The paper raises some problems caused by ‘associational thinking’ in social science by reference to examples from the literature on economic organisation and gender. Associational thinking focuses on common associations between social phenomena, such as the gendering of organisations, without asking counterfactual questions about the status of these relationships, for example, whether organisations are unavoidably gendered or only contingently so. It is argued these questions have been inadequately resolved in the literature, as a consequence of a reluctance to engage in counterfactual reasoning and abstraction, and a neglect of the extent to which systems – as opposed to the lifeworld – are ‘identity-blind’. These questions are pursued through discussions of whether markets and bureaucracies are inherently gendered. It is argued further that associational thinking has also clouded the normative judgements implicit in the critiques of gendered organisations.

This paper explores the possible patterns of crime and control in the twenty-first century, drawing on an analysis of current and recent developments. These suggest a dystopian prospect of permanently high crime rates, and control strategies that reinforce social division and exclusion. Current ‘third way’ policies for crime reduction may achieve modest success, in part because they indirectly encourage agencies to manipulate statistically recorded outcomes to their advantage. They do not however tackle the underlying sources of crime in the political economy and culture of global capitalism, offering only actuarial analyses of risk variation, and pragmatic preventive interventions to reduce these. In the absence of any broader changes to the social patterns which generate high-crime societies the prospect is of marginal palliatives for crime, which themselves have the dysfunctional consequences of increasing segregation, distrust and anxiety.

The boundary between the personal and the political is contested. Feminist interventions in this contest since 1970 have been particularly significant. A brief discussion of how feminists have theorised the personal/political division serves as an introduction to my analysis of current struggles over that division in Western liberal democracies. My analysis focuses on the workings of representative processes. Efforts to represent interests are strongly interlinked with the representation of meanings or images. Representations rely on, even if they resist, dominant discourses which privilege certain meanings and interests over others. To illustrate this analysis I use media representations of the Clinton versus Paula Jones case, which has produced considerable debate about the personal/political boundary. The continued high poll ratings Clinton received at that time suggest that his sexual behaviour was not seen as interfering with his political performance. In contrast, assessments of Jones’s political credibility appear considerably tied to evaluations of her ‘personal’ life. The difficulties of representing marginalised gender and class positions within current representative systems are explored in order to account for these differences.

The ethnic dimension to social relations can be distinguished from dimensions based on neighbourliness, national origin, race and religion etc., but ethnic conflicts are not a special class of conflicts. The significance of a shared ethnic origin varies with the location and scale of social relations. In local communities relations are multidimensional; ties based on different attributes are balanced against one another and against individual interests. Outside the range of personal acquaintance a shared ethnic origin may be a basis on which individuals are mobilised for collective action and for bargaining with other groups, though some individuals will seek to be free-riders. Mobilisers from elsewhere may induce individuals to change their relative preference for ethnic association, destroy local methods of dispute regulation, and so polarise relations that the participants treat their relations with members of an opposed ethnic group as unidimensional. Outside institutions, including foreign governments, can help resolve ethnic conflicts by providing guarantees that facilitate ethnic bargaining.

Recognising the importance of food preparation in divisions of domestic labour, this paper discusses influential literature on the gendering of domestic food preparation. It argues that Þndings from research on food preparation and food choice carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s must be seen in their historical context, and outlines major structural changes since then which impact on women's roles. It also argues that the tendency of sociology of food research to focus on the cultural norm of the nuclear family with dependent children ignores more common household structures in Britain today. This is particularly inappropriate since there are a number of reasons why we should not expect men and women at this stage in the life course to be typical, in terms of food preparation and choice, of those at other stages in the life course.

