bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hard Times or Great Expectations? Dividend Omissions and Dividend Cuts by UK Firms*
Authors: Benito Andrew , Young Garry
Published: December 2003

This paper uncovers an increasing proportion of quoted UK companies omitting cash dividends. Using a large panel of quoted UK firms, we estimate panel data probit models for the incidence of dividend omissions and cuts as functions of financial characteristics including cash flow, leverage, investment opportunities, investment and company size. These variables account for most of the increase in omission since 1995. There is relatively little evidence to link this to the major tax reform of 1997 that abolished tax refunds on dividend income payable to tax‐exempt institutions. Significant persistence effects indicate companies are slow to adjust their balance sheets through their dividend.
Non‐linear Predictability of UK Stock Market Returns*
Authors: McMillan David G.
Published: December 2003

Linear predictability of stock market returns has been widely reported. However, recently developed theoretical research has suggested that due to the interaction of noise and arbitrage traders, stock returns are inherently non‐linear, whereby market dynamics differ between small and large returns. This paper examines whether an exponential smooth transition threshold model, which is capable of capturing this non‐linear behaviour, can provide a better characterization of UK stock market returns than either a linear model or an alternate non‐linear model. The results of both in‐sample and out‐of‐sample specification tests support the exponential smooth transition threshold model and hence the belief that investor behaviour does differ between large and small returns.
Human Capital Spillovers within the Workplace: Evidence for Great Britain*
Authors: Battu Harminder , Belfield Clive R. , Sloane Peter J.
Published: December 2003

In this paper, we use a unique matched worker–workplace data set to estimate the effect on own earnings of co‐workers’ education. Our results, using the 1998 GB Workplace Employee Relations Survey, show significant effects. An independent, significantly positive effect from average workplace education is evident; own earnings premia from years of education fall only slightly when controlling for workplace education. This result suggests that the social returns to education are strongly positive – working with colleagues who each had 1.2 years (1 standard deviation) of more education than the average worker, boosts own earnings by 11.1%. An additional year of any single co‐worker's education is worth about 3.2% of an additional own year of education. We also test for interactions between own and co‐worker education levels and for ‘skills incompatibility’ when worker education levels are heterogeneous. The interactions appear negative: own education is not much valued at workplaces where co‐workers’ education levels are already high. There is no evidence that workplace heterogeneity in worker education levels adversely affects own earnings. This result runs counter to theoretical predictions, and suggests that workers compete in tournaments for high‐paying jobs.
Implications of the Changes in the System of National Accounts for Measured Growth and the Business Cycle*
Authors: Vanhoudt Patrick
Published: December 2003

The recent changes in the national accounts unequivocally imply that the nature of measured growth and the business cycle has changed. This note investigates to what extent.
Empirical Modelling of Money Demand in Periods of Structural Change: The Case of Greece*
Authors: Brissimis Sophocles N. , Hondroyiannis George , Swamy P. A. V. B. , Tavlas George S.
Published: December 2003

This paper examines the behaviour of the demand for money in Greece during 1976Q1 to 2000Q4, a period that witnessed many of the influences that cause money‐demand instability. Two empirical methodologies, vector error correction (VEC) modelling and second‐generation random coefficient (RC) modelling, are used to estimate the demand for money. The coefficients of both the VEC and RC procedures support the hypothesis that the demand for money becomes more responsive to both the own rate of return on money balances and the opportunity cost of holding money because of financial deregulation. In general, both procedures also support the hypothesis that the income elasticity of money demand declines over time as a result of technological improvements in the payments system and the development of money substitutes, which lead to economies of scale in holding money.
Exogeneity in Vector Error Correction Models with Purely Exogenous Long‐Run Paths
Authors: Pradel Jacqueline , Rault Christophe
Published: December 2003

Existing exogeneity conditions of literature are only sufficient and imply ‘overly strong’ constraints on long‐run parameters. This paper presents some new results on exogeneity in vector error correction models. A key concept of the analysis is the ‘purely exogenous long‐run path’, i.e. a cointegrating vector only including ‘exogenous’ variables. Extending earlier results of Johansen, S. (1992). ‘Cointegration in partial systems and the efficiency of single‐equation analysis’,Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 52, pp. 389–402 and ofToda and Phillips (1991).Vector Autoregressions and Causality, Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper, No. 977 among others, we propose a framework based on two canonical representations of the long‐run matrix, which can constitute a suitable basis to formulate a necessary and sufficient condition for non‐causality as well as a condition for strong exogeneity. An interesting property is that the statistics involved in the sequential procedures for testing these conditions are distributed asχ2variables and can, therefore, easily be calculated with the usual statistical computer packages, which makes our approach fully operational, empirically. Finally, the power and size distortions of the sequential test procedures are analysed using Monte Carlo experiments.
Cointegration Vector Estimation by Panel DOLS and Long‐run Money Demand*
Authors: Mark Nelson C. , Sul Donggyu
Published: December 2003

