Sociological Enterprise Research Articles

Breaking Walls, Building Bridges: Expanding the Presence and Relevance of Rural Sociology*

Abstract Rural areas continue to face a series of challenges; many are likely to have profound impacts on the vitality of these places over the long term. Of central concern is whether the rural sociological enterprise, a potentially vital source of information and guidance on such diverse issues, will be able to effectively respond to such challenges. The author argues that in order to strengthen its relevance and viability in coming years, the rural sociological profession must embrace three important shifts. First, it must modify the manner in which it engages in the production of new knowledge by pursuing a more balanced portfolio of investments in disciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Second, it must take a bold step to build bridges to new entities whose missions, goals, and values closely align with those of the Rural Sociological Society. And third, it must take a more proactive role in generating quality, scientifically sound information that is aligned with the needs of federal and state policy communities, particularly information that can better articulate how policies are likely to impact rural people and places.

Studying ourselves: Sociology discipline-building in the United States

self-studies, internal evaluations, and in the various histories of the discipline and of its professional organizations. In the early years of discipline-building, those who were, or wanted to be, sociologists studied themselves prodigiously and attempted to chart a course for posterity Prompted by the centennial anniversary of the American Sociological As sociation in 2005, it is timely to look back at how we defined and studied ourselves and at what was said as well as what was left unsaid. The "fathers" of American sociology and their network of associates engaged in dis cipline-building as they studied and directed the progress of the new science of sociol ogy. They collected data, analyzed it, reported their findings at professional meetings, and published them in the prominent journals of the day Of particular interest is who documented the history of early American sociology, how, and why? Peter Baehr di chotomized contributions to the development of sociology as either discursive or institu tional. Discursive contributions are those of ideas, and institutional those establishing "some artifact or institution demonstrably related to the sociological enterprise" (2002: 6). This work deals with the latter, specifically with sociology in institutions of higher education in the United States as it was introduced, defined, measured, and publicly presented. As is evident in the literature, the early history of academic sociology was written by white males and focused on selected male and coeducational institutions. In addition to looking at that history as a sociology of sociology, we will also seek out and examine the treatment of the "special mission" institutions for women and for blacks

Institutions and Rule-Scepticism

In the original exchange with Michael Lynch two things were at stake: first, we disagreed on the best way to analyse science as a social activity, and second, we disagreed on how to exploit the legacy ofWittgenstein's work in the course of such an analysis (see Pickering, 1992). Lynch opts for an ethnomethodological approach, which is descriptive but not explanatory in any causal way; I opt for a form of the sociology of knowledge in which the aspiration to provide causal explanations plays a central role. Lynch sees Wittgenstein's work as constituting a challenge to the sociologist, while I see it as a resource that can be used to deepen and further the sociological enterprise. Although we have a running disagreement about the interpretation of particular arguments in the Philosophical Investigations we agree, in general terms, that Wittgenstein's work is capable of being read in either way. The question is: which is the most fruitful? Predictably, we define fruitfulness differently. The result is that Lynch sees Wittgenstein as an embryonic ethnomethodologist; I see him as a proto-sociologist. I readily concede that the big battalions are on Lynch's side. Most philosophers selectively emphasize the points in Wittgenstein that Lynch deems decisive and share his lack of concern for the points I find most interesting. Wittgenstein was, after all, the patron saint of the 'ordinary language philosophy' or 'linguistic analysis' that dominated Oxford philosophy in the 1950s and 60s. These philosophers said they were doing neither metaphysics nor empirical science, but merely studying the 'logical geography' of concepts. Neither constructive theory building nor causal explanation was seen as necessary just 'analysis' and 'clarification'. Though fashions change quickly in philosophy, something of this spirit lives on in current Oxford readings of Wittgenstein (for example, those of Baker & Hacker, 1984). It is intriguing to find these readings enthusiastically absorbed into ethnomethodology. It has to be admitted that the two fit together very well. But for those of us who cut our philosophical teeth on Oxford-style linguistic analysis, and decisively rejected it, it is sad to see its narrow and self-imposed limitations reproduced and relabelled as a form of radicalism. This is why, in the original exchange, I spoke of a Right-wing