This article draws upon data from an in-depth ethnographic study of 5 and 6 year old children in an English multi-ethnic, inner-city primary school. It focuses on the significance of ‘race’ within young girls' peer-group relations and the ways in which the social dynamics that underlie those relations provide the context for understanding the particular nature and form that racism takes among the girls. This is done through a focus on the experiences of South Asian girls within the group. Within this, the article has two main aims. First, it aims to contribute to the literature within the sociology of education by extending the existing research focus on racism within teacher/pupil interactions to include an understanding of racism as it manifests itself among the children's peer-group relations. Second, in adapting and applying Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of capital and field, the article also offers a contribution to the literature within the sociology of ‘race’ and ethnicity by suggesting one potentially fruitful way in which racism can be understood within specific social contexts.

This paper argues that the subspecialism of sociology of education has, for a century, been ambivalent about the ‘hooligan’. It has both celebrated and excoriated the anti-school working-class boy. Similarly, the mainstream of sociology has been ambivalent about sociologists of education, both relying on them and ignoring them. Thirdly, the paper speculates on the position of hooligans in Britain in 2025 and the relationship between mainstream sociology and the sociology of education in that year.

Alfred Schutz argues that social scientists should interpret social life from the standpoint of the subjective meanings of ordinary actors, while themselves maintaining a detached, ‘objectifying’ attitude. This defence of the objectifying stance in social research has been criticised by some commentators, notably by Jürgen Habermas, on the grounds that it contradicts the phenomenological theory of intersubjectivity and interpretive participation from which Schutz sets out. Habermas in particular argues that validity in social science consists in the pursuit of normative dialogue between researchers and laypeople with a view to ‘consensus’ over beliefs and values. This article disputes any such charge of inconsistency in Schutz by arguing that while social-scientific knowledge may originate from communication in the lifeworld, it cannot itself involve a ‘communicative’ or ‘dialogical’ attitude to the subjects of research.

This article starts with a discussion of two books published in the mid-1990s; these are publications that provide a benchmark for later comparisons. Some subsequent ‘episodes’ in the life of modern Britain are then considered, all of which throw light on the religious situation in this country and its likely futures. The empirical data that emerge from these case studies provide a framework for a discussion of (a) increasing religious pluralism, and (b) church and state. The article concludes by placing Britain in its European context, underlining the theoretical questions that arise if this approach is adopted.

Black supplementary schools, as organic grassroots organisations, are not simply a response to mainstream educational exclusion and poor provision, as they are so often described. They are far more radical and subversive than their quiet conformist exterior, indicating the presence of a covert social movement for educational change. In our small-scale, exploratory study of four black supplementary schools, we attempt to uncover their subjugated knowledges and hidden histories in order to illustrate the ways in which they generate Mueller's ‘oppositional meanings’. The narratives of the black women educators consistently decentre assumptions of mainstream schooling, as well as providing evidence of thriving black communities, social capital and complex, contradictory pedagogies within which childcentredness remains an important component. Supplementary schools provide a context in which whiteness is displaced as central and blackness is seen as normative. We conclude by arguing that, through their strategies of reworking notions of both community and blackness, their creation of new ‘types’ of professional intellectuals and their commitment to social transformation, black supplementary schools represent the genesis of a new gendered social movement.

Alberto Melucci, The Playing Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, £13.95 paperback, vii+177 pp. (ISBN 0-521-56482-4)

Charles Lemert, Postmodernism Is Not What You Think, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, £15.99 paperback, xiv+185 pp. (ISBN 1-55786-286-9)

Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner (eds.), The Politics of Jean-François Lyotard, London: Routledge, 1998, £55.00, vii+168 pp. (ISBN 0-415-11724-0)

Barry Smart, Facing Modernity: Ambivalence, Reflexivity and Morality, London: Sage, 1998, £45.00 hardback (£14.99 paperback), 224 pp. (ISBN 0-7619-5520-8)

