{"title":"Becoming a young parent: a longitudinal study of associated factors.","authors":"K. Kiernan","doi":"10.2307/591138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591138","url":null,"abstract":"Teenage fertility rates in the UK are amongst the highest in Europe and have not altered significantly in the last 15 years, but the proportion of births outside marriage has risen rapidly. In this study we used longitudinal data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) to investigate the social, economic and educational backgrounds of young parents. The analysis showed there to be striking variations in the probabilities of becoming young parents but not with respect to whether the child was born within or outside marriage. Young mothers and fathers were more likely to come from economically disadvantaged families and to have lower educational attainment. Teenage mothers were more likely to have mothers who had a child in her teens and were more likely to have exhibited higher levels of emotional problems particularly in adolescence. Young women whose educational attainment scores deteriorated between childhood and adolescence had particularly high probabilities of becoming young mothers. For some teenage motherhood was unintended and the result of unprotected intercourse whilst other men and women who subsequently become young parents had expressed a preference for early parenthood whilst still at school.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130357764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Politics and the struggle to define: a discourse analysis of the framing strategies of competing actors in a 'new' participatory forum.","authors":"T. Skillington","doi":"10.2307/591142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591142","url":null,"abstract":"On account of the current wave of environmental consciousness, the state is adapting to the phenomena of systems of negotiations outside of the traditional institutional framework on environmental issues in an attempt to preserve cultural support. However recent experiments in discursive democracy have proven to be a modality for the transmission of productivist culture and for the reassertion of corporatist tendencies. This interpretation finds support here primarily through a discourse analysis based on a three-dimensional framework. The analysis begins by examining the structure of discursive formations of various participating actors at the Irish National Recycling Conference in 1993, and explores the ways in which actors struggled at the symbolic level to define the rules constitutive of this space of play. It argues from the perspective of discourse as social practice and justifies this approach by assessing the degree of synchronization between collective actors' systems of discursivity and the socially structured institutional sites within which they are embedded. Finally, by examining the position of this field vis-à-vis the field of political power, this research will show how broader relations of domination and traditional power asymmetries came to be reasserted in a 'new' participatory arrangement.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129953314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Did British society change character in the 1920s or the 1980s.","authors":"James Fulcher","doi":"10.2307/591143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591143","url":null,"abstract":"This is a response to Runciman's reply to my critique of his 1993 article. I argue that although the First World War brought about many changes in British society, it did not initiate a new stage in its development, for these changes were largely an acceleration of existing tendencies. Runciman's argument that the similarities between the 1930s and the 1980s show that British capitalism was essentially the same in both periods does not allow for the different directions in which British society was moving in the 1930s and in the 1980s. His treatment of the 1980s changes as another phase in the political cycle fails to grasp what was new about the 1980s or locate these changes in their wider economic and global context.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115020477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inequality, economic growth and social mobility.","authors":"R. Breen","doi":"10.2307/591139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591139","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops a model of intergenerational mobility and intragenerational inequality that allows us to explore the relationship between economic growth and social mobility. The model is used to analyse the neo-liberal theory of stratification and to assess the consequences of some of the criticisms that have been made of it. In particular, the intergenerational transmission of wealth and privilege, and the existence of ethnic, gender and other forms of ascriptive disadvantage, reduce economic efficiency, although they do not always diminish the extent of social mobility. Furthermore, excessive intragenerational inequality may inhibit, rather than encourage, economic growth. We show that there is no necessary link between rates of social mobility and levels of economic growth. This, we suggest, provides an explanation of why rates of social mobility show very little cross-national variation and display no very evident trend over time towards greater societal openness.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115238186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Household and labour market change: implications for the growth of inequality in Britain.","authors":"S. Mcrae","doi":"10.2307/591137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591137","url":null,"abstract":"The paper examines the relationships between population and household change, on the one hand, and labour market/employment change, on the other, and considers how these relationships have contributed to the growth of inequality. The perspective of the paper is sociological, although much of the work done in these areas has been carried out by demographers and economists. Areas where sociological research remains to be done are highlighted. Developments in patterns of fertility and in households are linked to the growth of individualism and to changes in the labour market, and shown to be implicated jointly in the marked growth of inequality in Britain. The paper argues that future research must link households and labour markets, and work towards understanding emerging new relationships between working and private lives, between living arrangements and labour supply, and between individual freedom and social integration.