This article is concerned with the status of generalisation in interpretive sociology. The case made is that generalisation is inevitable, desirable and possible. It is held that interpretivism must employ a special kind of generalisation, characterised here as moderatum. However, an acknowledgement that such generalisations can be made must bring us to specify the limits of generalisation in interpretive research. These limits are the limits of interpretivism itself and the paper concludes that this implies the adoption of methodological pluralism in order to realise the full potential of the method.

This article argues that Lockwood's piece on social and system integration was quite insightful at the time, but that it failed in correctly solving the issues it raised. More recent versions of the distinction, such as Giddens's and Archer's, are deemed not satisfactory either. Three steps are then taken in order to provide an alternative solution, which tackles the general problem of the relationship between structure and agency.The critical analysis of the notion of ‘emergent properties’, along with those of ‘structure’ and ‘mechanism’, is the groundwork for a discussion of collective causality that substantiates an alternative view which deÞnes social systems as collective subjectivities, including some methodological considerations. A broad notion of realism is upheld in the article.

In the following analysis I will focus on Bakhtin's concept of dialogical plurality, arguing that in spite of his position against the Þnalization of speech and his attack on monologistic, authoritarian unity, his dialogism is itself based on a supposition of wholeness. By insisting on dialogue as a remedy, Bakhtin's dialogism tends to oversimplify the instability and threat inherent in dialogue. The present study explores plurality as dependent on a shift into dialogue. The threshold of entrance and of exit which deÞnes the ‘betweenness’ of dialogue comes out as a rather problematic, torn link. It requires a constant making of a topic and is threatened and informed by forces of coercion, exclusion, break, strangeness and silence. Plurality becomes a critical trope in social theory that focuses on the very threshold of dialogue rather than on either a simpliÞed and smoothed version of the dialogic connection or on an exclusive version that splits between the dialogic and the monologic in an overstated ethics.

This article presents some preliminary results from a historical study of social mobility in Britain and Ireland, from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The study is marked by a unique combination of features: (1) it follows families for up to Þve generations, through both maternal and paternal lines; (2) it uses a continuous measure of social position, rather than class categories; (3) this measure is derived from data on social interaction – correspondence analyses of cross-tabulations of the occupations for marriages taking place in the periods 1777–1866 and 1867–1913; (4) each individual's social position is summarised by a work-life trajectory, represented by his social location at ages 20 and 50. The analyses are based on twelve ten-year birth cohorts from 1790–99 to 1900–09. The results indicate a remarkable degree of stability of social processes of reproduction throughout this period, although there is an extremely slow shift towards a weakening of family influence. This process appears to have accelerated for those born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a period of both educational reform and major change in Britain's industrial organisation.

This critical examination of theories of reflexive modernity with respect to the new human genetics draws on a range of empirical studies and conceptual critiques. In it we explore the ways in which genetic knowledge and testing technologies offer new choices, construct new risks and generate public and professional ambivalence. We contrast this with the processes of ordering, reduction and control suffusing these developments. We argue that reductionism and determinism continue to infuse genetic theories and methods, that scientific and social progress are collapsed anew, and that certitude and surveillance remain powerful guiding principles. Within this context, the reflexive potential of individual choice, personal responsibility and risk estimation is seriously undermined. Indeed, in the case of the new human genetics, it seems that reflexive modernisation promotes, rather than curtails, a new modern/counter-modern eugenics. This occurs through the privatisation of lay ambivalence and professionals' successful institutional reflexivity. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of our reflections for sociology and participatory democracy more broadly.

The boundary between the personal and the political is contested. Feminist interventions in this contest since 1970 have been particularly significant. A brief discussion of how feminists have theorised the personal/political division serves as an introduction to my analysis of current struggles over that division in Western liberal democracies. My analysis focuses on the workings of representative processes. Efforts to represent interests are strongly interlinked with the representation of meanings or images. Representations rely on, even if they resist, dominant discourses which privilege certain meanings and interests over others. To illustrate this analysis I use media representations of the Clinton versus Paula Jones case, which has produced considerable debate about the personal/political boundary. The continued high poll ratings Clinton received at that time suggest that his sexual behaviour was not seen as interfering with his political performance. In contrast, assessments of Jones’s political credibility appear considerably tied to evaluations of her ‘personal’ life. The difficulties of representing marginalised gender and class positions within current representative systems are explored in order to account for these differences.