We study the panel dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) estimator of a homogeneous cointegration vector for a balanced panel of N individuals observed over T time periods. Allowable heterogeneity across individuals include individual‐specific time trends, individual‐specific fixed effects and time‐specific effects. The estimator is fully parametric, computationally convenient, and more precise than the single equation estimator. For fixed N as T→∞, the estimator converges to a function of Brownian motions and the Wald statistic for testing a set of s linear constraints has a limiting χ2(s) distribution. The estimator also has a Gaussian sequential limit distribution that is obtained first by letting T→∞ and then letting N→∞. In a series of Monte‐Carlo experiments, we find that the asymptotic distribution theory provides a reasonably close approximation to the exact finite sample distribution. We use panel DOLS to estimate coefficients of the long‐run money demand function from a panel of 19 countries with annual observations that span from 1957 to 1996. The estimated income elasticity is 1.08 (asymptotic s.e. = 0.26) and the estimated interest rate semi‐elasticity is −0.02 (asymptotic s.e. = 0.01).
Tradition and Reason: Two Uses of Reason, Critical and Contemplative
Authors: Kerr Fergus
Published: December 2003

Abstract:  Reason, as it is proper to the task of theology, has two uses: critical and contemplative. This twofold appropriation of reason sets the stage for this article, a stage occupied in turn by Newman and by Aquinas. The critical function of theological work is expressed via the 1877 preface which Newman wrote for his Lectures on the Prophetic Office of the Church. The critical office of theology is vital not only to the practice of theology itself but to the liturgical and spiritual life of the church, and to the exercise of church leadership if that leadership is not to descend into tyranny. For the theologian, reason is not antithetical to contemplation; rather, contemplation includes a form of reasoning. Theology is ‘a schooling in the discipline of contemplating the self‐revealing God’, a discipline of ‘metaphysical ascesis’ which compels both intellectual conversion and moral practice. Such an ascesis was practised well by Aquinas, and Kerr reflects on the Summa Theologiae as ‘a training in a form of metaphysical reasoning’, being schooled in the knowledge of God which strips away our ‘idolatorous inclinations’.
Class inequality and meritocracy: a critique of Saunders and an alternative analysis1
Authors: Breen Richard , Goldthorpe John H.
Published: December 2003

Saunders' recent work claiming that contemporary British society is to a large extent ‘meritocratic’ is criticized on conceptual and technical grounds. A reanalysis of the National Child Development Study data‐set, used by Saunders, is presented. This reveals that while merit, defined in terms of ability and effort, does play a part in determining individuals' class destinations, the effect of class origins remains strong. Children of less advantaged class origins need to show substantially more merit than children from more advantaged origins in order to gain similar class positions. These differences in findings to some extent arise from the correction of biases introduced by Saunders; but there are also features of his own results, consistent with those reported in the reanalysis, which he appears not to have fully appreciated.
Social mobility and personal satisfaction: evidence from ten countries*
Authors: Marshall Gordon , Firth David
Published: December 2003

This paper examines survey data relating class mobility to satisfaction and dissatisfaction with seven different domains of everyday life among nationally representative samples of men and women living in ten industrialized nations. The evidence is set against competing pessimistic and optimistic accounts of the mobility experience found in earlier literature. Results show that individuals who move from working‐class origins to middle‐class destinations are no more likely to be systematically satisfied or dissatisfied with life than are the socially immobile or even those downwardly mobile from advantaged backgrounds into the working class. Indeed, in all nations, the overall association between class experience and satisfaction with life is both weak and uneven across the different life‐domains. The study also serves to illustrate an important principle of research methodology more generally.
Is there an underclass in Britain?*
Authors: Buckingham Alan
Published: December 2003

This paper sets out to define the underclass and then test the predictions of three competing theories in the underclass debate. Using the National Child Development Study for the analysis it is found that an ‘underclass’ suffering from a lack of qualifications, low cognitive ability and chronic joblessness exists. The validity of making a distinction between the working class and an ‘underclass’ has often been questioned both because of the dubious history of such a distinction and because it is not believed that such a distinction is empirically true. The results in this paper contradict this assertion by finding the underclass to be distinctive from the working class in terms of patterns of family formation, work commitment and political allegiance. The distinct attitudes of the underclass, when coupled with evidence of inter‐ and intra‐generational stability of membership, provide early evidence that a new social class, the underclass, may now exist in Britain.
Capitalism, money and banking: a critique of recent historical sociology
Authors: Ingham Geoffrey
Published: December 2003