The Arrogance of Public Sociology

My job is to introduce a little tension into an otherwise harmonious system. Public along with its cousin policy are currently very popular. My guess is that the vast majority of the audience is in agreement with Burawoy's call for an enlargement of sociology. And I suspect that most people in the U.S. today who call themselves sociologists somehow want to be molders of society. It is important, therefore, to challenge some issues implied by the call for more sociology. Yet, criticizing Burawoy's argument in a cogent way is difficult because his position is not entirely clear. Because what he means by is somewhat problematic, almost anything I say can be countered by a disclaimer that the object of my comment is not, in fact, part of his position or that it is not what he meant. Nevertheless, I will react to what I understand his points to be and to what I interpret his statements about sociology to imply. As I understand it, Burawoy argues that (1) sociology bears an interactive and mutually stimulating relationship with other forms of particularly what he calls sociology, (2) sociology is a desirable activity to be encouraged; indeed, that it is vital to the health of the entire sociological enterprise, (3) sociology depends on a base of strong professional sociology and that the two are not fundamentally incompatible. Further, from his remarks here and from his writings, I gather that sociology encompasses many things, including: (1) engagement in political activities to promote somebody's conception (I guess his) of social justice, (2) actively revealing to nonprofessional audiences the knowledge that sociologists think they have or the truths they think they know, (3) orienting our research and writing around moral issues, (4) engaging the in debate about moral questions based on sociological insights, and (5) helping various publics solve problems or gather information relevant to their concerns, or helping to create such publics. If my interpretation of the meaning of is correct, then a program encouraging sociologists to become more public would appear to be a mistake. In my opinion, (1) involves some false assumptions, (2) endangers what little legitimacy sociology has, thereby helping

Objectivity and the supernormal: the limitations of bracketing approaches in providing neutral accounts of supernormal claims

This paper contends that bracketing approaches to the sociological study of supernatural, paranormal, and occult proponents do not truly ‘bracket’ the reality-claims made by those being studied, but instead impose ontological limits on what can be considered ‘supernormal’. It is argued that such boundaries and definitions tend to rule out alternative ontological perspectives of the kind that researchers typically encounter among religious, paranormal, and occult proponents. It is also argued that, unlike earlier reductionist approaches to the supernormal, the bias of bracketing approaches is not necessarily based on an underlying sceptical outlook of researchers, but rather reflects an inherent ontological limitation within the sociological enterprise itself. It is recommended that bracketing should be replaced by a reflexive, dialogical approach that emphasises the ontological positioning of social analyses with respect to supernormal claims.

