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The football World Cup in South Africa ended yesterday, with early exits for the last Cup’s finalists France and Italy, quite a surprise and a shock to many. The Wimbledon tennis championships have signalled the start of summer. And the London 2012 Olympics will soon be upon us with all the excitement such a varied competition brings. The calendar of national and international sporting events helps to shape much of our leisure time with many people organize their entire lives around the football fixtures and other sporting competitions. Of course many millions of people are not just sports spectators, but are also actively involved in playing sport themselves and will continue to do so throughout their lives. Sport involves and even centres around the expression of emotions, which can be found in the mutual hostility of rival football fans, continuing reference to tired old national stereotypes in the mass media, the team spirit created amongst teams considered ‘underdogs’ or the outbursts of tennis players on court during matches. Why is sport so significant to people and why does it arouse such strong emotions? 

The study of sport has, since the late 1960s, gradually become part of the established order and sociology was among the first disciplines to embrace sport as a subject worthy of academic attention [BSA Sport Study Group here]. One important aspect of the sociology of sport is the finding that sport is significantly related to identity formation, and this is particularly noticeable at the national level of our identity. Extensive preparations are made, especially in World Cup years, to manage and police fans travelling to international fixtures to avoid trouble between national fan groups and there have indeed been numerous cases of violent outbursts during tournaments. Indeed, the absence of aggressive and violent behaviour by England fans was something worthy of media comment and political praise following England’s defeat by Germany. The assumption being that national identification in sport is so strong that we might expect trouble when ‘our’ team is beaten by an historic ‘enemy’ with the implication that sport is really war conducted by other means (with apologies to Carl von Clausewitz). The sense of national shame which pervades countries that haven’t performed as well as expected is quite palpable and startling. In England the team manager’s position was under severe threat, in France the national team’s poor showing has been the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, whilst in Nigeria the national team was apparently so bad it is to be prevented from taking part in international tournaments for two years. I’m really not making this up, check out the stories here and here. Sport apparently has the power to shake our sense of national identity and esteem and to strike at our very sense of who we are.

Understanding how sport has taken on such an important role in social life requires an historical-sociological approach. The gradual emergence of modern societies from the traditional social structures of the Middle Ages has often been referred to as a process of ‘civilization’. If we ignore the obvious normative dimension of the concept of civilization as meaning somehow better than what came before, the civilizing process can be taken as those social changes leading to a state monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, the consequent pacification of everyday life and an increasingly stable control of emotion at the personal level which makes for a more predictable life [see Norbert Elias (2000) The Civilizing Process (Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell) for the original theory of the civilizing process]. In this context the development of sports with codified rules, national standards of behaviour and an ethos of fair play, created arenas in which participants were expected to exercise more stable and even emotional control, whilst at the same time offering the experience of intense emotions and genuine pleasure and excitement. Sports not only allow emotional expression then, but actually generate emotional experiences not only for participants but also for spectators. One way of putting this is to say that sport offers a pleasurable and exciting, but quite clearly controlled, decontrolling of emotions. The things that spectators do, say and sing during football matches, for example, they wouldn’t dream of doing outside that arena and would find them rather ‘un-civilized’. Similarly, the ‘hardest’ and most aggressive of players can be quite shy and unassuming in every other part of their life. Sport, on this view, is a kind of emotional safety valve for our pacified societies, which offers the kind of experience that is hard to replicate in other spheres of life. No wonder then that ordinarily sane, rational individuals can sometimes be seen crying at sporting occasions, whether they happen to be televised or not.

[Issues of sport in society are scattered within the book, but the box on pp. 241-2 specifically covers the Olympic Games. Elias’s theory of the civilizing process can be found on pp.1037-8, whilst national identities are covered in Chapter 23. Human emotions are discussed on pp.25-6, 252-4 and 853-4.]  

Philip W. Sutton

I was in a shopping centre last week and my eye was drawn to the rules governing entry. Apparently the centre does not allow anything ‘which obscures the face’ including motorbike helmets, hoodies, baseball caps ‘with the peak turned to hide the face’ or anything else which makes faces less visible. Such rules are no doubt seen as reasonable anti-shoplifting and anti-terrorist measures. Of course dress codes are common at various social events and occasions such as funerals, dinners in polite society (not that I get invited to many) and lots more, but my shopping experience made me think about the significance of the human face in social interactions.

