Christopher T. Husbands

Race and Gender

The British political system does not easily accommodate the aspirations of groups of the electorate that see themselves as having particular collective interests. This has been a feature of the past as well as of the present. Such ethnic and religious groups as the Irish and the Jews — although they have eventually been more or less fully politically assimilated — had initially to press their claims for the representation of their interests by means of some form of group-based political action.

Students' Evaluation of Teaching in Higher Education: experiences from four European countries and some implications of the practice[1]

Abstract Mechanisms for the quality assessment of teaching in the higher education systems of the UK, The Netherlands, France and Germany give varying statuses to students’ assessment of teaching, specifically that done by means of questionnaires. Despite numerous assertions of the general validity of many aspects of such assessments, previous research — very little of which has been based upon the European experience — has nevertheless shown various biases in these evaluations (biases being defined as aspects of evaluation unrelated to the intrinsic characteristics of the teaching). It is also possible to hypothesise other sources of bias that are not analysed in depth in the existing literature; some of these may be specific to the higher education systems of individual countries. The possible existence of biases must necessarily entail some problems in the interpretation of questionnaire results and thus dilemmas in their application to decision‐making by institutions. [1] This is revised version of a ...

Decade of dealignment : the Conservative victory of 1979 and electoral trends in the 1970's

Preface Note on documentation Note on tables Part I. Political Context and Electoral Change Ivor Crewe: 1. The flow of events 2. The flow of the vote 3. The lockgates on the vote Part II. Issues, Opinion and Party Choice in the 1979 Election Bo Sarlvik: 4. Opinions on political issues and voting - the directions of the enquiry 5. Why the parties were liked and disliked 6. Managing the economy - the Labour governments record and the Conservative alternative 7. Responses to social and cultural change 8. Nationalisation and social welfare policies - a rightward shift in electoral opinion 1974-1979 9. Policy alternatives and party choice in the 1979 election 10. Ambiguity and change in party positions: three special cases 11. The impact of the issues - an overall account 12. The electorate and the party system 13. The making of voting decisions: political opinions and voting intentions during the campaign Part III. A Turning-Point?: 14. At the end of a decade Postscript: realignment in the 1980s? Appendix. Constructing the flow-of-the-vote tables Notes Index.

Victor Branford and the building of British sociology

Victor Branford was a central figure in the institutional development of British sociology in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. He is, however, a neglected figure and little is known about his life and his work in sociology. This article presents a biographical account of Victor Branford and outlines his sociological ideas. Particular attention is given to the part played by Branford and his second wife, Sybella Gurney, in the establishment of the Sociological Society and The Sociological Review. Writing between 1903 and 1930, he set out a distinctive view of the nature of sociology and an account of modernity, which he saw as underpinning a conception of a third way in politics that goes beyond capitalism and socialism. He tied this view, set out in the years after the First World War, to a conception of the public role of sociology in which the sociologist was to be a leading element in the building of social citizenship through social reconstruction.

The support for the front national: Analyses and findings

Abstract This article reviews the literature ‐ most but not all of it in French ‐ on the mass support given in France during the 1980s to the Front National led by Jean‐Marie Le Pen. Its principal focuses are the locational concentrations of this support, its social and demographic characteristics, and its former political‐party allegiances. Part of the presentation is expositional but the article also contains critiques of some of the methodological approaches that have been adopted by French social science in analysing the Le Pen phenomenon.

The Bases of National Front Support

The National Front (NF) is of interest both to students of British politics and to political sociologists interested in the general study of contemporary right-wing movements. This article examines the extent of public sympathy for the NF and identifies factors distinguishing NF voters from the rest of the adult population. Analysis of twenty-two national surveys shows that less than 1 per cent of the adult population aged fifteen or older are prepared to say that they intend to vote for the NF, although about 5 per cent can be assessed as potential NF voters and about another 10 per cent are sympathetic to the party. NF voting is located disproportionately among younger working-class males living in London and the West Midlands.