A conception of money as a ‘neutral veil’ masking a ‘real’ economy was adopted by orthodox economic theory after the Methodenstreit, and is also to be found, in a different form, in Marxian political economy. Both derive from an erroneous functionalist and anachronistic ‘commodity’ theory of money which, as Post‐Keynesian economists argue, cannot explain the distinctive form of capitalist credit‐money. Orthodox economic theory and classic Marxism have tacitly informed and flawed historical sociology's understanding of money's role in capitalist development. Mann and Runciman, for example, consider the ‘economy’ exclusively in terms of the social relations of production and imply that money is epiphenomenal and is to be explained as a response to the needs of the ‘real’ economy. They do not recognize the structural specificity of capitalist money and banking nor its importance. An alternative account of the autonomous historical conditions of existence of the specifically capitalist form of bank and state credit‐money and its role in capitalist development is outlined.
Gender and income in pharmacy: human capital and gender stratification theories revisited
Authors: Tanner Julia , Cockerill Rhonda , Barnsley Jan , Williams A. Paul
Published: December 2003

This is a case study of gender and earnings in pharmacy – a profession characterized by its rapid recruitment of female practitioners. We try to account for disparities in earnings between male and female pharmacists in Ontario with the aid of human capital theory and gender stratification theory. Data is drawn from a random sample of 463 Ontario pharmacists.

We find a consistent sex gap in earnings regardless of occupational level of practitioners (i.e. owner, manager or employee) and net of such factors as hours worked, commitment to work, hours devoted to childcare, absences from the labour market, and years since graduation. Instead, the main reason why women in pharmacy earn less than males is because they remain employees throughout their careers. However, we are less successful at identifying the additional factors responsible for the depressed earnings of female practitioners.

We discuss our findings in light of the claims of gender stratification and human capital theory.
The new regulatory state: the social powers of the European Union
Authors: Walby Sylvia
Published: December 2003

The understanding of the European Union poses a challenge for Sociology and its traditional conceptions of the state. In particular, the impact of the social dimension has been underestimated and undervalued. This paper explores the implications of the developing social dimension of the European Union for European social relations in the context of globalization which allegedly reduces the power of states to act effectively in the social realm. It argues for a broader conceptualization of the social dimension and for a new conception of the regulatory state. It argues that the significance of a politico‐legal project social justice. It concludes with a reconsideration of the powers of the state in an era of globalization
Modernity: a non‐European conceptualization
Authors: Mouzelis Nicos
Published: December 2003

In the light of insights drawn from historical sociology and Parsons' theory of differentiation/modernization, an attempt is made to conceptualize modernity in such a way as to avoid both eurocentrism and the total rejection of the concept by those who view it as an ideological means for the further advancement of western cultural imperialism.
Risk and the welfare state*
Authors: Taylor‐Gooby Peter , Dean Hartley , Munro Moira , Parker Gillian
Published: December 2003

The British welfare state developed as a state‐centred response to the problem of handling the risks encountered in a typical life‐course. The influential work of Giddens and others implies that the traditional welfare state is under attack from two directions: a changing international politi co‐economic environment limits the freedom of national governments to pursue independent policies involving relatively high taxation to finance social spending. At the same time, changes in the experience of risk and declining confidence in the expertise of welfare state planners and professionals undermine support for state‐centred solutions. This approach fails to acknowledge that available non‐state services are often inadequate to meet many everyday life risks and that the authority of private sector advisers, insurers and professionals is also increasingly open to question. This article discusses whether people reject welfare state solutions to problems of risk in the context of research on the perceptions and behaviour of people buying or selling their homes, considering provision for long‐term care needs and defrauding social security carried out by the ESRC's Economic Beliefs and Behaviour programme. Individual responses endorse the continued provision of state welfare in order to meet unprovided risks alongside disenchantment with the record of both state and private professionals and planners and awareness that state retrenchment requires greater individual responsibility for meeting one's own needs. The theory of risk society requires development to recognize that citizens are not necessarily alienated from state welfare.
Socio‐economic re‐structuring and employment: the case of minority ethnic groups1
Authors: Iganski Paul , Payne Geoff
Published: December 2003