From a sociological perspective, covering the face in public, however it’s achieved, leads to a lessening of communication. Being able to ‘read’ facial expressions is something we get used to without thinking about it and in any encounter we continuously monitor other people’s faces as well as managing our own facial expressions and the impressions we give out to others. As Norbert Elias pointed out, the human face is a remarkably flexible signing board which is capable of very subtle manipulation, and communicating in this way is part of all human cultures. At the same time though, our emotional states often breach our surface demeanour and we find it almost impossible to manage the facial signing board to avoid giving our real emotions away. How many times do we listen, apparently intently, to others whilst our face gives away to them just how tedious and dull we find their words? I know this to be true just by reading the faces of students during my lectures, though hopefully not all of them.

In short, it isn’t called ‘face-to-face’ communication for nothing and covering the face partially or entirely prevents much or all of this type of communication. This can be a positive thing and certainly doesn’t constitute a reason for banning some items of clothing. There are times when we just don’t want to communicate with other people. For example, I sometimes use dark sunglasses and a hat in public to avoid making eye contact with others and them with me, as I really can’t be bothered or don’t want to engage in conversation or interaction. Others use more subtle devices such as staring at the ground and walking quickly or talking on a mobile phone, even if it’s switched off. Avoiding face-to-face social interaction is part of what Georg Simmel called ‘urban reserve’, aimed at preserving our precious energy in densely populated cities.

Of course, for shopping centres and other public areas covered by the now ubiquitous CCTV systems, the face is central to identification and matching up live and recorded images with real people forms the basis of many criminal prosecutions. The logic of banning the covering of the face therefore seems legitimate. But how does this logic survive the adoption of dress codes based on religious belief? For instance, it is noticeable that the local shopping centre makes no mention of the burka or niqab, two forms of Islamic dress which many Muslim women wear as part of their commitment to their faith. I assume this is too sensitive an issue to deal with on a large sign at the entrance to the centre. But is there any difference between young men wearing fashionable hoodies and baseball caps and Muslim women choosing to cover the face for religious reasons? Certainly not if the issue is purely to enable facial identification on CCTV.

This polite bypassing of contentious matters of religious dress is quite typical of what used to be called ‘British reserve’, that less-than-explicit approach to establishing, monitoring and enforcing rules to avoid confrontation. No such reserve exists over in France, though, where public debate continues over proposed legislation to ban the burka and niqab in public places, with a vote in parliament due in July to settle the matter. Belgium has also moved to outlaw the burka, its Home Affairs Committee arguing that the garment is ‘not compatible with an open, liberal, tolerant society’. [See here for Belgium and other national campaigns.] In France the full burka has been banned in state schools and for public employees since 2004 as part of a general attempt to keep ‘religious symbols’ of all kinds out of public-sector employment and education. But the burka has been singled out as particularly ‘anti-French’ and President Sarkozy recently repeated yet again that ‘the burka is not welcome in France’. A parliamentary commission recently completed its deliberations, recommending a ‘partial ban’ on Islamic face veils. It suggests that face veils should be banned in schools, hospitals, state employment and on all public transport while anyone exhibiting visible signs of ‘radical religious practice’ should be refused citizenship, describing face veils as an unacceptable challenge to the Republic. The proposal includes fines for female wearers of the veil of 140 Euros with much larger ones for their husbands of up to 20,000 Euros.

By focusing specifically on religious symbols, the report is making essentially political arguments about the incompatibility of what it sees as religious fundamentalism and the oppression of women with French culture and its social ideals. Unlike crash helmets, the government argues that the burka and niqab are not freely chosen by women but are forms of dress they are made to adopt by their husbands. Hence the disparity in fines for men and women. If so, then banning them should represent liberation for women in line with foundational French national ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality. The problem of course is that Muslim women wear these items for a range of different reasons including expressing their personal commitment to Islam within a publicly secular society. [For a discussion of the various reasons why women wear the veil, see here.] Banning face veils on the basis of just one possible interpretation of their adoption means infringing the rights of others to wear what they freely choose as part of their religious life. In multicultural societies, this policy seems likely to highlight and reinforce social divisions rather than to promote better cross-cultural understanding and solidarity.

