British Journal of Sociology最新文献

Changes in the social mobility of men in Scotland between the late-19th and the late-twentieth century are examined using new individual-level data from nineteenth-century censuses, linking records of men aged 0-19 in 1871 to their records in 1901, and then comparing their patterns with the social mobility of men aged 30-49 in 1974 and in 2001 as recorded in social surveys at these dates. The extent of social mobility in the nineteenth century was large. In particular, the social origins of people in the highest classes-the salariat-were very varied, indicating a society that was more open than is sometimes supposed. There was a slow growth in social mobility between then and 2001. In both periods, class inheritance-sons in the same social class as their father-was strongest in the economically declining sectors, which were agriculture and fisheries in 1901 and industry in 1974 and 2001. In the 1901 data, however, the transition to a non-agricultural economy induced strong outward mobility from agriculture.

Academics influence not only knowledge production but also selection to the labour market and policy development. They have power. Despite the sociological attention paid to class in higher education, few studies have examined the way in which class interferes with the careers of those navigating from being students to becoming scholars. Building on Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction, this study examines how class influences different groups' experiences of becoming academics. Based on 60 interviews with Norwegian scholars in their early to mid-careers, the analysis identifies the kind of classed resources that are in play in the unequal access to academic positions. Beyond more classical resources, such as financial, cultural, and psychological certainty, the interviewees point to the significance of an early familiarity with the rules of the game and strategic navigation of the academic system. We use these findings to discuss and nuance Pierre Bourdieu's perspectives on the role of incorporated, practical consciousness and disinterestedness in class reproduction in the academic world. This theoretical contribution facilitates the combined analysis of the implicit and the explicit ways that dominant classes preserve their position in the hierarchy, which the study demonstrates as key to social reproduction in academic careers.

In this paper, we complement a previous study of the UK natural science elite, as represented by Fellows of the Royal Society, with a comparable study of the humanities and social sciences elites, as represented by Fellows of the British Academy. We seek to establish how far similarities and differences exist in the social composition of these three academic elites and in the routes that their members have followed into elite positions. We are also concerned with the consequences of the humanities and social sciences elites being brought together in the British Academy, in contrast with the situation in most other countries where elite natural and social scientists are located in the same academy. We pursue these issues in the context of C. P. Snow's discussion of the social underlay of the cultural disjunction that he saw between the natural sciences and the humanities, while also considering how the social sciences fit in. We find that there is support for Snow's position at the time of his writing. However, a notable development in more recent years is that the growing social sciences elite is moving in its social composition away from the humanities elite and closer to the natural science elite. This is primarily due to changes in the social origins and education of Fellows in those sections of the British Academy that are on the borderline between the social and the natural sciences. A widening difference thus arises with Fellows in the humanities sections most representative of Snow's 'traditional culture'.

In sociology, the question of what it means to explain social phenomena and how this relates to the purpose of the social sciences is important but nowadays rarely asked. This article elaborates on this question and provides an answer by outlining the program of "explanatory sociology" as a branch of the modern social science approach. It is shown that, in this framework, to explain means to uncover cause-effect relationships based on models of individuals who are assumed the central force in social life. This idea is taken further to uncover specific challenges that individuals face in social life and how and why they establish and manage (or do not) social forms that help to organize the world from the viewpoint of their abilities and needs. Such action-oriented explanations have been presented and developed in sociology since its very beginning. Two main forms or logics to construct action-based explanations are outlined and developed due to the form and function of the used action theory or model. The article contributes to the discussion about the form and task of sociological theorizing by presenting action-based explanations as a form of sociological theorizing that defines a clear task in exploring challenges in social life and assessing possible forms of coping with them from the perspective of individuals. By doing so, two main ways of broadening explanations are considered and compared in light of what the purpose of sociology might be.

This study employs latent class analysis (LCA) as a novel methodology to investigate the multidimensional nature of meritocratic beliefs, addressing the limitations of traditional unidimensional approaches. Using data from the International Social Survey Program 2009 for the United States, Finland, and China, this study demonstrates several advantages of this multidimensional approach. First, LCA effectively identifies dual consciousness, where individuals simultaneously endorse meritocratic and structuralist explanations of social stratification. The analysis reveals three distinct narratives explaining social stratification: purely meritocratic beliefs, predominantly meritocratic beliefs, and dual consciousness. While all three subtypes consider merits highly important, they differ in their perceived importance of structural factors. Second, LCA facilitates cross-national comparisons, unveiling qualitative typological variations in meritocratic beliefs across countries. Unique country-specific subtypes or patterns emerge: Finland exhibits purely meritocratic beliefs, the United States shows predominantly meritocratic beliefs, and China demonstrates a dominance of dual consciousness. Although dual consciousness exists in all three countries, its prevalence varies significantly-dominant in China, moderate in the United States, and least in Finland. Third, this study reveals that the effect of education on meritocratic beliefs varies across the three countries. Education strengthens individual meritocratic beliefs in the United States, weakens them in Finland, and shows no significant effect in China. These findings highlight both within-country and across-country heterogeneity of meritocratic beliefs, underscoring the importance of a multidimensional approach.

