bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sociological Work on Violence: Gender, Theory and Research
Authors: McKie Linda
Published: March 2010

The suffering caused by violence is senseless, persistent and demoralizing (Gordimer, 2003). For perpetrators there is the hollowness of holding power over others, a power that illustrates the fragility of their situation (Card, 2002; Mason, 2002). Yet despite the obvious relevance to sociology, violence in everyday and intimate practices has not been a central concern for sociological theory (Hearn, 1998; Ray, 2000). This may reflect the ‘taken for grantedness of violence’, the hierarchical and gendered nature of sociological work, especially on theory, combined with an earlier marginalization of gender, ethnicity and age. In this paper I draw upon the work of Midgley (2003) and her definition of ‘myths’ to offer an over-arching analysis of the images and ideas that surround and imbue sociological work on violence. Highlighting the barriers evident in, and recreated through, the sociological analysis of violence, the paper explores the challenges for sociology. A review of the tendency to atomistic approaches in sociological analysis and explanation reaffirms the need for theoretical pluralism in social sciences on the topic of violence (Eagleton, 2003).
Self-Organising Map Approach to Individual Profiles: Age, Sex and Culture in Internet Dating
Authors: Suna Teemu , Hardey Michael , Huhtinen Jouni , Hiltunen Yrjö , Kaski Kimmo , Heikkonen Jukka , Ala-Korpela Mika
Published: March 2010

A marked feature of recent developments in the networked society has been the growth in the number of people making use of Internet dating services. These services involve the accumulation of large amounts of personal information which individuals utilise to find others and potentially arrange offline meetings. The consequent data represent a challenge to conventional analysis, for example, the service that provided the data used in this paper had approximately 5,000 users all of whom completed an extensive questionnaire resulting in some 300 parameters. This creates an opportunity to apply innovative analytical techniques that may provide new sociological insights into complex data. In this paper we utilise the self-organising map (SOM), an unsupervised neural network methodology, to explore Internet dating data. The resulting visual maps are used to demonstrate the ability of SOMs to reveal interrelated parameters. The SOM process led to the emergence of correlations that were obscured in the original data and pointed to the role of what we call ‘cultural age’ in the profiles and partnership preferences of the individuals. Our results suggest that the SOM approach offers a well established methodology that can be easily applied to complex sociological data sets. The SOM outcomes are discussed in relation to other research about identifying others and forming relationships in a network society.
‘Doing What is Right’: Researching Intimacy, Work and Family Life in Glasgow, 1945-1960
Authors: Innes Sue , McKie Linda
Published: March 2010

Understanding discursive shifts over the twentieth century in relation to family roles, paid work and care is essential to any critical review of contemporary family theory and policies. This paper charts aspects of these shifts. An analysis of case records of the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSSPCC), 1945 to 1960 is presented. Based upon these data we reflect upon the construction of the working-class family in the West of Scotland and draw upon one case study to illustrate issues further. This post-war period was one of rapid social and technological change. It is commonly perceived as a period of segregated gender roles, and in the UK a predominant male-breadwinner family model. The RSSPCC case records suggest that family lives and forms, particularly for those on low incomes, were diverse throughout this period. Although prosecutions for cruelty and neglect are dominant in perceptions of the society, most of its work was in material assistance, advice and surveillance. This latter aspect is considered in this paper.
Dialectics and Modernity, Autonomy and Solidarity
Authors: Domingues J. M.
Published: March 2010

This article connects the contemporary crisis of modernity to the crisis of the Welfare State in the West and to its so far incomplete establishment in ‘Latin’-America, with special reference to Brazil. The reflexivisation of modernity is thus linked to a discussion of citizenship and social police which harks back to the definition of the principles of social policy, focusing on the possible alternative of ‘generative politics’ as a means of creating new forms of collective solidarity. The crisis of dialectical thought and the problem of social change are thereby tackled and a different way of understanding them is put forward, in accordance with new sorts of contemporary sociability.
The Career of Status Crystallization: A Sociological Odyssey
Authors: Smith R. David
Published: March 2010

