The authors, who form the Lancaster Regionalism Group, bring new research to bear on the ways in which places have been transformed through the changes taking place within them - shifts in the nature and quantity of paid and unpaid work, in social and political mobilization, in cultural and aesthetic experience and in the built environment. At the local level, the book draws on the authors' research on change in the city of Lancaster from its past as a place of manufacturing industry, through its current role as a centre of public services, and with increasing trends towards an alternative role in private services. At the general level the book relates the local detail to the broader social scientific analysis of social and economic change. How successfully do concepts of "restructuring" explain the relation between global and local change?.
This text explores the inability of the "crimino-legal complex" - criminology, criminal justice, criminal law, the media and ordinary, individual everyday experiences - to solve the problem of crime and criminality. It examines a number of events which have taken to represent something definitive about crime. Each event is seen as representing the crisis within the crimino-legal tradition in different ways. Topics discussed include: criminology's resistance to feminist intervention; the ambiguities of victimization in relation to social justice in the city; conjugal homicide and illegal immigration; the pleasures of reading about crime in detective fiction; the discovery of the limits in the representation of crime when two children killed another child (the Bulger case); the governmental campaigns against single motherhood as a challenge to the heterosexual norm; and HIV/AIDS as spectacle in criminal justive policies.
What determines the loyalties of voters? The factors identified by social scientists range from a last-minute television appeal by a politician to the social class of the voter's parents. But which of the many influences are most important electorally? "Loyalties of Voters" offers an answer based on an analysis of three decades of electoral behaviour. A sophisticated lifetime learning model is developed. Family loyalties absorbed as a child, adult socio-economic interests and enduring political values cumulate to shape the voter's judgement of the government of the day, the party leaders of the moment. Marshalling evidence from British elections from 1964 to the present, Rose and McAllister determine the critical steps in a lifetime of learning. They tabulate the influence (or lack of influence) of each potentially formative factor. The book illuminates the transition from the regular two-party pendulum of the 1960s: for the left and centre, the need to meld voters with differing values about the economy, the environment and international affairs into a winning coalition; for the right, what happens when Margaret Thatcher steps down.
Reconstructing Old Age outlines the changing contexts and experiences associated with later life, and provides and overview of theoretical debates in gerontology. Chris Phillipson critically reviews the different theoretical explanations which attempt to explain these changes. Contemporary controversies and debates examined in detail include: the argument that changes to pensions, employment, and intergenerational relations areplacing doubt on the meaning and purpose of growing old - the suggestion that later life is being reconstructed as a period of potential choice, but also one of risk and danger
The disciplines of economics and sociology, normally quite separate, are reconciled in this volume. Amongst the many questions considered are: the formal relationship between the two disciplines in terms of logical structure, types of hypotheses and explanatory models, the distinctive ranges of empirical data which each discipline calls into question, how the substantive findings of one discipline can modify the assumptions of the other. The book explores the historical development of economic theories of society from Marx through Weber, Schumpeter, Polanyi, Parsons and debates on rationality placed in context. The contribution of economic sociology is demonstrated through critical assessments of key areas of the literature such as the state/market division in capitalist and socialist economies, the informal economy and the relation of states and economies to the international arena.
`This book is a "must read" for all students of health psychology, and will be of considerable interest and value to others interested in the field. The discipline has not involved itself with the central issues of this book so far, but Radley has now brought this material together in an accessible way, offering important new perspectives, and directions for the discipline. This book goes a long way towards making sense for, and of, health psychology' - Journal of Health Psychology What are people's beliefs about health? What do they do when they feel ill? Why do they go to the doctor? How do they live with chronic disease? This introduction to the social psychology of health and illness addresses these and other questions about how people make sense of illness in everyday life, either alone or with the help of others. Alan Radley reviews findings from medical sociology, health psychology and medical anthropology to demonstrate the relevance of social and psychological explanations to questions about disease and its treatment. Topics covered include: illness, the patient and society; ideas about health and staying healthy; recognizing symptoms and falling ill; and the healing relationship: patients, nurses and doctors. The author also presents a critical account of related issues - stress, health promotion and gender differences.
This book by two leading experts takes a fresh look at the nature of television, starting from an audience perspective. It draws on over twenty years of research about the audience in the United States and Britain and about the many ways in which television is funded and organized around the world. The overall picture which emerges is of: a medium which is watched for several hours a day but usually at only a low level of involvement; an audience which views mainly for relaxation but which actively chooses favourite programmes; a flowering of new channels but with no fundamental change in what or how people watch; programmes costing millions to produce but only a few pennies to view; a wide range of programme types apparently similar to the range of print media but with nothing like the same degree of audience 'segmentation'; a global communication medium of dazzling scale, speed, and impact but which is slow at conveying complex information and perhaps less powerful than generally assumed. The book is packed with information and insights yet is highly readable. It is unique in relating so many of the issues raised by television to how we watch it. There is also a highly regarded appendix on advertising, as well as technical notes, a glossary, and references for further reading.
This text uses food as a case study of consumption and the expression of taste, providing a structural analysis of changes and continuities in the representation and purchase of food. It outlines theories of change in the 20th century and considers the parallels between their diagnoses of consumer behaviour and actual trends in food practices. The book argues that various dilemmas of the modern predicament and certain imperatives of the culture of consumption make sense of food selection. It also suggests that contemporary consumption is best viewed as a process of continual selection among an unprecedented range of generally accessible terms.
Management Theories for Educational Change i dentifies those theories and practices from the literature o n business, manufacturing and commerce which inform the mana gement of change in education. '
