This paper seeks to explore sociology as an imaginative pursuit. After a brief reconsideration of Mills's notion of 'the sociological imagination' I examine three areas illustrating the various imaginations within the discipline: the work of Robert K. Merton; ethnomethodology; and the diversities of feminist scholarship. Two particular case studies are explored: the sociology of the body and the use of autobiographical studies in sociology. I conclude with some suggestions for the encouragement of imaginative thought within the discipline.

The workplace has been extensively and variously evaluated as an environment which – like others – contains risks to health. This paper unpacks such risk assessment by problematising the relation between hazards and risks. Three positions are set out. In the first (materialist or realist), risks map directly onto underlying real hazards. In the second (constructionist or culturalist), hazards are natural, while risks are social constructions. In the final (postmodern) position, both risks and hazards are seen as constructions. The paper goes on to consider the implications of the latter position for assessment of risks in the workplace, arguing that risks are often discounted in the on-going choices made by people who do some things called ‘work’ and evaluate their continuity of sense-of-self as their ‘health’.

In this paper we explore some key antionomies which have emerged in relation to children and childhood in late modernity: tensions between autonomy and protection and between perceptions of children as ‘at risk’ and as potentially threatening. A particular focus here is on the sexualisation of risk, the degree of public concern expressed whenever the sexual ‘innocence’ of children is thought to be endangered. We argue that the concept of risk anxiety provides a useful means of analysing contemporary fears about children and childhood and may thus be understood as contributing to the ongoing social construction of childhood. Here risk anxiety must be located within the context of gendered and generational power relations, in which children’s lives are bounded by adult surveillance. Furthermore, risk anxiety may have material consequences for children’s daily lives and for everyday adult–child negotiations around safety and danger, protection and autonomy.

This paper examines the character of the debate about ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ methods in feminist social science. The ‘paradigm argument’ has been central to feminist social science methodology; the feminist case against ‘malestream’ methods and in favour of qualitative methods has paralleled other methodological arguments within social science against the unthinking adoption by social science of a natural science model of inquiry. The paper argues in favour of rehabilitating quantitative methods and integrating a range of methods in the task of creating an emancipatory social science. It draws on the history of social and natural science, suggesting that a social and historical understanding of ways of knowing gives us the problem not of gender and methodology, but of the gendering of methodology as itself a social construction.

The usefulness of archived qualitative data has been questioned where contextual information surrounding the conditions of its production is not provided. It has been assumed that, without this background information, the data remain incomplete. By the same token, it has been argued that the provision of such information will repair and complete the dataset for the purpose of generating new findings or theories. We suggest that these arguments stress practical solutions to what is in fact a more fundamental epistemological issue relating to the reflexive and interpretive nature of the research paradigm within which we, as qualitative researchers, reside. Our experiences of revisiting our own data, discussed in this paper, have highlighted the central part played by the researcher not only in the interpretation and theorising of data, but also in their construction. Because of this, we contend that the conditions under which data are produced are inescapable, thus rendering their re-interpretation at some later date problematic. Thus, we argue that, while ‘reflexivity’ is now recognised as a key feature of qualitative research across social science disciplines, the implications of this for the archiving and re-use of qualitative data have yet to be adequately addressed. Failure to acknowledge this epistemological issue leads researchers unwittingly to adopt a ‘naively realist’ position.

Taking as its starting point the ‘irrational passion for dispassionate rationality’, so prevalent in Western thought and practice, this paper traces, through the emotions, current debates surrounding the ambivalent nature of modernity as both order and chaos, conformity and transgression. Reason and emotions are not, it is argued, antithetical to one another, rather there is a need to fundamentally rethink existing epistemological models and ontological ways of being and knowing. These issues are traced, on the one hand, through the increasing rationalisation of Western society, the latest expression of which, it is claimed, is a new form of ‘postemotionalism’, and, on the other hand, through the resurgence of more Dionysian values and collective forms of effervescence. The paper concludes with a critical assessment of these contradictory features and the corporeal dilemmas which underpin them, speculating on the ‘fate’ of emotions at the turn of the century in the light of current postmodern theorising.

Cultural trends shape the experience of marriage by forming expectations, entitlements and obligations. The self-development discourse generated by the therapeutic culture has been suggested as playing a part in such shaping. This paper examines how this particular discourse affects the way women experience their marital conversations and, more specifically, the extent to which they feel able to initiate change-directed negotiation within them. Twenty-eight professional women in England, selected to reflect different occupational exposures to the self-development discourse, were interviewed in order to examine their experiences of the marital conversation and possible changes within it. The analysis shows that specific feeling rules limit the possibility of women’s concerns entering the marital conversation, and that the self-development discourse can introduce alternative feeling rules with the potential to overcome such limitations. It is shown that women who are influenced by the ideological messages equating change with relationship improvement contained within this discourse are able to adopt its proposed feeling rules and to use them to introduce negotiation into their marital conversations. These women are able to use this increased negotiability within the marital conversation to become more powerful in shaping their marital experiences.

