Publications

Who, or what, is English? Drawing on qualitative interviews with white majority interviewees in three locations in England, this article explores local interpretations of English and Englishness. The article investigates the way members view their local environment as being ‘English’, and examines the criteria underpinning such interpretations. While various meanings are identified, it is found…

Health lifestyles are collective patterns of health risk behaviour that develop within a social habitus. An important area for research is the extent to which health lifestyles become more individualised over time and as people age, or whether health lifestyles remain socially structured. This article presents findings from a Multiple Correspondence Analysis of the British…

How far have social theorists in Russia engaged with the international academic world since the era dominated by Soviet-style historical materialism? Mainstream theories in sociology and ‘culturology’ use new vocabulary but remain loyal to ideological interpretations of society and culture. A minority of Russian sociologists have translated, adopted and critiqued Western ideas. Works by three…

Recent initiatives for increasing participation in UK elections have yet to replace the traditional method of in-person voting at designated polling stations. Recent research has shown that voter turnout can be sensitive to geographical factors relating to the costs of voting, such as distance travelled to the polling station; government policy has stated that accessibility…

The following review symposium, on Martyn Hammersley’s (2008) book may seem rather late. We decided in the Spring of 2010 that Qualitative Research had made a mistake in 2008, when we decided not to commission a review of the volume. In retrospect we realize now that should have devoted space to the book when it…

During the course of this paper we mobilise an ideal typical framework that identifies three waves of reduction within contemporary qualitative inquiry as they relate to key aspects of the sociological tradition. The paper begins with a consideration of one of sociology’s key questions; namely how is social organisation possible? The paper aims to demonstrate…

A significant volume of research demonstrates that out-of-school learning activities enhance student development in terms of cognitive, affective and social outcomes. However, there is also evidence that the opportunity to engage in these activities has been severely reduced in recent years. This paper explores the extent to which the provision of such opportunities is unevenly…

Punishing the Poor avers not only that the United States has shifted from the single (welfare) to the double (social-cum-penal) regulation of the poor, but also that the ‘stunted development of American social policy’ skilfully dissected by Piven and Cloward stands in close causal and functional relation to America’s uniquely overgrown and hyperactive penal policy….

In this article we aim to utilise and apply ethnomethodological and interactionist principles to the analysis of members situated accounts of regenerated urban space. With reference to previous empirical studies we apply membership categorization analysis and the concept of mundane reason to data gathered from situated street level interviews carried out as part of a…

This paper develops multi-dimensional analyses of socio-spatial relations. Building on previous research, we identify some tensions associated with different dimensions of socio-spatiality and introduce the theme of compossible and, more importantly, incompossible socio-spatial configurations. Two short studies are deployed to highlight the socio-spatial implications of the principle that not everything that is possible is compossible. The first…