Since it was first introduced half a century ago, Status Crystallization [SC] which is also know as Status Incongruence, Consistency or Inconsistency has been used in over 200 research papers. Many have accepted it and treated it as a potentially useful substantive construct and even generalized it somewhat. A few have tried to forge theoretical links between it and such related concepts as socialization and mobility. A third group has taken a more combative approach and declared it either theoretically vacuous or empirically irrelevant. Much of the debate is apparently a failed attempt at communication between the innumerate and the a- theoretical. This paper evaluates both of these tendencies through the examination of a selection of contributions to the debate. The conclusions reached include, first, that SC has never been appropriately measured or tested so that any claims regarding its efficacy are premature and second that a coherent sociological paradigm must have a place for SC in it. Any sociological theory which cannot provide a meaningful place for SC is deemed too restricted to be of any lasting interest. From this second point the paper addresses the role that operationalization and empirical research play in the formulation and refinement of social theories and the need for social theorists to become more methodologically astute. Building on insights derived from recent developments in chaos theory, the paper concludes with a general discussion of SC as a dynamic concept best modelled with differential equations.
Some Methodological and Epistemological Issues Raised by Doing Feminist Research on Non-Feminist Women
Authors: Millen D.
Published: March 2010

Feminism is a powerful conceptual tool for critiquing traditional sociological research, but notions of conducting ‘feminist research’ may contain some unchallenged assumptions about who should be researched and which methodologies are used. Two key concepts within feminist research - empowerment of women and the equality of the research relationship - are interrogated in the light of research conducted on a population of women unsympathetic to feminism and constructions of gender. This research suggests that whilst there is a need to conduct gender-sensitive work, too orthodox a definition of feminist research may inhibit rather than facilitate research which could lead to helpful insights for women. A better strategy might be to site the conflict in epistemology, rather than methodology, and to define feminist research in terms of values which it might uphold rather than techniques it might use.

Doing feminist research on unsympathetic populations can lead to conflicts between the researcher and participant's construction of the meaning of gendered experience. Researchers can justify their accounts with reference to feminist ‘successor sciences’ which have been postulated as an alternative to traditional positivistic rationalism. In the context of this study both feminist standpoint theory and feminist postmodernism are considered as useful justifications for the decisions taken in the research.
Doing Gender on and off the Pitch: The World of Female Football Players
Authors: Harris John
Published: March 2010

The following paper looks at the experiences of female football (soccer) players at a College of Higher Education in the South of England. Association Football occupies a special place in English society where it has traditionally been linked to notions of toughness, manliness and hegemonic masculinity. The last decade has witnessed expedient growth in the number of women playing football and this has led to much debate related to the positioning of the game in contemporary society.

Data was collected through an ethnographic approach utilizing observation and semi-structured interviews. Through their very participation in the game the women can be seen to be challenging notions of male hegemony. However their acceptance of the male game as being more important, and their adopting of discourse and ideologies emanating from the male model of the sport, means that they are also colluding in the (re)production of masculine hegemony.

For the women in this study, of central importance to the development of a female footballing identity are issues surrounding sexual orientation within the football world. Women's football in England suffers from an ‘image problem’ which can and does lead to tension both on and off the pitch. This paper explores how these women make sense of their own involvement in the game and how they negotiate the contested ideological terrains surrounding femininity, masculinity and sexual orientation.
Friendship or Facilitation: People with Learning Disabilities and Their Paid Carers
Authors: Pockney Rebecca
Published: March 2010

This article compares the composition and characteristics of the social networks of 14 people with learning disabilities with those of 24 of their paid support staff. In doing so the article not only establishes the differences in the diversity, durability and density of each group's social set, but highlights the disparity in perspective that the service users and the support staff have about their shared relationships. This is followed by a sociological discussion of why those with learning disabilities perceive their support staff as friends, while the support staff seldom consider the service users in this way, preferring to view themselves as facilitators to these individuals’ friendships. The article concludes by discussing the consequences of the staff and service users’ differing perspectives about their relationships, in terms of the tensions it generates in staff about their caring role and the effect it may have upon those with learning disabilities’ broader social inclusion.
Public Intimacy in Neighbour Relationships and Complaints
Authors: Stokoe Elizabeth
Published: March 2010

This paper examines neighbour relationships as an example of non-familial intimacy. It focuses on the way disputes between neighbours often hinge on notions of obtrusive public intimacy, in which the sights and sounds of normatively private domestic lives become sources of complaint. The analyses are based on approximately 150 hours of naturally-occurring interaction with neighbours including telephone calls to mediation centres, environmental health departments and anti-social behaviour units, neighbour mediation interviews, police-suspect interrogations in neighbour crime, and neighbour issues broadcast on television and radio. It was found that while the neighbours maintain good relations at the edges of private spaces, the physical arrangements of domestic properties, with their shared boundaries, means that personal information can be transmitted and observed as a routine matter of course. Disputes often have their basis in the illegitimate breach of boundaries, and in the unwanted and unavoidable receipt of the sights and sounds of other people's intimate lives.
Access Grid Nodes in Field Research
Authors: Fielding Nigel , Macintyre Maria
Published: March 2010

