John Holmwood
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 247361 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | John Holmwood |
| NOMBRES | John |
| APELLIDO | Holmwood |
| FIRMA | HOLMWOOD J |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Nottingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3440-3524 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 76 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 486 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 74 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 4 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1983 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
Rethinking conceptual frameworks
We are grateful for the detailed attention Martyn Hammersley pays to our book, Colonialism and Modern Social Theory. It may seem a little odd to say that we also appreciate its critical character. Of course, authors will always value praise, but arguments are advanced and different understandings reached through disagreements. This was the spirit in which we wrote our book, and it is the spirit in which we would want it to be read. Here, we respo…
European Empires in and Beyond Europe
This article considers issues of ethnonationalism and minority rights in the immediate aftermath of WW1 when a new League of Nations was set up by the Allied (Entente) Powers. This body managed the end of empire in Europe and the new nation states in territories previously under the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires, alongside protections for their new minority subjects. This regime of protection was not extended to the minor…
The trials and tribulations of research evaluation
Race, nation and empire; the forgotten sociology of Herbert Adolphus Miller
Herbert Adolphus Miller (1875-1951) is a neglected figure within North American sociology, yet he made a distinctive contribution to the sociology and politics of race relations. He was one of the first sociological critics of eugenics and developed a distinctive approach to race relations and the position of subject minorities derived from a critical analysis of European empires. His approach was complementary to that of Du Bois with whom he had…
Race, caste and colonialism
This article addresses Oliver Cromwell Cox's criticisms of the application of the concept of caste to understand race relations in the southern states of the Unite States. It proposes that there are deep similarities in the experiences of Dalits in India and Blacks in the United States, but argues that these derive from the modern construction of caste and race in the conjunction of colonialism and capitalism. In each case, the problems do not de…
The Trap of "Capitalism", Racial or Otherwise
Loïc Wacquant's essay, "The Trap of 'Racial Capitalism'", asks whether the term is "a conceptual solution or a conceptual problem". His answer is forthright. He argues that racial capitalism has no place in a properly defined and understood social science. In this contribution, we set out the limitations, as we perceive them, of Wacquant's own analysis and, at the same time, discuss other difficulties of the idea of racial capitalism. These, we s…
Immigration, Domination, and ‘Proportional Patriotism’
This article addresses the sociological approach and political engagements of the early twentieth century sociologist, Herbert Adolphus Miller (1875–1951). He is now largely forgotten, but he had deep connections within the Chicago milieu of pragmatist sociology and social reform activities through both the Settlement movement and the Survey movement. In 1914 he wrote a volume in the Cleveland Survey on Immigrant children in the school system and…
Afterword
Renewal and Reconstruction in Sociological Theory
Colonialismo, Pós-colonialismo e o Estado de bem-estar liberal
Este artigo versa sobre as origens coloniais e raciais do estado de bem-estar social com uma ênfase particular no estado de bem-estar liberal do Reino Unido e dos Estados Unidos. Ambos são entendidos em termos da centralidade da condição mercantilizada da força de trabalho enquanto expressão da lógica das relações de mercado. Em contraste, argumentamos que, com um entendimento adequado das relações entre capitalismo e colonialismo, a venda de for…
Claiming whiteness
Robert G Dunn, Toward a Pragmatist Sociology
The impossibility of sociology as a science; arguments from within the discipline
This paper addresses a key moment in the development of sociology when its status as a science was criticised from within by ethnomethodologists (Harvey Sacks and Harold Garfinkel), post‐Althusserian Marxists (Barry Hindess) and Michel Foucault. These criticisms seemed to come from different sides, but they converged in arguing their positions from the point of view of a proper conception of science through which mainstream sociology was found wa…
Colonialism, Postcolonialism and the Liberal Welfare State
This article addresses the colonial and racial origins of the welfare state with a particular emphasis on the liberal welfare state of the USA and UK. Both are understood in terms of the centrality of the commodified status of labour power expressing a logic of market relations. In contrast, we argue that with a proper understanding of the relations of capitalism and colonialism, the sale of labour power as a commodity already represents a moveme…
Inegalitarian populism and the university
Countering Extremism in British Schools?
In 2014 an investigation into an alleged plot to ‘Islamify’ several state schools in Birmingham began. Known as the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair, this caused a previously highly successful school to be vilified. Holmwood, an expert witness in the professional misconduct cases brought against the teachers, and O’Toole, who researches the government’s counter-extremism agenda, challenge the accepted narrative and draw on the potential parallel with the Hi…
Countering Extremism in British Schools?
