It has recently been claimed that a particular form of intimacy, ‘the pure relationship’ is increasingly sought in personal life. For a couple, ‘the pure relationship’ involves opening out to each other, enjoying each other's unique qualities and sustaining trust through mutual disclosure. Anthony Giddens (1992) postulates a transformation of intimacy in all personal relationships with radical consequences for the gender order. Popular discourse supports the view that heterosexual couples are more equal and intimate. However, stories of everyday lives told to researchers paint a very qualified picture. Much of personal life remains structured by inequalities. Gendered struggles with the gap between cultural ideals and structural inequalities result in a range of creative identity and relationship-saving strategies. More, perhaps much more, creative energy goes into sustaining a sense of intimacy despite inequality than into a process of transformation. Moreover, the rhetoric of ‘the pure relationship’ may point people in the wrong direction both personally and politically. It feeds on and into a therapeutic discourse that individualises personal problems and down-grades sociological explanations. In practice, intimacy remains multi-dimensional and for the contenders for successful heterosexual equality, acts of practical love and care have been more important than a constant dynamic of mutual exploration of each other's selves.

This paper reconsiders the possibility for unification of sociological theory by the rational choice model. This is induced by the claims of rational choice theorists that extending this model from economics to sociology can be conducive to establishing a unifying paradigm and method to be given ‘paradigmatic privilege’ within sociology. The outcome of such an extension of the economic approach has been ‘sociological rational choice theory’ or ‘rational action theory for sociology’. Within sociology, such a rational choice model is regarded as a major theoretical or/and methodological innovation and thus a ‘new’ promise for sociology's unification. Overall, the paper suggests that these ‘ecumenistic’ claims of rational choice theorists cannot be taken at face value since they are predicated upon dubious views of the relations between economy and society and between economics and sociology, including inadequate interpretations of neoclassical economics.

National identities are not essentially fixed or given but depend critically on the claims which people make in different contexts and at different times. The processes of identity rest not simply on the claims made but on how such claims are received, that is validated or rejected by significant others. Because actors are able, up to a point, to anticipate validation or rejection in particular contexts and at particular times, this influences the identity claims that they make. Identity is claimed and read off from various identity markers according to identity rules. Identity rules are the probabilistic rules of thumb whereby under certain structural conditions and in certain contexts, markers are interpreted, combined or given precedence one over another. This paper locates this approach to studies of national identity in the literature, and presents evidence for these assertions from a study of national identity, with examples taken from interviews in Scotland with two elite groups. Those interviewed were for a variety of reasons sensitive to issues of national identity. However, we argue that similar processes are at work generally, albeit people who have less reason to concern themselves with their own identity and the identity of those with whom they interact, see national identity more as something ‘taken-for-granted’, and relatively fixed.

For too long the built working environment has been excluded from the analysis of work organisations. Buildings, like other cultural artefacts, encapsulate social and economic priorities and values, and represent prevailing power structures. Work buildings, such as offices and factories, both make possible the organisation of the labour process and also serve as structures of non-verbal communication, providing cues on hierarchy, status and appropriate behaviour. Control over the working environment can be seen as a constituent part of the control of the labour process, displaying similar cyclical movements. Human resource management and information technology are currently combining to encourage a reappraisal of the working environment, but one that is not without its own contradictions.

We have recently witnessed the emergence of a range of naturalistic studies concerned with work, interaction and technology in complex organisational environments. In this paper we examine a seemingly individual and isolated activity, which involves the use of relatively basic technology to guide a vehicle in accord with a highly regulated signalling system. The paper considers the ways in which operating a vehicle is systematically co-ordinated with the actions of others. These actions, whether by passengers or colleagues, are only ‘visible’ by virtue of various technologies; technologies that offer restricted and even distorted access to people and their conduct. In one sense, therefore, the essay is concerned with explicating the socially organised and interactionally sensitive ‘intelligence’ which features in the day-to-day work of drivers on London Underground; a rapid urban transport system which carries more than a million passengers a day.

