Anti-Catholicism is part of the dynamics of Northern Ireland's conflict and is critical to the self-defining identity of certain Protestants. However, anti-Catholicism is as much a sociological process as a theological dispute about doctrine. It was given a Scriptural underpinning in the history of Protestant–Catholic relations in Ireland, and wider British–Irish relations, in order to reinforce social divisions between the religious communities and to offer a deterministic belief system to justify them. This article examines the socio-economic and political processes that have led to theology being used in social closure and stratification. It describes the various forms of contemporary anti-Catholicism, and highlights two further sociological features of the process, the common-sense reasoning process which reproduces it and how, in its language, it operates as a ‘discursive formation’.

It has recently been claimed that a particular form of intimacy, ‘the pure relationship’ is increasingly sought in personal life. For a couple, ‘the pure relationship’ involves opening out to each other, enjoying each other's unique qualities and sustaining trust through mutual disclosure. Anthony Giddens (1992) postulates a transformation of intimacy in all personal relationships with radical consequences for the gender order. Popular discourse supports the view that heterosexual couples are more equal and intimate. However, stories of everyday lives told to researchers paint a very qualified picture. Much of personal life remains structured by inequalities. Gendered struggles with the gap between cultural ideals and structural inequalities result in a range of creative identity and relationship-saving strategies. More, perhaps much more, creative energy goes into sustaining a sense of intimacy despite inequality than into a process of transformation. Moreover, the rhetoric of ‘the pure relationship’ may point people in the wrong direction both personally and politically. It feeds on and into a therapeutic discourse that individualises personal problems and down-grades sociological explanations. In practice, intimacy remains multi-dimensional and for the contenders for successful heterosexual equality, acts of practical love and care have been more important than a constant dynamic of mutual exploration of each other's selves.

Concern is expressed about the demise of rural communities resulting from processes of out-migration of young people and in-migration of newcomers. Youth out-migration is the result of a combination of structural and motivational factors. Here the relationship between agency and structure in explaining migration behaviour is explored through the study of one factor: the development of socio-spatial identities in youth. This is of interest not only as a facet of identity construction in childhood and youth, the product of an internal–external dialectic, but also because it appears to represent, alongside structural factors such as local disadvantage, an important but under-recognised factor influencing migration or staying-on decisions among young people brought up in rural communities. Here, the construction of socio-spatial identities, the respective roles of the community and the individual in processes of inclusion and exclusion, inter-generational processes of social reproduction and, finally, the relationship between identity and migration behaviour are explored through the accounts of young people from the Scottish Borders.

The article describes the dilemmas raised in conducting a feminist research project with ‘anti-feminist’ women. Drawing on a qualitative study of the perspectives of women in the British moral lobby, the author raises questions about the applicability of the existing feminist methodological literature to research with relatively powerful and potentially hostile women. In particular, a discussion of interview rapport in terms of ‘moments’ of understanding and disjuncture, based on a recognition of the fractured and often contradictory subjectivities of researcher and researched, is presented as a contribution to debates about feminist standpoint research. Concerns about the desirability of research participants as active subjects at all stages of the research process and reflections on the fluctuating nature of power are also presented.

‘Relevance’, ‘accountability’ and ‘users’ are now prominent terms in the policies of public research funding agencies. In countries such as the UK, the funding of research in social science and other subjects has become increasingly dependent on the perception that research will contribute towards the achievement of certain national goals. Despite renewed discussions surrounding the utility of social analysis, these are rarely informed by debates in academic communities about the meaning of ‘relevance’ or associated debates about the status of knowledge. However divergent policy and academic discussions about relevance may appear, they intersect in concerns over the identity of researchers, the practices of research, and the claims made on behalf of research. This article draws on a case study in an attempt to show the difficulties of reconciling competing demands for relevance. Preliminary reflections are offered on a strategy for creating a productive tension between policy and academic discussions.

If class theory has explanatory and descriptive power it should be possible to provide evidence that social classes exist as phenomena generic to modern industrial societies. This paper addresses this issue by examining the structure of class situations, as defined by job attributes, in two central European, post-communist societies – Hungary and Poland – and then comparing them with a benchmark Western society, Britain. Classes are identified through a latent structure analysis of job attributes and by assessing the correspondence between the latent classes estimated through this procedure and positions on two alternative indicators of class position – the Goldthorpe class schema and self-rated class identity. The structure of latent classes is found to be generally similar across all three societies, as is the correspondence between these latent classes and positions in the Goldthorpe schema in the two societies in which it is measured, and class identification. The main exceptions to this shared pattern relate to variations in the size and organisation of the agricultural sector and the distinctiveness of ‘intermediate’ class positions. The evidence indicates the presence of a considerable degree of cross-national consistency in the structure of class situations across diverse social and political contexts.

