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Welcome

Welcome to the Sociology Post.

This is the place where I will be posting notes, comments, and reports on sociological matters and issues of sociological relevance. It is where I hope to engage with all of those who come to my website or who have read my work.

The post was launched in April 2017 on my website. Software changes have meant a transfer to Blogger, but I will soon reestablish a link to the website. All the old posts will be re-posted here over the next few weeks.

Watch this space!

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What are ‘British Values’?

Politicians and commentators often talk about the importance of British values and the need for migrants and refugees to respect British values. Such arguments have emerged strongly in debates over terrorism. Claims of this kind often, perhaps typically, mask a more or less deep-rooted prejudice towards outsiders and an assumption of the inherent superiority of Britons. Proponents of these views look back to an imperial past when Britannia ruled not only the waves but also much of the land and when it seemed natural to divide the people of the world into distinct ‘races’. We are rightly sceptical of such arguments, but is any meaning to be found in the argument that a society such as Britain is indeed marked by values that are subscribed to by a majority of its members and that help to define a shared sense of identity? Under what conditions can we talk about any kinds of national values? These ideas are best understood through the arguments that I have developed on social conscio
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Integration and Social Structure

In my previous post I set out a view of the relationship between the interaction order and social structure. I want now to discuss the forms of integration or malintegration that exist at each level. These issues were famously discussed by David Lockwood in an article of 1964 through his distinction between ‘social integration’ and ‘system integration’ (in  Explorations in Social Change , edited by Zollschan and Hirsch). My claim is that social integration should be seen as relating to the interaction order and system integration as relating to the macro-level social structure. A state of social integration exists when interacting individuals and groups establish shared understandings that permit a coordination of their actions. They produce a negotiated order that underpins their joint action. Where there are failures in mutual understanding and a resulting lack of coordination, there is social disorder, rather than social order, and the potential for social disintegration. This was
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Objectivity and Subjectivity

In  Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research , which I wrote with Gayle Letherby and Malcolm Williams (Sage Publications, 2013), we set out an account of objectivity and truth in relation to the necesarilly subjective basis of social knowledge. This posting outlines a summary of the key arguments of the book. Why are so many sociologists concerned with objectivity and the pursuit of ‘truth’ when our knowledge and understanding of the social world is so self-evidently subjective and partial? The conventional view in all the sciences has been that it is only by securing objective knowledge that we can be guaranteed that it is true and that we can therefore avoid the claims of our critics that we are biased in our viewpoint and are merely parading ideology in the guise of science. This is an important justification of the search for objectivity, but many critics, especially in the social sciences, have argued that it is unrealistic: objectivity is seen as impossible and truth a
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