Chapter 7 covers social interaction and body language extensively and has much relevant material on face-to-face encounters. Chapter 16 can then be approached for issues of religion, particularly pp.711-14 on ‘Islam and the West’ debates. Finally, the current context of governments introducing measures for controlling the ‘new’ terrorism is described on pp.1055-62. For a discussion of the veil in Western Europe, see Christian Joppke's Veil: Mirror of Identity . 

Philip W. Sutton

Two damaging wars, an economic crisis, a government that has served three terms in power, and an unpopular Prime Minister. If you wanted to create the circumstances for an opposition victory in the UK 2010 election you couldn’t do much better than this. Yet the Tories have been unable to win a clear victory in the way Labour did by a landslide in 1997 after 18 years of Conservative rule. In local elections on the same day as the national poll the Conservatives and LibDems lost ten or more councils while Labour gained at least a dozen. Labour has been written off many times in the past. And Britain has been seen as natural Conservative territory that social democracy has to fight to win every time. But, despite heavy losses for Labour nationally, this result doesn’t support such a thesis. One of the most striking things about the 2010 election is that the Conservatives, with an articulate young leader, failed to win more handsomely in circumstances about as propitious for them as it’s possible to get.

Turnout, a key issue for the health of British democracy, was up a bit and decent – 65%. At some polling stations queues snaked around street corners. Voters who couldn’t get in by the close of polls vented their spleen at election officials. But given the closeness of the parties in the polls and the much-discussed leaders’ debates on TV, it was noteworthy that turnout did not rise more. Expenses scandals may have played a part. Key things to find out are whether the 18-24 year olds who turned their noses up at the politicians last time failed to vote again, or whether first-time voters this time joined the ranks of non-participants in electoral politics. This age group is where antipathy to electoral politics has hit hardest. The prominence of issues such as climate change and war should have created a basis for greater electoral participation amongst the young. Data on their turnout will be crucial to understanding the future of British politics.

A small bit of history was made in Brighton. The Green Party won its first ever seat in the national parliament. Under a first past the post system, in what was often a Tory seat pre-1997, the local electorate returned a representative to the Commons from outside the mainstream. Her policies were about fairness as much as the environment and, in an all-female contest, her fiercest competition came from a Labour candidate with similar social justice concerns. This may be quorn country with its own demographic profile. But those who scorn the politics of social movements outside the establishment should take a second look. The labour movement started from such roots before it entered the political sphere. And Labour has now left quite a bit of space towards the egalitarian and green ends of parliamentary politics waiting to be filled. Reform of the voting system would make it easier for parties moving into this space to enter parliament. Other small parties did not achieve the same success. Business returned to normal in former Respect territory. The far right failed to win any seats. In Barking all 12 British National Party councillors were wiped from the political map. The danger of the far-right should not be underestimated. History has shown that race-hate needs just a foothold in democracy and the media to build more power. But this was a trouncing for the BNP. The UK Independence Party, who sound increasingly like the BNP with home counties accents, failed to make any extra ground.

Televised leaders debates, held for the first time and watched by many, suggested that the UK could move to a more volatile politics like the US where voters’ intentions chop and change and the outcome is less predictable. But voters’ willingness to shift to the LibDems’ Nick Clegg, expressed in polls, did not materialize. The election result was not wildly dissimilar to that predicted by many for weeks or months beforehand.

The outcome was a hung parliament where no party has a majority, the biggest party, the Conservatives, seeking LibDem support to make up the numbers. This produced some interesting discourses. One was that the lack of a clear result shows that politics, like society, is ‘broken’, a verdict that does not account for the fact that alternative electoral systems also do not produce clear majorities. Another is that the electorate ‘have told us’ that they do not want one party to rule. But this imposes a unitary personality on 30 million voters. The reality is that those voters were divided between different parties rather than united against any one of them ruling alone.

