Steve Fenton
Biographic Data
| ID | 3604075 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steve Fenton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steve |
| FAMILY NAME | Fenton |
| SIGNATURE | FENTON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 282 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Michael Banton
The Politics of English Identity and Nationalism
This chapter discusses the partial fusion of English identity with British identity, a fusion which has muted Englishness. The breakdown of the post-war consensus and the emergence of resentment politics have created space for a kind of English nationalism. We examine the ways in which English national identity has been presented (or ignored) in British political parties and the patterns of English identity found in recent research. We also discu…
Resentment, Classes and National Sentiments
At the outset of this chapter we examine in some detail the emergence of the concept of resentment as a sociological frame of analysis. As well as its origins in the work of Max Scheler, we look at more recent interpretations of the idea and its application to the theory of national identity and nationalism. We look in some detail at the downward trajectory of the so-called traditional British working class, marked by industrial decline and the b…
Class and Majority English Identities
This chapter addresses the significance of both class and ethnic majority status for contemporary English identities. It starts out discussing the centrality of class and racism for English nationalism, beginning with the work of Tom Nairn. This is contrasted with recent scholarship on English nationhood which argues for a more pluralistic understanding of English identities. The second part of the chapter then presents material from qualitative …
The Nationalist Alternative: Nation and Class in Scotland
This chapter aims to show how contemporary Scottish nationalist sentiments can be related to transformations in economic and social structures. We begin by providing an historical context for how the idea of Scottish national autonomy developed within the context of the British state. We then discuss the effect of economic changes on the political identities and values of a Scottish working class, whose livelihoods, up to the latter part of the t…
Conclusion
In this final chapter we offer a brief conclusion summarising the main arguments presented in the book. We make a case in the book for acknowledging the importance of classes and class experience in influencing the nature of national identities in multinational Britain. Changes in social and economic structures, and in capitalism, have left some classes, remnants of classes and fractions of classes resentful and disenchanted with mainstream polit…
Wales, Nationalism and the Politics of Resentment
In this chapter we examine the relation between political and popular conceptions of Wales as a national entity. The period since the establishment of a devolved Welsh government has seen support for the Labour Party in elections in Wales fall dramatically, in line with the rest of the UK. Unlike the Scottish National Party in Scotland, however, Plaid Cymru has not been able to capitalise on Labour’s decline. Rather, the post-devolution period ha…
Introduction: Nation and Class in Twenty-First-Century Britain
In this first chapter we introduce the main themes of the book. We begin by stressing the importance of considering popular sentiments towards the nation and their connection to class structures and changing material conditions. We then present our own use of class in which we stress the importance of changes to capitalist economies and the consequence of these changes for class structures. Once changes to social classes are taken into account, t…
Nation, Class and Resentment: The Politics of National Identity in England, Scotland and Wales
This timely book provides an extensive account of national identities in three of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom: Wales, Scotland and England. In all three contexts, identity and nation
Globalisation of researcher mobility within the UK Higher Education: Explaining the presence of overseas academics in the UK academia
In this paper, we argue that the power structure that lies within the UK elite universities dictates a division of labour through which the inflows of overseas academics into the UK academic labour markets are skewed towards these elite academic institutions where they are employed primarily in research-only posts. These posts, are less valued and are difficult to fill by UK academics. This explains the over-concentration non-UK academics within …
Power, reflexivity and difference in a Multinational Corporation
The rationale for multinational corporations is the creation and sustenance of global networks to increase profits by enabling market expansion. Since corporate executives facilitate the transfer of knowledge, processes and practices across borders, they effectively embody the globalizing project. Yet do these people, who are employed to make globalization work, engage in everyday practices that denote distinctly ‘global’ modes of being? The proc…