Postmodernizmas ir epistemologinio reliatyvizmo spąstai

This essay is an excerpt from the forthcoming book - Critical Discourse in Sociology. Between Positivism and Postmodernism. The essay deals with the dilemmas of relativism. The sociological concept of relativity of last decades was formulated as the integral part of sociological inquiry, aimed at the methodological complexity and some critical character of sociological thought. The intellectual transformation of recent sociology has been accompanied by a proliferation of alternative theories and concepts. Given the acute understanding of socially determined and arbitrary character of knowledge, the new sociological identity is being shaped by the pluralist context of latter-day sociological inquiry. This essay attempts an appraisal of differences in alternative modes of knowledge by exploring critically its various thematic features. As sociology‘s ongoing internal struggles continue, it is appropriate to ask whether the multidimensional approach is able to employ its own relativistic elements and maybe analytic techniques in the process of keeping itself more useful to the social sciences. It is possible to identify some postmodern trends in contemporary sociology that are becoming quite diverse internally. It is clear, however, that sociologists attach a little deal of significance to these differentiating changes as one of the crucial criteria of the arrival of new and the more complex forms of theorizing. Sociologists devote also too little attention to the relationship between contemporary social transformations and the restructuring some basic concepts in sociology. Furthermore, the current debates on relativism in sociology do not account for the fact that “postmodernism”, as a distinct and multiparadigmatic intellectual activity, is unequally distributed throughout the history of the social sciences.
 The paper examines the problematic relationship between positivistic and postmodern sociology, using the recent development of the social sciences in Lithuania as a case study and discussing the alternative models of sociology and their implications for intellectual reflexivity and critical reconstruction in social sciences. The dilemmas of relativism are clear in Lithuanian social scientists’s treatment of what they calls “postmodernism”. The aim of this essay is to explore the dual relations between the positivistic and postmodern trends in sociology by specifying the historical aspects of its contemporary development. As a consequence of one-sided, undifferentiating understanding of postmodernism, the more narrow, monist and “purist” concept of science is shaped. The central thesis is that pursuit of a „pure” science model restricts the potentiality of sociological enterprise. The paper argues specifically for the differentiation of the concept of postmodernism and suggests a need for sociology to more thoroughly integrate postmodern insights into its theory and practice while highlighting such key aspects of the sociological tradition as the need to ground its discoursive forms in dialogical, conventional and communicative attempts. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate and make explicit some positive connections between explanatory and discursive forms of sociology examined from the perspective of critical social theory.

Review essay: Reflections on Reynolds

Over the course of more than three decades, Larry Reynolds has presented a series of thoughtful critiques of the sociological enterprise as it is organized in the United States. This essay will focus on two volumes published recently by Larry Reynolds on the sociology of sociology (hereafter referred to as "Reflexive" and "Self-Analytical"), which are essential reading for anyone who is remotely concerned about the state of American sociology. Throughout the pages of these texts, Larry Reynolds raises important questions about the fundamental nature of sociology. His basic premise is that the assumptions underlying the discipline interfere directly with the self-correcting activity of a scientific field. Instead of resembling a science, research generated by members of the discipline typically serves as a proponent of state-sponsored capitalism (Reflexive, pp. 12-22). Reynolds believes this di rection leads to a bureaucratically successful discipline that is intellectually weak. To reverse this direction, Reynolds argues for a thorough critique and period of renewal for American sociology (Reflexive, pp. 204-232).

Questioning textbook truth: Suicide rates and the Hawthorne effect

Advocacy and interest groups routinely make fantastic and shocking claims in an effort to motivate the public to respond to what these groups perceive to be important but neglected social problems and/or incipient “crises.” When closer scrutiny impeaches these claims, these groups lose a measure of credibility, and the general public grows increasingly cynical of them and of the social sciences whose data and research presumably support the claim. Similar temptations and dangers may face sociology. I raise the possibility that the teaching of discredited findings and discoveries and the use of gimmicks that challenge conventional wisdom and common sense may turn our students off and trigger the same distrust and cynicism engendered by advocacy groups. Ironically, giving in to the temptation to shock and surprise rather than to inform and enlighten may foreclose the very real opportunities that exist for engaging our students and the public in the enterprise of sociology.

Moving to ‘Our’ Common Ground – a Critical Examination of Community Cohesion Discourse in Twenty-First Century Britain

The paper focuses on the discourses, recommendations and programmes for facilitating community cohesion in the UK as recorded on the pages of an archive of documents such as: The Community Cohesion Review Team Report (2001), The Bradford District Race Review (2001) and The Local Government Association's Guidance on Community Cohesion (2002). These documents were commissioned in relation to the disturbances in the city of Bradford and in the towns of Oldham and Burnley in the north of England in the spring and summer of 2001. The facilitation of community cohesion, it shall be revealed in this paper, is a rather sociological enterprise involving the problematization and modification of the forms of sociation in communities and especially the structures of interaction between different communities. Community, civil society and social capital are central to this community cohesion discourse, and the towns of Oldham, Burnley and the city of Bradford are at the epicentre of this unfolding social project of attempting to alleviate disorder, disharmony and discord in these areas characterized by multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-cultural communities. However, despite the best of intentions, the process of community cohesion facilitation as read off the pages of this archive of documents will be presented here as being blighted by three inter-related factors; (1) the practical problems associated with attempting to formulate a public policy of community cohesion on the assumption that common principles and shared values can be founded in multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-cultural societies; (2) the relative de-emphasis of material deprivation and socio-economic marginalization in community cohesion facilitation programmes in favour of concentrating on inter-community relationships; and (3) with special reference to Bradford, the criminalization of young male British-Asian ‘rioters’ in the city is shown to be inconsistent with the rebuilding and re-orientation of social capital from defensive ‘bonding’ to inclusive ‘bridging’ in the judicial aftermath that is currently gripping this city.

