bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
‘What are ‘they’ Doing to our Food?’: Public Concerns about Food in the UK
Authors: Shaw Alison
Published: March 2010

This paper explores ‘expert’ constructions of public concerns about food within a sociological framework. Concerns about potential risks in food have become controversial social and political issues in Britain in recent years. This paper reflects on these wider debates, and on sociological work on food, ‘risk’ and science, which provide the backdrop for qualitative research studying ‘expert’ and ‘lay’ understandings of food risks. The first phase of this exploratory research consisted of a series of ‘key informant’ interviews with a range of ‘experts’ in the arena of food. The interview data serve to ‘map out’ the key issues in current debates about food. However, they also enable insight into the ways different involved ‘experts’ construct accounts of public concerns about food. From the data, several key issues and themes relating to ‘expert’ views of public understandings and concerns about food emerged. These included, a ‘rolling issue’ of food concerns, public questioning of the origins and integrity of food, increased involvement of ‘external people’ in food, the extent of public understandings of microbiological food safety; public understandings of risk in the BSE crisis, and public knowledge and acceptance of genetically-modified food. These data set the scene for further research directly exploring the views of food consumers. The issues and themes from the ‘expert’ accounts are being followed-up by the author through research in progress, which seeks to uncover the range of rich, intuitive understandings of food risks held by a diverse range of people who make up ‘the public’.
The Fear of Unreason: Science Wars and Sociology
Authors: Cooper Geoff
Published: March 2010

This paper considers one recent and continuing set of arguments about the representation of science, the so-called ‘Science Wars’, and argues that, for a number of reasons, this dispute has particular strategic value for raising questions about the discipline of sociology today. These reasons include: the participation of the sociology of scientific knowledge; the fact that the dispute is explicitly concerned with disciplinary boundaries, competence and legitimacy; and the ways in which the dispute connects to related arguments within sociology. It is argued that whilst much of the debate focuses on an alleged crisis of reason, the most interesting issue to emerge may rather be a questioning of the salience of disciplinarity.
Genetics and the Future of Nature Politics
Authors: Sutton Phil
Published: March 2010

This article is concerned with the extent to which recent environmental campaigns against GM food trials are likely to be successful, and whether the symbolic protests that have typically characterised environmental activism will remain effective in the future. Although the recent direct actions have highlighted the continuing salience of ‘nature’ as a major source and symbol of political protest, the paper also considers whether the development of genetic technologies is creating new opportunities for collaborative collective actions across diverse new social movements. Following Beck's theory of the emergence of a ‘risk society’, sociologists have begun to see environmentalism and issues of ‘life’ politics (including genetic research and its commercialisation) as increasingly important in shaping the future direction of modern development, and the paper concludes with some thoughts on the convergence of the new ‘life politics’ with the nature politics of environmentalism.
Food Trust, Ethics and Safety in Risk Society
Authors: Almas Reidar
Published: March 2010

We are living in the age of mad cow disease. Through large scale bulletins in the media, we have learned about food scandals that threaten both our health and our environment. This has raised problems like: Who can we trust? And what type of food production can be regarded as ethically defensible in our day and age? And finally, how does the precautionary principle apply to the way we evaluate food and risk. The likelihood of becoming sick from the next meal has probably never been less than it is today. Yet at the same time, we know less than ever about the long-term consequences of today's food production. Ulrich Beck argued more than 10 years ago that we are moving from “industrial society” to “risk society”. While industrial society was structured through social classes, risk society is individualised. Beck's individualisation thesis is central to being able to understand how individuals handle risks through composing their own risk identity profile. Because the different experts “dump their contradictions and conflicts at the feet of the individual” (Beck 1992:137), he or she has to find biographical solutions to handle risks. Where to live, what to eat, where to take a vacation, what clothes to wear, with whom to mingle and to have sex with is up to the individual. And it is not like in simple modernity anymore, when the regulatory authorities took care of the risks and kept the foods you should not eat out of the country. The reflexive burden is placed upon the shoulders of the individual. So is also the case when it comes to genetic modified foods and debates around this. Even if these new foods are labelled, the consumer has to choose which experts to believe before to buy and eat. It is not the case any more that all experts agree and that the public food control institutions will tell you what to do. In the future there will be new food scandals in Europe that will threaten health and the environment. Such food scandals will be a central feature in what people experience as “risk society”. Expertise in the social sciences will gradually be given a new role as “experts on peoples’ concerns”.
Sociology, What's it for? A Critique of Gouldner
Authors: Hammersley Martyn
Published: March 2010