Recent debates within social and political theory, and within the public sphere more generally, reveal growing concern with issues of ‘trust’. While forms of voluntary association frequently are cited as prime examples of trust relations, they rarely provide a focus for such debates. In this paper we examine current developments within the voluntary sector in Britain, arguing that the relation of voluntary organisations to questions of trust is increasingly problematic. In particular a tension exists between trust relations based on principles of voluntarism and linked to shared values, and relations of confidence that are mediated by institutional and contractual forms. After surveying recent theoretical accounts of trust and confidence, we consider the relevance of these debates to the British voluntary sector. We then draw on a range of quantitative and qualitative research on the voluntary sector to examine how trust and confidence are negotiated with a number of key constituencies: the general public; government and institutional funders; business; and users or beneficiaries. Our argument is that, while resources of trust are linked to their core values, voluntary organisations are increasingly governed by formal measures designed to promote confidence.

This paper reconsiders the possibility for unification of sociological theory by the rational choice model. This is induced by the claims of rational choice theorists that extending this model from economics to sociology can be conducive to establishing a unifying paradigm and method to be given ‘paradigmatic privilege’ within sociology. The outcome of such an extension of the economic approach has been ‘sociological rational choice theory’ or ‘rational action theory for sociology’. Within sociology, such a rational choice model is regarded as a major theoretical or/and methodological innovation and thus a ‘new’ promise for sociology's unification. Overall, the paper suggests that these ‘ecumenistic’ claims of rational choice theorists cannot be taken at face value since they are predicated upon dubious views of the relations between economy and society and between economics and sociology, including inadequate interpretations of neoclassical economics.

This article emerges from a project that examines the relationship between forms of labour, in the context of managerially directed organisational and cultural change, in a light engineering firm on Tyneside. This material is situated within contemporary and historical accounts of workplace interaction. The paper will address the new emphasis on culture and its manipulation, that is increasingly forming a locus of interest in current literature. Whilst stressing that there is much in these accounts that was common in earlier writing the paper draws out what is distinctive about contemporary concerns.

These issues are developed in the empirical account through an analysis of the manipulation of difference along the axes of gender, age and skill. The findings are located within a wider framework of the shift from post figurative to cofigurative culture. In this view there is a reworking of both the substantive relations between generations and in the form of relationships of age and gender.

The result of this analysis is an account which, whilst stressing the radical change that has taken place nevertheless recognises that even the ‘cleansed culture’ is subject to contradictions stemming from the employment relationship. Further, that within the context of the social reproduction of the workplace, shopfloor experience is chronically implicated in the construction of autonomous cultures. As such the analysis provides a more positive interpretation of resistance to such change than that available in many recent accounts.

National identities are not essentially fixed or given but depend critically on the claims which people make in different contexts and at different times. The processes of identity rest not simply on the claims made but on how such claims are received, that is validated or rejected by significant others. Because actors are able, up to a point, to anticipate validation or rejection in particular contexts and at particular times, this influences the identity claims that they make. Identity is claimed and read off from various identity markers according to identity rules. Identity rules are the probabilistic rules of thumb whereby under certain structural conditions and in certain contexts, markers are interpreted, combined or given precedence one over another. This paper locates this approach to studies of national identity in the literature, and presents evidence for these assertions from a study of national identity, with examples taken from interviews in Scotland with two elite groups. Those interviewed were for a variety of reasons sensitive to issues of national identity. However, we argue that similar processes are at work generally, albeit people who have less reason to concern themselves with their own identity and the identity of those with whom they interact, see national identity more as something ‘taken-for-granted’, and relatively fixed.

This paper starts from a critique of the dominant and largely empiricist paradigm within which sociologists have approached the relationship between social class and health. Referring to the transformational model of social activity and the relational model of society advanced by Bhaskar, the nature and reality of class relations and the preconditions for their theorisation are discussed. A neo-Marxist theory of class relations owing much to Clement and Myles is outlined. The relevance of this theory for a revised and more sociological consideration of health inequalities is then explored and some pointers offered for future empirical enquiry. The authors contend that this theory may throw some light too on the theoretical and political timidity medical sociologists characteristically show in their current research on health inequalities.

This paper examines the role and meaning of nostalgia, and its opposite nostophobia, in the contemporary railway industry. It charts the way the past is passively and actively used by organisational actors, management as well as at the political level. It is argued that in the contemporary railway industry history and heritage are selectively annexed, negatively in order to win consent for change, and positively in an attempt to recapture the ‘golden age of railways’ for marketing purposes. The paper makes sense of these processes by deploying a framework derived from various writers on issues connected with nostalgia and the emotional attachment to work.

Within environmental sociology realist critiques of the use of social constructionist approaches abound. This paper challenges features of the realist critique and emphasises the appeal and utility of social constructionist approaches for the study of environmental issues. We start by outlining the criticisms levelled at social constructionism, particularly the claim that the approach amounts to a denial of the existence of environmental problems and provides no contribution to managing them. We argue that this characterisation of ‘extreme’ constructionism is problematic in two senses. First, in that it bears little resemblance to the mild approach actually used in the majority of empirical studies and, secondly, that it is a misleading characterisation of a more radical constructionism. We conclude that the utility of constructionism can be formulated in terms of two distinct approaches. One refrains from making overt moral and political claims, and treats such claims as topics for analysis; such an approach can, however, provide resources for social criticism. Another adopts an overtly political or environmentally motivated stance towards the issues investigated. Underlying these suggestions is our conviction that a particular model of engagement is implicit in many realist critiques and that others are possible, and perhaps, preferable.

