Slaves to no sect: the Anglican clergy and liturgical change

Many writers have argued that the Church of England, in common with other Christian denomination, is undergoing a profound crisis of identity. One crucial aspect of this is the clergy's rapid abandonment of the traditional services of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in favour of the radically different, modern language services of the Alternative Service Book, published in 1980. Liturgical change on this scale is said to be both cause and effect of a gradual transformation of the Church of England into a sect. In this article, evidence from a survey of the parochial clergy of one English diocese is presented, showing that the great majority of respondents approve of the Alternative Service Book and use it frequently for the conduct of worship. However, then outlook on the role of the Church of England in national life does not display any of the essential characteristics of sectarianism, the fact that the Church of England is the established Church is an important obstacle to sectarian tendencies, and the argument that the Church is being transformed into a sect is not warranted.     

Victor Branford and the building of British sociology

Victor Branford was a central figure in the institutional development of British sociology in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. He is, however, a neglected figure and little is known about his life and his work in sociology. This article presents a biographical account of Victor Branford and outlines his sociological ideas. Particular attention is given to the part played by Branford and his second wife, Sybella Gurney, in the establishment of the Sociological Society and The Sociological Review. Writing between 1903 and 1930, he set out a distinctive view of the nature of sociology and an account of modernity, which he saw as underpinning a conception of a third way in politics that goes beyond capitalism and socialism. He tied this view, set out in the years after the First World War, to a conception of the public role of sociology in which the sociologist was to be a leading element in the building of social citizenship through social reconstruction.     

The problem of early English sociology

A brief survey is attempted of the recent literature relating to the ‘problem’ of early English sociology, i.e. its apparent failure to produce in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a body of thought comparable to the ‘classical’ sociological tradition which emerged in France and Germany during the same period. It is argued that the absence of such a tradition in England cannot be linked to the supposed failure of the English middle class to develop a corporate identity, as certain contemporary Marxist theorists have suggested. If the continental ‘classical’ tradition reflects the ideology of any social stratum, it is that of the educated middle class, linked to the central state apparatus, which developed in a number of European countries during the nineteenth century. The failure of such an intelligentsia to emerge in England in the same period is reflected in the specific development of English social thought.     

Women's and men's careers in British sociology

The career experience of men and women in British university sociology since 1950 is compared, using published data for the whole group and fresh data from a sample of departments. It is shown that, when like is compared with like, the outcomes for men and for women have not been as different as is often suggested; family reasons were more salient in women's careers, but in the end have not made much difference to their destinations. But the proportions of women recruited have varied over time, and the experience of both sexes has been strongly influenced by historical factors affecting different periods. Within the constraints which those have imposed, individuals have not all made the same choices, and that too has affected the outcomes.     

British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline

The following is the lecture given for the BJS 2005 Public Sociology Debate given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on ll October 2005. This lecture on the character of British sociology provides a pretext for a more general inquiry into public intellectual life in postwar Britain. The argument put forward falls into several distinctive sections. First, British social science has depended heavily on the migration of intellectuals, especially Jewish intellectuals who were refugees from fascism. Second, intellectual innovation requires massive, disruptive, violent change. Third, British sociology did nevertheless give rise to a distinctive tradition of social criticism in which one can argue there were (typically home-grown) public intellectuals. The main theme of their social criticism was to consider the constraining and divisive impact of social class, race and gender on the enjoyment of expanding social citizenship. Fourth, postwar British sociology came to be dominated by the analysis of an affluent consumer society. Finally, the main failure of British sociology in this postwar period was the absence of any sustained, macro-sociological analysis of the historical decline of Britain as a world power in the twentieth century.     

Foundations of British sociology 1880–1930: contexts and biographies

‘This paper provides an overview of aspects of the history of British sociology. In particular, it tries to answer critical historical work by among others, Perry Anderson and Philip Abrams, which sought to explain the supposed indigenous ‘failure’ to develop academic sociology in Britain before the 1960s. It is argued that a narrowly academic reading of the history of sociology cannot do justice to its role in the service of social administration and public enlightenment and may exaggerate the degree to which sociology from its foundations was conceived as a purely intellectual discipline. The paper points to a thriving sociological culture in Britain in the generation before the First World War, though it was one in which many contributions came from philosophers, natural scientists and political economists rather then self‐proclaimed ‘sociologists’. It ends with a brief review of Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, a founder of the Sociological Society and editor of the Sociological Review, whose biographies and eclectic social and international interests tell us something about the personalities and political interests of early British sociological pioneers.’     

Specialization and the development of sociology: Differentiation of fragmentation?