The consequences of major changes in employment, due to the decline of manufacturing and the growth of the service sector, have not been well‐documented, nor theorized, in the sociology of ethnic relations, even in recent studies. For example, Blumer's classic argument that economic development adapts to ‘race relations’, rather than the reverse as predicted by the modernization school, has not been either empirically resolved or conceptually applied to the UK. By adapting data from the Labour Force Survey and the Census, the paper begins to fill this gap with a detailed account of three main minority ethnic groups, and a separate analysis of male and female employment. It is demonstrated that, contrary to assumptions that members of the minority ethnic groups suffered most from de‐industrialization, they actually did rather well, and in some cases did better than the majority population. These findings are re‐conceptualized as collective social mobility, as part of a review of a number of conceptual frameworks in the light of the data.
Routes of success: influences on the occupational attainment of young British males
Authors: Bond Rod , Saunders Peter
Published: December 2003

Using data from the National Child Development Study, the paper develops a complex path model predicting the occupational grade achieved by 4, 298 employed British males at age 33. Most British social mobility research has been based in the ‘class structurationist’ tradition, and the paper begins by comparing this with the ‘status attainment’ tradition, which is more common in the USA The class structurationist approach has rarely analysed the factors influencing individual occupational attainment, and those working in this tradition in Britain have often assumed that people from working‐class origins fare worse on average than those from the middle class because of factors associated with their class disadvantage rather than any difference in individual characteristics such as ability or ambition. Status attainment research, however, has generally found that individual ability and motivation are the key factors influencing occupational attainment, and that class origins count for comparatively little. Using various measures of class origins, parental support, qualifications, and individual ability and ambition, the paper goes on to develop a linear structural equations model which achieves a good fit to the data. The model demonstrates that individual ability is by far the strongest influence on occupational achievement, that motivation is also important, and that factors like class background and parental support, while significant, are relatively much weaker. The paper concludes that occupational selection in Britain appears to take place largely on meritocratic principles.
Governing police practice: limits of the new accountability
Authors: Chan Janet B. L.
Published: December 2003

The advent of public‐sector managerialism has brought with it a new principle of police accountability in Western democracies such as Australia and Britain. The new accountability gives emphasis to managerial rather than legal or public‐interest standards, favours external oversight combined with self‐regulation rather than centralized control, and promotes risk management rather than rule enforcement. This article makes use of the experience of an Australian police force to show that the new accountability has not been successful in holding police accountable, while elements of the old accountability have re‐emerged to dominate public debates. It is argued that in the area of police governance, the neo‐liberal state does not necessarily pursue a coherent strategy of ‘acting at a distance’ (cf. Miller and Rose 1990), partly because of the inability of accountability technologies to deliver substantially the promised policy outcomes and partly because of the sensitivity of its political arm to the public's moral outrage against corruption (cf. Garland 1996).
Norbert Elias and the civilized prison
Authors: Pratt John
Published: December 2003

This paper employs an Eliasian perspective to provide an historical overview to the contemporary crisis in British prisons. It argues that some of the roots of this crisis lie within the very attempts to bring prison development in line with the cultural values of modern society.
The barbarism of civilization: cultural genocide and the ‘stolen generations’1
Authors: van Krieken Robert
Published: December 2003

Norbert Elias suggested that ‘civilization’ involves the transformation of human habitus so that violence of all sorts is gradually subjected to greater and more sophisticated forms of management and control, whereas ‘decivilization’ encompasses processes which produce an increase in violence and a breakdown in the stability and consistency of on‐going social relations. What remains unexplored is the extent to which ‘civilizing offensives’, the self‐conscious attempts to bring about ‘civilization’, have revolved around essentially violent policies and practices. This paper examines the systematic removal of indigenous Australian children from their families, largely for the social engineering purpose of the gradual and systematic annihilation of Aboriginal cultural identity. At the time, these policies and practices were constructed by most observers as contributing to the ‘welfare’ of Australian Aborigines, and this intersection of welfare and violence raises the possibility that civilization and decivilization, rather than being different processes which may or may not run alongside each other, interpenetrate each other so that, under certain circumstances, societies are ‘barbaric’ precisely in their movement towards increasing civilization. It may also be possible to describe the move away from the systematic removal of Aboriginal children since the 1970s as itself part of a civilizing process, an increasing recognition of the human rights of Australian Aborigines and of the inhumanity of those policies and practices. The paper concludes by addressing the implications for theories of civilization and decivilization, as well as more generally for our contemporary understanding of what it means to be a ‘civilized’ modern citizen.
The concept of adequate causation and Max Weber's comparative sociology of religion
Authors: Buss Andreas
Published: December 2003

Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and, the Spirit of Capitalism, studied in isolation, shows mainly an elective affinity or an adequacy on the level of meaning between the Protestant ethic and the ‘spirit’ of capitalism. Here it is suggested that Weber's subsequent essays on ‘The Economic Ethics of World Religions’ are the result of his opinion that adequacy on the level of meaning needs and can be verified by causal adequacy.