This article reports fieldwork with an Access Grid Node (‘AGN’) device, analogous to video teleconferencing but based on grid computational technology. The device enables research respondents to be interviewed at remote sites, with potential savings in travelling to conduct fieldwork. Practical, methodological and analytic aspects of the experimental fieldwork are reported. Findings include some distinctive features of AGN interviews relative to co-present interviews; overall, there were some benefits and some disadvantages to communication. The article concludes that this new research interview mode shows potential, particularly once the difficulties associated with a new research technology are resolved.
Research Identities: Reflections of a Contract Researcher
Authors: Goode Jackie
Published: March 2010

This paper examines the institutional identity formation of contract research staff in the context of the Taylorisation of research knowledges. The author has been a contract researcher for many years, after initially training and practising as a Probation Officer. She makes links between her social work training, and her current practice as a qualitative researcher. Drawing on her experience of working on a variety of different projects, at a number of different institutions, and providing illustrative examples from projects in sociology, social policy, health, and education, she reflects on the implications of the current social organization of academic research both for professional research practice and for researcher identity. There is a paradox in the way that contract research staff accrue a wealth of experience of how research is organised and conducted in different contexts, a repertoire of skills, and a vast volume of various kinds of ‘data’, whilst remaining vulnerable and marginalized figures within the academy, with few opportunities for professional development and advancement. She outlines a number of strategies she has employed in the preservation of the ‘research self’, and concludes by suggesting that the academy has much to learn about the effective management of ‘waste’, as embodied by researchers’ selves and their data, consequent upon the Taylorisation of research work.
The Time Economy of Parenting
Authors: Gray Anne
Published: March 2010

This paper explores how the UK Time Use Survey (UKTUS), together with the author's qualitative interviews and focus groups with London parents, can inform current policy debates about childcare and parental employment. It also refers to the international literature about long-term trends in parental childcare time. It addresses four key questions about time use and parenting, which have implications for theorisation of the ‘gender contract’ regarding childcare and for our understanding of the gendered distribution of time between care, work and leisure in two-parent families. How is total parenting time affected by parents’ work hours? How do the long work weeks of British fathers affect their capacity to share childcare with mothers? Would childcare time rise if work hours were more equally distributed between women and men? This invokes a discussion of how far childcare is really transferable between parents (or can be delegated to external carers); to what extent is it ‘work’ or a relational activity?
To Buy or not to Buy: Family Dynamics and Children's Consumption
Authors: Evans Julie , Chandler Joan
Published: March 2010

This article draws on data from a qualitative study of children living in families with either low or high levels of household income and outlines the intrafamilial dynamics that surround young children's relationships to contemporary consumer culture. The motivation for parents to provide their children with particular commodities, how parents prioritised children's requests and the rationale they used to buy or not to buy certain items was much more complex than parents simply ‘giving in’ to pester power. In the main, parents were making very considered judgements based on a range of factors. Wider social changes were seen as being contributory to new forms of consumption and thus new experiences of childhood which meant parents having to deal with an aspect of their children's lives that was much more problematic than they had experienced in their own childhoods.
Configurations of Care Work: Paid and Unpaid Elder Care in Italy and the Netherlands
Authors: Glucksmann Miriam , Lyon Dawn
Published: March 2010

Most current sociological approaches to work recognise that the same activity may be undertaken within a variety of socio-economic forms - formal or informal, linked with the private market, public state or not-for-profit sectors. This article takes care of the elderly as an exemplary case for probing some of the linkages between paid and unpaid work. We attempt to unravel the interconnections between forms of care work undertaken in different socio-economic conditions in two settings, the Netherlands and Italy. The research is part of a broader programme concerned with differing interconnections and overlaps between work activities. In this article, we are concerned with: 1) how paid and unpaid care work map on to four ‘institutional’ modes of provision - by the state, family, market, and voluntary sector; and 2) with the configurations that emerge from the combination of different forms of paid and unpaid work undertaken through the different institutions. Despite the centrality of family-based informal care by women in both countries, we argue that the overall configurations of care are in fact quite distinct. In the Netherlands, state-funded care services operate to shape and anchor the centrality of family as the main provider. In this configuration, unpaid familial labour is sustained by voluntary sector state-funded provision. In Italy, by contrast, there is significant recourse to informal market-based services in the form of individual migrant carers, in a context of limited public provision. In this configuration, the state indirectly supports market solutions, sustaining the continuity of family care as an ideal and as a practice.
Questioning the Subject in Biographical Interviewing
Authors: Harding Jennifer
Published: March 2010