Decades of field experiments show that White Americans are more likely to discriminate against Black Americans when the situation provides a nonracist rationalization for withholding help from a Black target - for instance, when the cost of helping looks unreasonable. However, work on racial discrimination in helping is scarcer outside of the US context. The present experiment extends this line of research to Europe and studies differences in helping asiatique (Asian), blanc (White) and noir (Black) men and women in France. In addition, it assesses to what extent racial discrimination in the probability to provide assistance is moderated by the perceived cost of help. The study rests on a sample of over 4500 independent observations collected through a factorial design that combines 12 testers (equally apportioned in race and gender groups), two social class conditions and four observation sites. Testers asked for directions to pedestrians in front of the traffic lights of a busy road, and pedestrians could provide different forms of help that varied in perceived cost. The analysis indicates that overall asiatique and noir testers receive help less often than their blanc counterparts. It also shows that racial discrimination is stronger when the perceived cost of helping is higher.

Current literature often links contentious protests with media hostility, showing that news outlets typically portray protests involving disruption or violence in a negative light. Contesting this literature, this work introduces an intersectional approach-focusing on geopolitics, protest goals and actions-to theorize divergences in the media framing of protests that entail violence. To illustrate these divergences, we use mixed methods-network analysis and content analysis-to examine an original dataset on U.S. media coverage of three large movements in different countries. These movements share similarities in their anti-status quo goals and contentious actions but differ in geopolitical locations: one taking place in the U.S., the second in a U.S. ally country, and the third in a non-ally country. As the first to apply network analysis in movement-media studies, this comparative study contributes to a systematic examination of media framing variations both within and across social movements. This work also complicates our understanding of violence and media representation by introducing a theoretically-informed approach that considers multiple factors simultaneously.

This essay introduces contributions to a special section, which documents and extends a debate on the proposition "Social Science is Explanation or it is Nothing" held at the London School of Economics on October 13^th, 2022. It discusses the history of the "Group for Theoretical Debates in Anthropology" led by Tim Ingold, Peter Wade and Soumhya Venkatesan, which has handed down a list of credible candidates for issues that had a chance of engaging every anthropologist, including students and those with interdisciplinary interests. It raises questions about the specific affordances of debates as forms of academic engagements. It argues that the chosen proposition concerning explanation invites a discussion about the contributions of the social sciences at a time when impulses from science and technology studies as well as fruitful exchanges across the boundary between "theory" and "method" have helped us moved beyond the older question as to whether or not sociology is "a science".

The article focuses on the work of working-class women (WCW) amid turbulent times. Its timespan is just prior to and during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK. The women's work, and the key skills involved, are fundamental to everyday lives, but both have been under-valued and under-rewarded. The pandemic shone a fresh light on the societal importance of this work and highlighted how its under-valuation and the women's systemic low pay and inferior working conditions have serious ramifications not only for individual workers and their families but for the provision of key services. The article centres WCW, at the intersection of classed and gendered disadvantage, to ask about inequalities in work experiences. Analysing nationally representative samples of thousands of workers in the UK prior to and as Covid-19 rolled out, we compare WCW with other workers. We show that the women faced both persistent and new inequalities at work: enduring low earnings, pandemic-led risks to jobs and paid hours, little opportunity to work from home or flexibly, and stressful key working roles. We reveal the heavily classed nature of some of these findings, show that others were more strongly gendered, while still others were classed and gendered outcomes that require intersectional analyses of the women's working lives.

Informal affective bonding through which social resources are deployed, known as guanxi, is significant in social, political, and economic relationships in present-day China. Guanxi is sociologically understood as a form of social network and also as a type of social exchange. In addition, guanxi is regarded as a kind of or derived from ritual practices. Ritual aspects of guanxi are critically examined. The concept of ritual is distinguished from Confucian li, with which guanxi is often associated. Rituals held to be supportive of guanxi are examined, three distinct conceptualisations of ritual are identified, and ritual is differentiated from social practice, ceremony, and rite. Finally, emotions in guanxi ritual are briefly discussed, comparing Collins' approach with an account from the early Chinese theorist Xunzi.