A result with no overall majority is common under Proportional Representation (PR) but less usual in First Past the Post systems like the UK’s. A different voting system was on the election agendas of both Labour and the LibDems, to produce a distribution of seats that better reflects the spread of votes. The party leaders looking for deals to secure a majority is a test for what a more proportional system would lead to. But majority-making deals prevent the sort of transparent, planned approach New Labour had in 1997, at least in economic and social policy. Instead it leads to policies decided one-by-one in post-election backroom negotiations. Who is to govern after the 2010 election is the decision of elites from the two or three main political parties, the most significant being those from the party with the least votes. Some agreed with Nick in the UK election. But only 23%. In coalition politics smaller parties wield influence out of proportion to their support. What is proportional in PR in terms of votes and seats can lead to disproportionality in government power. The voter gets a fairer say in their MP on election day; less so in the formation of government and policy when they wake up the day after.

Under a minority government the opposition can vote down government policies too often for it to stagger on. With such a government the bookies will be taking odds on another election in the near future. Between now and then the Conservatives will have either made hard decisions, or avoided them to keep up electoral support. Neither may go down well and voters could resent the government for instigating another election campaign so soon. At this election Labour and the LibDems took 52% of the vote, and centre-left and liberal parties took just over 50% of the seats. While Britain has often been seen as a naturally Conservative country it has also been said to be one where progressive anti-Conservative forces are divided by party but together make up a majority. Labour changing leader could add to the viability of this force at a second election in the near future.

The hung parliament raised some antiquated constitutional issues that rarely come to the fore when election results are clear. The head of state in the UK is a hereditary monarch. She calls on a party leader to form the government but she is not accountable to the people. Not only does the incumbent PM get to choose the election date, he or she is allowed to make the first attempt to form a government after polling day, even if s/he loses. Nick Clegg set the agenda for the shape of the next government by bypassing this convention and first approaching David Cameron. Gordon Brown did not try to hold Clegg to the rules. It’s unlikely the monarchy will be abolished but other constitutional oddities may get swept up in any future political reforms.

Another ongoing issue that has raised its head concerns the political geography of Britain. The South of the electoral map is drowning in blue, the North covered with red, with a similar split along rural-urban lines. These differences can’t be reduced to economic inequalities, but neither can they be divorced from them. Of course there are other complexities, areas where the LibDems are popular or there are nationalist parties. But some of the problems of this divide have returned. Scotland has 59 seats. In 2010 just one was won by a Tory and Labour’s vote north of the border increased, yielding 41 MPs. The Tories won only 8 of 40 seats in Wales. This sort of thing didn’t matter so much when there was a Labour government, and New Labour’s devolution of power ameliorated the situation. But now we are back with a Conservative government, and Scotland and Wales, as far as the UK parliament goes, are ruled by what is effectively an English party. This would repeat the Thatcher years where these two countries did not vote for the government they got landed with time after time.

Beyond the bubble of the UK election, power over what happens in Britain lies with unaccountable corporations and international finance as much as with elected politicians. Political turmoil and uncertainty in the UK does not compare to that on the streets of Greece. Our problems are on a different scale to the conflict and poverty across sub-Saharan Africa. 80% of the world’s population live in developing countries; two out of five people globally live on less than $2 dollars a day. The world is under threat from climate change and nuclear proliferation. At election time obligations to those beyond ourselves can disappear from the political radar. There is space for them to become part of politics again once the buzz of electoral intrigue has died down.  

The outcome of the forthcoming British General Election on May 6^th seemed a formality just 10 days ago. David Cameron’s Conservatives had been well ahead in the polls for a long time and looked a safe bet to gain a working majority. The only issue was how large that majority would be. The Labour Party was running well behind, with the Liberal Democrats even further adrift, whilst the backdrop of recession, public spending cuts and a static property market appeared to offer little to get excited about. That all changed with the first ever televised debate between the three main party leaders on 15^th April. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, previously seen as an inexperienced lightweight who had been largely invisible in the campaign, came out of the debate the clear winner, sending the polls, Gordon Brown and David Cameron into a tailspin.