This paper considers how different approaches to interviewing and styles of questioning produce different sorts of biographical subjects and accounts. It compares styles of biographical interview (chronological and narrative) and types of question (narrative and explanatory), and presents an approach, which treats the interview as a collaborative co-production primarily concerned with the present and subjectivity, rather than the past and fact. It also considers how biographical interviewing may direct and contain narratives of the self through the subject positions it creates and offers interviewees. Discussion is grounded in reflection on a recent project involving university students in interviewing young people leaving care about their care experiences and making a training video for professionals. The paper highlights the inter-subjective and emotional aspects of interviewing in this context.
On Not Living with a Partner: Unpicking Coupledom and Cohabitation
Authors: Roseneil Sasha
Published: March 2010

The contemporary normative model of sexual/ love relationships assumes a teleology in which some time after getting together two people instantiate their state of coupledom by moving in together. As a consequence, those who do not cohabit with a partner are generally thought not to be coupled. Social researchers have largely shared this understanding of intimate relationships, operating with a tripartite model of relationships in which people are single, cohabiting or married. This paper seeks to unpick the assumed contiguity of coupledom and cohabitation, and to deconstruct the category of ‘single’. It draws on data from an intensive investigation of the relationship experiences, practices and values of people who are not living with a partner. It starts with a discussion of the prevalence of not living with a partner, offering a commentary on recent demographic data and quantitative research. It then sets out the methodology used in research, and describes the sample, before exploring the diverse practices of partnership and orientations towards (non) cohabitation of those interviewees who were in non-residential couple relationships. Three main orientations are identified amongst the partnered (living apart together, or LAT) interviewees: living apart regretfully; living apart gladly and living apart undecidedly. The individual and relational contexts of these orientations are then discussed.
Social Capital as Network Capital: Looking at the Role of Social Networks among Not-For-Profits
Authors: Prell Christina
Published: March 2010

Social capital's rise in popularity is a phenomenon many have noted (Kadushin, 2006; Warde and Tampubolon, 2002; Portes, 1998). Although the concept is a relatively old one, it is the works of Bourdieu (1986), Coleman (1988; 1990), and Putnam (1993, 2000) that often get credited for popularizing the concept. These three, while sharing a view that social networks are important for social groups and society, place differing levels of emphasis on the role of networks in building trust or the exchange of various types of resources. In this paper, I briefly revisit these three theorists, and the criticisms each have received, to provide background for discussing recent research on social capital from a social networks approach. The social network approach is then applied to my own case study looking at the relations among not-for-profits, and special attention is given to the unique context of not-for-profits, and how this context might elaborate or challenge current thoughts on social, aka ‘network’ capital. A final discussion is also given to some measurement problems with the network approach to social capital.
Love Lives at a Distance: Distance Relationships over the Lifecourse
Authors: Holmes Mary
Published: March 2010

Distance relationships may be increasingly undertaken by dual-career couples at some point in their life course. Although this can make it difficult to quantitatively measure the extent of distance relating, qualitative analysis of distance relationships promises to give considerable insight into the changing nature of intimate lives across the life course. This paper indicates the kind of insights offered via analysis of exploratory research into distance relating in Britain. What begins to emerge is a picture of distance relating as offering certain possibilities in relation to the gendered organisation of emotional labour and of care in conjunction with the pursuit, especially of professional, careers. These possibilities might be more realistic, however, at certain points in the life course. Nevertheless, this new form of periods of separation between partners, tell us a considerable amount about how people approach the challenges of maintaining a satisfying and egalitarian intimate life, involving caring relationships with others, within contemporary social conditions.
The Pop-Pickers Have Picked Decentralised Media: The Fall of Top of the Pops and the Rise of the Second Media Age
Authors: Beer David
Published: March 2010

The BBC has recently announced that Top of the Pops, the long-running weekly popular music programme, will broadcast its final episode in the summer of 2006. This brief ‘rapid response’ article considers how the conclusion of Top of the Pops’ 42 year history may be understood as representative or indicative of broader transformations in musical appropriation. As such it considers the fall of Top of the Pops in relation to the rise of what Mark Poster has described as a ‘second media age’ (Poster, 1996). This second media age is defined by the emergence of decentralised and multidimensional media structures that usurp the broadcast models of the first media age. This article argues that the decommissioning of Top of the Pops, and the ongoing expansion of ‘social networking’ sites such as MySpace and Bebo, illustrates the movement from a first to a second media age. In light of these transformations I suggest here that there is a pressing need to develop new research initiatives and strategies that critically examine these new digitalised forms of musical appropriation.
Negotiating Selves: Reflections on ‘Unstructured’ Interviewing
Authors: Collins Peter
Published: March 2010