In this paper I argue against the influential ‘mission statement’ offered by Alvin Gouldner in his book For Sociology. This treats the discipline as supplying a reflexive perspective on social life that will lead political action towards the realisation of Enlightenment ideals. I point out that Gouldner is inconsistently reflexive, preserving his own position from the corrosive effects of the kind of sociological analysis he applies in criticising others. I contrast this with the reflexivity advocated by Steve Woolgar, deriving from the sociology of scientific knowledge. Woolgar suggests that reflexivity is always selective, and that (contrary to Gouldner) there is no sociological essence to be realised. Instead, the task for sociologists is to construct and reconstruct both sociology and its context, so as to bring off a practically successful mode of knowledge production. I argue that while Woolgar's position points to some genuine problems, it too is unsatisfactory. This is because he shares with Gouldner the assumption that a sociological perspective can be the basis for action in the world; what might be called the ‘grand conception’ of its role. I conclude that a more modest approach is required, similar to the position taken by Max Weber. This treats sociology as no more than a source of specialised factual knowledge about the world. Its practical value is considerable, but nevertheless limited. Above all, it cannot offer a self-sufficient answer to questions about ‘what's wrong?’ or ‘what is to be done?’.
Consciousness in Transition: A Case Study of Social Identity Formation in KwaZulu-Natal Study Description and Methodology
Authors: Marcus T , Manicom D
Published: March 2010

The aim of this article is to describe the Class Race and Gender (CRG) Research Programme. The CRG research programme aims to explore the development of consciousness in South Africa, to understand how we come to be the black and white, rural and urban, rich and poor and men and women who make up our stratified and differentiated society and to identify and assess the impact of changes over time. This complex problem is being investigated through a study of class, race and gender identity formation in the first generation of children entering the new, compulsory education system. This article specifically tries to document the research process; its methodology and the instruments which were used and developed in order to engage with the issues under investigation. The article also tries to explain the rationale informing the choice of the sample and methods and describes how these research methods were implemented. Research with people is always interactive and reflexive, even if the researchers do not concern themselves with what the research might contribute to respondents. Yet, in questions there are ideas and information which people think about and learn from. Research is or can be a learning process for respondents. For respondents (and researchers) there is a continual tension between the limits of research (finding out) and the possibilities of intervention (acting out).
Women in the British Sociological Labour Market, 1960-1995
Authors: Platt Jennifer
Published: March 2010

Women have been a much lower proportion of university teachers of sociology than of students in sociology in Britain, and have also been under-represented in the higher ranks of academia. This has often been treated as the effect of discrimination. However, a review of available data suggests that women's choices - however formed - have also played a role, and that changing historical circumstances have affected the demography of the discipline in ways which have had significant consequences for women (and men) independent of either choice or discrimination. The current pattern cannot be understood without its history, which reveals that much of the snapshot picture of the situation now follows from strata of recruitment laid down at earlier periods.
‘The Visual Availability and Local Organisation of Public Surveillance Systems: The Promotion of Social Order in Public Spaces’
Authors: Ball Mike
Published: March 2010

The empirical focus of the research reported in this paper is the recent rapid growth in public surveillance systems. It is now commonplace in Britain for certain “public” spaces to have video surveillance and for some stretches of public highways to have “Gatso” speed cameras located on them. The visual availability of items of material culture such as surveillance systems is introduced as an analytical organising principal for delineating the study of objects within the “seen” world. It is argued that we inhabit a palpable material environment of objects which has consequences for and impinges upon aspects of our practical decision making.
Theorising Empowerment Thought: Illuminating the Relationship between Ideology and Politics in the Contemporary Era
Authors: Forrest Dod
Published: March 2010

One response to the on-going crisis of profitability, East and West, has been to alter the form and content of supervisory relationships at work and in the community. The 1990s have been described as the empowerment era. A paradox exists however in that the idea of empowerment appeals to the rich and powerful and the poor and powerless. It is both liberatory and regulative. In this article the ideological polarity of empowerment is investigated in the context of the management of change in the workplaces of large private sector organisations and public sector welfare in Britain. It is argued that the growth of the idea of empowerment is central to politics in the contemporary era.
Plans, Evaluation, and Accountability at the Workplace
Authors: Koskinen Ilpo
Published: March 2010