Consumption and Emotion: The Romantic Ethic Revisited

This article revisits Campbell's (1987) The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism thesis in the light of new intersections with sociological issues of embodiment and emotions. A variety of themes and issues are raised: the persistence of mind/body, reason/emotion dualities in the consumption literature, the importance of `disappointment' in consumer culture, external factors which mediate the consumption experience, and finally the interpretation of both Romanticism and romantic, interpersonal relationships. A largely disembodied and socially disembedded account of consumption and emotion is on offer here, the implications of which extend far beyond the limits of Campbell's thesis to debates on consumer culture and the sociological enterprise in general. In making these claims, we highlight the need for a `passionate' sociology which would in turn integrate embodiment and emotions more fully into the consumption agenda. These key themes are discussed, with some sociological pointers for the future, in consumption and beyond.

Get Ready to Duck. Bouncers and the Realities of Ethnographic Research on Violent Groups

This paper seeks to address some of the pragmatic and ethical issues encountered when researching violence. We seek through reference to our own work and to the work of others to highlight the inevitability of these problems and to suggest that dealing with them is instrinsic to the sociological enterprise. People don’t realise how fucking mean and nasty the world can get when it’s got a drink inside him. We stand there and the dregs of the universe are out on the piss, now we are on our own and there is no way that anyone understands because it’s a young peoples’ world. The nice people, the quiet people don’t notice we are there. And the older people are at home in front of the telly. If they realized how bad it can be and that we were the only ones there they would be shocked. (Steve South) Generations of scholars have found ethnographic work to be a staple method of investigating deviant cultures and institutions, and ethnographic strategies have often proved as varied and imaginative as the world they describe (Hobbs 2001). Violent action lies at the core of many of these worlds and ethnographers have tended to deal with this violence in an understandably cautious fashion. Usually this caution is manifested by a switch from a deep engagement with the culture to a sudden adoption of observational techniques, although violence can become the focus for ethnographers (Armstrong 1998; Norris 1993) as they attempt to tease out essential essences of cultures grounded in visceral action. Occasionally violence may be used against ethnographers as part of group initiation. For instance Sanchez-Jankowski (1990) in his ten-year study of gangs in Los Angeles, New York and Boston, was the subject of physical attack both as part of initiation rituals, and as a result of being falsely accused of being an informant, while Jacobs (1998) was robbed at gunpoint, and then suffered telephone harassment by a crack dealer who was one of his research informants. Indeed one of the most interesting aspects of deviant ethnographies is the lack of attention generally paid to the frequently chaotic relationships that are generated by the field, of which violence is often a by-product. Usually this issue is dealt with by a rendition of some situationally justified heroic operetta delivered in the all too familiar tones of the college boy as wanna be corner boy. However our research was all about personal violence as a commercial device, and neither macho posing, 1 nor dismissive and frankly