In this paper I reflect on a series of informal or ‘unstructured’ interviews with people experiencing chronic job insecurity. I show that far from being merely a source of data these interviews are dynamic social interactions wherein multiple dialogues are conducted between multiple selves. I argue that because interviews are epistemologically ambiguous, morally ambivalent and emotionally charged they cannot be seen simply as repositories of ‘objective facts’ but should also be understood as mutually constructed social events with an existential quality sui generis.
‘Collegial Accountability’ and Bias: The Solution or the Problem?
Authors: Temple B.
Published: March 2010

In a recent debate about bias in social research, Hammersley and Gomm (1997) discuss error, and bias as a form of error, as ‘a matter of collegial accountability’. They argue that radical epistemologies are a growing threat to the research community. Only by using such a community to decide what is reasonable can researchers avoid the threatened slip into the abyss. This threat is illustrated for the authors by, for example, the growing emphasis on the role of users of services by funding agencies.

For those researchers who have struggled to be heard within academic life, the desire to install a single community as judges of research is a step backwards. The evaluation criteria used for research have been narrowly defined by some researchers within that community. Feminists, amongst others, have been trying to widen the definitions of validity. The desire to return to an authoritative voice, a particular and restricted group of ‘colleagues’ in Hammersley and Gomm's case, constitutes the threat rather than the solution for those researchers. It assumes that these colleagues speak for everyone and are only accountable to themselves. In this article I examine the way in which Hammersley and Gomm (1997) have set up the debate with feminist researchers. I then go on to discuss the notion of ‘the research community’ and the assumptions the authors make about the criteria for evaluating research. I finish by introducing an alternative way of being accountable which involves opening up dialogue with a wider audience.
Out and About: Negotiating the Layers of Being Out in the Process of Disclosure of Lesbian Parenthood
Authors: Almack Kathryn
Published: March 2010

Discussion of coming out within lesbian and gay academic literature has focussed primarily on the individual process and consequences of disclosing a lesbian/gay identity. Drawing upon data from a qualitative research study of 20 lesbian parent families in the UK, who had planned and had their first child together, this paper considers dimensions of coming out that arise for lesbian parents having children in an openly lesbian relationship. To date little attention has been paid to these dimensions. Women identified how having children revealed new layers of being out as parenthood brought them into contact with a whole new range of people, settings and networks. Negotiating recognition of their parental and familial status involves making decisions about when, where and how to come out in these new settings and women also faced renegotiations of an acceptance of their lesbian identity and parenthood with family members. This paper utilises stigma theory to examine some of the additional complexities related to the decisions and negotiations involved in being out as lesbian parent families.
Changing Social Class Identities in Post-War Britain: Perspectives from Mass-Observation
Authors: Savage Mike
Published: March 2010

The idea that class identities have waned in importance over recent decades is a staple feature of much contemporary social theory yet has not been systematically investigated using primary historical data. This paper re-uses qualitative data collected by Mass-Observation which asks about the social class identities of correspondents of its directives in two different points in time, 1948 and 1990. I show that there were significant changes in the way that class was narrated in these two periods. There is not simple decline of class identities, but rather a subtle reworking of the means by which class is articulated. In the earlier period Mass-Observers are ambivalent about class in ways which indicate the power of class as a form of ascriptive inscription. By 1990, Mass-Observers do not see class identities as the ascribed product of their birth and upbringing, but rather they elaborate a reflexive and individualised account of their mobility between class positions in ways which emphasise the continued importance of class identities. As well as being a contribution to debates on changing class identities, the paper highlights the value of the re-use of qualitative data as a means of examining patterns and processes of historical change
Female Involvement in the Miners’ Strike 1984-1985: Trajectories of Activism
Authors: Spence Jean , Stephenson Carol
Published: March 2010

This paper is based on recent primary research interviews with women who were active in the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. The paper claims that one depiction of women's engagement in the strike has been privileged above others: activist women were miners’ wives who embarked on a linear passage from domesticity and political passivity into politicisation and then retreated from political engagement following the defeat. This depiction is based on a masculinist view which sees political action as organisationally based and which fails to recognise the importance of small scale and emotional political work which women did and continue to undertake within their communities. In reality many women were politically active and aware prior to the dispute though not necessarily in a traditional sense. Women's activism is characterised by continuity: those women who have maintained activism were likely to have been socially and/or politically active prior to the dispute.
(Trans)Forming Gender: Social Change and Transgender Citizenship
Authors: Hines Sally
Published: March 2010

This paper aims to contribute to recent sociological debates about gendered identity constructions and formations, and gendered citizenship, by exploring gender transformation through an analysis of new femininities and masculinities as they are variously articulated by transgender women and men.