This paper is based on an ethnomethodologically informed analysis of plans by Dant and Francis (1988). Using ethnographic and conversation data, this paper will argue that although plans do not ordinarily organize action at the workplace in the sense proposed by rationalistic viewpoints on planning, planning does have one key managerial use that has scarcely been dealt with in previous research. Managers often formulate and systematize their vision of the workplace using plans and categories found in plans, and they simultaneously formulate the workplace's activities as sanctionable. This result is discussed.
Dealing with Difference: Researching Health Beliefs and Behaviours of British Asian Mothers
Authors: Reed Katherine
Published: March 2010

Contemporary sociology is faced by a central problem of conceptualising and rendering empirically operable the concept of difference without dissolution into perpetual plurality on the one hand, and recourse to fixed hierarchical relations on the other. Drawing on attempts to operationalise research categories within a research project on the health beliefs and behaviours of South Asian mothers, the paper explores the difficulties of operating concepts of difference at epistemological analytical and methodological levels. For example, within the research there are difficulties in operationalising concepts of local/global difference and differences between western and non-western medical systems without fixing one in a privileged position relative to the other or without seeing them as necessarily always equal. The research also raises questions of how to sample across multiple difference and develop interview and writing strategies which do not fix relations between researcher/researched in either equal or hierarchical relations. The paper draws on attempts to cope with these problems. It engages with post-modern approaches to difference but stops short of complete deconstruction, developing these approaches instead within a dialectical framework. A dialectical approach attempts to contextualise difference, recognising the interrelationship and contradiction between research categories of difference, temporally locating hierarchies between them. Methodologically, it also strives to develop an approach which steers a course in between a position of researcher as ‘expert’ and a position where our knowledge of others is treated as inconceivable.
The Usefulness of Indepth Life History Interviews for Exploring the Role of Social Structure and Human Agency in Youth Transitions
Authors: Hubbard Gill
Published: March 2010

This paper discusses the usefulness of indepth life history interviews in illustrating the role of social structure and human agency in youth transitions. Drawing on sociological theory and youth transition research, the paper highlights how the role of structure and agency has been perceived by youth researchers. Whilst this literature acknowledges the interplay between structure and agency in transitional processes, the appropriateness of particular research methods for explicating structure and agency needs to be further elucidated. Using data from a study of youth transitions in rural areas of Scotland, a range of transitional experiences from two indepth life history interviews is presented here. This exploratory exercise suggests that life history interviews enable researchers to explore how far social structures provide opportunities and constraints for human agents at the same time as showing how individuals, with their own beliefs and desires, take actions despite the social structures that underlie the immediacy of their experiences.
‘What Difference does it Make? Women's Pop Cultural Production and Consumption in Manchester’
Authors: Richards Nicola , Milestone Katie
Published: March 2010

This paper explores the experiences of women in small cultural businesses and is based upon interviews with women working in a range of contexts in Manchester's popular music sector. The research seeks to promote wider consideration of women's roles in cultural production and consumption. We argue that it is necessary that experiences of production and consumption be understood as inter-related processes. Each part of this process is imbued with particular gender characteristics that can serve to reinforce existing patterns and hierarchies. We explore the ways in which female leisure and consumption patterns have been marginalised and how this in turn shapes cultural production. This process influences career choices but it is also reinforced through the integration of consumption into the cultural workplace. Practices often associated with the sector, such as the blurring of work and leisure and ‘networking’, appear to be understood and operated in significantly different ways by women. As cultural industries such as popular music are predicated upon the colonisation of urban space we explore the use of the city and the particular character of Manchester's music scene. We conclude that, despite the existence of highly contingent and individualised identities, significant gender power relations remain evident. These are particularly clear in discussion of the performative and sexualised aspects of the job.
‘Reflexivity or Sociological Practice: A Reply to May’
Authors: Slack Roger
Published: March 2010

The paper constitutes a response to May's concept of reflexivity, and argues that debates on reflexivity have missed the need to ground their claims in the life world of society members - thus promoting the very ironic stance they seek to address. A re-articulation of claims to reflexivity is made in the distinction between ‘essential’ and ‘stipulative’ reflexivities wherein the former is grounded in members’ observable-reportable natural language practical actions, while the latter remains the province of the analyst and subjects members’ versions to sociological remedy. The paper suggests a return to the work of Garfinkel (1967) as a means of respecifying the grounds of the reflexivity debate.
“Homosexuality and the New Right: The Legacy of the 1980s for New Delineations of Homophobia”
Authors: Waites Matthew
Published: March 2010