For too long the built working environment has been excluded from the analysis of work organisations. Buildings, like other cultural artefacts, encapsulate social and economic priorities and values, and represent prevailing power structures. Work buildings, such as offices and factories, both make possible the organisation of the labour process and also serve as structures of non-verbal communication, providing cues on hierarchy, status and appropriate behaviour. Control over the working environment can be seen as a constituent part of the control of the labour process, displaying similar cyclical movements. Human resource management and information technology are currently combining to encourage a reappraisal of the working environment, but one that is not without its own contradictions.

This paper offers a critique of the argument that the category of ‘work’ is no longer useful in theories of society and suggests that sociology needs to be able to explain why work is not in fact being decommodified, and why the new middle classes appear unable to offer substantive challenge to alienated work and the instrumentalism of modern societies. The central focus of the paper is an examination of the extent to which public service work is subject to processes of rationalisation and degradation. Qualitative data, on the restructuring of local government, illustrates the argument. Senior officers' responses to the double-edged requirement of justifying and implementing reforms, according to a cost-quality rhetoric, are explored. The paper asks to what extent the trust relationship, embodied in the service class contract, is eroded by market principles. It suggests that divisions are emerging within the public service class between the entrepreneurial ‘strategists’ and the welfare professionals. It assesses the extent to which public servants continue to engage critically with processes of rationalisation and suggests that conservatism and defensiveness may be the predominant responses, particularly if expectations raised by devolution and democratic renewal are confounded by intensification and insecurity. In conclusion it contends that ongoing rationalisation and state policies to ‘remoralise work’ suggest that Offe (1985) and others such as Beck (1999) are over-optimistic in forecasting the demise of ‘wage slavery’.

This article advances the argument that we are becoming a post-work society, and that the restoration of work-centred society is an irrational and untenable goal. I consider the phenomenon of jobless growth and suggest that the economy’s declining need for labour is underestimated due to the influence of three factors: a statistical dependence on jobs held rather than hours worked; the growth of socially unproductive personal services; and the growth of destructive, defensive and unsustainable forms of production. I show that the decentring of work in people’s lives is a process well under way, and conclude that the ‘crisis’ of work-based society derives not from the scarcity of work, but from a theoretical and practical failure to give the decline of work a human meaning.

This paper reports findings from twenty-six interviews conducted with retired households about the way they make budgeting decisions. The data are presented with three objectives. First, to describe the way that households carry out the process of budgeting. Secondly, to consider the implications for economic and sociological theories of consumption. Thirdly, to construct a framework for understanding budgetary decision making which organises the data usefully and places current theories in a clearer relationship to each other. It is found that personal budgeting has several characteristics which are poorly represented in existing theories of consumption: the strong relation between time and money in decision making, the importance of durable goods, the social rather than rational nature of household decision making and the need for budgeting strategies to deal with uncertainty. A five-level framework is presented which shows how different resources and methods are used by decision makers to manage their money.

We have recently witnessed the emergence of a range of naturalistic studies concerned with work, interaction and technology in complex organisational environments. In this paper we examine a seemingly individual and isolated activity, which involves the use of relatively basic technology to guide a vehicle in accord with a highly regulated signalling system. The paper considers the ways in which operating a vehicle is systematically co-ordinated with the actions of others. These actions, whether by passengers or colleagues, are only ‘visible’ by virtue of various technologies; technologies that offer restricted and even distorted access to people and their conduct. In one sense, therefore, the essay is concerned with explicating the socially organised and interactionally sensitive ‘intelligence’ which features in the day-to-day work of drivers on London Underground; a rapid urban transport system which carries more than a million passengers a day.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an integrated (meta)theoretical framework that I call anti-reductionist sociology: this entails a focus on agency, structure (the ‘conditions-of-action’), and social chance; micro–macro; and time–space. What follows allows only for a sketch of the framework; I have published fuller theoretical, methodological and policy-related accounts elsewhere. Anti-reductionist sociology is a sensitising theoretical perspective, not a body of substantive theory. This differentiation has an affinity with Mouzelis's (1993:684) distinction between methodological generalisations and substantive generalisations, the present paper being concerned with the former. In Cohen's terminology (1987:279–80) the approach outlined in the paper is ontologically flexible and in some sense eclectic: while explicitly excluding reductionist, essentialist, reified and teleological formulations, anti-reductionist sociology is a synthetic metatheoretical framework designed to encourage the development of substantive theories that are not necessarily tied to any particular paradigm.

Following debates within this journal regarding the absence of adequate studies of resistance in the contemporary fields of industrial sociology and organisational behaviour, this paper seeks to understand its reasons and consequences. Through an examination of the history of approaches to the study of power and resistance at work, the grounds for this debate are considered and illuminated. The paper then suggests how this debate might be taken forward through developing the ideas of tactics and strategies and episodic and dispositional power.