Classic research on unemployment and mental health has focused on the functions of employment. These functions are considered to be of equal importance for all unemployed. A critique of this perspective has been that it views the unemployed as passive and homogeneous. Instead, an agency approach has been suggested, which focuses on the individual goals of the unemployed. This paper develops and tests a model for understanding the differentiated mental consequences of unemployment, which on a theoretical level integrates both the structural restrictions of the unemployment situation and the agency of the individual. The model is based on previous findings which indicate that mental well-being is dependent on the economic need for employment, on the one hand, and on the psychosocial need for employment, on the other hand. The model integrates both these aspects and the results show that the combined effect is of central importance for the differentiated mental well-being of the unemployed. The analysis is based on a longitudinal survey of 3,500 randomly selected, unemployed Swedes.

Despite the criticisms of subcultural theory as a framework for the sociological study of the relationship between youth, music, style and identity, the term ‘subculture’ continues to be widely used in such work. It is a central contention of this article that, as with subcultural theory, the concept of ‘subculture’ is unworkable as an objective analytical tool in sociological work on youth, music and style - that the musical tastes and stylistic preferences of youth, rather than being tied to issues of social class, as subculture maintains, are in fact examples of the late modern lifestyles in which notions of identity are ‘constructed’ rather than ‘given’, and ‘fluid’ rather than ‘fixed’. Such fluidity, I maintain, is also a characteristic of the forms of collective association which are built around musical and stylistic preference. Using Maffesoli's concept of tribus (tribes) and applying this to an empirical study of the contemporary dance music in Britain, I argue that the musical and stylistic sensibilities exhibited by the young people involved in the dance music scene are clear examples of a form of late modern ‘sociality’ rather than a fixed subcultural group.

With the election of a Labour government in 1997 many sociologists perceived the dawning of new opportunities for the discipline to contribute to the policy process. At the same time there have been signs of a growing receptiveness on the part of government to the results of academic research and reflection. Prominent sociologists have even been credited with significant influence on the overall direction of New Labour. All of this goes hand in hand with ESRC's continuing injunctions, inherited in part from the demands of the previous government, to engage users and beneficiaries in the research process.

Phil Cohen, Rethinking the Youth Question: Education, Labour and Cultural Studies. London: Macmillan, 1997, £16.99, xi+414 pp. (ISBN 0-333-63148-X).

Andy Furlong and Fred Cartmel, Young People and Social Change: Individualisation and Risk in Late Modernity. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997, £45.00 (£14.99 pbk), viii+141 pp. (ISBN 0-335-194-656 hbk, 0-335-19464-8 pbk).

H. Decker Scott and Barrick Van Winkle, Life in the Gang: Family, Friends and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, £45.00 (£15.95 pbk), xi+303 pp. (ISBN 0-521-56292-9 hbk, 0-521-56566-9 pbk).

John Hagan and Bill McCarthy, Mean Streets: Youth Crime and Homelessness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £40.00 (£14.95 pbk), xv+299 pp. (ISBN 0-521-49743-4 hbk, 0-521-646-26X pbk).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Kevin Rathunde and Samuel Whalen (with contribution by Maria Wong), Talented Teenagers: The Roots of Success and Failure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £14.95, x+307 pp. (ISBN 0-521-57463-3 pbk).

Historically there have been continuing concerns about the everyday lives of young people which have been voiced vociferously by the press, politicians and the public alike. These concerns have oscillated along the careöcontrol continuum and reflect both political and personal confusions about the daily lives of young people and how they as both individuals and a group, in turn make sense of the social, political and economic structures created for them by ‘adult’ society. These ‘concerns’ have not always been reflected by academic writing and research, which has struggled over whether ‘youth’ were worthy of special attention in the first place or whether such writing should be integrated into general research and teaching.