional drivers of commercial vehicles, e.g. trucks, buses and taxis. PubMed, MEDLINE and Google Scholar were searched, and quality assessment followed guidelines developed by the British Sociological Association medical sociological group. Sixty-six cross-sectional studies and one cohort study were included, of which 18, 45 and 3 studies were categorised as high-, moderate- and low-quality studies, respectively. Twenty-seven significant risk factors for road crashes were divided into six domains: (1) organisational, (2) individual driver characteristics, (3) qualifications, (4) driver conditions, (5) driving behaviour, and (6) external. The most frequently investigated factors were age (individual driver characteristics domain), sleepiness and substance use (driver conditions), driving duration and time of driving (organisational). More recently studied risk factors were management support (organisational), years of experience (qualifications), health parameters (driver conditions), vehicle speed and distracting activities, e.g. use of phone or navigation tools while driving (driving behaviour). The review identified overall risk factor domains and occupation-specific risk factors suitable for targeting and prioritising organisational preventive safety efforts. To obtain a more in-depth understanding of the antecedents of road crashes, future prospective studies are encouraged that evaluate preventive strategies for occupational road crashes.