Inventing Social Justice: SSSP and the Twenty-First Century

I would like to start with a question that I have borrowed from colleagues in the Humanities who are interested in the history of science (de Santillana 1959). What was Galileo’s crime? Most responses to this question would focus on his revolutionary discoveries about the movement of the planets around the sun. Another view of his crime, however, was that he chose to communicate his Žndings about the earth and the sun, not in Latin, the medium of the educated elite, but in Italian, the public vernacular, parola del popolo. My address today is a call to the Society for the Study of Social Problems to build on its legacy and move toward committing Galileo’s crime. I will examine different approaches to making the knowledge generated by scholars in SSSP available to a public outside of the academy and our professional community. I believe that a search for this new direction has beneŽts not only for inventing social justice, but also for reinventing and energizing the sociological enterprise. Let us begin with a brief look backward. As we all know, the founding of SSSP in 1951 was grounded in its opposition to the American Sociological Society’s commitment to a “pure science” model of sociology, and the belief that sociology had lost sight of humanistic goals (Galliher and Galliher 1995; Skura 1976). The early opposition to ASS was often grounded in personal animosities, but there was also the concern that ASS was not democratic and was dominated by an “Eastern establishment” not very open to the aspirations of younger sociologists. But SSSP was not alone in its emergence as an alternative or oppositional movement. At least a decade before the founding of SSSP, some of the newest generation of professional psychologists were concerned about the narrow professionalism of their Želd and in 1936, they formed the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). These early opposition movements looked like attempts to reform the larger and more dominant professional associations of their disciplines. It was not until the early 1960s that SSSP set in motion the beginnings of a critique of mainstream sociology that went to core issues of epistemology and methodology—How do we know what we know? And what is the role of the sociologist in the process of creating new knowledge? In 1961, Alvin Gouldner’s presidential address to SSSP examined the doctrine of a value-free sociology and judged it to be a group myth that, among other things, served to marginalize the role of sociologist as critical intellectual and to elevate to center stage the sociologist as value-free professional.

Sociological imperialism and the profession of medicine revisited: where are we now?

This paper revisits Strong’s thesis of ‘sociological imperialism’ some 20 years on in order to assess its relevance to present day developments within and beyond the sociology of health and illness. The thesis, it is suggested, continues to raise a number of key sociological issues of more or less abiding importance, particularly in the light of recent Foucauldian and postmodern critiques of medicine, the body and disease. This in turn paves the way for a further series of critical reflections on the limits of constructionism in particular and the dilemmas of the sociological enterprise in general. Revisiting these issues from time to time, it is concluded, is indeed an instructive exercise: a reminder perhaps, welcome or otherwise, of the limits of our own disciplinary claims on the world and our place within it.

On sources and narratives in historical social science: a realist critique of positivist and postmodernist epistemologies*

Critics of the interdisciplinary enterprise of historical sociology commonly contend that the narrational accounts of past social phenomena provided by historians are inadequate to the task of theory-building and testing. In support of this negative assessment, opponents will adduce informational deficiencies in the available data (the standard positivist appraisal of historical evidence), or cite the interpretive anarchy that seemingly prevails at the narrative phase of emplotment (the skeptical, postmodernist contention that historiographic texts 'construct' rather than veridically represent the events they artfully contrive to signify). Both of these lines of criticism are unbalanced, and therefore seriously misleading as regards the epistemic foundations of historical-sociological inquiry. The 'social authenticity' and 'informational density' of historical evidence does allow for veridical reconstructions of the past, while the reflexive interpretive protocols of source criticism and the sociology of knowledge can be deployed to provide warrant for discriminating arbitrations between competing theories and narratives. The various epistemological deformations in the study of human affairs that have been encouraged by the old idiographic-nomothetic polarity - chronic ahistoricism within the social sciences, the atheoretical predilections of much conventional historiography - are rectifiable through the consolidation of a fully integrated sociological history, a unified and inclusive historical social science.