Specialization has long been a dominant trend in American sociology despite persistent concern that it may constitute a threat to the intergrity of the discipline. The author proposes that specializations have proliferated because they have been functional for the growth and legitimation of the profession. Specifically, they have provided opportunities for more sociologists to make recognized contributions to knowledge during a prolonged period of increasing competition for research recognition and support. The emphasis on research also has advanced the status of faculty within the university. Because the source of new specialties has been changes in society, the domain of sociology has continued to expand, promoting student enrollments. However, the growth of the profession has been purchased at the price of the coherence of the discipline. Moreover, the fiscal crisis of the university may make the eclectic image of sociology departments a liability to their efforts to protect faculty. In the future, unionization may become an alternative to departmentalization and professionalization. Meanwhile, a new concentration on the development of the discipline may be the most effective way to ensure support of the profession. Our principal goal should be to develop a general, critical theory of society. As a first step, all studies should be addressed to and classified in terms of the core concepts that define the distinctive concerns of the discipline.     

The sociology of compassion: A study in the sociology of morals

Abstract

This essay analyzes the theoretical foundations of collective interest in the sufferings of strangers. Concern with the suffering of others, accompanied by the urge to help, is compassion. This study develops the social and historical conditions under which public compassion emerges. Two broad interpretations of these developments are suggested. The democratization perspective suggests that with the lessening of profoundly categorical and corporate social distinctions, compassion becomes more extensive. A second perspective is linked to the emergence of market society. By defining a universal field of others with whom contracts and exchanges can be made, market perspectives extend the sphere of moral concern as well: however unintentionally. Public compassion is part of the language of modernity. This gives compassion the possibility to be also part of a newly emerging ‘Second Modernity’.     

The sexuality of men and the sociology of gender

In recent years writers in the field of the sociology of gender have turned to psychoanalysis for insights into the psychological dimensions of female sexuality. The same insights are now being applied to the analysis of masculinity. This paper argues that the full advantages of this are undermined by the adoption of an object-relations perspective which restores the social determinism from which many such writers seek to escape. This argument is pursued through a detailed analysis of one recent text in the field —The Sexuality of Men (eds) A. Metcalf and M. Humphries (1985) — but is applied more widely to the treatment of sexuality in the sociology of gender.     

The idea of philosophical sociology

This article introduces the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the relationships between implicit notions of human nature and explicit conceptualizations of social life within sociology. Philosophical sociology is also an invitation to reflect on the role of the normative in social life by looking at it sociologically and philosophically at the same: normative self‐reflection is a fundamental aspect of sociology's scientific tasks because key sociological questions are, in the last instance, also philosophical ones. For the normative to emerge, we need to move away from the reductionism of hedonistic, essentialist or cynical conceptions of human nature and be able to grasp the conceptions of the good life, justice, democracy or freedom whose normative contents depend on more or less articulated conceptions of our shared humanity. The idea of philosophical sociology is then sustained on three main pillars and I use them to structure this article: (1) a revalorization of the relationships between sociology and philosophy; (2) a universalistic principle of humanity that works as a major regulative idea of sociological research, and; (3) an argument on the social (immanent) and pre‐social (transcendental) sources of the normative in social life. As invitations to embrace posthuman cyborgs, non‐human actants and material cultures proliferate, philosophical sociology offers the reminder that we still have to understand more fully who are the human beings that populate the social world.     

The sociology of social classes

Comme son titre l'indique, cet article tente de récapituler les travaux les plus importants sur les classes sociales dans la sociologie québécoise des cinquante dernières années. Ces travaux se rattachent à divers courants de pensée théorique qui ont suivi des voies parfois parallèles et parfois opposées les unes aux autres: problematiques d'inspiration weberienne, parsonienne, marxiste, gurvitchienne, tourainienne, etc. En meme temps, la sociologie des classes s'est integree dans plusieurs conjonctures politiques successives, toutes marquees par la question nationale. Ses debats scientifiques eclairent les principaux enjeux de ces conjonctures eu egard au changement social et aux groupes qui en sont l'avant-garde.
As its title indicates, this article attempts to summarize the most important work on social classes in Quebecois sociology during the last 50 years. Social class research in Quebec has been associated with various theoretical approaches (Weberian, Parsonian, Marxist, Gurvitchian, Tourainian, etc.) which have taken either parallel or conflicting paths with each other. At the same time, the sociology of classes has been associated with many successive political conjunctures, each of which has been marked by the national question. These scientific debates illustrate the most important stakes involved in these conjunctures, especially with regard to social change and avant-garde social groups.     

The politics of figurational sociology

Figurational sociology is so often said to distance itself from the political issues of the day. Whilst this is certainly true with regards to the present day, it in no way follows that figurational sociology seeks to distance itself from politics as such. On the contrary, as will be shown within this paper, politics is and always has been a central concern for figurational sociologists. This political concern, however, is an exclusively long term concern; figurational sociology purposively postpones present political engagement for the sake of developing a sufficiently detached sociology that would eventually facilitate in the delivery of effective practical and political measures. This paper discusses the stakes involved in, as well as the reasoning behind, the assignment of such a place to politics. It gestures towards two distinct and separate concepts of social control that exist within figurational sociology and then proceeds to offer a critical consideration of the consequences that can be derived from any temporal demarcation of the political done on their basis. The paper ultimately suggests that figurational sociology's position on politics raises a series of as yet unanswered questions, questions which can no longer remain unanswered by the contemporary figurational sociologist.