Sociological Research Online

The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health was established to track the health of three age cohorts of Australian women - 40,000 in total - over a twenty year period. It provides opportunities for research into health and related issues for women. In this paper, we investigate (1) baseline data from the young cohort of 1400 survey participants and (2) follow up in-depth interview data from a small sample of 57 of the original respondents. The focus of the paper is on the aspirations of young women (aged 18-23) for work, their ideal job, relationships (including children) and further education, particularly in the context of gender inequality in labour markets.Through an analysis of the data, we look at the extent to which gender inequalities are the result of free choices and preferences and to what extent they are conditioned by socio-economic structures and processes that reproduce inequalities over time. This issue is further explored through a classification of women by socio- economic status. In this way, we can analyse the gender dimension of labour market inequality in general as well as the relationship of gender inequality to class inequality in the areas of work, work choice and the ability to combine work and family responsibilities. Analysis of the two data sets sheds light on debates about women's workforce participation as well as establishing baseline data for future research on the options chosen and available for this group of young women. The results will have significance for policy debates in several areas, including those concerned with worker entitlements, childcare, access to higher education and workforce planning. More particularly, it makes a significant contribution to the current debate, initiated by Catherine Hakim, about women's supposed preference for part-time rather than full-time work.

The paper attempts to explain the unease and evasion that sociologists commonly encounter when asking lay people about class. It is argued that these responses derive from varying degrees of awareness of the morally problematic nature of class. This has been obscured by contemporary sociology's tendency to explain behaviour by reference to interests and power or custom and to overlook lay moral sentiments. That the responses are reasonable is shown by an analysis of a) the injustice of class, b) its effect in distorting moral sentiments, and c) the injuries caused by class. Combinations of self-justification with acknowledgement of undeserved advantages and disadvantages result in ambivalence and embarrassment about class, though this may not preclude class pride. The analysis of these moral sentiments is then developed further in relation to studies of the struggles of the social field, in the work of Bourdieu and others, commenting on his shift from a hermeneutics of suspicion to a hermeneutics of sympathy in The Weight of the World. It is argued that what is at stake in these struggles is not only differences in material wealth and recognition but differences in ability to realise commitments and valued ways of living.

Globalization theorists frequently claim that the disembedding of social relations across various dimensions renders obsolete the former object of sociology, namely ‘society’. The exceptional change to social life arising from globalization demands that sociality is viewed in more fluid and complex ways than in the past. A closer examination of classical concepts of the social would reveal more nuanced and multidimensional concepts. I suggest that globalization does not entail the stretching of social relations beyond recognition, but reconfigures spaces and identities according to powerful dynamics. Classical theory emphasizes the embeddedness of exchanges and flows in social and cultural relations. This will be exemplified with reference to migration, which both epitomizes globalizing tendencies and illustrates its limitations. Along with mobile subjects there are immobile subjects (racialized migrants) policed by actual and threatened violence, who have been underplayed in globalization theory. The paper concludes that concepts of the ‘social’ may need rethinking but central to this should be an understanding of the interlocking of mobility with the circulation of capital, commodities and cultural practices.

The paper advances the notion that there is ‘metropolitan habitus’ in large global cities such as London which distinguishes it from other conurbations in the United Kingdom. At the same time, it is argued that whilst London is becoming an increasingly middle-class city, this group is increasingly stratified along socio-spatial lines. Richard Sennett's work The Corrosion of Character is drawn upon to suggest that, to some extent, different gentrification strategies enable the metropolitan middle classes to compensate for the lack of a long term in contemporary middle-class life. Drawing on fieldwork, recently conducted in five gentrified areas of inner London north and south of the Thames, it is suggested that an important aspect of the socio spatial differentiation within the metropolitan middle class is whether it seeks to embrace or escape the contemporary globalization of consumer culture. Although this process is highly nuanced by individual strategies for negotiating the boundaries between the global and the local, which are exemplified by the distinction between residential areas and the centre of London, it is nevertheless suggested that these socio-spatial divisions account for variations within the metropolitan habitus to a greater extent than socio- demographic and occupational divisions which are only weakly associated with the global/non-global dichotomisation. The paper uses both quantitative and qualitative data to look at the different ways in which cultural, economic and social capital are drawn on in the gentrification of each area and how these reflect not only the capabilities but also the proclivities of the different groups concerned. It is suggested that metropolitan habitus is a concept that needs further analysis and research but which has considerable potential explanatory value in accounting for differences between the middle classes in London and other provincial cities and non urban areas.

This paper explores some of the processes that influence access to higher education and employment for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in Britain. We ask what changes we can expect amongst younger Pakistani and Bangladeshi women who have grown up in the UK? How do we expect educational qualifications and family formation to influence labour market participation amongst these women? What barriers do these women face in obtaining qualifications and paid employment? To what extent are these barriers imposed by the family and community and to what extent are they imposed by the local labour market?