This article addresses the relationship between the New Right and the politics of homosexuality in the United Kingdom. It begins by outlining recent political conflicts surrounding attempts to equalise the ‘gay age of consent’ and to repeal Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988). The article then examines the New Right's relationship to homosexuality in the 1980s, and the history of socio-political analyses of this relationship. It is argued that pro-gay left theorists have tended to homogenize the New Right of the 1980s, with negative consequences for the analysis of more recent right-wing transformations. The article suggests that contemporary right-wing campaigns against equalisation of the age of consent and abolition of Section 28 need to be understood as the product of a complex right-wing alliance between old-style Conservatism and new right-wing generations. The sexual values of William Hague and Michael Portillo are very different from those of Margaret Thatcher or Norman Tebbit. More mediated forms of homophobia have surfaced in recent campaigns, particularly in the defence of Section 28. New analytical tools are needed to map ‘new delineations of homophobia’ emerging in the political language of the right, operating within a new terrain of sexual politics. The conclusion suggests ways in which such a perspective could inform future sociological and political research agendas.
‘Who Wants to be a Social Engineer? A commentary on David Blunkett's Speech to the ESRC’
Authors: Hodgkinson Peter
Published: March 2010

This article is a response to a speech addressed to the Economic and Social Research Council which was made, in February this year, by the UK Secretary of State for Education and Employment, David Blunkett. The speech was entitled ‘Influence or Irrelevance: can social science improve government?’ . Blunkett's programme for engaging social science in the policy process is far from unique and many of the arguments have been heard before. However, the curiosity of the speech lies in the fact that the conception of social science which Blunkett advocates mirrors the approach New Labour itself has to politics and government. This raises some rather interesting difficulties for social scientists. How do we engage in a debate about the role of social scientific research in the policy process when our own conception of the discipline may be radically at odds with that of the government? Furthermore, New Labour's particular conception of the relationship between social and policy-making means that we not only have to contest their notion of what it is we do, but also challenge their conception of the policy process. We cannot ignore this engagement, even if we wanted to. The challenge is to address it and to do so, moreover, in terms which Blunkett might understand. This article is an attempt to start this process.
Drug-Taking, ‘Risk Boundaries’ and Social Identity: Bodybuilders’ Talk about Ephedrine and Nubain
Authors: Monaghan Lee , Bloor Michael , Dobash Russell P , Dobash Rebecca E
Published: March 2010

The instrumental use of steroids and analogous drugs is a normalised practice in bodybuilding subculture. However, in a society where bodily health and lifestyle are conjoined, such risk-taking carries negative connotations. Bodybuilders using drugs for purposes of physique enhancement are able to resist accusations of opprobrium and maintain competent social identity by drawing a sharp contrast between themselves and ‘junkies’. This self-serving differentiation appears untenable, however, when bodybuilders take Ephedrine and Nubain: drugs that may be compared respectively and unfavourably to amphetamines and heroin. Using qualitative data, this paper considers the variable status of Ephedrine and Nubain as risk boundaries among bodybuilders. In operating as risk boundaries, these drugs signify limits beyond which ‘sensible’ drug-using bodybuilders should not venture. As social constructs, risk boundaries are also contingent. Correspondingly, bodybuilders using Ephedrine and Nubain may redraw lines delimiting (in)appropriate behaviour thereby retaining competent social identity. These ethnographic observations ground theoretical debate about the impact of risk society on body- and identity building in late modernity and highlight some of the limitations of influential cultural theories of risk.
On-Line with the Friends of Bill W: Social Support and the Net
Authors: Pleace Nicholas , Burrows Roger , Loader Brian , Muncer Steven , Nettleton Sarah
Published: March 2010

The Internet is now being used as a mechanism for the delivery of social support on a global scale, chiefly through the formation of self-help groups. Most of the research that has been undertaken on these groups has focussed on Usenet and the use of newsgroups for social support. This paper examines the use of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) ‘room’, by a self-help group composed of problem drinkers. The group had an international membership and advocated the use of social support, rather than intervention by professional services, to help its membership overcome problem drinking. The paper considers the roles that these new forms of Internet mediated self-help and social support might play in changing the relationships of those who participate in them towards traditional health and social care services. The paper also critically examines the extent to which such fora might function as virtual ‘communities’ of care.
Rethinking Land Reform in South Africa: An Alternative Approach to Environmental Justice
Authors: Geisler Charles , Letsoalo Essy
Published: March 2010