The paper charts the ways in which transgender has emerged as a subject of increasing social and cultural interest in recent years. Shifting attitudes towards transgender people are also evident through recent legislative changes brought by the Gender Recognition Act (2005). These social, cultural and legislative developments reflect the ways in which gender diversity is acquiring visibility in contemporary society, and suggest that gender diverse people themselves are experiencing greater levels of social inclusion. Such developments mark transgender as an important and timely area of sociological study.

The paper argues that while the Gender Recognition Act marks a significant shift in socio-legal understandings of ‘gender’ as distinct from ‘sex’, it problematically remains tied to a medical perspective of transgender that continues to marginalise practices of gender diversity. The paper thus proposes caution against an assured trajectory of (trans) gender transformation and social change. Rather, normative binary understandings of ‘gender’ underpin recent social and legislative shifts, giving way to individual and collective tensions around the desirability of assimilation. In turn these issues produce divergent ways of living as ‘new’ women and men.
Preserving and Extending the Commodification of Football Supporter Relations: A Cultural Economy of Supporters Direct
Authors: Kennedy David , Kennedy Peter
Published: March 2010

This paper examines the role of Supporters Direct, a sports policy initiative launched by the British Labour government in 2000. The objective of Supporters Direct is to democratise football clubs by intervening in what it views as the unequal relationship that exists between the relatively powerless supporters of football clubs and private shareholders who have organisational control of clubs. They hope to achieve this by facilitating mutual forms of ownership and control of clubs via supporters’ trusts. With respect to this objective, established research concerning Supporters Direct emphasises this initiative as an inherently progressive development for the football industry. The aim of this paper is to situate the development of Supporters Direct in the wider context of the British Labour Government's policy of social inclusion. On the basis of a textual analysis that draws on current literature in the area of culture and economy - with specific reference to processes of commodification - we reveal an alternative view of Supporters Direct. The Supporters Direct initiative, we conclude, is an integral part of a social policy aimed at the preservation and extension of commodified social relations.
Reflections in an Unblinking Eye: Negotiating Identity in the Production of a Documentary
Authors: McGettigan T.
Published: March 2010

The presence of a motion picture documentary team during a Green Tortoise adventure trip created a variety of unique opportunities to evaluate the construction of identity in a postmodern, ‘cinematic society’ (Denzin, 1995). While, the ‘gaze’ (Nichols, 1991) of cameras often participated directly in the production of ‘spectacular’ events, the ‘simulating’ (Baudrillard, 1988, 1994) gaze of the cameras also served as a ‘reflexive mechanism’ through which to expose cinematic influences that construct contemporary reality.
Bourdieu and Postcommunist Class Formation
Authors: Outhwaite William
Published: March 2010

This article suggests that Bourdieu's model of class, framed in terms of cultural capital and habitus, is particularly valuable in understanding the restoration of capitalism under postcommunist conditions. Following the analyses of Szelényi and his collaborators, it is suggested that post-communist managerialism is still strikingly more pronounced than in the West. This and the notion of habitus in particular are perhaps the main elements of Bourdieu's thinking on which we can draw in theorizing postcommunist transition.
By Slow Degrees: Two Centuries of Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain
Authors: Lambert Paul , Prandy Kenneth , Bottero Wendy
Published: March 2010

This paper discusses long term trends in patterns of intergenerational social mobility in Britain. We argue that there is convincing empirical evidence of a small but steady linear trend towards increasing social mobility throughout the period 1800-2004. Our conclusions are based upon the construction and analysis of an extended micro-social dataset, which combines records from an historical genealogical study, with responses from 31 sample surveys conducted over the period 1963-2004. There has been much previous study of trends in social mobility, and little consensus on their nature. We argue that this dissension partly results from the very slow pace of change in mobility rates, which makes the time-frame of any comparison crucial, and raises important methodological questions about how long-term change in mobility is best measured. We highlight three methodological difficulties which arise when trying to draw conclusions over mobility trends - concerning the extent of controls for life course effects; the quality of data resources; and the measurement of stratification positions. After constructing a longitudinal dataset which attempts to confront these difficulties, our analyses provide robust evidence which challenges hitherto more popular, politicised claims of declining or unchanging mobility. By contrast, our findings suggest that Britain has moved, and continues to move, steadily towards increasing equality in the relationship between occupational attainment and parental background.
(Re)Using Qualitative Data?
Authors: Moore Niamh
Published: March 2010