Resentment, class and social sentiments about the nation: The ethnic majority in England
The concepts of ‘class trajectory’ and ‘secondary properties of classes’, drawn from Bourdieu, are deployed in an attempt to explain orientations to nation. Interview material forms the basis of two characterisations of these orientations: the resentful nationalist and the liberal cosmopolitan. These two orientations are seen as being associated with declining and rising class situations
Thinking across domains: Class, nation and racism in England and Britain
As Aughey comments in his paper in this issue, there was, until relatively recently, an assumption in UK political life that ‘class and distribution’ politics were ‘normal’ and ‘nationalist’ politics abnormal. Only Northern Ireland had nationalist politics grounded in religious and ethnic identities, and directed towards different views of nation and statehood. This was, so to speak, a deviation. We may now have to accept that the politics of ‘na…
The sociology of ethnicity and national identity
In the last decade or two we have seen the remarkable rise of research interest in questions of 'national identity'. This preoccupation has shifted the ground so much that it is now difficult to think of a sociology of ethnicity without a key focus on nation, nationalism, and national identity. We could say it has taken us a long time to get here: as long ago as 1981 Anthony Smith was telling us that modern nations and their nationalist stories b…
How global is the UK academic labour market
One of the themes of the recent sociology of higher education has been the globalisation of knowledge and the professional transfer of scientists and researchers. In this paper we show how these transfers of people and knowledge are disproportionately characteristic of: (a) some institutions; and (b) some cost centres. We argue that universities form part of an international labour market for high skilled workers in prestige institutions. However…
Not Thinking Ethnicity: A Critique of the Ethnicity Paradigm in an Over‐Ethnicised Sociology
The many critical approaches to an ‘ethnicity framework’ have fallen short of a very possible conclusion—that the language of ethnicity provides, for the most part, a poor paradigm with which to work. In the present paper we seek not only to re‐state some key weaknesses of this paradigm but also to suggest that these weaknesses are more general in an over‐ethnicised sociology. There are numerous critiques of particular models or elements of ethni…
The Personal Contexts of National Sentiments
There is an important strand of scholarship which argues that we need to explain ‘ethnicity’ within the social and personal contexts in which ethnic identities and sentiments are created and enacted. But there has been little attempt to consider whether, and if so how, attitudes to the nation may be informed by experiences and events at the personal level. Adopting a case-study approach, this paper focuses upon the lives of four ‘white English’ i…
What Makes Young Adults Happy? Employment and Non-work as Determinants of Life Satisfaction
Durkheim and subsequent commentators have argued for the'benign' influence of work and employment in modern life. Contemporary patterns of work and employment are thought to be fragmented and precarious and thus alienating and demoralizing - and this runs largely, but not wholly, counter to Durkheim's prognosis. If employment may be integrative or demoralizing, this raises the question of 'are employment factors key determinants of life satisfact…
Indifference towards national identity: What young adults think about being English and British
National identity should be sharply distinguished from nationalism. People speak by reference to a general and assumed membership of a country, and routine markers of behaviour and style may exhibit this sense of membership. This matter‐of‐fact acceptance of ‘national’ membership does not guarantee enthusiasm for the ‘nation’ and it cannot be taken as a signal of nationalism, banal or otherwise. While theoretical statements and assumptions often …
Fragmented careers: Winners and losers in young adult labour markets
It has been argued that people's engagement with work is becoming more like a series of encounters than an enduring relationship. In this article we address the question of whether this fragmentation is characteristic of people in the early stages of their working lives by drawing on a study of young adults in Bristol. We conclude that there is a core of young adults who are employed in a relatively stable pattern, along with a sizable minority, …
Beyond Ethnicity: The Global Comparative Analysis of Ethnic Conflict
Conflicts that are reported as being between ethnic groups are often described as “ethnic conflicts.” The implication is that such conflicts belong to a general type of ethnic conflict with certain repeated and predictable features. This type of conflict is seen as being motivated by ethnic sentiments, as being grounded in deeply set hatreds, and as being virtually inescapable. By applying the epithet “ethnic,” it is as if the conflict were alrea…
Debate: Explaining ethnicity
Ethnicity, health and health services utilization in a British study