On 6^th April the BBC’s averaged ‘poll of polls’ showed the Conservatives on 39%, Labour at 31% and Lib Dems way behind on just 19%. But five days after the first televised debate, the same averaged poll had the Conservatives on 33%, Labour on 28% and the Lib Dems in second place on 30%. An astonishing turnaround in such a short period. How did Clegg do it? Well, he did give a very naturalistic performance in the debate and was able to skilfully present his party as offering something genuinely new compared to the other two ‘dinosaur parties’ of British politics. Brown gave some detailed answers and offered more substantive content, but his presentation was widely seen as poor, failing to properly engage with the audience. Cameron was surprisingly nervous, failed to match Brown’s detail and substance and, crucially, seemed unable to deflect Clegg’s interpretation of the Conservatives as part of the old, failed politics. Given the enormous amount of discussion on how this would be the first British ‘Internet election’ where blogs, tweets and viral campaigns would dominate, it is ironic that it took just 90 minutes of good, old-fashioned television to transform the whole campaign. And with two more TV debates to come, there’s plenty of scope for more twists and turns yet. [Watch the first debate here.]

However, Clegg’s good performance only struck a chord due to the underlying fragility of voting intentions as reflected in the polls, and which can be attributed to continuing public outrage at revelations from the MPs expense claims debacle. The attitude of ‘a plague on all your houses’ has led to a softening of people’s commitment to the two main parties and a subsequent openness to alternative messages. In particular, Clegg was able to present himself as something new, a force for change, and that apparently rare thing, an ‘honest politician’ who tells it like it is. In part this was due to the fact that he had previously been quite invisible to most voters who wouldn’t even have recognized him as the leader of a major political party. To them, he really was a breath of fresh air, though whether he will still look that way on 6^th May is another matter. Apparently, 90 minutes is now a long time in British politics.

The main loser has been David Cameron’s Tories. Avoiding detailed policy announcements, talking in vague generalities and bashing Gordon Brown worked well initially and, in a two-party system, only the Conservatives could realistically suggest they could become the next government. But as the election got closer, this should have been bolstered with a raft of much more detailed policies to firm up the Tory message. That just didn’t happen. Hence, in the TV debate David was hopelessly outmanoeuvred by Clegg, who hammered home the message that he had no idea what the Conservatives stood for any more. Strategies that worked in a dyadic relationship (two parties) now look outmoded as we move into a genuinely triadic one (three parties). As Georg Simmel (one of the first German sociologists) observed, a three-party relationship offers possibilities for new alliances, shifting allegiances and a kind of fluidity that simply cannot exist within a dyad. For example, although they are bitter enemies, the dyad of Labour and Conservatives at Westminster also produces that place’s atmosphere of an ‘insiders only’ club, something that many blame for expenses claims abuses. Given the Lib Dem challenge to the Labour–Conservative dominance, we can now expect to see Labour and the Tories reframing their main messages as the campaign moves on.

This election, perhaps more than most, has focused on the very vague and, you may think, quite empty notion of ‘change’. The parties have clearly taken a leaf from Barack Obama’s campaign in the USA which used the slogan ‘change we can believe in’. The Conservatives’ slogan is ‘Vote for Change’; Clegg and the Lib Dems use ‘change that works for you’; whilst the incumbent Brown’s Labour Party has ‘a future fair for all’. Well, it makes little sense for the party that’s been in power for 13 years to campaign for change now does it? But what do such vacuous slogans mean? What change? Change of what, for what reason and how? [You can see a discussion here.]

The use of general notions of fairness, justice, progress or change in election campaigns aims to tap into what Vilfredo Pareto (a turn-of-the-century Italian economist and sociologist) called ‘residues’ – those stable and unchanging, deep-seated sentiments that lie beneath the surface of rational debate. Pareto calls the rational arguments and explanations ‘derivations’. Hence, in the struggle for political power in democracies, politicians create derivations (arguments about the need for change or stability, for example) which appeal to basic human residues or ‘instincts’ in order to attract mass support. In the present economic and political climate, therefore, it makes perfect sense to go on endlessly about the need for change even if you don’t explain in any detail what such change might amount to. And this is David’s new problem. Nick Clegg, not Cameron, is now seen as embodying this most important element of the campaign and, whilst that continues, we are heading for a hung or ‘balanced’ parliament and a period of triadic rather than dyadic politics.