The Social Construction of Meaning

What is commonly called the construction of meaning is one expression of sociology's increasing maturity. It is an area that cuts to the very heart of the sociological enterprise by challenging vulgar essentialisms and models of human group life based on reified constructs that are inconsistent with what we know about the human species. The first major challenge was largely completed by the 1930s, when instinct theory as a form of biological essentialism was replaced with a wholly social ontology in which explanations and understandings of social phenomena could be sought in their own terms. It is therefore fair to say that the entire field of sociology has been a social constructionist one for most of the twentieth century, to the extent that practicing sociologists look directly at social processes to find explanations for societal configurations and arrangements. A second wave of constructionist scholarship is conventionally marked by Berger and Luckmann's The Social Corlstruciiorl of Reality (1966). Berger and Luckmann drew from Weberian, phenomenological, and pragmatist scholarship, which is more explicitly interpretive and has been used to challenge the sociological essentialisms stemming from influential misunderstandings of Durkheim and the subsequent hegemony of so-called factist paradigms. While this newer constructionist

A Neo‐Utilitarian Theory of Class?

Previous articleNext article No AccessA Neo‐Utilitarian Theory of Class?1Dietrich Rueschemeyer and James MahoneyDietrich RueschemeyerBrown University Search for more articles by this author and James MahoneyBrown University Search for more articles by this author Brown UniversityPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 105, Number 6May 2000 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/210466 Views: 87Total views on this site Citations: 8Citations are reported from Crossref © 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Dustin Avent-Holt Reconceptualizing Exploitation, Social Currents 2, no.33 (Aug 2015): 213–221.https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496515589854Arthur Sakamoto, ChangHwan Kim Bringing Productivity Back In: Rising Inequality and Economic Rents in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector, 1971 to 2001, The Sociological Quarterly 55, no.22 (Nov 2016): 282–314.https://doi.org/10.1111/tsq.12055Michèle Ollivier REVISITING DISTINCTION, Journal of Cultural Economy 1, no.33 (Nov 2008): 263–279.https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350802476970Arthur Sakamoto, Jeng Liu A critique of Wright's analysis of exploitation, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 24, no.22 (Apr 2006): 209–221.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2006.01.002Jörg Rössel Literatur, (Jan 2005): 357–402.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-80794-6_8Michèle Ollivier TOWARDS A STRUCTURAL THEORY OF STATUS INEQUALITY: STRUCTURES AND RENTS IN POPULAR MUSIC AND TASTES, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 21 (Jan 2004): 187–213.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0276-5624(04)21010-1Caleb Southworth, Judith Stepan-Norris The Geography of Class in an Industrial American City: Connections between Workplace and Neighborhood Politics, Social Problems 50, no.33 (Aug 2003): 319–347.https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2003.50.3.319Susanne von Below Anhang, (Jan 2002): 193–236.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-97567-6_10

Obligation as an Aspect of Leisure Experience

is a frequently used but lamentably under-conceptualized idea in leisure studies. Its importance there stems from two facts: leisure activities occasionally or frequently have an obligatory side that some participants nonetheless experience as part of leisure, but that other participants experience as offensive, chiefly because it effectively robs the activities of the essential quality of leisure choice. To speak of obligation, then, is to speak not about how people are prevented from entering certain leisure the goal of leisure constraints research, but about how people fail to define a given activity as leisure or redefine it as other than leisure, as an obligation. Accordingly, this paper treats obligation both as a state of mind, an attitude-a person feels obligated-and as a form of behavior-a person must carry out a particular course of action. But even while obligation is substantially mental and behavioral, it roots, too, in the social and cultural world of the obligated actor. Hence, the study of obligation is at once a psychological and sociological enterprise. People are obligated when, even though not coerced, they do or refrain from something because they feel bound in this regard by promise, convention, or circumstances. Obligation is not, however, necessarily unpleasant. For example, the leading lady is obligated to go to the theater during the weekend to perform in an amateur play, but does so with great enthusiasm because of her passion for drama as a leisure activity. By contrast, her obligation to go to work the following Monday morning after the high satisfaction of the leisure weekend comes as a letdown. In fact, she could refuse to honor both obligations, for no one is likely to force her to do so, but such refusal is unlikely, because it would very probably result in some unpleasant costs (e.g., a fine for missing work that day, a rebuke by the director for being absent). Another example might center on people, among them a fair range of professionals, for whom their occupation is as much a passion as acting is for the actress and for whom to work each Monday, however obligatory, is viewed as a good thing. Obligation also thrives beyond work and leisure in a third sphere; it is constituted of what might be called obligations, for want of a better descriptor. I have in mind such diverse requirements in life as eating, grocery shopping, taking a shower, attending religious services, to the dentist, mowing the lawn, driving the children to the cinema, and paying the family bills. These are routine activities. Participation in one-shot or highly unusual events can also be obligative, as in having an operation or getting a divorce. Routine or unusual, these activities must be done, even if some are occasionally pleasant and perhaps sporadically satisfying (e.g., finding a bargain at the grocery store or an insight in the sermon). And however viewed, they are normally seen as neither work nor leisure. Thus personal obligations are of concern to leisure studies only to the extent that they help demarcate this discipline, indicating that leisure is limited, in part, by the demands they occasionally impose. The relationship between obligation and leisure has been examined before. Dumazedier (1967) coined the term to describe activities, which from the point of view of the individual, arise in the first place from leisure, but which represent in differing degrees the character of obligations. He observed that the line separating leisure and obligation is at times unclear and depends largely on a person's attitude toward the activity. Thus, playing with one's children or shopping can be a duty or a delight (Bowlby, 1997, p. 102 distinguishes between doing and going shopping,) . Laverie ( 1998) found that aerobics are considered serious leisure by some participants, while others see them as personal obligation. But semi-leisure sometimes degenerates into anti-leisure. …