We find evidence of change across generations. By contrast with their mothers' generation, younger women who had been educated in the UK saw paid work as a means to independence and self- esteem. Women with higher level qualifications often showed considerable determination in managing to combine paid work and child-care. Whilst most women subscribed strongly to the centrality of the family, it is clear that the majority will follow very different routes through the life-course from their mothers. However, even with higher level qualifications, women are facing considerable barriers to employment. If the expected increase in economic activity amongst Pakistani and Bangladeshi women is not to lead to even higher unemployment, there is a pressing need to ensure that potential employers do not hold negative and out-dated stereotypes of traditional Muslim women.

This paper reviews the ways in which sociologists in the second half of the twentieth century attempted to make sense of the major trends unfolding in their societies. It focuses in particular on the way in which sociologists have responded to the legacy of the founding figures in terms of their identification of trends such as rationalization, bureaucratization, and proletarianization. The proliferation of other trends captured by words ending with the suffix -ization (for example globalization, McDonaldization, and postmodernization) is noted, and the argument is developed that this style of theorising is valuable but problematic. It is valuable because it encourages sociologists to think comparatively, given that the trends identified necessarily have reference points in the past and that their uneven progress in different societies (or other social units) can be compared. It is problematic because there is no agreement on what constitutes evidence that these processes are unfolding, nor on the need for such evidence. A further problem relates to the issue of how these processes are considered to relate to each other. Research undertaken in the field of community in Britain and beyond over the period 1950-2000 is drawn upon to illustrate these points and to support the argument that concepts drawn from theorization at a general level are essential tools in the analysis of contemporary trends. It is also used to support the related argument that such theorization needs to be grounded in empirical evidence if it is to go beyond mere speculation.

This paper investigates the role of families in the transmission of tendencies to engage in social and civic activities. The relationship between parents' social class, sector of employment, education and social engagement with their children's civic and social engagement is investigated. It was provisionally hypothesized that graduate parents, particularly those working in the health, education or welfare services, would be more likely to be involved in civic activities, and that they would transmit this pattern to their children. Other forms of social engagement were also examined. Data was drawn from the British Household Panel Study. The survey yielded a sample of approximately 1500 young people and approximately 1200 families. It was found that middle-class parents (particularly professionals) were more likely to be involved in civic activities and that this was also true of their children. A similar effect was found for involvement in religious activities, although the rates of religious activity were low. Little difference by social class was found for Sports and Social activity, although there was a trend towards more involvement for children of managers. The children of managers were involved in a wider range of social organisations. Models exploring the effects of parental class, education and public sector employment were fitted. These seemed to suggest that parental education, particularly mother's education, has an especially strong association with civic activity among children. However, the association was only there for graduate (or sub-degree) mothers who work in the public sector. It seems likely that a particular configuration of professional graduate employment in the state sector has developed in the twentieth century which is associated with civic activity. The results are discussed in the light of the recent university expansion and shift of graduate employment from the public to the private sector.

In European and American cities alike, politicians and policymakers have developed a strong believe in ‘mixture’. They believe that mixed neighbourhoods have the critical mass of an urban middle class whose economic, human and social capital benefits the whole neighbourhood. If middle classes have the social network contacts to access politicians and policymakers in ways that residents without such contact cannot, is it enough for the poor simply to rub shoulders in the same neighbourhood with the better-off? Does such social capital as individual asset become available to all? Or do the social networks within the neighbourhood, across the lines of class and race, need certain characteristics as meant by Putnam and Coleman for Portes’ and Bourdieu's social capital to become transferable? This paper discusses these questions through a case study in a mixed neighbourhood in a New England college town. The case study suggests that the help of an urban gentry in collective action might depend on how inclusively and fluidly such a gentry defines ‘shared interests’, how power relations determine what ‘collective’ in collective action means, and how difficulties to speak with those the gentry might want to speak for can be overcome. For residents with limited resources, the case suggests that whether or not they can use an urban elite in their neighbourhood to access new resources depends on the quality and nature of informal rather than institutional relationships, and on specific characteristics of reciprocity and mutuality of neighbourhood networks across race and class.

Following the important recent work of Robert Putnam, there is considerable current debate about whether the volume of ‘social capital’ in western societies is in decline and if so what might be the implications for political democracy. Evaluations of the arguments are difficult both because the concept of social capital is a contested one and because measuring social capital is difficult. This paper focuses on membership of voluntary associations in England and Wales as a key measure of social capital and analyses trends in associational membership and their social determinants using the Oxford Mobility Study and British Household Panel Survey. We show that focusing on seven associations there is a broad pattern of stability in membership with the striking and remarkable exception of falling male membership of trade unions and working-men?s clubs. We see this as testimony to a class polarisation in membership in which working class men have been increasingly marginalised from associational memberships. Our conclusion argues that if the membership of voluntary associations is to be used as an index of social capital, there is an increasing social skewing of membership and an intensifying service class hegemony over social capital which poses major concerns for its potential to sustain democratic politics.