Chapter 22 on politics contains much relevant material on elections and political parties and is the logical place to start, especially pp. 988-92. British party politics can be found on pp. 1003-6. Democracy and its spread cross the world are covered on pp. 992-9 along with a Box on the Internet as a democratizing force. The impact and use of media is then included on pp. 725-44.

Philip W. Sutton

It’s UK election time again and, yes, the media are still reproducing and circulating the same old entrenched ideas about the place of women in the political sphere. It hardly comes as a surprise, but that doesn’t make it any less depressing and the eagerness of political parties to play the game is dismal. Here’s Sarah Brown, dutiful and loving wife of the prime minister, posing for the cameras. And there’s Samantha Cameron, pounding the campaign trail with her opposition-leader husband. Pick up a copy of Hello! and see the happy couples smiling and holding hands. Read about Sarah’s polka-dot dress and Samantha wearing comfortable clothes now that she’s pregnant. It’s just one media event after another. Samantha on WebCameron at last, Sarah endlessly on Twitter.

But wait, surely someone’s missing? When the main political parties launched their campaigns in early April, the Lib Dem leader was accosted by reporters. Where was Miriam? Nick Clegg’s wife, Miriam González Durántez, was nowhere to be seen. How could this be? Because it was a weekday - she was at work. Not propping up her husband, just getting on with her own job. Well really!

None of this is ‘progressive’, as the main parties are claiming their policies are. None of it is even politics. In-depth reports about ‘the SamCam effect’ and endless discussion of ‘the Sarah Brown strategy’ are not signs of progress. In fact, in terms of female representation, it’s beginning to feel as if we’ve regressed to the 1950s and I’m heartily sick of it. The real line-up in the current election campaign is exclusively male. It’s almost as though the last 40 or 50 years never happened. The only visible, and occasionally audible, women are two US-style ‘first ladies’. These women’s participation in their spouses’ work is fine, of course, but they are not elected representatives and they have no political power in their own right. They are publicly displayed as decorative supports who add a humanizing, personalizing touch to their husbands’ political profiles. This not only diminishes women’s participation in politics, but also degrades our whole political process. An election is supposed to be about policies, not politicians’ wives. Now if we were seeing public displays of same-sex civil partners, now that would be some sort of political statement – a challenge to heteronormativity, at least.

The personal will always be political. But transforming politics into the personal? That’s just absurd.

Mary Talbot is Secretary of the International Gender and Language Association. This month sees the release of the second edition of her popular book Language and Gender, a clear and engaging overview of foundational research and current trends in the interdisciplinary study of language, gender, and sexuality, and ‘an essential guide for new generations of students’ (Mary Bucholtz, UCSB) .

 

In 1973, The Strawbs – an old-fashioned pop combo, a bit like today’s boybands but they played their own instruments and wrote their own songs (I know, it’s ridiculous) – released their now classic song, Part of the Union, which contained the following lyric: “So though I'm a working man, I can ruin the government's plans, / Though I'm not too hard / The sight of my card / Makes me some kind of superman”. Clearly an ironic critique of trades union militancy which was very much the hot topic at the time. I heard echoes of that song last week when UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron said that the trades unions have ‘scented weakness’ in the Prime Minister and, presumably like hungry sharks scenting blood, are lining up to take strike action.

There is also talk of a ‘spring of discontent’, a reference to the 1978-79 ‘winter of discontent’, which was the final straw that broke the Labour Government and helped bring Margaret Thatcher to power in 1979. But is there any realistic possibility of history repeating itself? In a word, no.

Inflation in 1978 was 10%, about three times higher than it is today, and it had been at 26% in 1975. In 1978, the Labour government tried to impose a 5% pay norm which triggered a whole range of strikes in both the private and public sector, from car manufacturing at Ford to lorry drivers at oil refineries, waste collection workers, ambulance workers and gravediggers (in Liverpool and Tameside): the unrest and action amongst unions was very widespread. January 22^nd 1979 was the largest one-day public-sector stoppage since 1926 with 1.5 million workers taking strike action.