Worldwide, millions of rural people inhabiting marginal lands have been evicted from their homes in the name of conservation. Africa is no exception, nor is South Africa, the focus of this paper. Our central concern is whether land reform in South Africa can accomplish both social and environmental justice in a context of widespread and longstanding human displacement and opportunity costs as the country's national parks and game refuges expand. The costs of ecological expropriation are illustrated, as are instances from other countries where land reform simultaneously serves social and environmental objectives. Recommendations are advanced for greening South Africa's land reform without sacrificing its social and economic missions.
Is Democracy at the Heart of IT? Commercial Perceptions of Technology
Authors: McKie Jane
Published: March 2010

The article uses two adverts for Microsoft Office products as a springboard from which to discuss claims about the democratic potential of IT (information technology). Adverts for technological products frequently use glamorous icons as metaphors for the exploratory mode of hypermedia technologies (including the World Wide Web). These metaphors find subtle expression in the textual conflation of virtual and physical ‘realms’ exemplified by the Microsoft slogan ‘Where do you want to go today?’. It is a small step from suggesting that you can go anywhere you want to go, to the assertion that you can be anyone you want to be. This assertion underlies the textual construction of democracy that is singled out in the first advert: a democracy that is forged from individual versatility rather than cultural diversity. Roles and functions become blurred as specialized worker is transformed into jack-of-all trades through the use of technology. This vision of democracy is contrasted with two related pictures of contemporary technologies: the Internet as a world-wide cooperative community and hypermedia texts as the poststructural antithesis of the modern univocal text. Claims of this nature, and their critiques, are positioned within discourse about the impact of technology, both personally and culturally. Personally, job satisfaction and versatility are indicators of success in the texts examined. Culturally, constructions of ‘cooperative community’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ are examined with reference to the myth about the computer as an isolationist tool, revealing a theoretical ambivalence towards the impact of technology that underscores recent intense media and academic attention.
Proactive and Defensive Engagement: Social Citizenship in a Changing Public Sphere
Authors: Ellison Nick
Published: March 2010

Arguing that the nature of citizenship is changing as a result of the progressive fragmentation of the public sphere in late modern societies, this article suggests that contemporary citizenship is best understood as a series of ‘temporary solidarities’ contained within a social politics characterised by ‘defensive’ or ‘proactive’ forms of engagement. Beginning with a theoretical discussion which explores some of the reasons for the fragmentation of the public realm as well as its possible impact on citizenship and the conduct of social politics, the article subsequently considers a number of examples of defensive and proactive engagement in the general area of welfare. The article then moves on to examine the implications of a theory of citizenship as defensive and/or proactive engagement for contemporary understandings of social divisions, before concluding with a brief consideration of how this approach of citizenship might also contribute to a more detailed understanding of social inclusion and exclusion.
The Class Situation of Information Specialists: A Case Analysis
Authors: Lewin Clare , Orleans Myron
Published: March 2010

This paper examined the paradoxical class situation of information specialists in the post-industrial society as both professionals and employees. We described and analyzed the ‘technocratic’ authority wielded by them and their mode of consciousness. We assessed whether these workers functioned as the vanguard of a new style of democratized work or buttressed the position of managerial authority. We used qualitative methods to study the social conduct and meaning systems of fourteen computer specialists, including programmers, analysts, and project leaders employed in a large insurance company. The data was analyzed using a critical phenomenological perspective derived from the work of authors such as Berger, Braverman, Burawoy, Foucault, and Marcuse. We found that the subjects experienced a class situation that was somewhat more empowered than the industrial or corporate models, but did not differ substantially from that of the production workers in industrial society. Their power, prestige, privilege and status essentially camouflaged the subjects’ compliance to hierarchical authority. The subjects exhibited awareness of their power but essentially directed their energies toward task attainment and individual mobility. Lacking an orientation toward structure change, the information specialists did not appear to fit the notion of a vanguard group. From this research we foresee some possibilities of changes within organizational authority as information specialists confront management with their expertise, but we anticipate that the institutions of social domination will prevail.
Cyber-Mothers: Online Synchronous Interviewing using Conferencing Software
Authors: O'Connor Henrietta , Madge Clare
Published: March 2010

The potential of the Internet as a valuable methodological tool for social science research is increasingly being recognised. This paper contributes to the debate surrounding virtual synchronous interviews and the value of online research. Specifically it introduces the use of a software conferencing technique - Hotline Connect - and discusses the implications of using the technique for Internet- based research. In particular issues of interview design, developing rapport, the role of insiders and outsiders in the research process, language use and the virtual interface are considered. The paper draws on the experience of a recent research project entitled ‘Cyberparents’ and concludes that the use of conferencing software holds great potential for synchronous online interviewing. However, this must be combined with sensitive, ethical handling of both the research process and the data to overcome both the weaknesses of this particular method and those inherent in any interviewing situation.
Making a Difference?: Institutional Habituses and Higher Education Choice
Authors: Reay Diane , David Miriam , Ball Stephen
Published: March 2010

