Sociological Research Online

Traditionally, social research is represented as a neutral (objective) search for knowledge as an entity, for which claims of ‘reliability’, ‘validity’ and ‘credibility’ may be made if the researcher follows prescribed techniques of inquiry. From this perspective, techniques of inquiry may cause harm to informants who are subjected to the process of inquiry. Therefore, ethical research is about the legal and moral protection of subjects from the researcher's techniques of inquiry. The research relationship is constituted as one between ‘powerful researcher’ and ‘powerless researched’. Alternative views which foreground the researcher (and informants’) subjectivities as positioned sites of power challenge the unitary identities of ‘more powerful researcher’ and ‘less powerful researched’. In this paper I show through reflection on my PhD research, how the identities of ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ are fluid, dynamic relations of power, by which ‘knowledge’ is achieved through processes of negotiation and access to ‘sites of knowledge/power’. From this perspective, knowledge is not an entity for which definitive claims of ‘reliability’, ‘validity’ and ‘credibility’ can be made. Nor are ‘research ethics’ simply the responsibility of the researcher but instead are complex and shifting micropractices of power/knowledge between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’.

The New Right have had an important if somewhat imprecise impact upon Anglo-American capitalism over the past twenty years. Much has been written about them by a variety of disciplines over a wide subject terrain. This paper will further contribute to this analysis by discussing an area which has been somewhat neglected to date - namely, the way in which the New Rightís attempt to reconstruct society has affected professional work, the identities of professionals and, by implication, the service class. It will do so through an analysis of the New Right and towards the end it will use the University sector as an example of change for a variety of professional areas. Changes in the University and other sectors have led to new discourses and practices which have had real material effects and altered the nature of professional work. In turn, these effects have reshaped the welfare state and undermined key aspects of the pre-New Right foundations on which it was built. This alteration is ongoing and hence the future of the welfare state and the wider social structure is being fought out in these processes. To simplify this attempted reconstruction has pitted public sector professionals against private sector ones as the former have material interests bound up with a large allocative state whilst the latterís interests are tied up with a neo-liberal state. However, such a division creates a problem for the New Rightís long term success as it potentially encourages one section of the service class to support the left in an attempt to conserve their bit of the welfare state. What follows is based upon the experience of the UK.

The paper constitutes a response to May's concept of reflexivity, and argues that debates on reflexivity have missed the need to ground their claims in the life world of society members - thus promoting the very ironic stance they seek to address. A re-articulation of claims to reflexivity is made in the distinction between ‘essential’ and ‘stipulative’ reflexivities wherein the former is grounded in members’ observable-reportable natural language practical actions, while the latter remains the province of the analyst and subjects members’ versions to sociological remedy. The paper suggests a return to the work of Garfinkel (1967) as a means of respecifying the grounds of the reflexivity debate.

The empirical focus of the research reported in this paper is the recent rapid growth in public surveillance systems. It is now commonplace in Britain for certain “public” spaces to have video surveillance and for some stretches of public highways to have “Gatso” speed cameras located on them. The visual availability of items of material culture such as surveillance systems is introduced as an analytical organising principal for delineating the study of objects within the “seen” world. It is argued that we inhabit a palpable material environment of objects which has consequences for and impinges upon aspects of our practical decision making.

Feminism(s) as practice(s) in the world of the women's movements have frequently either rejected science and scientific approaches or utilised scientific evidence in support of arguments, positions and campaigns. This has happened with some degree of contradiction. Problems of how feminist theory deals with questions about the nature and role of science and scientific techniques and information still remain. The debates that are taking place are complex, and have rarely been utilised or applied in the situation of how higher education might utilise them. This paper attempts to examine current philosophical and feminist ideas about the nature of science, to assess if it is possible to theorise about the possibility of a feminist science. Equally problematic is the application of these ideas to the context of higher education, and providing more women or feminist orientated educational practice. This paper draws links between theory about science, and issues in relation to the higher education curriculum. It argues the case that although this theorising may appear difficult to apply, there are several ways by which it may be used to guide thinking about how education courses may be structured in order to allow students to learn in ways that may not be as limited as previously. These debates are new, ongoing, and yet not fully explored and so this paper provides a position from where this might be explored, and therefore demonstrates some areas for further exploration.

Research indicates that the number of women using drugs, including alcohol, is increasing nationally, particularly among women of childbearing age. Nevertheless it is still largely men who contact drug or alcohol agencies for help, while women with children are particularly reluctant to access services and tend to remain a hidden population. Thus learning more about the lives of substance-using mothers is an important area of concern, pragmatically in terms of developing effective social policy which addresses their and their families’ needs, and sociologically in terms of studying a little-known and vulnerable population. This article discusses the conduct of a project set up to address this gap in knowledge and investigate the everyday lives and experiences of a sample of substance-using mothers in the mid-1990s. Accessing this population proved very difficult because of such factors as the women's involvement in illegal activities, lack of stable housing, and the stigma of being a mother with a substance-use problem. Several strategies to overcome these problems were tried, of which the most successful was relying on drug and alcohol workers as gate-keepers to assist in locating and recruiting volunteers for interview. Because it was so central to the success of the project, as the research progressed the role of the drug-worker became itself a focus for analysis. Having discussed aspects of the researcher/respondent relationship, therefore, the article focuses on the drug-worker/client relationship, and concludes by suggesting that drug-workers are typically required to act in both a counsellor and an authoritarian role, which appears from the research to lead at times to a problematic relationship with clients. The article ends by questioning whether the nature of the drug-worker/client relationship and the drug-worker's status as gate-keeper may at times in itself contribute to the research inaccessibility of this vulnerable population.