After some introductory remarks, particularly on elective affinity, the paper tries to develop the concept of adequate causation and the related concept of objective possibility on the basis of the work of v. Kries on whom Weber heavily relied. In the second part, this concept is used to show how the study of the economic ethics of India, China, Rome and orthodox Russia can support the thesis that the ‘spirit’ of capitalism, although it may not have been caused by the Protestant ethic, was perhaps adequately caused by it.
Two arguments for ‘covert methods’ in social research
Authors: Herrera C. D.
Published: December 2003

In some ‘covert’ participant–observation studies, social researchers defend their omission of informed consent on the basis of a need to protect subjects from apprehension, nervousness, or even criminal prosecution. In other instances, researchers contend that deception is rampant in society, and that their methods are no more immoral than the behaviour that ordinarily prevails. These defenses of covert methods fail to appreciate the range of risks that may be involved, and in the latter case, fail to show that these methods are in fact morally indistinguishable from the ‘deception’ that people typically engage in. Ultimately, these proposed defenses of covert methods succeed only in arousing greater concern about informed consent in social research, and the researcher's privilege in bypassing it.
Do the social sciences create phenomena?: the example of public opinion research
Authors: Osborne Thomas , Rose Nikolas
Published: December 2003

This paper is an investigation into the philosophy and the history of the social sciences. Some philosophers of the social sciences have suggested that a key feature of the natural sciences is their capacity to create phenomena, and that the social sciences do not meet this criterion. We suggest, to the contrary, that the social sciences can and do create phenomena, in the sense of new ways of describing and acting that have been used to produce all sorts of effects. Like the natural sciences, the social sciences create their phenomena through the procedures that are established to discover them. But the creation of phenomena is a complex, technically difficult and contested process and its success rare. Historically, this argument is developed through a case‐study of the development and evolution of public opinion research in the USA and Britain. We argue that by the 1950s public opinion produced a version of the world that had entered ‘into the true’. Special attention is given to technical considerations in the development of public opinion research, especially the genealogy of a particular research technology, that of the representative sample. Whilst we are not concerned with demarcation criteria, we argue that there are some important differences between the social and the natural sciences; that the former have a less concentrated ‘spatial mix’ and a slower ‘tempo of creativity’. None the less, in this particular case, the social sciences have played a key role in the creation of opinioned persons and an opinionated society.
Elite formation under occupation: the internal stratification of Palestinian elites in the West Bank and Gaza Strip*
Authors: Mazawi André Elias , Yogev Abraham
Published: December 2003

This paper examines the internal stratification of Palestinian elites in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation. Our general aim is to clarify the extent to which social and political subordination to outside rule influences the development of indigenous elites in stateless societies. In contrast to nation‐state societies, such elites may be horizontally stratified into a wider range of institutional settings, and vertically stratified by anti‐occupation activism alongside the attainment of occupational prestige. In addition, context‐specific determinants of their stratification patterns, such as refugee status, regionality, and country in which educational credentials were acquired, should be considered. A secondary content analysis of interviews conducted by the Palestinian Panorama centre with 249 elite members reveals, that the vertical stratification of Palestinian elites along occupational attainment and anti‐occupation activism constitutes two quite independent status dimensions. A multinomial logit regression shows that, horizontally, elite groups are embedded in four distinct types of institutional activity, further demonstrating the multi‐faceted formation of Palestinian elites. Contextual resources, such as refugee versus non‐refugee status, regionality, and the acquiring of Western credentials, have differential effects on the vertical and horizontal stratification of Palestinian elites. The implications of these findings for further research on elite formation in the post‐Oslo Palestinian society and in other stateless societies are discussed in conclusion.
Beyond the racist/hooligan couplet: race, social theory and football culture
Authors: Back Les , Crabbe Tim , Solomos John
Published: December 2003

This paper draws on recent research to explore the changing cultures of racism in English football. Starting from a critical analysis of key themes in the literature on football it seeks to show that existing analytical frameworks need to be reworked if they are going to adequately account for the complex forms through which racism is expressed in contemporary football cultures. In the course of this analysis we question some of the ways in which the issue of racism in football is collapsed into broader accounts of ‘hooliganism’ and other forms of violence among football fans. From this starting point the paper draws on some elements of our empirical research in order to outline an alternative way of framing the issues of racism and multiculturalism in football.
Repartnering: the relevance of parenthood and gender to cohabitation and remarriage among the formerly married*
Authors: Lampard Richard , Peggs Kay
Published: December 2003