Few studies have focussed on the impact made by individual institutions on the attainment of prospective university applicants and their subsequent destinations within higher education. In this paper we deploy the concept of institutional habitus in order to explore such influences. In spite of an inevitable degree of overlap and blurring of boundaries between peer group, family and institution we argue that there are specific effects from attending a particular educational institution. And these become most evident when examining the choices of similar kinds of students across the private-state divide. We conclude by arguing that, despite the gaps and rough edges in the seams of the concept of institutional habitus, these do not vitiate its value but, rather, suggest the need for further work. This paper then is the beginning of our efforts to try and develop institutional habitus at both the conceptual and empirical levels as a method for understanding the ways in which educational institutions make a difference in higher education choices.
Bias in Social Research
Authors: Hammersley M. , Gomm R.
Published: March 2010

Accusations of bias are not uncommon in the social sciences. However, the term ‘bias’ is by no means straightforward in meaning. One problem is that it is ambiguous. Sometimes, it is used to refer to the adoption of a particular perspective from which some things become salient and others merge into the background. More commonly, ‘bias’ refers to systematic error: deviation from a true score, the latter referring to the valid measurement of some phenomenon or to accurate estimation of a population parameter. The term may also be used in a more specific sense, to denote one particular source of systematic error: that deriving from a conscious or unconscious tendency on the part of a researcher to produce data, and/or to interpret them, in a way that inclines towards erroneous conclusions which are in line with his or her commitments. In either form, the use of ‘bias’ to refer to systematic error is problematic. It depends on other concepts, such as ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’, whose justification and role have been questioned. In particular, it seems to rely on foundationalist epistemological assumptions that have been discredited. And the various radical epistemological positions that some social scientists have adopted as an alternative either deny the validity of this concept of bias, explicitly or implicitly, or transform it entirely. We will argue, however, that while it is true that abandonment of a foundationalist conception of science has important implications for the meaning of ‘bias’ and its associated concepts, they are defensible; indeed, they form an essential framework for research as a social practice. In this context, we shall examine error as a matter of collegial accountability, and define ‘bias’ as one of several potential forms of error. We conclude by pointing to what we see as the growing threat of bias in the present state of social research.
‘I Saw You’: Searching for Lost Love via Practices of Reading, Writingand Responding
Authors: Laurier Eric , Whyte Angus
Published: March 2010

How do emotions move and how do emotions move us? How are feelings and recognitions distributed socio-materially? Based on a multi-site ethnographic study of a ëromanticí correspondance system, this article explores the themes of love, privacy, identity and public displays. Informed by ethnomethodology and actor- network theory its investigations into these ëinformalí affairs are somewhat unusual in that much of the research carried out by those bodies of work concentrates on ëinstitutionalí settings such as laboratories, offices and courtrooms. In common with ethnomethodology it attempts to re-specify some topics of interest in the social sciences and humanities; in this case, documents and practices of writing and reading those documents. A key element of the approach taken is restoring to reading and writing their situated nature as observable, knowable, distributed community practices. Re- specifying topics for the social sciences involves the detailed description of several situated ways in which the ëromanticí correspondence system is used. Detailing the translations, transformations and transportations of documents as ‘quasi- objects’ through several orderings, the article suggests that documents have no essential meaning and that making them meaningful is part of the work of those settings.
Responding to the Racialisation of Irishness: Disavowed Multiculturalism and its Discontents
Authors: Lentin Ronit
Published: March 2010

This article begins by discussing the specificities of racism in the Republic of Ireland. Critiquing multiculturalist and top-down antiracism policies, it argues that Irish multiculturalist initiatives are anchored in a liberal politics of recognition of difference, which do not depart from western cultural imperialism and are therefore inadequate for deconstructing inter-ethnic power relations. Multiculturalist approaches to antiracism result in the top-down ethnicisation of Irish society, and are failing to intervene in the uneasy interface of minority and majority relations in Ireland. Instead of a ‘politics of recognition’ guiding multiculturalist initiatives, I conclude the article by developing Hesse's (1999) idea of a ‘politics of interrogation’ of the Irish ‘we’ and propose disavowed multiculturalism as a way of theorising Irish responses to ethnic diversity. Interrogating the Irish ‘we’ cannot evade interrogating the painful past of emigration, a wound still festering because it was never tended, and which, I would suggest, is returning to haunt Irish people through the presence of the immigrant ‘other’.
Youth Citizenship and Unemployment: The Case of Passive and Active Labour Market Policies towards the Young Unemployed in Greece
Authors: Lazaridis Gabriella , Koumandraki Maria
Published: March 2010

