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The SAGE Dictionary of S O C I O L O G Y STEVE BRUCEand STEVEN YEARLEY 00-Bruce-3321-Prelims.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page i The Sage Dictionary of Sociology 00-Bruce-3321-Prelims.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page ii 00-Bruce-3321-Prelims.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page iii The Sage Dictionary of Sociology Steve Bruce and Steven Yearley SAGE Publications London ●Thousand Oaks ● New Delhi 00-Bruce-3321-Prelims.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page iv © Steve Bruce and Steven Yearley 2006 First published 2006 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,or criticism or review,as permitted under the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act,1988,this publication may be reproduced,stored or transmitted in any form,or by any means,only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers,or in the case of reprographic reproduction,in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks,California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42,Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 110 017 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 7481 4 0 7619 7482 2 Library of Congress Control Number Available Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd,Chennai,India Printed on paper from sustainable resources Printed in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Ltd,Trowbridge,Wiltshire 00-Bruce-3321-Prelims.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page v Contents Preface vii A 1 B 16 C 26 D 60 E 80 F 101 G 118 H 129 I 142 J 160 K 162 L 165 M 179 N 206 00-Bruce-3321-Prelims.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page vi contents O 217 P 224 Q 249 R 252 S 266 T 298 U 308 V 313 W 316 X 321 Y 322 Z 323 Bibliography 324 [vi] 00-Bruce-3321-Prelims.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page vii Preface We would like to welcome readers to our new dictionary.It has been written with a number of aims in mind.First,we have tried to ensure that nothing said in any entry is more obscure than the term it is supposed to explain.It is always frustrating to look something up only to find that the definition is less understandable than the original concept.Second,and not always easy,we have tried to ensure that we really understand what we are saying; newcomers to the discipline may find it reassuring that we are sometimes perplexed by the work of our colleagues.Third,we have aimed for consis- tency of comment.Most comparable reference works are written by large teams and what is said in one entry often jars with what is said in another.All of our entries are joint productions which,while they do their best to explain fairly their subjects,often express our preferences.Fortunately neither of us is terribly doctrinaire. A common weakness of technical reference works is that while they address igno- rance of the matter in hand,they assume too much general knowledge.We have tried to take nothing for granted;in particular we have made a point of briefly explaining the origins of ordinary language terms.Although our prose is always correct, it is never pompous or overly formal and we have even allowed humour to intrude. Last,we have tried to keep entries relatively brief.We have not listed all the works of the authors mentioned or gone into lengthy biographical details.In an age of Internet search engines,such information is readily available.This dictionary offers readers an accessible and lucid starting point for their enquiries and we hope people will find it a pleasure to use. We would like to take this chance to thank our colleagues.Steve Bruce is very grateful to David Voas and Tony Glendinning for help with the statistics entries. Steve Yearley is similarly appreciative of the help of Andy Tudor with the entry on Anthony Giddens and grateful to Phil Stanworth who persistently excused the borrowing of his books without permission. 00-Bruce-3321-Prelims.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page viii 01-Bruce-3321-Ch.A.qxd 11/18/2005 3:20 PM Page 1 A ABSOLUTE POVERTY Also known as predictability. While this fits the history of subsistence poverty,this is an idea of poverty western Europe,in eastern Europe and other derived from the minimum requirements for parts of the world absolutism retarded rather subsistence:what a person must have to live than encouraged progress. and to make a living. ABSTRACTED EMPIRICISM C. Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination (1959) ABSOLUTE RATES OF MOBILITY We can derided social scientists who allowed the pri- describe social mobility in absolute or rela- mary task of understanding to be subverted tive terms. The absolute rate of mobility is by technical issues of data collection and the proportion of people in a particular analysis. Mills thought his colleagues misled social class who move up or down in the by a desire to imitate the natural sciences. socio-economic hierarchy. Relative social Excessive concern with the internal validity mobility is the proportion of one social class of statistical techniques and the assumption that moves up or down compared with the that if it could not be quantified,it was not proportion of another class that moves.The evidence,meant that what passed for sociol- distinction is important because the two ogy was actually closer to alchemy: elegant measures can give a very different impression but pointless.Worse,because the survey data of the degree of social mobility. favoured by empiricists related to indivi- duals (e.g. their attitudes or their demo- ABSOLUTISM This denotes a political graphic characteristics), the importance of regime in which the ruler (usually a social structure was under-estimated.Mills’s monarch) is not constrained in the exercise critique is a useful caution against losing of power either by custom or by rule of law, sight of the purpose of research, but its and which has an effective centralised blanket application as an argument against administration so that the ruler’s will can be quantitative research is improper.Empirically- turned into action.The idea plays an impor- minded historical sociologists (such as tant part in models of political evolution. Charles Tilly) and students of social mobility Max Weber saw the absolutist state as a (such as John Goldthorpe) have ably demon- progressive stage between feudalism and strated that it is possible to combine statisti- modern capitalism:it created a bureaucratic cal and technical sophistication in data administration,gradually gained a monopoly collection and analysis with insightful theory of the legitimate use of force,and used that and a due appreciation of the role of social force to impose law and order and hence forces.