Countering Extremism in British Schools
In 2014 the UK government launched an investigation into the “Trojan Horse” affair: an alleged plot to “Islamify” several state schools in Birmingham. Twenty-one schools in Birmingham were subjected to snap Ofsted inspections and included in the various inquiries into the affair. The book's authors — one who was an expert witness in the professional misconduct cases brought against the teachers in the school, and the other, who researches the gov…
Countering Extremism in British Schools
In 2014 the 'Trojan Horse' affair, an alleged plot to 'Islamify' several state schools in Birmingham, caused a previously highly successful school to be vilified. Holmwood and O'Toole challenge the accepted narrative and show how it was used to justify an intrusive counter extremism agenda
Prague, Villa Lanna and a changing Europe
The university, democracy and the public sphere
This article takes a historical approach to the rise and fall of the public university, relating its fate to specific developments in public policy. Particular attention will be paid to the United Kingdom since it has developed an explicit drive towards the marketization of higher education in the context of an earlier commitment to public higher education, although the latter was initially first developed in the United States. Both countries are…
The turn of the screw’; marketization and higher education in England
Ben Martin’s powerful proposition paper describes a puzzle and poses two challenges. The puzzle is to understand how universities in the UK have come to be dominated by forms of management and orga
John Holmwood
Social Rights and Complex Freedom
Sociologyâ s Past and Futures
Sociology's misfortune
This paper is about tendencies to the subversion of sociology as a discipline. It connects external factors of the wider socio-political environment of higher education in the UK, especially those associated with the audit culture and new systems of governance, with the internal organization of the discipline. While the environment is similar for all social science subjects, the paper argues that there are specific consequences for sociology beca…
Colonialism, Postcolonialism and the Liberal Welfare State
This article addresses the colonial and racial origins of the welfare state with a particular emphasis on the liberal welfare state of the USA and UK. Both are understood in terms of the centrality of the commodified status of labour power expressing a logic of market relations. In contrast, we argue that with a proper understanding of the relations of capitalism and colonialism, the sale of labour power as a commodity already represents a moveme…
Sociology as Public Discourse and Professional Practice
In this article I discuss Burawoy's (2005) argument for public sociology in the context of the sociologist as both citizen and as social scientist; that is, as simultaneously a member of any 'society' being researched and as researcher claiming validity for the knowledge produced by research. I shall suggest that the relation between citizenship and social science necessarily places a limit on sociological claims to knowledge in terms both of wha…
Founding Sociology? Talcott Parsons and the Idea of General Theory
The theories of Talcott Parsons' are enjoying a revival in the world of sociology. Rather than following closely the complex original prose in an effort to explain the theory in its minutiae, Holmwood presents a highly readable non-technical critique of several of the strongest underlying sociological themes and shows how, although flawed in many respects, these themes have been recurring, in different forms, in the theories of those critical of …
Action and Its Environments
From social rights to the market
Public higher education has a long history, with its growth associated with mass higher education and the extension of a social right to education from secondary schooling to university education. Following the rise in student numbers since the 1970s, the aspiration to higher education has been universalized, although opportunities remain structured by social background. This paper looks at changing policies for higher education in the UK and the…
Realism, Regularity and Social Explanation
Stephen Kemp and John Holmwood, Realism, Regularity and Social Explanation, pp. 165–187. This article explores the difficulties raised for social scientific investigation by the absence of experiment, critically reviewing realist responses to the problem such as those offered by Bhaskar, Collier and Sayer. It suggests that realist arguments for a shift from prediction to explanation, the use of abstraction, and reliance upon interpretive forms of…
Gender and Critical Realism
In a recent article in this journal, Andrew Sayer has argued that much feminist research on the gendered nature of organisations, such as bureaucracy and the market, confuses a contingent association of gender and organisational forms with a stronger claim that they are intrinsically gendered. Sayer accepts that this research has shown that the empirically found, concrete forms of organisations are gendered. However, deeper theoretical reflection…
Stratification and Power
Viewpoint — The Impact of ‘Impact’ on UK Social Science
Government funding of research in the UK takes place in three ways. First, direct funding by contracted research commissioned by Government departments (and by local authorities). Second, funding via the QR block grant distributed through the Research Assessment Exercise (now called the REF). Third, funding via the seven research councils and their umbrella organisation, Research Councils UK (RCUK). Each of these streams of funding has been sever…
The Palgrave Handbook of Sociology in Britain
A history of the relationship between sociology and social work in the UK
The Challenge of Global Social Inquiry