This article concentrates on youth transitions into the labour market in one EU member state, Greece. The aim is to explore ways in which the Greek state has responded to the problem of youth unemployment, looking at policies (passive and active) introduced to address this. It reveals that state policies and social norms deeply embedded in the Greek culture, rather than encouraging acquisition of ‘full-citizenship’ and financial independence, restrict young people's chances for independence from the family. As is the case in other southern European countries, in Greece, the family and informal clientelistic networks of relatives and friends have acted as the primary source of economic and social support for young people. We argue that four co-centric circles circumscribe the type of citizenship available to a young person and have implications for young people's acquisition of full citizenship and financial independence: (a) the family, (b) friends and acquaintances, (c) changes in the labour market and (d) opportunities offered to the young unemployed through passive (benefits, social assistance) and active (vocational training) labour market policies available. With regard to young peoples’ ability tobecome financially independent, these either exercise a centrifugal force, encouraging dependency upon others (especially parents and close friends) for care, guidance and support, or a centripetal force, encouraging them to assume full rights and responsibilities of adulthood.
Field Research for Boneheads: From Naïveté to Insight on the Green Tortoise
Authors: McGettigan Timothy
Published: March 2010

In the following story, I catalogue a variety of difficulties that I encountered while conducting field research on the Green Tortoise. Oddly enough, the greatest impediments to the early success of this project were my poorly examined orienting assumptions. Nevertheless, the distortions imposed by my flawed assumptions were effectively sundered by an uncomfortable, but invaluable “corrective” crisis.
Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Learning from Women's Groups in Indonesia
Authors: Porter Marilyn
Published: March 2010

This paper focuses on the way in which Jakarta women's groups responded to the crisis that preceded and succeeded the end of Suharto's regime in Indonesia. In particular it looks at the way in which the gang rapes of women of Chinese descent focused and united the feminist response to the turmoil of 1998. Women's groups developed a number of strategies and actions during this period, but this paper focuses on the way in which women's groups accessed and used international instruments, especially Human Rights instruments to challenge their own government and to develop a specifically feminist position on violence against women. This activity is described as a form of creative ‘borrowing’. Seen in this context is can provide a new perspective on approaches to development that are genuinely indigenous and participatory.
The Timing of Family Formation in Britain and Spain
Authors: Holdsworth Clare , Elliott Jane
Published: March 2010

Both fertility and marriage behaviour have changed considerably throughout Western Europe. While fertility has declined across the continent there has been an increase in the age of marriage, accompanied by an increase in cohabitation rates and marriage dissolution. These cross- national trends have been suggested to be indicative of a second demographic transition. Both Beck and Giddens have attempted to locate these changes in family formation within a wider context of social change associated with late modernity. However, in this paper we argue that in trying to provide a universal theory to understand the second demographic transition it is important not to overlook important cross- national differences. Previous comparative research has established that in the South young people tend to marry later, but have children earlier in partnerships. While in the North, marriage and leaving home occur earlier but the link between marriage and childbirth is weaker. In this paper we use data from the British National Child Development Study and the Spanish 1991 Sociodemographic Survey in order to compare the processes of family formation in Britain and Spain. The emphasis is on understanding the sequencing and timing of a) leaving home, b) forming a partnership, and c) giving birth to a first child in relation to each other rather than as independent events.
‘What are they Doing? Dilemmas in Analyzing Bibliographic Searching: Cultural and Technical Networks in Academic Life’
Authors: Matthew David , David Zeitlyn
Published: March 2010

This paper presents provisional results from research into the uses and usefulness of electronic bibliographic databases in academic contexts. The research has been carried out as part of a British Library funded research project using ethnographic, focus group and conversation analytic techniques. Here we address the question: What can different varieties of ethnography and discourse analysis contribute to our understanding of organizational and institutional settings? Online and distributed bibliographic services (such as BIDS - Bath Information Data Services- and locally networked CD-ROMs) have now been available for some years in most universities and are thought to be a positive development. Many questions arise; some of which we hope may be answered by our results: What are they being used for? How are they being used? Are they as useful as central and local providers believe? Why do some researchers not use them? The research discussed here is based upon ethnographic interviews with 93 academics, researchers and postgraduates, ongoing observation as well as four focus group interviews with members of three departments (from different faculties) and with library staff at the University of Kent. We shall examine the cultural construction and negotiation of order and self-evidence. It is by the construction of cultural networks in which routine modes of questioning and criteria of relevance achieve the status of self-evidence that normal academic research communities establish themselves. Nevertheless the failure of this self-evidence to sustain itself sheds light on what ethnomethodologists find most interesting in any institutionalized discourse; its contingent dependence upon negotiations over interpretation and meaning.
Categorisation, Narrative and Devolution in Wales
Authors: Housley William , Fitzgerald Richard
Published: March 2010

