John MacInnes

Voting for Ford: Industrial Democracy and the Control of Labour

‘There has never been such complete democracy in the management of industrial establishments as exists in our shops.’ F.W. Taylor [1]

Population ageing: the timebomb that isn’t?

Jeroen Spijker and John MacInnes argue that current measures of population ageing are misleading and that the numbers of dependent older people in the UK and other countries have actually been falling in recent years

WORK–LIFE BALANCE IN EUROPE: A RESPONSE TO THE BABY BUST OR REWARD FOR THE BABY BOOMERS?

ABSTRACT The academic analysis of work–life balance (WLB) has too often followed the public policy debate without sufficient reflection on its origins, the accuracy of the assumptions it tends to make, or the analytical adequacy of the concepts it uses. This paper suggests that what are usually assumed to be the causes of the debate (longer hours and greater stress at work, along with the collapse of the male breadwinner division of parenting and employment responsibilities within couples) are nothing of the sort. Rather the debates origins lie in states’ concerns about demographic trends, especially low and falling fertility, which they fear threatens the future of the labour supply and viable dependency ratios between those in work and those dependent upon them. The WLB debate can thus be seen as part of a specifically liberal discourse about ‘population ageing’ that seeks to legitimate the rolling back of a welfare state by arguing that current levels of support cannot be sustained in a globalising world. This analysis reveals two new features of WLB policies. First, most are quite contradictory. What makes them popular (such as enabling the ‘baby boomer’ generation to withdraw from work on favourable terms) also makes them unlikely to address their goal of specifically supporting parenting and avoiding a ‘baby bust’. Conversely effective support for parenting may require far more fundamental change than most WLB policies envisage. Second, demographic change has heightened the importance of the inter-generational transfer of resources between those now retired from employment, those currently in it, and those yet to enter it. This reveals a key feature of WLB policies to be how far these transfers are socialised or left to the family.

Nation speaking unto nation? Newspapers and national identity in the devolved UK

There are two problems with the existing account of the relationship between newspapers and national identity in the UK. The first is that although it is widely assumed that the mass media are central to the reproduction and evolution of national identity this has never been empirically demonstrated. The second is that exactly what comprises the relevant ‘national’ context in the UK is unclear. Content analysis of 2,500 sampled articles, together with qualitative comparison of different editions of the same newspaper titles and interviews with editors and journalists are used to show the extent and nature of ‘national’ frames of reference in newspapers in England and Scotland. Paradoxically, devolution may have reduced the spatial diversity of news stories in the press in England and Scotland.

Mediating Which Nation? Citizenship and National Identities in the British Press

This paper examines one particular aspect of the relationship between citizenship and media, namely the way in which newspapers establish, define or reinforce the boundaries of “national” communities (and thus determine who might be a member). The research is conducted against the background of devolution in the United Kingdom, which helped to focus upon and illuminate the diverse conceptions of national identities within multi-national states. We critique the routine application of theories of “banal nationalism” and “imagined community” in settings where different understandings of what may constitute “the national” co-exist. Analysis of newspaper editions distributed in England and Scotland highlight the complex, ambiguous and shifting use of national terminology and markers. Rather than focus on specific “newsworthy” events, the paper investigates everyday reporting of “ordinary” news and reveals the limitations of existing theories and accounts of the links between media and national (and wider social) identities.

The reproductive revolution

We suggest that a third revolution alongside the better known economic and political ones has been vital to the rise of modernity: the reproductive revolution, comprising a historically unrepeatable shift in the efficiency of human reproduction which for the first time brought demographic security. As well as highlighting the contribution of demographic change to the rise of modernity and addressing the limitations of orthodox theories of the demographic transition, the concept of the reproductive revolution offers a better way to integrate sociology and demography. The former has tended to pay insufficient heed to sexual reproduction, individual mortality and the generational replacement of population, while the latter has undervalued its own distinctive theoretical contribution, portraying demographic change as the effect of causes lying elsewhere. We outline a theory of the reproductive revolution, review some relevant supporting empirical evidence and briefly discuss its implications both for demographic transition theory itself, and for a range of key social changes that we suggest it made possible: the decline of patriarchy and feminisation of the public sphere, the deregulation and privatisation of sexuality, family change, the rise of identity, ‘low’ fertility and ‘population ageing’.

Diez mitos sobre la conciliación de la vida laboral y familiar

An automated method for evaluating the amount of residual protein levels following treatment of cellular specimens. Particular methods include the measurement of maternal neutrophil alkaline phosphatase after treatment with or without urea or heat, measurement of leukocyte acid phosphatase after treatment with or without tartrate, and measurement of leukocyte esterase after treatment with alpha-naphthol butyrate with or without fluoride.

Analysing patriarchy capitalism and women's employment in Europe

Abstract Variations in inequality between men and women across European countries might best be understood by examining how the capitalist market, liberal democratic state and growth of rational reflexivity systematically undermines a range of pre‐existing patriarchal social orders, creating a more egalitarian sexual division of labour. The expansion of womens employment, initially promoted by the long post‐war boom has been central in accelerating this process. Such an analysis also resolves some problems in gender theory, by suggesting that the origins of the concept of gender lie paradoxically in mens attempt to legitimate their patriarchal rights from the new challenge posed by modernity.

Teaching Quantitative Methods

As Payne points out, the failure of most undergraduate social science degree programmes in the UK to give students a good grounding in social statistics has been a chronic problem for some forty ye...

La tercera revolución de la modernidad; la revolución reproductiva

A third «revolution» alongside the better known economic and political ones has been vital to the rise of modernity: the reproductive revolution. This comprises a historically unrepeatable shift in the efficiency of human reproduction. As well as clarifying the key role of demographic developments in the rise of modernity, the concept of reproductive revolution offers a better way to integrate sociology and demography. The former has tended to pay insufficient heed to sexual reproduction, individual mortality and the generational replacement of population. Some key results of the reproductive revolution are discussed. As well as reviewing some empirical evidence for the concept, its implications for debates on the demographic transition, falling fertility, the social regulation of sexuality, the decline of patriarchy, rise of reflexive indentity, «population ageing» and family, are briefly discussed. The article discusses these ideas in relation to arguments about the family and fertility initially proposed by Davis (1937).