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126058003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Political ideology and popular beliefs about class and opportunity: evidence from a survey experiment.","authors":"Geoffrey Evans","doi":"10.2307/591140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591140","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines popular understanding of class inequalities in opportunity using an experimental approach to assess implicit as well as explicit comprehension. Three competing representations of popular beliefs are compared: a 'class inequality' model, implying widespread belief in class-related inequalities of opportunity; a 'meritocratic' view of achievement, in which emphasis is placed on individual responsibility; and an 'ideological polarization' model, which assumes that beliefs emphasizing class inequality or merit vary with left-right ideology. Predictions derived from these ideas are tested using a national survey with an experimental design, in which respondents are presented with vignettes designed to elicit their beliefs as to how and why people from different class backgrounds obtain middle-class or working-class occupations. As predicted by the class inequality model, there is clear evidence of the impact of tacit assumptions about class structured inequality of opportunity on expectations, judgments of responsibility and explanations of occupational attainment. Even among right-wing respondents, who are more likely to endorse the rhetoric of individual responsibility, there remains an implicit awareness of social class influences on life-chances, suggesting the pervasive presence of these beliefs in popular understanding of social processes.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125072631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'A way of struggle': reformations and affirmations of E. P. Thompson's class analysis in the light of postmodern theories of language.","authors":"M. Steinberg","doi":"10.2307/591141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591141","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is an analysis of the role of language in historical class formation in light of the recent developments in postmodern social theory and historiography. Revisionists from within this perspective have questioned if not abandoned E. P. Thompson's class struggle analysis, arguing that he fails to account for the constitutive character of language in the construction of collective identities. They oppose his account of the making of the English working class with alternative histories emphasizing populist and other non-class identities. Drawing on the Bakhtin Circle of literary studies, and returning to Thompson's own writings, I argue that we can incorporate language into class struggle analysis as a critical mediating force. I maintain that class struggle occurs largely within a hegemonic discursive formation, and that class consciousness and identity thus in part are formed through counter-hegemonic strategies of resistance to ideological domination. To illustrate this theory I analyse the role of language in the class struggles of the silk weavers of the Spitalfields district in London in the 1820s. I analyse how the silk weavers articulated a class consciousness through their counter-hegemonic struggles with the large capitalists and the language of political economy.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"133 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127215723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The risk society in an age of anxiety: situating fear of crime.","authors":"W. Hollway, T. Jefferson","doi":"10.2307/591751","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591751","url":null,"abstract":"As many now recognize, fear of crime is an inadequately theorized concept. In particular, it is premissed on rational, calculating individuals who routinely miscalculate their 'true' risk of crime. Hence the repeatedly found paradox that the least at risk group (elderly females) are most fearful. The risk literature has adopted a cultural/anthropological rather than an individual perspective, but, in so doing has not succeeded in retheorizing the notion of the rationally calculating subject it critiques (Douglas), even if rational calculations are no longer possible in today's 'risk society' (Beck). We develop these cultural perspectives in a way which is founded on a post-structuralist theory of individuals wherein inter-subjective defending against anxiety replaces rational calculation as central to the understanding of fear. Not only does this re-link the concepts of fear and anxiety, currently divorced in the fear of crime debate, but it offers the prospect of understanding the paradoxical mismatch between risk and fear at both the level of the individual and of society.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132236803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Attacking the attacker: gay Christians talk back.","authors":"A. Yip","doi":"10.2307/591913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591913","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses the accounts constructed by 60 gay male Christians in partnership as stigma management strategies at the level of cognition and rhetoric. Four strategies are identified: (i) attacking the stigma; (ii) attacking the stigmatizer; (iii) use of positive personal experience; and (iv) use of the ontogeneric argument. These strategies are interchangeably and collectively used to dismiss the credibility of the institutionalized Church and the validity of its unfavourable official position on the issue of homosexuality. The effective use of these strategies demonstrates the positive personal identity these gay Christians have developed in this advanced stage of their moral career.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127927032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reason and protest in the new urban public health movement: an observation on the sociological analysis of political discourse in the 'healthy city'.","authors":"T. Milewa, E. de Leeuw","doi":"10.2307/591078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/591078","url":null,"abstract":"The urban environment represents an important social and geographical focus for the international new urban public health movement in general and the World Health Organization's 'Healthy Cities' project in particular. Existing and new policies of relevance to urban health are however infused with notions of cause, effect and ideas of appropriate intervention that reflect highly malleable and more or less conscious expressions of rationality, self-interest and organizational purpose--factors central to sociological analysis of the political discourse and objectives associated with the new urban public health movement. This article begins to develop a research agenda in this respect through consideration of the 'language' of policy and reference to Habermas' idea of 'communicative reason'. It is argued that case-study based research into the discourse of the new urban public health movement has to balance empirical accounts with analysis of the 'policy ontologies' that confront and underpin the mobilizations and has, secondly, to consider the 'communicative capacity and orientation' of such initiatives.","PeriodicalId":365401,"journal":{"name":"The British journal of sociology","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126695173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}