1999 volume 14 (2)
CONTENTS
Paul
Harris abstract
Dissolving Dualisms: Changes in the World of Work and Employment
Carl Davidson abstract
Selling
Sociology: Better Brands or Bargain Bins?
Georgina Murray abstract
People, People,
People
Maureen O'Malley
Steve Kemp abstract
New Zealand
Sociology and Difference
Michael Pickering abstract
In Search
of Sociological Distinctiveness
George Pavlich abstract
Summoning
Sociology: Response To A Beckoning Finger
Gregor McLennan
abstract
Positivity, Reflexivity, Indigeneity
REVIEWS
Ariel Salleh
Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern
Reviewed by Richard M. Fisher
Ian Culpitt
Social Policy and Risk
Reviewed by Jane Higgins
Sociology Department, University of Canterbury
David Robinson (ed.)
Social Capital in Action.
Reviewed by Ruth McManus
Sociology Programme
Massey University.
S. Boggess, and M. Corcoran with S.P. Jenkins
Cycles of Disadvantage?
A. Grimes and J. Tyndall, (eds)
Counting the Beat: Culture, Democracy and Broadcasting.
Reviewed by Chamsy Ojeili
Bronwyn Elsmore
Te Kohitianga Marama - New Moon, New World: The Religion of Matenga
Tamati.
Reviewed by Paul Morris
Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington
S. Chatterjee, P. Conway, P. Dalziel, C. Eichbaum, P. Harris, B. Philpott,
R. Shaw
The New Politics: A Third Way For New Zealand.
Reviewed by Chamsy Ojeili
T. Nichols
The Sociology of Industrial Injury
Reviewed by John Wren
Injury Prevention Research Unit, University of Otago
ABSTRACTS
Dissolving
Dualisms:
Changes in the World of Work and Employment
Paul
Harris
Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Waikato
The analysis of the area of work and employment has conventionally made use of a number of dualistic models of reality. This article explores three such dualisms, those of: work and home; being 'in work' and being 'out of work'; and of paid labour and leisure.
It is argued that, at the very least the boundaries between the two sides of these models have become blurred, at the most the real life dichotomies the models are meant to represent are in the process of dissolving.
Recent developments in New Zealand, such as the growth of home working, the invasion of leisure time by the sphere of paid employment, and the requirement that the unemployed and other beneficiaries be subjected to work testing and exhorted to improve their suitability for paid labour, are explored to support that argument.
Selling
Sociology:
Better Brands or Bargain Bins?
Carl Davidson
This paper argues that the future of sociology lies in how sociologists position the discipline in the academic 'marketplace'. It adopts the language of that marketplace, the new lingua franca of academia, to argue that there is a bright future for sociology as long as sociologists market the discipline in a sufficiently innovative manner. A key component of this argument is that there is nothing wrong with our discipline's 'product' even if there is much wrong with the signals we send our clients about it. This paper offers a number of suggestions about how we might improve those signals, reconceptualise our marketing, and rethink our market positioning.
Georgina Murray
He aha mea nui o te ao?
Tangata! Tangata! Tangata!
What is the most important matter in the world? People, People, People.
Do New Zealand sociologists write in ways that convey this fight for the human condition and social justice? No. I do not think that on the whole they do fight for social justice or for People! People! People! Nor do they admire those who still do. On the contrary they dismiss them as Troglodyte Materialists, Methodological Geeks, Neanderthal Marxists or just a mealy ragbag of anachronistic leftovers.
I might be wrong and if I am you can dismiss this as the impressionistic ramblings of a New Zealander who has not lived or worked in the country for ten years - an expatriate who is now an expediently naturalized Australian, writing and teaching political economy in a more secure, growing economy, in a bigger and better funded university sector. Someone, in other words, who can more easily be a Marxist and proud. So rest assured my qualification for sitting in judgement on the work of any New Zealand colleague is both shallow and partial, but bare with me whilst I enjoy myself.
I would like to do this circuitously, in a girly way, by using my family and friends as the entrée into the New Zealand condition and then look at how New Zealand sociology is facing up to its post-1984 challenge.
New Zealand Sociology and Difference
Maureen O'Malley
Steve Kemp
The very term 'New Zealand Sociology' implies its comparison against a putative 'other' and raises the question of how that other should be conceived if current postcolonial concerns are to be taken seriously. Should New Zealand sociology be different from Euro-American sociology and thus require its own distinctive categories and analyses? The answer to this question is based on a more fundamental issue: does the difference between New Zealand and Euro-American societies warrant different categorizations and understandings? Addressing this question requires a careful analysis of what difference amounts to in the analysis of society. In particular, it is crucial to grasp that difference per se cannot be an end point for such analysis unless sociology is to be abandoned.
In Search of Sociological Distinctiveness
Michael Pickering
One of the problems which first strikes anyone coming to New Zealand sociology and cultural studies from outside the country is their lack of distinctiveness. The basis of their understanding of 'culture and society' relations is largely derivative. They lack a sense of their own theoretical locatedness and their own key problematic in relation to that, centred in any social philosophy or sociological school particular to New Zealand and emerging from its own 'culture and society' relations, conceived both locally and globally.
Summoning
Sociology:
Response To A Beckoning Finger
George Pavlich
..the profile of Mount Kilimanjaro rises spectacularly out of the distance, its crags unfamiliar but indescribably beautiful. It heralds an experience of being amidst a departure, a move away from familiar Southern African plains into, for me at least, the unfamiliar accents of my British Columbian destination. Over the years, the departure brings with it profound, even if inevitable, longings that come and go while negotiating shades of displacement...
Positivity, Reflexivity, Indigeneity.
Gregor McLennan
There is, I feel, a 'new positivity' within sociological discourse today.
This does not amount to a full rehabilitation of positivism in any doctrinal
sense, but it does represent at least three rediscovered impulses: a)
the aim to say something about what is going on in the world today as
well as, or even instead of, dwelling upon the dilemmas of interpretative
reflexivity; b) the sense of the need for greater consensus amongst serious
observers and critics about the state of empirical understanding and the
theoretical categories which encompass it; and c) the desire to put those
results to progressive and effective use in the public realm.