Recognising the importance of food preparation in divisions of domestic labour, this paper discusses influential literature on the gendering of domestic food preparation. It argues that Þndings from research on food preparation and food choice carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s must be seen in their historical context, and outlines major structural changes since then which impact on women's roles. It also argues that the tendency of sociology of food research to focus on the cultural norm of the nuclear family with dependent children ignores more common household structures in Britain today. This is particularly inappropriate since there are a number of reasons why we should not expect men and women at this stage in the life course to be typical, in terms of food preparation and choice, of those at other stages in the life course.

Alberto Melucci, The Playing Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, £13.95 paperback, vii+177 pp. (ISBN 0-521-56482-4)

Charles Lemert, Postmodernism Is Not What You Think, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, £15.99 paperback, xiv+185 pp. (ISBN 1-55786-286-9)

Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner (eds.), The Politics of Jean-François Lyotard, London: Routledge, 1998, £55.00, vii+168 pp. (ISBN 0-415-11724-0)

Barry Smart, Facing Modernity: Ambivalence, Reflexivity and Morality, London: Sage, 1998, £45.00 hardback (£14.99 paperback), 224 pp. (ISBN 0-7619-5520-8)

Postmodernism is routinely identified with political radicalism. From one angle, it is easy enough to see why this is so, for many of the leading theorists of postmodernity hail from that side of the political spectrum (such as Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and Fredric Jameson). From another angle, though, it is much less obvious that postmodernism is itself a radical social and political concern. Indeed, the opposite might plausibly be argued. What has happened with the advent of so-called postmodern society is the collapse of modernist rationality, core community values, and ethical and moral foundations. The sociological message in this reading is that postmodernism, in fact, spells a repressive reorganisation of everyday life within the ideological structures of the global capitalist economy itself. Thus the advent of postmodernism – with its dazzling globalisation of social relations, its deconstruction of metaphysical foundations, its reifying of technology and its cult of consumer hedonism – fits hand in glove with the imperatives of a market logic in which everything goes but nothing much counts. Or so the story goes.

David Byrne, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1999, £45.00 (£:15.99 paperback), viii+206 pp. (ISBN 0-415-16296-3)

Raymond A. Eve, Sara Horsfall and Mary E. Lee (eds.), Chaos, Complexity and Sociology: Myths, Models and Theories). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997, £37.00 (£16.99 paperback), xxxii+328pp. (ISBN 0-7619-0890-0 pbk)

Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures. London: Profile, 1998, £9.99 paperback, xiii£274pp. (ISBN 1 86197 074 9)

Natural scientists and their lawyers in the philosophy of science, can often be heard to complain that sociologists (and social scientists in general) misunderstand science, their methods are not methodical and their conclusions often unwarranted. Few, however, have actually gone out of their way to present systematic evidence of the failure of social science to live up to the rigour they feel obtains in their own disciplines. An exception was Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at New York University, who submitted a spoof paper entitled ‘Trangressing the boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’ to the journal Social Text. This paper, Sokal and Bricmont admit, in Intellectual Impostures, was ‘brimming with absurdities and non sequitors’ (p. 1), but not only was it published, but it was published in a special issue ‘devoted to rebutting the criticisms levelled against post modernism and social constructivism by several distinguished scientists’ (p. 2). The reaction both for and against the value of Sokal's ‘experiment’ was robust, but Sokal had in mind something more specific than simply to show that the social sciences (the humanities and philosophy) were not rigorous. His project was to expose the misunderstandings and pretensions to scientific language and concepts used in these disciplines. This book, initially published in France (the intellectual heartland of ‘post’ critique), continues this project with rigour and relish.