Green Politics and the New Class: Selfishness or Virtue?

The predominantly new middle-class social composition of the green movement has become a matter of increasing interest in the wake of the success of green parties and the growth of an international green movement. This paper considers the concept of the 'new class' in relation to two explanations for the social composition of the green movement. The class-interest argument seeks to show that green politics is a means of furthering either middle-class or new-class interests while the 'new childhood' argument claims that the development of the green movement is the result of the spread of post-material values, the main bearers of which are the new class. Against these arguments a more comprehensive explanation is presented, which focuses on the education of the new class and its relative structural autonomy from the production process.     

Politics and Mass Media: A Response to John Street

This short article is a response to an overview of research on media-political relations written by John Street and published in the Political Studies Review in 2005. The usefulness of the exercise is recognised but issue is taken both with the organising concepts of Street's account and the way he excludes a significant body of research from his assessment, raising questions about his characterisation of the field under scrutiny. A case is made for assessing the tensions and the varieties of work in this broad area by the use of other categories, including the play-off between media-centric and politics-centric accounts, the continuing strand of work informed by critical theory and the sheer variety of the topics upon which researchers have chosen to focus as a way into a broader agenda. The importance of work engaging with issues at an international level is emphasised together with the value of new comparative studies. In conclusion, the state of the area is judged more positively than in Street's assessment. Questions of power are argued to be the principal point at issue in comparing research approaches and the need for further explicitness and clarity here is noted.     

Tradition and Change: Four People A Response to the Politics of Paradox

Helen Goodman, the Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland has responded to the Blue Labour Publication The Politics of Paradox, with Tradition and Change: Four People. Blue Labour's thesis is that a return to the ideas and practices prevalent at the foundation of the Labour Party—solidarity and reciprocity, can form the basis of significant social change. Helen views the thesis from the perspective of two communities—first the hill farmers of Teesdale, a paradigmatic community whose rights and way of life on the Commons have existed for over 600 years. Then she looks at the Durham Miners’ Gala and the needs of the former coalfields. Helen argues that in both cases, only government can take the national and international action they need. Secondly she looks at the stories of a mother and a priest. The importance of the welfare state in providing security and opportunities becomes clear. Helen confronts Blue Labour's criticism of women's independence and prays in aid the Archbishop of Canterbury on the need for a feminist analysis. She accuses Blue Labour of ‘drum and trumpet jingoism’.     

法社会学研究的新视域——以魏晋南北朝王僧孺谱学为中心

魏晋南北朝时期,谱牒编修蔚为风气。当时所修谱牒的主要内容包括谱主姓名、郡望、官爵、世系、婚姻关系等。这些内容折射出较强的等级差别性和血缘传承性等法社会学特征。魏晋南北朝谱牒本质上是当时社会分层——门阀制度的客观体现。王僧孺是魏晋南北朝时期的谱学名家,亦是中国谱牒学史上著名的王氏谱学的代表人物。以王僧孺谱学为中心展开研究,在历史性考述王僧孺修谱行为的基础上,探析其行为背后的法社会学动因并作出评价,具有法社会学与历史学的双重意义。     

Politics, Robinson Crusoe, Harold Laski and Plato: A Response to Burns

In a recent article, Tony Burns (2000) challenged the traditional view that politics is necessarily restricted to relations between human beings. However, what such a challenge does not take into account is that the values of non-human nature cannot be conveyed from their source to the humans that represent them. Indeed, such values are estimated by nature's human representatives. The ideas of Harold Laski and Plato can be invoked to support the argument that Robinson Crusoe's relation to nature is not a political one.     

Professionalism and the Millbank Tendency: The Political Sociology of New Labour's Employees

This article analyses party employees, one of the most under-researched subjects in the study of British political parties. We draw on a blend of quantitative and qualitative data in order to shed light on the social and political profiles of Labour Party staff, and on the question of their professionalisation. The latter theme is developed through a model derived from the sociology of professions. While a relatively limited proportion of party employees conform to the pure ideal-type of professionalism, a considerably greater number manifest enough of the core characteristics of specialisation, commitment, mobility, autonomy and self-regulation to be reasonably described as 'professionals in pursuit of political outcomes'.     

The Dynamics of Change: Class, Politics and Civil Society—From Marx to post-Marxism

This paper discusses how Marxist understandings of politics and civil society, particularly Marx's own work, can contribute to understanding the dynamics of political change in contemporary capitalist democracies. While briefly exploring the conceptual problems contained in the political-philosophical agenda set out in Marx's earliest works, the paper argues that his subsequent examinations of civil society and class relations are grounded in a political economy of capitalist development which retains considerable salience. The possibilities of a post-Marxist politics of civil society are assessed in this light, using the example of recent neo-liberal and neo-conservative assaults on the welfare state to indicate the ways in which membership of civil society is itself a critical focus of political contestation. A politics of civil society (for example, contemporary 'third way' strategies) lacks any substantive democratic potential, without the type of radical political economy developed by Marx.