Postmodernism is routinely identified with political radicalism. From one angle, it is easy enough to see why this is so, for many of the leading theorists of postmodernity hail from that side of the political spectrum (such as Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and Fredric Jameson). From another angle, though, it is much less obvious that postmodernism is itself a radical social and political concern. Indeed, the opposite might plausibly be argued. What has happened with the advent of so-called postmodern society is the collapse of modernist rationality, core community values, and ethical and moral foundations. The sociological message in this reading is that postmodernism, in fact, spells a repressive reorganisation of everyday life within the ideological structures of the global capitalist economy itself. Thus the advent of postmodernism – with its dazzling globalisation of social relations, its deconstruction of metaphysical foundations, its reifying of technology and its cult of consumer hedonism – fits hand in glove with the imperatives of a market logic in which everything goes but nothing much counts. Or so the story goes.

On the basis of a fourfold typology referring to different definitions of the social-structure concept, and of a critique of Giddens's and Bourdieu's strategies for transcending the divide between objectivist and subjectivist sociologies, this paper argues that rapprochement rather than transcendence is the way to overcome the existing fragmentation and for bringing closer together structural/structuralist and interpretative paradigms in the social sciences.

David Byrne, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1999, £45.00 (£:15.99 paperback), viii+206 pp. (ISBN 0-415-16296-3)

Raymond A. Eve, Sara Horsfall and Mary E. Lee (eds.), Chaos, Complexity and Sociology: Myths, Models and Theories). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997, £37.00 (£16.99 paperback), xxxii+328pp. (ISBN 0-7619-0890-0 pbk)

Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures. London: Profile, 1998, £9.99 paperback, xiii£274pp. (ISBN 1 86197 074 9)

Natural scientists and their lawyers in the philosophy of science, can often be heard to complain that sociologists (and social scientists in general) misunderstand science, their methods are not methodical and their conclusions often unwarranted. Few, however, have actually gone out of their way to present systematic evidence of the failure of social science to live up to the rigour they feel obtains in their own disciplines. An exception was Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at New York University, who submitted a spoof paper entitled ‘Trangressing the boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’ to the journal Social Text. This paper, Sokal and Bricmont admit, in Intellectual Impostures, was ‘brimming with absurdities and non sequitors’ (p. 1), but not only was it published, but it was published in a special issue ‘devoted to rebutting the criticisms levelled against post modernism and social constructivism by several distinguished scientists’ (p. 2). The reaction both for and against the value of Sokal's ‘experiment’ was robust, but Sokal had in mind something more specific than simply to show that the social sciences (the humanities and philosophy) were not rigorous. His project was to expose the misunderstandings and pretensions to scientific language and concepts used in these disciplines. This book, initially published in France (the intellectual heartland of ‘post’ critique), continues this project with rigour and relish.

The past two decades have seen rapid changes in the ways in which sociologists think about children, and a growing cross-fertilisation of ideas between researchers in a variety of social science disciplines. This paper builds upon these developments by exploring what three inter-related ways of thinking about spatiality might contribute to the new social studies of childhood. Specifically, we identify the importance of progressive understandings of place in overcoming the split between global and local approaches to childhood; we discuss the ways in which children's identities are constituted in and through particular spaces; and we examine the ways in which our understandings of childhood can shape the meaning of spaces and places. These ideas are illustrated by reference to our current research on children's use of the internet as well as a range of wider studies.

Medical autonomy in the United Kingdom has declined over the last twenty-five years, whether considered at the micro level (such as control over treatment and work patterns), the meso level (in terms of corporatist relations with the state) or the macro level (in terms of the ‘biomedical model’). After a period in the early 1990s when the National Health Service displayed a mix of Fordist and post-Fordist controls, the emphasis has swung sharply towards the former, suggesting the continued explanatory value of theories which focus on the state's need both to contain welfare expenditure and to maximise the political legitimacy derived from it. The analysis of this relatively narrow area of sociology has implications for the study of much broader questions about the capacity and legitimacy of the state in the twenty-first century.

