Anti-Catholicism is part of the dynamics of Northern Ireland's conflict and is critical to the self-defining identity of certain Protestants. However, anti-Catholicism is as much a sociological process as a theological dispute about doctrine. It was given a Scriptural underpinning in the history of Protestant–Catholic relations in Ireland, and wider British–Irish relations, in order to reinforce social divisions between the religious communities and to offer a deterministic belief system to justify them. This article examines the socio-economic and political processes that have led to theology being used in social closure and stratification. It describes the various forms of contemporary anti-Catholicism, and highlights two further sociological features of the process, the common-sense reasoning process which reproduces it and how, in its language, it operates as a ‘discursive formation’.

Recent debates within social and political theory, and within the public sphere more generally, reveal growing concern with issues of ‘trust’. While forms of voluntary association frequently are cited as prime examples of trust relations, they rarely provide a focus for such debates. In this paper we examine current developments within the voluntary sector in Britain, arguing that the relation of voluntary organisations to questions of trust is increasingly problematic. In particular a tension exists between trust relations based on principles of voluntarism and linked to shared values, and relations of confidence that are mediated by institutional and contractual forms. After surveying recent theoretical accounts of trust and confidence, we consider the relevance of these debates to the British voluntary sector. We then draw on a range of quantitative and qualitative research on the voluntary sector to examine how trust and confidence are negotiated with a number of key constituencies: the general public; government and institutional funders; business; and users or beneficiaries. Our argument is that, while resources of trust are linked to their core values, voluntary organisations are increasingly governed by formal measures designed to promote confidence.

This paper starts from a critique of the dominant and largely empiricist paradigm within which sociologists have approached the relationship between social class and health. Referring to the transformational model of social activity and the relational model of society advanced by Bhaskar, the nature and reality of class relations and the preconditions for their theorisation are discussed. A neo-Marxist theory of class relations owing much to Clement and Myles is outlined. The relevance of this theory for a revised and more sociological consideration of health inequalities is then explored and some pointers offered for future empirical enquiry. The authors contend that this theory may throw some light too on the theoretical and political timidity medical sociologists characteristically show in their current research on health inequalities.

Within environmental sociology realist critiques of the use of social constructionist approaches abound. This paper challenges features of the realist critique and emphasises the appeal and utility of social constructionist approaches for the study of environmental issues. We start by outlining the criticisms levelled at social constructionism, particularly the claim that the approach amounts to a denial of the existence of environmental problems and provides no contribution to managing them. We argue that this characterisation of ‘extreme’ constructionism is problematic in two senses. First, in that it bears little resemblance to the mild approach actually used in the majority of empirical studies and, secondly, that it is a misleading characterisation of a more radical constructionism. We conclude that the utility of constructionism can be formulated in terms of two distinct approaches. One refrains from making overt moral and political claims, and treats such claims as topics for analysis; such an approach can, however, provide resources for social criticism. Another adopts an overtly political or environmentally motivated stance towards the issues investigated. Underlying these suggestions is our conviction that a particular model of engagement is implicit in many realist critiques and that others are possible, and perhaps, preferable.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an integrated (meta)theoretical framework that I call anti-reductionist sociology: this entails a focus on agency, structure (the ‘conditions-of-action’), and social chance; micro–macro; and time–space. What follows allows only for a sketch of the framework; I have published fuller theoretical, methodological and policy-related accounts elsewhere. Anti-reductionist sociology is a sensitising theoretical perspective, not a body of substantive theory. This differentiation has an affinity with Mouzelis's (1993:684) distinction between methodological generalisations and substantive generalisations, the present paper being concerned with the former. In Cohen's terminology (1987:279–80) the approach outlined in the paper is ontologically flexible and in some sense eclectic: while explicitly excluding reductionist, essentialist, reified and teleological formulations, anti-reductionist sociology is a synthetic metatheoretical framework designed to encourage the development of substantive theories that are not necessarily tied to any particular paradigm.

Drawing on data from a study of middle-class women undergoing the transition to motherhood, this paper critically examines the early 1990s' work of Giddens and Beck on self-identity. Parallels with the work of Giddens and Beck are drawn, but it is argued that more attention needs to be paid to gendered and embodied identity. Using discourse analysis, it is suggested that the women are ‘excused’ from aspects of their identity in the process of pregnancy, but remain within the same regime of subjectification. Six dimensions of an altered sense of self are identified, and the discourses on which the women draw in maintaining a coherent sense of self are discussed. The concept of a refracted self is proposed as a means of theorising these changes.

The paper explores how regime change affects social movements, drawing on studies of Latin America, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. After discussing the concepts and method used, it is argued that social movements do exist in authoritarian regimes, and hence the question of the effect of regime change upon them can be posed. Contrary to the assumption that democratisation leads to the flourishing of social movements as repression is removed and new channels of participation are opened up, it is shown that in the immediate period between the end of an authoritarian regime and the initiation of a democratic one the opposite effect may occur. This is because liberalisation in authoritarian regimes can lead to a particularly high level of social movement activity which cannot be sustained once more ‘normal’ conditions apply. The utility of the concept of regime change is questioned, and the desirability of breaking it down into its component parts which may be more or less present in different cases is stressed.

This paper sets out to make sociological sense of some contemporary trends in the consumption of policing services and security products. I argue that the commodification of policing and security can fruitfully be theorised and investigated in terms of the spread of consumer culture, a contention that I demonstrate in three (related) ways. I begin by examining how a culture of consumption is pervading the practices and rhetoric of the public police and outlining the impact of ‘consumerism’ on lay sensibilities towards policing. I then set out some prevailing trends in the consumption of protective services and hardware and consider the effects of a burgeoning ‘security market’ on the construction of authority, subjectivity and social relations. Finally, I detail a number of possible points of resistance to the spread of commercially-delivered policing and security and argue that these provide both some potential cultural limits to the extension of a ‘consumer attitude’ in this field, and a space within which to think about, and develop, modes of policing shaped by citizens acting in a democratic polity rather than consumers operating in the market.