So far, around 200,000 civil servants staged a one-day strike on 24^th March to coincide with the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget announcement. British Airways cabin crews held a 3-day action on 20^th March, 4 days on 27^th March and more to come, while the rail unions have a 4-day strike planned for 6^th April.

One big difference in this recession is that before this wave of strikes, the most striking (pun intended) thing about workers and unions in many private companies and public-sector environments has been the way that unions have actually worked with management: accepting pay cuts, shorter working weeks, unpaid sabbaticals and other ways of cutting costs, to help their businesses ride out the recession without the kind of conflict and rapid rise in unemployment we saw in 1978-9. It’s hard to see how this outbreak of moderate trades unionism can be equated with the militancy of the 1970s. There is another big difference, too. The BA strike is partly about pay of course, but it’s also about reducing staff numbers on long-haul flights and changed contracts for new staff. Similarly, the proposed national rail workers strike is about plans to cut 1,500 jobs and increase evening and weekend working. OK, the civil service action was in relation to proposed reductions in redundancy payments, but that’s not quite the same as striking over an imposed government pay norm. Again, it’s hard to see a direct comparison between the winter of discontent and the present strikes.

One paradoxical finding from what used to be called ‘industrial sociology’ is that trades unions tend to be stronger in economic booms and weaker in economic downturns. This is odd because it’s in the downturns when workers need their unions most. But it’s easier for management to accede to pay demands when business is good, much less so when times are hard. Hence what Zygmunt Bauman once called the ‘economization of class conflict’ – the channelling of management–worker conflict into issues of pay where they can be more easily resolved – works less well in recessions. Of course, what this should lead to today is more intractable conflicts as companies just don’t have the finance to pay off their workers’ demands. All of which makes the previous cooperative agreements between unions and management even more remarkable. Why are workers more willing to be ‘reasonable’?

One factor could be the decline of class and work as central forms of people’s identity. Anecdotal reports from some of the workers who accepted shorter working weeks, for instance, show that provided mortgages can be paid and cloth cut accordingly, many workers saw the extra time off as enabling. It allowed them more time with their children and partners, time to focus on leisure or hobbies or even plan for a new career. The kind of ‘all-or-nothing’ strikes of the 1970s and ’80s, when work and class very much defined a person’s self-identity and attacks on their industries were felt very personally, now appear to be absent from such accounts. A second factor must surely be the economic climate itself. For example, interest rates remain historically low with the Bank of England base rate having stayed at just 0.5% for over 12 months now. This has meant that mortgage payments have been more manageable and allowed workers to accept rather more flexibility than in the 1970s. Similarly, inflation has not spiralled to the levels of the 1970s, making it somewhat easier to cope in the present climate. So, sadly for me, it’s unlikely that The Strawbs’ anthem will be revived this year; but as Westlife say, this is after all Where We Are.

Philip W. Sutton

Ten years after the publication of the first edition of the groundbreaking Exploring Disability, the second edition has just been released. Here Colin Barnes (Professor of Disability Studies at the Universities of Leeds and Halmstad, Sweden) surveys the advances and continuing challenges facing the field over the last decade... 

A decade ago, a socio/political or ‘social model’ of disability – inspired by an understanding of the economic, political and social deprivations encountered by people with accredited impairments and labelled ‘disabled’ – was hardly visible within mainstream sociology and related disciplines. Today it stands centre stage alongside sociological explanations of racism, sexism, heterosexism and other forms of social oppression and inequality.

The last decade has witnessed a growing number of undergraduate and post-graduate courses in the general area of ‘Disability Studies’ at both the national and international levels. This has been accompanied by the establishment of specialist centres, journals and professional chairs in disability and related fields. Globally, the rise in interest in disability has been equally phenomenal. In 2010, for example, there are international Disability Studies conferences in Honolulu, Montréal, Philadelphia, and Tokyo. The UK Disability Studies Network holds its fifth international event this September at the University of Lancaster. All of which has generated considerable debate and discussion about the relevance and utility of social-model-inspired theorizing and research for the 21^st century within the academy and beyond.