This article is a response to a speech addressed to the Economic and Social Research Council which was made, in February this year, by the UK Secretary of State for Education and Employment, David Blunkett. The speech was entitled ‘Influence or Irrelevance: can social science improve government?’ . Blunkett's programme for engaging social science in the policy process is far from unique and many of the arguments have been heard before. However, the curiosity of the speech lies in the fact that the conception of social science which Blunkett advocates mirrors the approach New Labour itself has to politics and government. This raises some rather interesting difficulties for social scientists. How do we engage in a debate about the role of social scientific research in the policy process when our own conception of the discipline may be radically at odds with that of the government? Furthermore, New Labour's particular conception of the relationship between social and policy-making means that we not only have to contest their notion of what it is we do, but also challenge their conception of the policy process. We cannot ignore this engagement, even if we wanted to. The challenge is to address it and to do so, moreover, in terms which Blunkett might understand. This article is an attempt to start this process.

Within sociological and demographic research many argue that recent demographic transformations can be explained, at least in part, by a growth in individualism. Such approaches, with their emphasis on growing individual autonomy, offer a model of human action in which the social recedes from analysis. This paper offers an alternative framework for analysing processes shaping demographic change, taking as a particular focus aspects of changing patterns of fertility in the UK. Interpretations of the fertility decline at the turn of the twentieth century emphasise the importance of changing patterns of inter-dependence across generations and between women and men. It is argued that in parallel, although to a lesser degree, recent decades have manifest a change in the social positioning of these groups. Change in the reproductive regime is offered as a concept for denoting this restructuring of inter-dependencies. We are witnessing a reconfiguration of social ties and not their displacement. It is as an integral part of such changes that developments in fertility are best interrogated.

This article explores the nature of the begging encounter. It does this through an investigation of people's attitudes towards, and experiences of, being approached by people begging. The data are derived from interviews with people who work in the centre of Edinburgh and are regularly involved in begging encounters. The begging encounter is often a problematic one and we argue that this is, in part, because of the ambiguous nature of the interaction. The nature of the giving involved is frequently unclear and quite unlike other monetary interactions that we are normally involved in. Moral considerations regarding how ‘real’ or ‘genuine’ beggars are became crucial when deciding to give or not. Ambivalence and contradiction were common characteristics of understandings of, and attitudes towards, those who beg.

This paper explores the experiences of women in small cultural businesses and is based upon interviews with women working in a range of contexts in Manchester's popular music sector. The research seeks to promote wider consideration of women's roles in cultural production and consumption. We argue that it is necessary that experiences of production and consumption be understood as inter-related processes. Each part of this process is imbued with particular gender characteristics that can serve to reinforce existing patterns and hierarchies. We explore the ways in which female leisure and consumption patterns have been marginalised and how this in turn shapes cultural production. This process influences career choices but it is also reinforced through the integration of consumption into the cultural workplace. Practices often associated with the sector, such as the blurring of work and leisure and ‘networking’, appear to be understood and operated in significantly different ways by women. As cultural industries such as popular music are predicated upon the colonisation of urban space we explore the use of the city and the particular character of Manchester's music scene. We conclude that, despite the existence of highly contingent and individualised identities, significant gender power relations remain evident. These are particularly clear in discussion of the performative and sexualised aspects of the job.

This article addresses the relationship between the New Right and the politics of homosexuality in the United Kingdom. It begins by outlining recent political conflicts surrounding attempts to equalise the ‘gay age of consent’ and to repeal Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988). The article then examines the New Right's relationship to homosexuality in the 1980s, and the history of socio-political analyses of this relationship. It is argued that pro-gay left theorists have tended to homogenize the New Right of the 1980s, with negative consequences for the analysis of more recent right-wing transformations. The article suggests that contemporary right-wing campaigns against equalisation of the age of consent and abolition of Section 28 need to be understood as the product of a complex right-wing alliance between old-style Conservatism and new right-wing generations. The sexual values of William Hague and Michael Portillo are very different from those of Margaret Thatcher or Norman Tebbit. More mediated forms of homophobia have surfaced in recent campaigns, particularly in the defence of Section 28. New analytical tools are needed to map ‘new delineations of homophobia’ emerging in the political language of the right, operating within a new terrain of sexual politics. The conclusion suggests ways in which such a perspective could inform future sociological and political research agendas.

This article looks at the possible links between auto/biography and right wing nationalism. It is based on extensive archival and oral history research carried out during the 1990s. The recent shift to the right of Austrian governmental politics is examined by looking at biographical aspects of a key player of that process, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party Joerg Haider. His current political views should be read as being embedded within the wider historical and political biography of Austria as a nation state. A life story is constructed in exchange with ones own and other people's actions. This construct is constantly in flux. This is true for authors of academic research as much as for their objects of investigation. Consequently, the authors’ experiences as an Austrian national, both at home and abroad, form a part of this study. The paper concludes by debating how auto/biographical experiences from the past become a constituting element of a person's present and future.

The lesbian and gay movement in the UK has been the least successful of the major ‘new social movements’ (NSMs) in achieving social policy and legislative change, and Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988) remains in force as a major symbol both of Conservative opposition to such changes and also of wider and institutionalised discrimination. Around ‘New Labour’ proposals to repeal Section 28, a ‘moral panic’ has taken place, and sections of the popular press have been ‘players within’ the amplification processes involved. Reporting of ‘what has been happening’ has suggested apparently close ongoing links exist between disparate groups opposed to repeal and largely homogenous views about the moral wrongness of homosexuality as such tantamount to a ‘New Right’ hegemonic phenomenon. However, a closer look suggests there is actually important differences between the groupings involved and the ‘close links’ are actually artefacts of ‘creative reporting’; and that these events are better characterised in terms of a ‘backlash’ to the specificities involved rather than a ‘New Right’ blanket response.