British Journal of Sociology最新文献

Perspectives on neoliberal political-economic practice often frame its dominance in terms of harms to 'society'. Prominently, Wendy Brown (2019, 52) offers an account of the 'neoliberal revolution', claiming that, when 'the social vanishes from our ideas, speech, and experience', commonality disappears, democracy diminishes, and authoritarianism prevails. The paper considers this understanding to argue for the importance of political articulations of 'society', which reveal complexities that elude nostalgic accounts of how the social has been lost. Making this case, it works through real-world invocations of social commonality in the name of social cohesion. Social cohesion illustrates the multiplicity of objectives invoking 'society', ranging from the production of pro-social subjects to the pursuit of resilience against shifting scenarios of social collapse. On this basis the paper problematises perspectives that either treat the social as an artefact of administrative practice or that prioritize experiences of moral purpose and commonality. It argues that such positions risk mythologizing 'society' if they don't attend to the complex circumstances of its political articulation.

Since the 1990s, high-income individuals have increasingly sorted into the Democratic Party as a result of their socially liberal views. There is evidence that over time high-income Democrats have also liberalized in their economic attitudes, but the motivations behind this purported support remain unclear. This study uses a forced-choice conjoint experiment with an oversample of high-income respondents and takes the novel approach of pairing the experiment with cognitive interviews in order to explore why high-income Democrats support redistributive policies. Results show that the redistributive preferences of high-income Democrats look very similar to those of other Democrats. They prefer policies proposed by their own party. They want policies that are racially "fair," and sometimes define this to mean favoring Black recipients. Most of all, however, they are driven by a commitment to "fiscal populism," the idea that (increased) government spending should be funded by the most elite members of society.

The most recent British census was the first to elicit transgender identity. The 2021 Census of England and Wales asked 'Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?'. It is has been argued that this formulation confused a substantial number of respondents who erroneously answered in the negative. The 2022 Census of Scotland asked a clearer question, 'Do you consider yourself to be trans, or have a trans history?' Comparison between the results provides further evidence that the Census of England and Wales overestimated the transgender population, and also raises the possibility that it undercounted the non-binary component of this population.

The paradox of inequality posits that individuals in high-inequality societies paradoxically exhibit stronger meritocratic beliefs, perceiving their societies as systems that reward individuals based on ability and effort rather than social background or connections. This study presents an explanation from the perspective of critical sociology of education, complementing prior research that offers community contextual and psychosocial insights. By analysing the ISSP 2019 dataset, which includes 29 countries or regions, we find that in countries or regions with high income inequality, education serves to legitimise inequality and diminishes individuals' awareness of the structural factors contributing to inequality. Conversely, in those with low inequality, while basic education also functions to legitimise inequality, advanced stages of education possess an enlightening character that enables individuals to be more aware of the structural factors that lead to inequality. Generally, by estimating the interactions between education and country-level income inequality, this study elucidates the factors contributing to the paradox of inequality and reconciles the persistent argument between legitimisation and enlightenment theories of education.

This article examines civil society organisations working to enhance social mobility in England, especially through higher education. Against the backdrop of neoliberal governance, we investigate whether these organisations operate as protective counter-movements resisting marketisation or as institutional mechanisms that stabilise the inequalities they aim to address. Drawing on Karl Polanyi's concept of the ‘double movement’ and Nancy Fraser's critique of marketised social protections, we map and analyse over 100 charities and non-profits established since 1992. We combined qualitative coding of organisational websites across nine Fraserian dimensions with Latent Profile Analysis to identify structural patterns within the field. Findings reveal that most organisations balance critical framings of inequality with funder-compatible, technocratic delivery models. We argue this structural ambivalence is a defining feature of civil society under neoliberalism and show how the social mobility industry operates to suggest symbolic reform without redistributive transformation. Our contribution is threefold: we provide the first systematic typology of the UK's social mobility sector, extend Polanyi and Fraser's theoretical frameworks into social mobility and education policy, and offer a methodological model combining qualitative and quantitative methods with AI-assisted research.

Due to their geographical dispersion, many families face challenges in exchanging support over long distances. While family theories emphasise the importance of a systemic approach to family relationships, reciprocity—a core feature of these relationships—is still predominantly studied within specific dyads, such as the parent-child relationship, rather than within the broader family network and its spatial context. This study addresses this gap by examining whether family members reciprocally exchange material and emotional support, and how these exchanges relate to spatial characteristics at three levels: the individual (past migration, degree of urbanisation), the dyadic tie (physical distance between members) and the network (spatial dispersion). Using a national sample of 549 adults living in Switzerland, who named important family members and identified available support, we apply a multilevel network approach. Results show that only reciprocity in material support declines with residential distance when controlling for both in-person and remote contact. Moreover, reciprocity is more likely in large, tightly-knit families, and—specifically for emotional support—in spatially dispersed ones. This last finding suggests that reciprocating emotional support is a key mechanism through which families maintain long-distance relationships. Another takeaway is that cultivating mutually supportive ties must be understood not only through dyadic distance and contact between individual members, but in relation to the spatial and network context of the family as a whole.

Elites are increasingly visible in academic and political discourse owing to their disproportionate power in shaping policy. For the most part, however, elites have been viewed in race-blind terms. In this paper, we advance a racialized perspective on elite studies by highlighting three salient ways that race matters for elite views on inequality and redistribution. First, we focus on elites as racialized actors whose racial identities impact their perspectives on social policies. Second, we examine the effect of holding a historical perspective of racialized inequality on elites' redistributive preferences. Third, we highlight the importance of attending to the racialization of social policies, distinguishing between redistributive measures framed in race-neutral and race-conscious terms. We demonstrate the utility of a racialized approach to elite studies by analyzing survey data collected from political, economic, and civil service elites in South Africa. Findings show that elites' racialized identities shape their redistributive preferences, as do their historical understandings of racialized inequality, but these effects vary depending on whether elites are evaluating race-conscious or race-neutral policies.

Studies consistently find family background differences in educational attainment, with parental education being an important factor in families' educational decision-making processes. Alongside parents’ own resources and accomplishments, research has shown that both immaterial and material resources from extrafamilial connections, such as extended family members, are positively associated with children's educational attainment and may compensate for a lack of resources within the immediate family. In this study, we examine the compensatory role of parental workplace ties in shaping children's educational choices. Using full population register data from Finland, we find that children from lower-educated families are more likely to enrol in higher education if they have a parent working among highly educated colleagues. We discuss the importance of diverse environments for educational mobility and aim to shed new light on the role of weak ties in educational decision-making.

There is increasing recognition of the use of family violence by children and young people, and the need to build the evidence base on understanding this form of violence. Adolescent family violence (AFV, also referred to as adolescent violence in the home) refers to the use of violence by a young person against another family member within the home, and can include physical, verbal, emotional, psychological, financial and/or sexual abuse and property damage. This article presents findings from a secondary analysis of data from the Adolescent Family Violence in Australia (AFVA) study—the first national study of the nature, prevalence and impacts of AFV in Australia. The AFVA study involved an online survey of 5021 young people aged 16–20. Drawing from a subset of this survey data, this article aims to better understand how correlations between disability, poor mental health and use of AFV relate to young people's experiences of child abuse. The findings provide further evidence that young people's use of family violence in the home is interrelated to their own family violence victimisation during childhood. Findings presented here reiterate the need to recognise and respond to children experiencing family violence as victim-survivors in their own right. Early and age-appropriate child-centred interventions would create opportunities to mitigate adverse outcomes, including poor mental health and the intergenerational transmission of violence.