Within this paper we examine the use of extended story turns, within the accomplished context of a radio news debate, that display various accounts of national identity in relation to a proposal for devolved democratic institutions within the United Kingdom. In this sense, they display a ‘world view’. These various positions are displayed through the use of various categories, inferences and connections in order to lend support to and promote positions of For and Against the proposal of the establishment of a devolved democratic assembly for Wales. In this sense the topics of national identity and political re- organisation are omni-relevant topics (Sacks 1992). However, our particular focus and interest is upon the various detailed ways such positions routinely rely on methods of categorisation and moral assessment in their construction, configuration and promotion of arguments. Furthermore, the analysis of such category work contributes to our understanding of the moral organisation of Welsh identity in relation to devolved forms of political organisation and representation.
Women's Occupations and the Social Order in Nineteenth Century Britain
Authors: Bottero Wendy , Prandy Kenneth
Published: March 2010

This paper examines the hierarchy amongst female occupations in Britain in the nineteenth century, using information on marriage and family patterns to generate a measure of distance within a social space. This social interaction approach to stratification uses the patterning of close relationships, in this case between women and men, to build up a picture of the social ordering within which such relationships take place. The method presented here starts, not with the assumption of a set of broad social groups that may interact to a greater or lesser extent, but from the opposite direction, from the patterns of social interaction among detailed occupational groupings. Instead of reading off social hierarchy from the labour market, we use relations of social closeness and similarity (here marriage) to build a picture of the occupational ordering from patterns of relative social distance. Such an approach is possible because of the way in which social relations are constrained by (and constrain) hierarchy.
The Whispering Shadow: Collectivism and Individualism at Ikeda-Hoover and Nissan UK
Authors: Stephenson Carol , Stewart Paul
Published: March 2010

Despite recent interest in the character of individual dissonance in the workplace less attention has been given to the nature of collectivism in the context of restricted trade union behaviour. While findings on conflicts associated with collective practices have been given reasonable space these have tended to focus on the association between collectivism qua trade unions and the presence or absence of conflict. Moreover, where the relationship between conflict and individualism provide the focus of study, this often serves to herald the demise of forms of collectivism or collectivism in general. The paper identifies three forms of collectivism in two Japanese manufacturing plants. These are; ‘trade union collectivism’; ‘work place collectivism’ and, the ‘social collectivism of everyday life’. By moving away from the conflict-consensus polarity, the intention is to shift the terms of debate over the nature of individualism and collectivism in the context of LLPs. The perceived conceptual and empirical gap is not to be closed by highlighting only incidents of dissonance, whether individually or collectively construed.
The Paradigm Contingent Career? Women in Regional Newspaper Journalism
Authors: Aldridge Meryl
Published: March 2010

Current commentary on non-manual employment suggests that we are moving into an era of ‘contingent careers’ where current performance is the only valid criterion for reward and advancement. New-style jobs may be intensive and insecure, it is argued, but they are also less freighted with gender-based assumptions. Newspaper journalism, with its lack of bureaucratic organization, varied tasks, tradition of high employee mobility, and deep-seated belief in meritocracy would seem to fit well within this model. Interviews with women working in the UK regional press indicate, however, that the occupation is less egalitarian that many in the industry believe. Newspaper organisations and status hierarchies continue to be built around ‘hard news’, despite the commercial importance of other elements of content. Consequently management experience in newsgathering is a key stage in promotion, but this work as currently structured is incompatible with primary domestic responsibility for dependants. Even those without such concerns, or with limited ambitions, find the intensified work règime in today's regional press hard to sustain. Considering why these working practices have remained largely unchallenged, the paper identifies five contributing factors. The epistemological individualism characteristic of women and well as men in journalism, a culture of vocation, the construction of editorial power as charismatic rather than bureaucratic, the commonsense populist style of most regional papers and, not least, journalists’ own entrenched belief in the contingent nature of their employment combine to make the profession particularly resistant to acknowledging structural barriers to advancement.