Calls to provincialise sociology have been criticised as relativistic and self-contradictory. Utilising the arguments of Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Peter Winch, the present paper defends a provincialised sociology against these criticisms and argues that only a provincialised sociology can meet the challenge of global social inquiry
Pragmatism and the prospects of sociological theory
The paper addresses the recent turn to pragmatism within sociological theory, arguing that, in crucial respects, the 'new' pragmatism is at odds with the animating thrust of the 'old' pragmatism associated with James, Dewey and Mead. Two tendencies in the new pragmatism are discussed, namely 'the universal pragmatics' associated with general theory (Habermas) and the displacement of explanation in favour of edification (Rorty). Each position fail…
The university, democracy and the public sphere
This article takes a historical approach to the rise and fall of the public university, relating its fate to specific developments in public policy. Particular attention will be paid to the United Kingdom since it has developed an explicit drive towards the marketization of higher education in the context of an earlier commitment to public higher education, although the latter was initially first developed in the United States. Both countries are…
Three Pillars of Welfare State Theory
Current social and political theory is sceptical of the future of welfare states in the face of global markets. Their moral claims, too, have been challenged by the neo-liberal association of market capitalism and individual freedom and by an implicit acceptance of that critique - of the welfare state as bureaucratic - by left-wing commentators. This article offers a defence of the national welfare state as the guarantor of 'complex freedom'. Thi…
Sociology after Fordism
A number of commentators have suggested that the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist regime of political economy has had positive consequences for sociology, including the reinforcement of critical sociologies ( Burawoy, 2005 ; Steinmetz, 2005 ). This article argues that, although disciplinary hierarchies have been destabilized, what is emerging is a new form of instrumental knowledge, that of applied interdisciplinary social studies. This dev…
"Economics, Sociology, and the "Professional Complex
This article discusses the relationship between economics and sociology in the context of Parsons's analytical theory of action and systems and his criticisms of orthodox and institutional economics. The article also addresses his view of the importance of the professions to an understanding of the nature of advanced capitalism. The professions are discussed as both an illustration of his theoretical argument and a substantive problem that stimul…
Feminism and Epistemology
In this paper, I address recent feminist epistemological claims - in particular, those associated with 'standpoint theory' and 'feminist postmodernism' - arguing that they share difficulties with other forms of anti-positivist social theory and contribute to an impasse in social inquiry which is becoming increasingly acute. This impasse is traced to the displacement of explanation from the centre of theoretical concerns. In arguing this, I am not…
Synthesis and Fragmentation in Social Theory
Dans cet article, les AA. tentent de repondre aux interrogations suscitees par l'etat actuel de la theorie sociologique, presentee comme etant en crise. L'incoherence souvent deploree n'est pas tellement eloignee des theories generalisatrices des annees 60 ou 70. Celles-ci etaient basees sur des contradictions qui ont debouche sur la fragmentation post-moderne. En etudiant les contradictions des principales ecoles de la theorie sociale, les AA. e…
Questioning Contingency in Social Life
Structure/agency theories presuppose that there is a unity to structure that distinguishes it from the (potential) diversity of agents' responses. In doing so they formally divide the robust social processes shaping the social world (structure) from contingent agential variation (agency). In this article we question this division by critically evaluating its application to the concept of role in critical realism and structural functionalism. We a…
The Attack on Education as a Social Right
The essay addresses recent government proposals for higher education in England. It argues that they represent a neoliberal attack on the idea of public higher education. Where public higher education had previously been widely accepted as a social right and a condition of liberal citizenship, higher education is now to be understood as a private responsibility, an investment in human capital necessary to secure positional advantage in a deeply u…
The Trap of "Capitalism", Racial or Otherwise
Loïc Wacquant's essay, "The Trap of 'Racial Capitalism'", asks whether the term is "a conceptual solution or a conceptual problem". His answer is forthright. He argues that racial capitalism has no place in a properly defined and understood social science. In this contribution, we set out the limitations, as we perceive them, of Wacquant's own analysis and, at the same time, discuss other difficulties of the idea of racial capitalism. These, we s…
Claiming whiteness
Beyond capital? The challenge for sociology in Britain
This article offers a 'local',British, reading ofPiketty's landmark book,Capital in the Twenty-First Century, suggesting that the challenge it offers to sociological approaches to inequality is more fundamental than hitherto recognized. The variations in 'national trajectories' exposed byPiketty revealBritain to be anomalous in terms of standard approaches to the path dependencies embedded in different welfare regimes. Using the recent work ofMon…
Public Reasoning without Sociology
Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to social justice has helped to form UN millennium goals as well as other policy expressions of both national and international political agencies. It has had a major influence on many researchers across a range of disciplines, from economics, politics and philosophy to development studies and social policy. However, despite the relevance of Sen's approach to sociological concerns - inequality, after all, is at…
Shorter Notices
Sociological Theory
American Sociological Theory
Talcott Parsons and the Development of His System
The State of Sociology
Action, System and Norm in the Action Frame of Reference
The Role of Contradictions in Modern Theories of Social Stratification
This paper traces the contours of current, practical explanatory problems in stratification theory showing the similarity of issues in apparently diverse approaches, both Marxist and non-Marxist. There are two related purposes. The first is to show the specific nature of the current crisis, locating particular explanatory failures. The second is to illustrate the more general issue of the way in which the central epistemology of self-conscious so…
Action and Its Environments
Democratic Socialism in Britain and Sweden
Rationality and Action
We have seen that the vertical and horizontal fallacies are drawn from the same sort of data and that neither represents an adequate explanation of that data. Since each fallacy derives from the same problem there can be no expression of either that does not involve the other. In the illustrations offered in the previous chapter, modern Weberians were associated with the horizontal fallacy and modern Marxists with the vertical fallacy, but the co…
Explanation and Social Theory
The book ranges widely over modern social theory, giving detailed treatments of major sources to identify common themes and deficiencies in apparently disparate schools of thought. The object is to la
Explanation and Social Theory
Modern social science is largely pessimistic about social life and inquiry and this text traces the reasons for this. It argues for a creative and progressive social science to tackle the real problem
W(h)ither Welfare
Explanation and Social Theory
Gender, the Professions, and Employment Citizenship
(1994). Gender, the Professions, and Employment Citizenship. International Journal of Sociology: Vol. 24, Work and Welfare in a Changing Europe Part I: Transformation of the European Societies, pp. 43-66
Synthesis and Fragmentation in Social Theory
Dans cet article, les AA. tentent de repondre aux interrogations suscitees par l'etat actuel de la theorie sociologique, presentee comme etant en crise. L'incoherence souvent deploree n'est pas tellement eloignee des theories generalisatrices des annees 60 ou 70. Celles-ci etaient basees sur des contradictions qui ont debouche sur la fragmentation post-moderne. En etudiant les contradictions des principales ecoles de la theorie sociale, les AA. e…
Feminism and Epistemology
In this paper, I address recent feminist epistemological claims - in particular, those associated with 'standpoint theory' and 'feminist postmodernism' - arguing that they share difficulties with other forms of anti-positivist social theory and contribute to an impasse in social inquiry which is becoming increasingly acute. This impasse is traced to the displacement of explanation from the centre of theoretical concerns. In arguing this, I am not…
Constructing the New Consumer Society
This book argues that the coming of the 'a new consumerism' in the affluent societies marks a distinct phase of modernity. Limits of production no longer confine consumption to what is necessary or in
Constructing the New Consumer Society
Stratification and Power
A Treatise on Social Theory, Volume III
Radical Sociology
The centrality of power to social relationships and, thus, as an explanatory category, to sociological theory, is one of the dominant themes of contemporary sociology.1 This sensibility is of relatively recent origin, deriving from criticisms, in the 1960s and since, of what was held to be the 'orthodox consensus' of professional sociology, to which was counterposed a series of 'radical alternatives' (Atkinson, 1971). These alternatives were ofte…
Europe and the ‘Americanization’ of British Social Policy
This paper identifies and seeks to resolve the paradox that British social policy appears to have diverged from its EU partners in the period since membership and to have converged with that of the USA. Existing historical institutionalist approaches stress common regime characteristics of Britain and the USA in explanation of British difference from other member states. The present paper challenges such accounts and argues that the explanation l…
Three Pillars of Welfare State Theory
Current social and political theory is sceptical of the future of welfare states in the face of global markets. Their moral claims, too, have been challenged by the neo-liberal association of market capitalism and individual freedom and by an implicit acceptance of that critique - of the welfare state as bureaucratic - by left-wing commentators. This article offers a defence of the national welfare state as the guarantor of 'complex freedom'. Thi…
Gender and Critical Realism
In a recent article in this journal, Andrew Sayer has argued that much feminist research on the gendered nature of organisations, such as bureaucracy and the market, confuses a contingent association of gender and organisational forms with a stronger claim that they are intrinsically gendered. Sayer accepts that this research has shown that the empirically found, concrete forms of organisations are gendered. However, deeper theoretical reflection…
Sociology (67 obras) · Political science (43 obras) · Epistemology (41 obras) · Law (37 obras) · Philosophy (35 obras) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (34 obras) · Social science (33 obras) · Economics (25 obras) · Politics (21 obras) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (21 obras)