When it comes to understanding the relationship between organised labour and the racialised worker in England, the conclusions reached by black radical theorists like Sivanandan and Gilroy have gone unchallenged for many years. In this paper, it is contended that these accounts of trade-union racism are constructed on the mistaken assumption that a trade union represents the interests of all the working class. Instead, an alternative conceptual framework is advanced underpinned by the recognition that the response of trade unions towards racialised labour is contingent on a wider set of economic, political and ideological circumstances and the type of strategy trade unions employ to protect the economic interests of their members. Through an assessment of events between 1945 and 1979 (the period black radical theorists use to advance their arguments), this paper challenges the conclusions drawn by black radical theorists regarding the basis of trade-union racism, the significance of ‘black’ self-organisation and the likelihood of ‘inter-racial’ class action developing.

Urban and rural sociology is currently dominated by two relatively separate approaches. One perspective emphasises political economy and increasing globalisation. Another focuses on the meaning of urban and rural areas in people's lives. This paper argues for a fusion between these two views. Urban and rural sociology should be concerned with the relations between political economy on the one hand and the biological and psychological bases of human behaviour on the other. Recent developments in the human sciences and psychology assist in making this link. They can be used to extend the original insights of the early Chicago School of sociology, particularly as regards the formation of human identities. Nevertheless, there remain substantial arguments as to how ‘the Chicago School's biotic level’ should be conceptualised and how we envisage its links to the more conscious, pre-planned, aspects of human behaviour. Early Marx and Williams's now somewhat neglected work on the country and the city offer provocative yet helpful ways forward.

Family lives are an area where people's moral identities are crucially at stake. Yet the significance of dependent children to the work needed to sustain morally adequate adult identities is largely overlooked. Furthermore, the particular situation of divorce or separation and repartnering where children are involved is fundamentally relevant to current sociological debates about the changing nature of marriage and family life. Notions of the pursuit of self-development and couple intimacy clash and create tensions with notions of duty or responsibility to children's needs. Drawing on a study of parents and step-parents, we consider how interviewees' moral understandings were fundamentally shaped by social constructions of the Child and the Adult. Importantly, the presence of dependent children led to an overall key moral imperative concerning the requirement for responsible adults to put the needs of children first. There were, however, strong gender dimensions in the ways in which this moral imperative was played out, and in some tensions with an alternative, but secondary, moral ethic of care of self. We discuss the significance of the Child/Adult construction in relation to theories about the nature of contemporary family obligations and of contemporary morality more generally.

Jean Curthoys, Feminist Amnesia: The Wake of Women's Liberation, London: Routledge, 1997, £40.00 (£12.99 paperback), xiv+200 pp. (ISBN 0-415-148073)

Mary Evans, Introducing Contemporary Feminist Thought, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, £39.50 (£11.95 paperback), 170 pp. (ISBN 07-456-14760)

Heidi Safia Mirza (ed.), Black British Feminism: A Reader, London: Routledge, 1997, £45.00 (£15.99 paperback), xiv+306 pp. (ISBN 0-415-152895)

All three books attempt, in different ways, to re-evaluate the feminist enterprise, reflecting on contemporary developments within feminism. Heidi Mirza's collection of essays represents developments in what she terms ‘Black British Feminism’. Jean Curthoys, on the other hand, criticises contemporary feminism, arguing that the ‘true spirit’ (sic) of feminism has been subverted by later developments in the academy. Mary Evans has written a history of the development of Western feminist thought in the academy. The two latter books focus on post-1970 developments in Western feminism, arriving, however, at opposite conclusions. Where Evans sees the 1970s as an important building block for contemporary feminist thought, Curthoys argues that the important insights of the 1970s have been abandoned. Both of these books, in one way or the other, acknowledge the multiplicity of voices within feminism today, and the need to pay attention to ‘difference’. However, neither of these books fully attends to contemporary debates within anti-racism and the critiques made by black and Third World feminists. Mirza's book, by contrast, claims to be the ‘first to be entirely dedicated to the writings of black women in a British context’.