This paper provides a content analysis of 1094 dating advertisements. It seeks, in part, to test results of previous research emanating mainly from the disciplines of psychology and sociobiology, which shows that men offer financial and occupational attributes and seek physical attractiveness in partners whereas women offer physical attractiveness and seek resource and status attributes, consistent with traditional ‘sex-role’ stereotypes and mating selection strategies. Locating analyses in the context of a postmodern, consumer society, it shows that lifestyle choices have superseded resources as primary identity markers for men, that women market their ‘masculine’ attributes and seek ‘feminine’ men; and that the body is central to identity for both men and women. It concludes therefore that traditional gendered stereotypes may now be changing as men and women deal with a context of a novel set of social conditions.

In this paper I examine changes in men and women’s attitudes to sexual morality across nations and time. First, I use time-series data from British Social Attitudes and the General Social Survey of the United States to examine to what extent there has been a revolution in sexual attitudes and whether the change in attitudes has continued through to the 1990s. In particular, I investigate whether changes in permissiveness are mainly due to period effects or to cohort replacement. I also compare the trajectory and pace of change in the two countries. Second, I use data from the International Social Survey Programme to compare British and American attitudes with those of four other nations with very different socio-political and religious traditions – Ireland, Germany, Sweden and Poland. With the exception of attitudes to pre-marital sex, attitudes have not changed very dramatically over the past few decades. Attitudes towards homosexuality are becoming slowly more tolerant, especially among women, but condemnation of extra-marital sex has remained high. Religion plays an important role in explaining both within and cross-national variations in attitudes and provides a powerful counterbalance to permissive trends. I conclude that change has not been as revolutionary as is often claimed and the demise of traditional values is over-stated.

In his account of Thatcherism as a hegemonic project, Stuart Hall points out that discourse theory provides insight both into the ways in which Thatcherism was constructed as a discourse from a combination of disparate ideological strands and into the ways in which this discourse was engaged in a hegemonic project. However, discourse analysis has rarely been applied in empirical study of the spread of the ideas and values of Thatcherism. The findings of attitude surveys indicate the failure of Thatcherism to produce radical social and cultural change. This paper presents textually oriented discourse analysis as an alternative way of understanding the spread of Thatcherism to that of attitude surveys. Research applying the approach demonstrates the continuing use of elements of Thatcherite discourse across the Conservative party and Labour party and hence the lasting impact of Thatcherism in spite of its failure to become hegemonic.

Rosemary Crompton, Women and Work in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, £27.50 (£9.99 pbk), xi+155 pp. (ISBN: 0-19-878096-6 hbk; 0-19-87097-4 pbk).

Susan Halford, Mike Savage and Anne Witz, Gender, Careers and Organisations: Current Developments in Banking, Nursing and Local Government. London: Macmillan, 1997, £42.50 (£13.99 pbk), xi+292 pp. (ISBN: 0-333-60977-8 hbk; 0-333-60978-6 pbk).

Elizabeth Higginbotham and Mary Romero (eds.) Women and Work: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Class. London: Sage, 1997, £45.00 (£19.95 pbk), xxxii+269 pp. (ISBN: 0-8039-5058-6 hbk; 0-8039-5059-4 pbk).

As we approach the Millennium there are clear signs of major upheavals in the established gender order. In September 1996 for the first time women were recorded in government statistics as outnumbering men in the labour force; girls are doing better than boys in school examinations; young women are asserting ‘girl power’, appearing confident of their ability to succeed. Such changes might be viewed positively, as a triumph for feminist campaigning and Equal Opportunities programmes. Increasingly the press treat them negatively, fostering a ‘moral panic’ about the adverse consequences for men. Indeed, in a slightly tongue-in-cheek recent article, Fay Weldon (1997) advocated the formation of a ‘masculinist movement’ to redress the balance of this ‘gender switch’.

Lawrence A. Kuznar, Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology. London: AltaMira, 1997, £35.00 (£16.50 pbk), xi+284 pp (ISBN: 0-7619-9114-X).

Jeremy MacClancy and Chris McDonaugh (eds.), Popularizing Anthropology. London: Routledge, 1996, £45.00 (£14.99 pbk), xi+253 pp. (ISBN: 0-415-13613-X).

Jerry D. Moore, Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. London: AltaMira, 1997, £35.00 (£16.50 pbk), 283 pp. (ISBN: 0-8039-7097-8).

We start off with Edward Tylor, but Professor X tells us that Tylor was just an armchair anthropologist. So we read Malinowski who everyone says was a good fieldworker, but then Professor X says Malinowski was a racist. And then we read Margaret Mead, and Professor X says Mead was a liar ... What's the goddamn point of it all?

(Jerry D. Moore 1997. Visions of Culture, p. 9)