Recent interest by social scientists in the questions posed by reusing qualitative data has been prompted by two related events. The first is the establishment of the Qualitative Data Archival Resource Centre (QUALIDATA, and, since 2003, ESDS Qualidata) at the University of Essex in 1994. The second is the publication of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Datasets Policy (1996) which asks that those in receipt of ESRC grants offer copies of their data for deposit to QUALIDATA. This perceived injunction to archive data has been met with resistance by recalcitrant researchers who are wary of the implications of depositing data, and the possibilities of reusing data. The debate risks becoming polarised between those advocating the archiving and reuse of qualitative data, and those more sceptical of these possibilities. This paper aims to open up this debate and to seek a more fruitful path between these positions. I begin by calling into question the supposed ‘newness’ of reusing qualitative data, through turning to examine some of the assumptions embedded in the key terms and premises of the debate thus far, including the reliance on distinctions between primary and secondary data and primary and secondary analysis. I examine some common tropes in accounts of reusing data: comparisons with secondary analysis of quantitative data; efforts to distinguish between reusing qualitative data in a sociological context and other disciplinary and methodological traditions; and reliance on particular interpretations of key principles of qualitative research, context and reflexivity, in establishing the challenges of the reusing of qualitative data. I suggest that reuse may be more productively understood as a process of recontextualising data, and that attending to the reflexive production of data in the contemporary research project may offer more hopeful possibilities for reuse. I conclude by offering some reflections on why discussions of reusing qualitative data appear to have become so fraught.
Coming to Terms with Contemporary Capitalism: Beyond the Idealism of Globalisation and Capitalist Ascendancy Arguments
Authors: Kennedy P.
Published: March 2010

This article challenges the prevailing orthodoxy which suggests that contemporary global capitalism is in the ascendancy. In the context of an evaluation of the extensive literature supporting the ascendancy argument and a brief synopsis of empirical evidence supporting a decline thesis, a number of alternative theories of capitalist transition are then assessed. It is argued that each theory, in different ways, offers an inadequate explanation of contemporary capitalist development. On the basis of this assessment, the article then contributes to a theory of capitalist decline by examining and explaining the importance of the Marxist conception of social law, the law of value and the role of gold as world money, to an understanding of contemporary capitalism's transition and decline. [1]
‘'Sex Changes'? Paradigm Shifts in ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’ following the Gender Recognition Act?’
Authors: Whittle Stephen , Turner Lewis
Published: March 2010

Gender transformations are normatively understood as somatic, based on surgical reassignment, where the sexed body is aligned with the gender identity of the individual through genital surgery – hence the common lexicon ‘sex change surgery’. We suggest that the UK Gender Recognition Act 2004 challenges what constitutes a ‘sex change’ through the Act's definitions and also the conditions within which legal ‘recognition’ is permitted. The sex/gender distinction, (where sex normatively refers to the sexed body, and gender, to social identity) is demobilised both literally and legally. This paper discusses the history of medico-socio-legal definitions of sex have been developed through decision making processes when courts have been faced with people with gender variance and, in particular, the implications of the Gender Recognition Act for our contemporary legal understanding of sex. We ask, and attempt to answer, has ‘sex’ changed?
‘Changing Marriage? Messing with Mr. In-Between?: Reflections upon Media Debates on Same-Sex Marriage in Ireland’
Authors: Reynolds Sean
Published: March 2010

This article explores some aspects of the emergence of local debates around same-sex marriage in the Republic of Ireland. Taking up this issue through an analysis of Irish (local) mediatized reactions to the introduction of German gay marriage in 2001, I point to how we can see some evidence of a shift away from Irish traditional relationships between the social, politics and religion, which served to police and silence much public discussion about sexuality. While prudery about sexual issues still remains, my paper points to the emergence of prudent-yet-tolerant sharing of stories about the social exclusion of same-sex couples. In spite of recent setbacks for a legal case seeking the recognition of a foreign same-sex marriage in Ireland, we may point to a growing political and legal consciousness for the extension of rights for lesbian and gay couples but it is still unclear as to what model will be adopted in the Irish context. While in the Irish case, there is only intermittent media interest in ‘gay marriage’, we can locate this struggle within the framework of the sociology of intimate citizenship. Not only do claims for same-sex marriage illustrate pointed inequalities experienced by lesbians and gay men, the stories also problematize the naturalness of heterosexuality. The Irish case may, of course, be explored within the context of a global challenge to gender identity where the imagined same-sex couple enjoy some element of certainty in an uncertain world.
The Politics of Environmental Activism: A Case Study of the Cruise Industry and the Environmental Movement
Authors: Klein Ross A.
Published: March 2010