This paper is an exploratory analysis of the impact of current and anticipated parenthood on cohabitation and remarriage among those formerly living in marriage‐type relationships. The focus on children is embedded within a broader analysis of repartnering which takes account of other factors, including gender. Quantitative and qualitative analyses are used, with a multivariate analysis of repartnering patterns, using data from the General Household Survey, being complemen ted by in‐depth interview data examining the attitudes of the formerly married to future relationships. The paper demonstrates that parenthood has a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of formerly married women repartnering, with a higher number of children being associated with a lower probability of repartnering. The presence of children can work against repartnering in a variety of ways. Children place demands on their parents and can deter or object to potential partners. Parents may see their parental role as more important than, and a barrier to, new relationships. However, mothers are typically looking for partners for themselves rather than fathers for their children. Among formerly married people without children, the desire to become a parent encourages repartnering. The paper concludes that parenthood should be a key consideration in analyses of repartnering.
Idealist thought, social policy and the rediscovery of informal care
Authors: Offer John
Published: December 2003

Recent work in the history of welfare has suggested a need to reconsider the status of some conceptual frameworks within sociology and social policy studies regarding the meaning of ‘social welfare’ and the ‘welfare state’. In this context, the present article argues in particular that the marked upswing of interest in informal care in the UK beginning in the 1970s reflected, at least in part, a reaction, itself not so far adequately understood, to some features of the work of Richard Titmuss and ‘traditional social administration’, work which, on examination, reveals a distinctive ‘idealist’ core, unsympathetic to research into familial patterns of caring. Similarities with ‘classic’ British idealism, broadly defined, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries are reviewed. This idealist thought emerges too as unresponsive to informal care, even though contemporary non‐idealist thought had discussed it.

The article concludes that the (unacknowledged) persistence and influence of idealist modes of social thought diverted attention away from informal care; informal care was in fact not ‘discovered’ in the 1970s, it was rediscovered as idealist preconceptions about the nature of ‘real’ welfare were discarded. The sense of ‘discovery’ reflected prevailing and dubious historigraphical interpretations of the meaning of ‘social welfare’ and the status of the (‘classic’) ‘welfare state’.
Who killed whom?: victimization and culpability in the social construction of murder
Authors: May Hazel
Published: December 2003

Based on in‐depth interviews with relatives of people convicted of murder, this article examines the ways in which everyday understandings of ‘murder’ are socially constructed, as revealed by the narratives of murderers‘ relatives. To this end, interviewees' explanations of the killings are analysed and a distinction is drawn between interviewees who understood the killings committed by their relatives as manslaughter and those who accepted the murder verdict. In defining the offences in this way, interviewees identified the significance of victimization and culpability to understandings of interpersonal violence. Through the analysis of interview data, it is possible to examine the ways in which ‘murder’ is seen to have occurred only when particular criteria of victimization and culpability are met.
Theorizing fear of crime: beyond the rational/irrational opposition
Authors: Lupton Deborah , Tulloch John
Published: December 2003

Much has been written about the ‘social problem’ of fear of crime in the criminological and sociological literature in recent years. We would argue that thus far in this literature, however, there has been too much emphasis on the question ‘How rational is people's fear of crime?’, a question that largely reduces the complexity of the phenomenon and positions a ‘biased’ lay response against an ‘expert’ objective judgment. In this article, we review different epistemological perspectives that can be offered to understand in greater depth the fear of crime phenomenon. We place particular emphasis on those hermeneutic perspectives that go beyond the models of the rationalist, individualistic subject to exploring issues of symbolic representation, discourse and the micro ‐ and macro‐contexts in which fear of crime is experienced and given meaning. We also draw upon two case studies from our own empirical research into fear of crime, conducted with the intention of exploring the situated narratives, cultural representations and different levels of symbolic meaning that contribute to the dynamic constitution of fear.
REVIEW ARTICLE
Authors: Fielding Nigel G.
Published: December 2003

Qualitative methods have lately enjoyed enhanced legitimacy and are increasingly used in academic and applied social research. Yet the field is marked by controversy about virtually every key tenet of qualitative inquiry, from matters of epistemology to purely practical matters of relations with research subjects. Not only is the practice of qualitative research hotly contested, consensus is lacking about the purpose of qualitative research and whether it has a distinctive role to play relative to other approaches to the study of social phenomena. Against this context, the handbooks of qualitative method edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln represent a significant attempt to capture the breadth of contemporary approaches to qualitative method. The article examines key contributions from the handbooks, drawing on these to develop a view of qualitative method from a pragmatic, realist perspective. Among the issues considered are the significance of relativism, subjectivity, post–modernism and feminist method, the politicization of the purposes of qualitative research, the debate over criteria of validity, and the move to treat qualitative research as an entertainment rather than a scientific practice.
Towards an embodied understanding of the structure/agency relationship
Authors: Shilling Chris
Published: December 2003

