Sociological Research Online

This paper explores the significance of dirt in the work of technicians who service and repair private cars. Rather than being useful in understanding how dirt is dealt with, the historical and anthropological analyses of dirt are shown to be overly concerned with cultural significance and the idea that dirt is no more than ‘matter out of place’. Such accounts suppress the more common sense approach that dirt is unpleasant to human beings and is to be avoided if possible. In work such as garage servicing and repairs, dirt has to be confronted and dealt with pragmatically, according to the consequences of its presence, rather than symbolically according to its cultural meaning. The writing of Sartre on slime provides a more persuasive explanation both for the ambivalence towards ambiguous materials of slime and dirt and for the moral connotations that attach to them. Everett Hughes's account of a ‘moral division of labour’ in which distinctions are made concerning dirty work fits with some of the visible hierarchical distinctions in the garage setting. But it is the variability of practices, both between garages and between technicians in a similar setting, that suggests dealing with dirt is a practical matter that is not prescribed by ritual or cultural significance.

During the course of this article we intend to explore some issues surrounding government policy and actions and the moral organisation of political discourse surrounding the recent enquiry into the BSE crisis and the publication of the Phillips Report in the UK. More specifically, we wish to develop the concept of moral discrepancy and it's use in politically accountable settings, in this case the political interview. The paper, through the use of membership categorisation analysis, explores issues surrounding the social organisation of interview settings, the discursive management of policy decisions and ‘bureaucratic mistakes’ and the allocation of blame in situated media/political formats. The paper then relates these issues to notions of democracy-in-action, public ethics and the respecification of structure and agency as a members phenomenon.

This paper develops Anderson's (1983) concept of ‘imagined community’ to explore the social meaning of popular images of ageing and the beliefs of older people. Popular iconography and texts are examined in relation to the representation of ‘normal’ or ‘positive’ ageing in areas including the marketing of seaside towns as places for retirement through the emphasis upon heritage, British holiday brochures for old people, lifestyle magazines, and the general sites of death, dying, funerals and bereavement ‘therapy’. These are seen as prescriptive representations that are sanitised and fictional. Emphasising communalism and homogeneity, they ignore the realities of history, and the differences and inequalities to be found amongst the old as a social group. This ‘vocabulary of motive’ (Mills 1940) of imagined community is found to be predominant within positive images of ageing, especially those found in ‘consumer culture’. The paper also considers how ageing can become a theatre for the interpretation and performance of imagined community in autobiographical context.

This paper explores the phenomenon of ethnic entrepreneurship in Greece. Greece has been transformed from an emigration to an immigration country. Since the 1990s the majority of migrant workers occupy low paid, unskilled jobs in the informal economy. However, some set up (in) formal businesses. Ethnic entrepreneurs of our study have been excluded from social and economic opportunities. By running a business they struggle against exclusion, have control over their work situation (work hours, income) and gain emotional satisfaction and self-fulfilment. As we will show, self-employment is viewed as an ‘alternative income-generating activity, a strategy towards inclusion, a feasible ‘survival strategy’ for escaping discrimination and exclusion given the lack of other employment options. In this context, entrepreneurship is not viewed as an economic behaviour structured by the existing economic and socio-political structures only, but also, as having an important subjective meaning for the self-employed migrant. We will demonstrate that ethnic businesses comprise a mosaic of formal and informal activities. Opportunities for participation of migrants in informal activities occur because of the high demand for informal provision of services and goods at competitive prices. The entrance barriers are lower than in the informal sector since one usually does not have to meet costs associated with running of a business. Although the development of ethnic business activities will be viewed as the outcome of interaction on one's legal status, economic resources, access to informal networks of support, individual aspirations and structures of opportunity (e.g. informal economy) available to migrants in the Greek case migrants are faced with structural disadvantages that push them into what is marginal self-employment. It is the peculiarities of the Greek case (large informal economy and high rates of self-employment and the multiple forms of exclusion they experience as they were in Greece) that encourage them to become ‘ survival’ entrepreneurs, to strive to create a business of their own in the ‘twilight zone’ of the Greek economy where they often carry out extra-legal activities in order to ‘survive’.

This paper focuses on ‘beanpole’ families, that is those with several living generations; it analyses patterns of care and paid work across the generations and the resource transfers which take place between generations. Drawing on a small-scale study of four generation families, it provides a typology of intergenerational relations with respect to the transmission of material assets, childcare and elder care, sociability, emotional support, and values. It examines two a fortiori conditions which are considered to shape intergenerational relations: (a) occupational status continuity/ mobility and (b) geographical proximity/ mobility. Four types of intergenerational relations are generated by this examination: traditional solidaristic; differentiated; incorporation of difference; and reparation in estrangement. The paper looks at families holistically and draws on the concept of ambivalence to describe the forces which push family members to carry on family patterns and those which pull them apart and lead them to strike out on their own. It shows how, whatever the type of intergenerational pattern, each generational unit seeks to make its own mark.