Aslib directory of information sources in the United Kingdom. Vol. 2: Social sciences, medicine and the humanities

1985 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 549
Author(s):  
Robert A. Aken
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
The United Kingdom

scholarly journals Shopping with violence: Black Friday sales in the British context

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 677-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Smith ◽  
Thomas Raymen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Black Friday

This article argues that the 2014 adoption of the US shopping tradition of Black Friday sales to stores and supermarkets in the United Kingdom and beyond represents an important point of enquiry for the social sciences. We claim that the importation of the consumer event, along with the disorder and episodes of violence that accompany it, are indicative of the triumph of liberal capitalist consumer ideology while reflecting an embedded and cultivated form of insecurity and anxiety concomitant with the barbaric individualism, social envy and symbolic competition of consumer culture. Through observation and qualitative interviews, this article presents some initial analyses of the motivations and meanings attached to the conduct of those we begin to understand as ‘extreme shoppers’ and seeks to understand these behaviours against the context of the social harms associated with consumer culture.

Supporting Research in the Social Sciences

1989 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
M. V. Posner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Is Research ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Short Memory ◽  
Research Councils

WHAT IS RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES FOR? SHOULD (much of) it be financed by the state? How should it be organized? Where should it take place? In the United Kingdom, these questions thud down each morning on the desk of the Chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council, which now has a new home (in Swindon, with its big sister Research Councils) and a new Chairman, Professor Howard Newby. Six years, and more than one chairman, have come and gone since I sat at that desk; I have a short memory, and a full recognition of the duty of a retired bureaucrat — ‘get out, and shut up’. I am not willing or able to bore readers with a description or a critique of recent policies. But my present function gives me a new standpoint; things look different from Strasbourg, and an international perspective helps; above all, my responsibilities now spread widely (although jolly thinly) over the whole range of learning, scholarship, and science. So these are home thoughts from abroad.

scholarly journals Beyond Health and Happiness: An Exploratory Study Into the Relationship Between Craftsmanship and Meaningfulness of Sport

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Noora J. Ronkainen ◽  
Michael McDougall ◽  
Olli Tikkanen ◽  
Niels Feddersen ◽  
Richard Tahtinen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Older Age ◽  
Life Meaning ◽  
Male Age ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Demographic Questionnaire ◽  
The Relationship

Meaning in movement is an enduring topic in sport social sciences, but few studies have explored how sport is meaningful and for whom. The authors examined the relationships between demographic variables, meaningfulness of sport, and craftsmanship. Athletes (N = 258, 61.6% male, age ≥18) from the United Kingdom completed a demographic questionnaire, the Work and Meaning Inventory modified for sport, and the Craftsmanship Scale. Older age and individual sport significantly correlated with higher craftsmanship. Craftsmanship and religion were two independent predictors of meaningfulness, but emphasized somewhat different meaning dimensions. Meaningfulness in sport seems to be related to how athletes approach their craft, as well as their overall framework of life meaning.

scholarly journals The Rising Salience of the Absent: An Interactionist Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Hillyard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Rural Sociology ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Rural Studies ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social

The paper uses examples from rural studies to demonstrate the relevance of symbolic interactionism for unlocking the complexity of contemporary society. It does so by making a case for a nonprescriptive theory-method dialectic. Case examples are drawn upon in support of the argumentation, including early interactionism and ethnographic work in the United Kingdom, and, in the second half of the paper, rural sociology and fieldwork. The main argument presented is that the traditional remit of interactionism should be extended to recognize how absence is increasingly influential. It concludes that interactionism is in tune with other new trajectories in the social sciences that take into consideration co-presence proximity both on and off-line.

Social Science and Health Policy in the United Kingdom: Some Contributions of the Social Sciences to the Bureaucratization of the National Health Service

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Draper ◽  
Tony Smart
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
National Health Service ◽  
Health Service ◽  
Social Science ◽  
National Health ◽  
Social Medicine ◽  
Organizational Studies ◽  
The United Kingdom

A current and major health policy, the first fundamental reorganization of the administrative structure of the National Health Service (NHS), is reviewed in this paper. The shake-up in the administration of the NHS is seen as having two main components: a partial integration of the three separate administrative branches, and an injection of a particular kind of managerial ideology. This “management revolution” is seen as consisting essentially of a powerful thrust toward central and bureaucratic control of the NHS. Social sciences in the broad sense–ranging from work study (organization and methods study) through social medicine and sociology to economics-are reviewed in relation to their contributions to this bureaucratization of the NHS. It is shown that narrow and out-of-date organizational studies and technocratically oriented social medicine have contributed significantly, if sometimes unwillingly and unwittingly, to the drive toward centralization and bureaucratization. Rejecting a highly bureaucratic form of organization for a national health service, the authors discuss briefly some developments which reflect a more decentralized and more adaptive pattern of administration. The paper suggests that independent research foundations with a strong interest in health have a responsibility to break the incestuous relationships which have developed with the health department in some instances. It is suggested that foundations, professional associations, unions, and consumer groups could promote the maturation of “medical sociology” and “administrator's social science” into a full-blooded sociology of health. Currently social science within the health field in the United Kingdom is seen as being both underfinanced and prostituted to the interests of medical and administrative power groups. A participatory framework for social science is outlined as an alternative to the current models which are based on Taylorism or “scientific management.”

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