Re-Branding Britain: Sociology, Futures and Futurology

This paper argues that notions of the future and social change have been central to the sociological enterprise since its inception. However, sociology developed with the modern project and the rise of nation-states. This is reflected in the way that sociology has consistently taken for granted the geography of the nation-state as a basic organising principle for the understanding of social formations, producing ‘national’ sociologies. Thus, while providing a view of Britain in 2025, this paper also asks questions about the imaginary that constitutes Britain and the ways in which it will be re-visioned as part of the ‘global cosmopolitan society’. This re-visioning is not, however, the preserve of sociology and the paper elaborates popular imaginaries on the future of Britain. A recurring theme within visions of the future is the binary between utopias and dystopias, reframed in relation to the impact of new technologies and discussions of cyberspace. The paper examines the impact of these debates on the sociological imagination and the future of the sociological enterprise.

Re-Branding Britain: Sociology, Futures and Futurology

This paper argues that notions of the future and social change have been central to the sociological enterprise since its inception. However, sociology developed with the modern project and the rise of nation-states. This is reflected in the way that sociology has consistently taken for granted the geography of the nation-state as a basic organising principle for the understanding of social formations, producing `national' sociologies. Thus, while providing a view of Britain in 2025, this paper also asks questions about the imaginary that constitutes Britain and the ways in which it will be re-visioned as part of the `global cosmopolitan society'. This re-visioning is not, however, the preserve of sociology and the paper elaborates popular imaginaries on the future of Britain. A recurring theme within visions of the future is the binary between utopias and dystopias, reframed in relation to the impact of new technologies and discussions of cyberspace. The paper examines the impact of these debates on the sociological imagination and the future of the sociological enterprise.

Developing sociological arguments through community studies

This paper argues that community studies remain an effective medium for the development of sociological arguments, despite well-known criticisms of the genre. Several features of community studies help to explain the continuing popularity of the approach among researchers and audiences, even though they are at odds with the discipline's supposed 'McDonaldization'. First, community studies have the capability of 'placing' sociological arguments. Secondly, community studies have the capacity to illustrate the meaning of macro-level trends for people's everyday lives. Thirdly, community studies facilitate holistic treatments of the social relations under investigation through their emphasis on context. Fourthly, the community studies format is prized for its accessibility, achieved through a narrative style which plays down conventional researcher/ reader hierarchies without losing analytical sharpness. Recent research monographs and other studies are drawn upon to illustrate these points. They show that while the community studies tradition has necessarily evolved conceptually and methodologically, it has continuing relevance to the sociological enterprise.