Assessing the Extent of Use of Part‐time Teachers in British Higher Education: Problems and Issues in Enumerating a Flexible Labour Force

This article first describes the several types of part-time teacher in higher education in the United Kingdom and laments the paucity of data about them. It discusses how the Higher Education Statistics Agency [HESA] was founded and the extent of its coverage of part-time academic staff, focusing specifically upon how the criterion for submission of an individual staff record was developed and the implications of this criterion for enumerating the numbers and use of part-time teachers. Then are presented approximate survey-derived estimates of the numbers of various types of part-time teacher in United Kingdom higher education. There may be as many as 75,000 teaching positions, and probably more, in six particular categories of part-time teacher and it is suggested that perhaps 50,000 of the persons performing this work are not individually enumerated by HESA. Various reasons are suggested why many institutions might have been reluctant to compile full data on their part-time teaching staff, before a conclusion is given which stresses how contemporary developments in employment law are making it increasingly incumbent upon institutions to have adequate data on all their teaching staff, including those employed on different types of part-time basis.

Crises of national identity as the ‘new moral panics’: Political agenda‐setting about definitions of nationhood 1

Abstract During the past decade there has been a heightened concern about national identity and definitions of nationhood in a number of west European countries. Such a concern has had varying content in different countries but has been universally based upon the supposed threat posed by various types of immigrant or foreigner. These fears, often created and stimulated by mass‐media treatment, have features of a ‘moral panic’, a concept used initially by sociologists of deviance. Examples are considered using recent episodes and occurrences in Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany and The Netherlands. These new moral panics may be decomposed into specific elements, based especially upon fears about numbers and of cultural dilution or threat. It is suggested that such panics derive particular sustenance from the anxieties and uncertainties held by many indigenous people in western Europe about whether their own national identity does have sufficient resilience and adaptive capacity to survive inta...

Values education in the mathematics classroom:subject values, educational values and one teacher's articulation of her practice

The issue of values has been a longstanding concern of mathematics education research. Attempts have been made to analyze the specifically mathematical values which characterize the practice of mathematics teachers. In this paper we draw on one teachers articulation of her practice to explore values issues in the teaching of mathematics, drawing both on the mathematics education literature and the general values education literature. We find a discontinuity between the concerns of these two literatures and argue that neither offers a sufficiently subtle conceptual framework for the analysis of classroom practice.

Doppelgängers and racists::on inhabiting alternative universes. A reply to Steve Fuller's ‘A path better not to have been taken’

We found it difficult to know how best to reply to Steve Fuller’s comments on our articles in this issue of The Sociological Review. The ‘Patrick Geddes’ and ‘Victor Branford’ who appear as the ostensible objects of his comments are so unrecognisable that we wondered if he had discovered doppelgängers who happened to write on vaguely similar topics. We also failed to recognise the arguments of our own papers and began to wonder whether Fuller had slipped into the pages of The Review from a parallel universe in which things are subtly, but significantly, different from those in the world that we inhabit. In fact, Fuller’s reading of sociology’s past, driven by his intellectual agenda, is one that demands the wholehearted denial of the achievements of two of Britain’s sociological pioneers. Among these achievements was Geddes’ and Branford’s attempt to construct a sociological perspective that was neither biologically reductionist nor in thrall to an ‘exuberant’ human exceptionalism apparent in the work of some of their contemporaries (Catton, 1976; Catton and Dunlap, 1978). Moreover, Geddes’ environmental conservationism is a theme that resonates with a current sense of urgency surrounding how we should live in the face of impending environmental disaster. However, to acknowledge the importance of such a realist approach to the relationship between humans and their environment would do significant damage to Fuller’s own commitment to a wholly constructivist future for sociology. Since he cannot ignore their contribution, Fuller is forced to make a number of claims that anyone familiar with the work of Branford and Geddes will recognise as untrue. We are accused of ‘political correctness’ in that we deliberately misrepresent Geddes and Branford and that we ‘airbrush’ aspects of their argument that others would find unacceptable (Fuller, 2007: 653). Fuller sees us as engaging in a deception aimed at surreptitiously enthroning