Based on a case study of environmental organizations’ confrontation of the cruise industry over environmental practices, this article critically assesses several campaigns and actions by the environmental movement as represented by several key organizations that focus specifically on the cruise industry, and at the social and political processes used by the cruise industry to deal with these organizations. Five environmental groups are included in the case study; the cruise industry is represented by the three major cruise corporations (comprising more than 90% of the North American and European market), their marketing agents and lobbyists. Strategies used by environmental organizations and by the cruise industry are identified and analysis seeks to explain factors associated with the effectiveness or non-effectiveness of these strategies.
A Reflexive Account of Reusing Qualitative Data: Beyond Primary/Secondary Dualism
Authors: Bishop Libby
Published: March 2010

Though secondary analysis of qualitative data is becoming more prevalent, relatively few methodological studies exist that provide reflection on the actual, not idealised, process. This paper offers a reflexive account of secondary analysis focused on the topic of convenience food and choice. Several phases of the research process are examined: understanding context, defining a subject area, finding data and sampling, later sampling and topic refinement, and relating to transcripts. For each phase, I explore if reusing data is different from using it in the first instance, and if so, how those differences manifest themselves. The paper closes with reflections on the differences, similarities, and relationships between primary and secondary analysis of qualitative data. Although differences exist regarding the researcher-respondent relationship, primary and secondary analyses are more alike than not. The suitability of each approach can only be assessed in light of a particular research question.
Are Children Getting Enough Sleep? Implications for Parents
Authors: Wiggs Luci
Published: March 2010

Sleeping is a child's primary activity; by the time an average child goes to school they will have spent more time sleeping than engaging in any other activity, such as playing, eating or interacting socially. Disturbances of sleep (especially sleeplessness) are one of the most frequent child behaviour problems to be reported by parents, affecting about 30% of typically developing children and adolescents. The definition of ‘sleeplessness problems’ will be considered noting how, with child sleeplessness, the complainant and the sufferer are frequently not the same person (frequently parents are the former and the children the latter), and that this has implications for how we should define and, where appropriate, attempt to ‘treat’ these problems. Parental perceptions and parental sleep patterns, moreover, may be key in understanding how some child sleeplessness problems are conceptualised, how they might impact on the child and family and the mechanisms by which successful intervention for childhood sleeplessness may result in benefits for families. The author suggests that child sleeplessness might be better theoretically conceptualised as comprising two distinct states with different causes and effects. Firstly, a ‘biologically-defined sleeplessness‘ characterised by a child having objectively impaired sleep quantity and/or quality, relative to their biological sleep needs. Secondly, a ‘socially-defined sleeplessness’ characterised by the child's sleep pattern deviating from a desired sleep pattern. Judgements about what constitutes a ‘desired’ sleep pattern will be influenced by multiple factors including expectations and culture. Both of these states may exist independently, or co-exist. Both of these states must be considered in order to decide whether or not children are getting enough sleep.
Epistemology, Structure and Urgency: The Sociology of Financial and Scientific Journalists
Authors: Cooper Geoff , Ebeling Mary
Published: March 2010

This paper, which examines the work of journalists in one field, argues for the value of including journalists’ own understandings and practices in analyses of the role of the media. Moreover it suggests that, in this field, there may be more commonalities between the practices of journalism and social science than is commonly supposed.

The paper is based upon a set of interviews with scientific and financial journalists, covering their interpretations of nanotechnologies and their development. Whereas much of the social scientific work to date in this area has been concerned with the public understanding of science, and the role that journalism plays in relation to this, our study addresses the parallel issue of how, in a field characterised by high levels of commercialisation, potential investors get information and make judgments about particular applications, and the extent to which journalism plays a key role in this process. Here, we focus not primarily on the ways in which the media frame understandings of a complex technology, important though they may be, but on the practical epistemological strategies that journalists employ to make sense of it.

We argue that journalists can be seen to be engaged in epistemological strategies that are analogous to those of sociologists, and that this dimension is too easily missed by approaches that, for example, recommend that the correct unit of analysis should always be journalism rather than journalists. We conclude by suggesting that, whilst the general applicability of our argument to other fields of journalism is necessarily an empirical question, our approach may have more general significance for debates about the critical role of social science.