Journal of Sociology

During the 1980s Labor has been extraordinarily electorally successful. Yet as the Queensland ALP State Secretary has acknowledged ALP 'membership numbers are virtually static ... and there remains a high degree of alienation and disillu sionment amongst the rank and file' (Courier Mail 1 August 1988). Each of these very different faces of the ALP can be traced to the 1960s and 1970s when the ALP attracted a new middle class clientele. Their growing presence within the party offset declining working class involvement, encouraged reform and gave Labor a far more electorally attractive image.

Yet middle-class party members provide it fickle support. In Parkin's (1968) terms they tend to have an expressive rather than instrumental orientation toward politics. With often al truistic motives for joining the ALP they grow readily disillu sioned with the real politik of internal party politics and chafe at surviving party habits and practices which bear the stamp of Labor's working class origins. Despite Whiteley's (1983) finding in the case of the British Labour Party, ALP middle class mem bers show little sign of forgiving Labor governments for failing to act upon party policy.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics recently released a new occupational classification, the Australian Standard Classifi cation of Occupations. Unlike its predecessor, the new classifi cation is skill-based. In this research note, I use a public use sample from the 1986 Census, the ASCO/CCLO link file, and other census data, to explore the structural basis of the two main Australian prestige scales. I also present a new socio- economic status scale, the ANU3 scale, for use with the Aus tralian occupational classification.

Two distributional mechanisms can be identified in advanced capitalist systems: states and markets. State distribution of resources according to needs-based non-market criteria repre sents a departure from capitalist relations of distribution and accumulation and the 'decommodification' of labour power. Such a departure has been achieved with the development of particular sorts of welfare state institutional forms. These insti tutions are the outcome of a number of political and economic pressures. Politically, the way in which a labour movement is organised in parties and unions has been a crucial determinant of decommodification. Economically, conditions of prosperity and full employment seem important to welfare state develop ment.

Regression analyses, and a brief historical survey of the ex periences of Australia, Sweden and the United States confirm the above propositions suggesting that decommodification as a departure from the logic of private capital accumulation is an important basis for the transformation of capitalism.

This paper contends that sociological understandings of the ways in which social control activities are carried out are both too general and lack sophisticated analytical conceptualis ations of the way such processes operate. Using data collected in a study carried out by the author, which examines the re sponses taken by three categories of official personnel to sec ondary school children in Melbourne who fail to attend school, an analysis is made of the operation of social control in a spe cific area. On the basis of the findings of this study it is argued that distinctions must be made between different kinds of con trol agents and different kinds of control and that the assump tion of comprehensive and coherent ideologies underpinning systematic and co-ordinated social control activities should be discarded. Attention must be directed to the structural location (both organisational and inter-organisational) of agents, and the notion of 'system', except as a shorthand term for ongoing relationships, should be treated with scepticism as a descrip tion of inter-organisational connections in the field of social control.

This paper examines the politics of the RSI debate, and more particularly, the ideologies which underpin both sides. It goes on to argue that the intervention into the debate of social scientists with a social construction perspective has political implications. While the social construction position, in prin ciple, is consistent with a view of RSI as injury, in practice it has been closely aligned with the view of RSI as neurosis and thus with the interests of insurers seeking to avoid liability for compensation.

Few Australian studies have examined the social interaction of older people once they have entered nursing homes. Much of the existing literature reports the frequency of contacts that the elderly in nursing homes have with family and friends rather than explaining the factors that influence which people are more likely to visit regularly and why. This paper examines the interrelationship between frequency of visits and the charac teristics of aged residents, visitors and nursing homes, and the processes which explain these levels of interaction. A question naire was administered to aged residents in nursing homes and data was collected on the resident's network members, fre quency of contact and perceptions of the influence of placement in a nursing home on relationships. The results show that (1) the resident's perceived quality of the relationship and the location of the nursing home are important factors determining frequency of visiting, and (2) the placement in a nursing home does not necessarily weaken family ties.