Alcoholics Anonymous has developed an oral tradition for teaching people to alter their relation to their own desires and their own freedom fundamentally, teaching that is done through practice rather than through ideas. Our study of AA's innovative organisational tools for building long-lasting mutual-help groups shows that the same tools that build the organisation also exemplify and embody the organisation's ethical worldview. To that extent, AA's group practices are worth studying not only from the point of view of learning about bottom-up, non-expert-led networks but also to shed light on the development of a popular pragmatist ethics in which little techniques – anonymity, the focus on the 24-hour cycle, etc. – deconstruct the Kantian distinction between means and ends.

This study of the everyday ethics of AA members argues that AA's unique role in the history of popular ethical practices can be traced to several original features. First, AA incorporates elements of the disease model of alcoholism while remaining fundamentally a spiritual programme, thus mapping an important hybrid terrain often ignored by students of medicalisation. Secondly, AA was able to steer away from the political controversies about temperance, prohibition, and control of alcoholic beverages that had made the old temperance movement founder. Thirdly and most importantly, AA uniquely managed to combine the once-in-a-lifetime experience of total transformation that is characteristic of religious conversion with the development of a series of slogans and mental techniques for dealing with the ‘trivial’ details of life. This paper first outlines the hybrid terrain of AA, between medicine and religion, and then examines a few of the techniques that are at the core of AA's success, including anonymity, the Higher Power, and the twenty-four hour cycle.

This paper links the ideas of Norbert Elias to the conceptualisation of power and subjectivity that has developed in British industrial and organisational (I/O); sociology. It examines the relevance of power and subjectivity to British I/O sociology and reviews theoretical positions that have influenced this field. Elias's work is examined in some detail, exploring his approach to power, agency, the self, individualisation and discourse. His work is then applied to a re-examination of the perspectives on power and subjectivity contained within labour process, Foucauldian and actor network theory. The paper attempts to show how Elias's work re-frames our understanding of power and subjectivity through a stress on interdependencies and their asymmetry, the ‘networked’ nature of agency, and the interwoven form of human and socio-political development. It argues that Eliasian analysis maintains the critical concern with power asymmetries witnessed in labour process theory, yet avoids some of the difficulties in conceptualisation of power and subjectivity that are apparent in labour process, Foucauldian work and actor network theory. Elias's work also illustrates the need for a lengthier historical perspective than is typically observed in industrial and organisational sociology, and points to the value of studies which look beyond the context of the workplace. Finally, attention is paid to some of the limitations of Elias's work.

Jack Demaine and Harold Entwistle (eds.), Beyond Communitarianism: Citizenship, Politics and Education. London: Macmillan, 1996, £15.99 pbk, ix+216 pp. (ISBN 0-333-67744-7).

Stephen A. Gaetz, Looking Out for the Lads: Community Action and the Provision of Youth Services in an Urban Irish Parish. St John's, Newfoundland: Institute for Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, 1997, no price stated, paperback, xx+236 pp. (ISBN 0-919666-90-6).

Philip Nyden, Anne Figert, Mark Shibley and Darryl Burrows (eds.), Building Community: Social Science in Action, London: Pine Forge Press, 1997, £26.00 pbk, xiv+263 pp. (ISBN 0-8039-9093-6).

Chris Searle, Living Community, Living School. London: The Tufnell Press, 1997, £11.99, xvi+164 pp. (ISBN 1-872767-27-3).

What is ‘community’? This question exercises the four books which form the basis of this review essay and links a disparate collection together. Each text covers substantially different subjects in addressing the relevance of community in diverse settings. Beyond Communitarianism has twelve chapters which explore rights and citizenship in different domains. Living Community, Living School provides a set of sketches which examines how a school in Sheffield, England, draws on its local community to overcome social divisions found in its midst. Looking Out for the Lads contains a detailed case study of a housing estate near Cork in Ireland, which considers at length the difficulties that cause residents in a particular geographic location to feel alienated from those residing in neighbouring streets, despite concerted attempts to bring them together. Building Community illustrates through twenty-six specific examples how research need not be an ‘ivory tower’ activity orientated to the dispassionate pursuit of knowledge and of little use to people who are the subjects of academic study. Embedded within a politics of knowledge framework, it argues for a value-based remit fostering social justice for the social sciences.

Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: An Introduction, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, £45.00 (£14.95 pbk), 378 pp. (ISBN 0-7456-1312-8).

Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, £40.00 (£14.00 pbk), 298 pp. (ISBN 0-691-01132-X).

Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova and Douglas Kruse, Kremlin Capitalism: Privatising the Russian Economy, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997, $42.50 ($16.95 pbk), xix+190 pp. (ISBN 0-8014-8396-4).

Annika Thunborg, Public and Non-Profit Interaction: U.S. Assistance to Eastern European Media 1989-1995, Lund: Lund University Press, 1997, SKr 223 pbk, x+271 pp. (ISBN 911-7966-419-9).

The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the state socialist system has put an end to a sub-discipline of political science (communist politics), to the study in sociology of an ‘alternative’ framework of industrial society and it has also led to philosophical speculation about the ‘end of history’. In its train the collapse has generated new sets of problems in the field of ‘transitology’. The distinctive features of the transformation of state socialism are that, unlike in the political movement from autocracy to polyarchy characterising southern European states such as Spain and Greece, the structural elite-induced changes under post-communism involve simultaneously transformations of the value system, forms of integration and legitimacy, types of political management and interest articulation and the economic mechanism, including the ownership of property.