At the same time, social-model-inspired insights are firmly established in government and policy circles and official documents in Britain and elsewhere. Important examples in the UK include the setting up of the 'Disability Rights Commission'in 2000, the Cabinet Office report Improving Life Chances for Disabled People (2005) and the setting up of the Government’s 'Office of Disability Issues' in 2007 and their assertion that ‘by 2025 disabled people in Britain should have full opportunities and choices to improve their quality of life and will be respected and included as equal members of society’ (Cabinet Office 2005: 5). Similar assertions are implicit at the European level (Equal Opportunities for People with Disabilities, 2003) and internationally with the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Yet despite these initiatives, exclusion rather than inclusion into the mainstream of economic and social life remains a constant feature of the everyday lived experience of the overwhelming majority of disabled people and their families. The numbers of disabled people have increased significantly over recent years. Yet barriers to inclusion in education, employment and mainstream leisure and social activities are still prevalent. Consequently disabled people remain the ‘poorest of the poor’ in all societies. The situation is especially dire in the poorer nations of the ‘developing’ world where health and disability-related support services are almost non- existent.

Moreover, public attitudes toward the meaningful inclusion of disabled people are now seriously undermined by the recent resurgence of interest in eugenic-type solutions to the problem of disability which many claim threaten their very existence. Examples include developments in bio-medicine, prenatal screening and the growing trend toward the legalization of ‘assisted suicide’ for people with ‘serious handicaps’ and or ‘terminal illness’.

All this has created a heady mix of progress coupled with new and continuing demands for change which has inspired the new edition ten years on.

 

The second edition of Exploring Disability has been completely re-written and expanded to take account of these developments. As in its predecessor, the book’s 10 chapters focus on the increasingly complex relationship between theory, policy and practice and on-going struggle for meaningful change. It concludes with Chapter 9 which addresses recent ethical debates surrounding ‘Disability and the Right to Life’ and Chapter 10 which centres on global perspectives on ‘Disability and Development’. The book will prove to be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the growing controversies surrounding the struggle for human rights and equality for those sections of the population who are unfortunate enough to be labelled ‘disabled’.

For Bill Jordan (University of Plymouth), a leading scholar of social policy, the findings of the recent inquiry into standards at Stafford Hospital – described as ‘one of the worst NHS scandals in history’ – offer confirmation of what’s wrong with social policy and its current principles...

My new book was written during the economic crash of 2008-9. It argues for a transformation of our collective life, based on a rejection of the abtract economic model which has penetrated every aspect of our societies.

The helplessness of governments as the crash unfolded, and their subsequent haste in borrowing funds to bail out the banks and mortgage companies, revealed how much of their power they had delegated to these financial intermediaries. But the extent of private debt also showed how the wider public had accepted this process. The book describes how a set of interlocking ideas installed the consuming, choosing, ‘independent’ individual at the base of a pyramid of credit, linked together through contractual relationships.

These notions have gradually usurped other political and moral principles and social bonds, to supply the rationale for all activities and organizations. As they have insinuated themselves into collective life, other cultural resources have decayed; increasingly we define who we are and what we do in terms of this model.

The worst consequences of these processes were publicized last week in the report on the scandal of perhaps 1,000 avoidable deaths at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Hospital Trust. It described the humiliation and neglect that had become routine elements in patients’ experiences, as staff ignored their pleas for help, and managers focused on government targets and efficiency savings. Almost the worst feature of the scandal was that the Trust was granted lucrative and prestigious Foundation status during this process, as complaints from patients and their relatives were brushed aside.

In social policy, the edifice of regulation, accreditation, measurement, performance and delivery has been tailored to the economic model, often at the expense of a culture of care, respect and recognition. Part of the solution lies in restoring standards of empathy and judgement in practice; another part in making services truly accountable to the public.

More fundamentally, social policy should seek to build a social infrastructure in which people experience themselves as equal and participating members of society, as a collective body with shared purposes and ideals. The public services should be central to this project.

What’s Wrong with Social Policy and How to Fix It  has just been released, and offers a diagnosis of, and suggested cures for, growing inequalities in society, failures in our social services, increases in a wide range of social problems, and public disillusion over the effectiveness of policy programmes.