Theoretical conceptualizations of the structure/agency relationship have been central to the development of the discipline, yet tend to exhibit two major limitations. First, they share a relatively disembodied view of the agent which overemphasizes cognition and marginalizes the significance of the emotional dimensions of interaction for human action and social structure. Second, most have difficulty maintaining the causal significance of both the ‘people’ and the ‘parts’ of the social system and are, therefore, unable to examine adequately their interplay. This paper suggests these problems are related, and examines the contribution recent formulations of the ‘interaction order’ can make toward overcoming the difficulties characteristic of this key sociological debate. The ‘interaction order’ identifies the embodied dimensions of interaction as consequential for, yet irreducible to, structures and agents, enables us to investigate the ‘loose coupling’ of interaction to individuals and social systems, but is underdeveloped in important respects. This paper addresses these limitations. It also highlights the utility for the structure/agency debate of identifying a sector of embodied interactions concerned with the maintenance of social selves, and suggests how this somatic sector of social life might be developed analytically.
Weber's alleged emotivism
Authors: Tester Keith
Published: December 2003

This paper seeks to refute Alasdair Maclntyre's contention that the sociology of Max Weber is emotivist. Maclntyre understands emotivism to involve the collapse of all moral judgment into statements of personal preference. It is shown that Weber's sociology analyses this condition and seeks to repudiate it. In no way does Weber embrace emotivism. Maclntyre misses Weber's repudiation because he misreads Weber's sociological project. The paper shows that Maclntyre's reading of Weber can be refuted if attention is paid to the ‘Politics as a Vocation’ lecture.
Is Bauman's bureau Weber's bureau?: a comment*
Authors: du Gay Paul
Published: December 2003

In his highly regarded and influential Modernity and the Holocaust Zygmunt Bauman launched one of the most passionate and sustained critiques of ‘bureaucratic rationality’ seen within social theory for some time. In so doing he drew heavily upon the work of Max Weber for support. In this brief paper I am interested in exploring the extent to which Weber really is the anti‐bureaucratic ally Bauman claims him to be. In the first part of the paper I outline the main elements of Bauman's critique of bureaucratic rationality, drawing particular attention to its reliance upon a self‐consciously Weberian theoretical lexicon. In the second part of the paper I seek to indicate that, despite his claims to be following in Weber's tracks, Bauman's conclusions regarding the moral vacuity of bureaucratic conduct are the very antithesis of Weber's own.
Globalization and the policing of protest: the case of APEC 1997
Authors: Ericson Richard , Doyle Aaron
Published: December 2003

The policing of protest at international events conflicts with the political and policing culture of the host nation. Previous research shows a trend toward softer, more tolerant styles of policing protest within various Western democracies. We present a case study of an exception: the repression of protest at an international event in which one Western democracy hosted rulers of less democratic regimes in a ritual celebration of economic globalization. We explore reasons why, in the face of protests about undemocratic regimes elsewhere, the Canadian government and police were willing to use blatantly undemocratic tactics popularly believed to be more characteristic of those other regimes. Implications are discussed concerning protest policing, economic globalization, the nation‐state and social movements.
Class voting, social change, and the left in Australia, 1943–961
Authors: Weakliem David L. , Western Mark
Published: December 2003

The relationship between class and voting choices has been the subject of controversy in recent years, especially in connection with the apparent decline of the traditional left. This paper examines class voting in Australia, focusing on three major issues: (1) changes in the overall strength of class voting (2) realignment, or changes in the relative political positions of the classes (3) the connection between the strength of class voting and support for Labor. It finds that (1) there is a decline in ‘general’ class voting (2) much of this decline involves a realignment of certain middle class groups, but there is no support for the popular idea that class alignments have become more complex (3) there is no connection between the strength of class voting and Labor performance. Our results cast doubt on accounts that regard the electoral difficulties of left parties as a symptom of the decline of class.
Boredom and social meaning
Authors: Barbalet J. M.
Published: December 2003

Meaning is necessary in social processes. An absence of meaning in an activity or circumstance leads to an experience of boredom. This is a restless, irritable feeling that the subject's current activity or situation holds no appeal, and that there is a need to get on with something interesting. Thus boredom emotionally registers an absence of meaning and leads the actor in question towards meaning. Boredom, then, is central to key social processes centered on questions of mean‐ingfulness. Given the pervasive preconditions for boredom, release from boredom is a factor that explains characteristic social practices, including risk taking and intergroup conflict.
Fish, field, habitus and madness: the first wave mental health users movement in Great Britain*
Authors: Crossley Nick
Published: December 2003

This paper traces and explains the emergence of the mental health users movement in Great Britain, focusing specifically upon the formation of the Mental Patients Union in the early 1970s. The analysis presented in the paper draws, to some extent, from conventional movement theory. In addition, however, it draws from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This represents an innovation in movement analysis and the necessity of this innovation is argued for in an early section of the paper.
Rational Choice Theory and prison chaplaincy: the chaplain's dilemma1
Authors: Beckford James A.
Published: December 2003

Critical responses to the application of Rational Choice theories to the study of religious phenomena tend to be polarized between outright denial that the theories have any relevance to religion and equally outspoken claims that the theories are the only hope for progress in the sociology of religion. This article aims to avoid both of these extreme positions by raising a question, instead, about one of Rational Choice's central propositions about religion. This proposition holds that levels of religious vitality vary positively with the degree to which agencies of the state are prevented from regulating religious activity. The findings of recent research into prison chaplaincy in the UK and the USA will be used to test this claim. The main argument will be that the existence of an established church has facilitated a higher level of religious activity, especially for minority faiths, in prisons in England and Wales than is possible in American prisons. This difference in religious vitality is explained in terms of the Church of England's privileged position as a ‘broker’ between the state and minority faith communities. There is greater equality of opportunity for religious activity in American prisons, but the level of the activity is necessarily lower. In neither country is there anything truly resembling a ‘free’ market for religion in prisons, but the established Church of England is able to use its quasi‐monopoly powers to broker advantageous conditions for minority faith communities. This brokerage function may be advantageous to all religious organizations in the highly regulated ‘economy’ of prisons.
Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society1
Authors: Castells Manuel
Published: December 2003

This article aims at proposing some elements for a grounded theory of the network society. The network society is the social structure characteristic of the Information Age, as tentatively identified by empirical, cross‐cultural investigation. It permeates most societies in the world, in various cultural and institutional manifestations, as the industrial society characterized the social structure of both capitalism and statism for most of the twentieth century.

Social structures are organized around relationships of production/consumption, power, and experience, whose spatio‐temporal configurations constitute cultures. They are enacted, reproduced, and ultimately transformed by social actors, rooted in the social structure, yet freely engaging in conflictive social practices, with unpredictable outcomes. A fundamental feature of social structure in the Information Age is its reliance on networks as the key feature of social morphology. While networks are old forms of social organization, they are now empowered by new information/communication technologies, so that they become able to cope at the same time with flexible decentralization, and with focused decision‐making. The article examines the specific interaction between network morphology and relationships of production/consumption, power, experience, and culture, in the historical making of the emerging social structure at the turn of the Millennium.
From sociology to historical social science: prospects and obstacles
Authors: Wallerstein Immanuel
Published: December 2003

Analysis is provided of the roots of sociology and its links with historical optimism. Particular focus is placed by such a sociology upon the origins of modernity and problems of urban disorder. Sociology's golden age was in the immediate postwar period. But since the 1960s, ‘globalization’, the sciences of complexity and cultural studies have transformed the context for sociology (especially transforming the so‐called ‘two cultures’). The article concludes with some wide‐ranging recommendations as to how sociology should be developed into a re‐unified, historical social science on a truly global scale.
At the birth of second century sociology: times of reflexivity, spaces of identity, and nodes of knowledge
Authors: Therborn Göran
Published: December 2003

The sociology of the next century is likely to differ from that of the twentieth century. The current situation and the future prospects of sociology are assessed by spelling out the trajectory over the past century of sociology's predominant assumptions about the character and direction of the social world and of its own task of cognition. Sociology is located in three spaces of identity: a space of disciplines, a stage of everyday practice, and a space of imagination and investigation. From the cosmological, epistemological, and spatial trajectories some indications of a new, very different future of sociology are given. Finally, a way of preserving and developing the legacy of first century sociology is presented, in the form of nodes of knowledge, central to a ‘typical’ sociological approach to the social.
Two societies, one sociology, and no theory
Authors: Esping‐Andersen Gosta
Published: December 2003

This article shows the declining effectiveness of the sociological classics to make sense of the dramatically changing economy and society. However, the various ‘post‐something’ analyses of such transformations, especially the post‐modern emphases on language and discourse, are also shown to be inadequate. In their place the author advocates the use of various leitmotifs to establish certain constants, in order then to be able to describe and determine various patterns of variance. The article makes various recommendations for future sociology to be empirical and both diachronically and cross‐sectionally comparative in order to comprehend those dramatic changes that currently surround us as sociologists. Sociology should establish such ‘constants’ and worry less about being ‘theory‐less’.