Despite the exponential growth in the number of studies addressing ethnicity and health, there is considerable debate about definitions of ethnicity, the appropriate use of ethnicity in health research and whether research focusing on ethnicity in the health field will ultimately result in reduced disadvantage or will simply contribute to the reification of ethnic origin as a cause of health problems. The authors present and discuss health outcom…
Ethnicity, health and health services utilization in a British study
Despite the exponential growth in the number of studies addressing ethnicity and health, there is considerable debate about definitions of ethnicity, the appropriate use of ethnicity in health research and whether research focusing on ethnicity in the health field will ultimately result in reduced disadvantage or will simply contribute to the reification of ethnic origin as a cause of health problems. The authors present and discuss health outcom…
Ethnicity and Economy: "Race and Class" Revisited
Indifference towards national identity: What young adults think about being English and British
National identity should be sharply distinguished from nationalism. People speak by reference to a general and assumed membership of a country, and routine markers of behaviour and style may exhibit this sense of membership. This matter‐of‐fact acceptance of ‘national’ membership does not guarantee enthusiasm for the ‘nation’ and it cannot be taken as a signal of nationalism, banal or otherwise. While theoretical statements and assumptions often …
Culture, relativism and the expression of mental distress: South Asian women in Britain
Social anthropology and medical anthropology have presented a challenge to the belief that there are universal categories of mental illness. A relativist position would suggest that there are as many categories of mental health (or physical health) as there are languages and culture in which they are expressed. Intermediate arguments suggest that there may be common elements in ideas of mental illness but that cultural expression of syndromes may…
Fragmented careers: Winners and losers in young adult labour markets
It has been argued that people's engagement with work is becoming more like a series of encounters than an enduring relationship. In this article we address the question of whether this fragmentation is characteristic of people in the early stages of their working lives by drawing on a study of young adults in Bristol. We conclude that there is a core of young adults who are employed in a relatively stable pattern, along with a sizable minority, …
Not Thinking Ethnicity: A Critique of the Ethnicity Paradigm in an Over‐Ethnicised Sociology
The many critical approaches to an ‘ethnicity framework’ have fallen short of a very possible conclusion—that the language of ethnicity provides, for the most part, a poor paradigm with which to work. In the present paper we seek not only to re‐state some key weaknesses of this paradigm but also to suggest that these weaknesses are more general in an over‐ethnicised sociology. There are numerous critiques of particular models or elements of ethni…
Durkheim and Modern Sociology
Beyond Ethnicity: The Global Comparative Analysis of Ethnic Conflict
Conflicts that are reported as being between ethnic groups are often described as “ethnic conflicts.” The implication is that such conflicts belong to a general type of ethnic conflict with certain repeated and predictable features. This type of conflict is seen as being motivated by ethnic sentiments, as being grounded in deeply set hatreds, and as being virtually inescapable. By applying the epithet “ethnic,” it is as if the conflict were alrea…
Nation, Class and Resentment: The Politics of National Identity in England, Scotland and Wales
This timely book provides an extensive account of national identities in three of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom: Wales, Scotland and England. In all three contexts, identity and nation
Ethnonational Identities
The prominence of ethnonational identities and movements is of increasing interest and concern in today's world. But the nature and importance of these identities remain ill understood. Ethnonational
The Personal Contexts of National Sentiments
There is an important strand of scholarship which argues that we need to explain ‘ethnicity’ within the social and personal contexts in which ethnic identities and sentiments are created and enacted. But there has been little attempt to consider whether, and if so how, attitudes to the nation may be informed by experiences and events at the personal level. Adopting a case-study approach, this paper focuses upon the lives of four ‘white English’ i…
Epidemiology and Sociology as Incommensurate Games: Accounts from the Study of Health and Ethnicity
The 'discrete variables' methodology of epidemiology is contrasted with the contextuality and complexity of sociology in general and of qualitative fieldwork in particular. Sociology has always interrogated the categories which it deploys. The lessons of the contemporary interrogation of the category 'ethnic group' are applied in a critique of positivistic methodologies which have tended to treat ethnic groups as natural divisions of the populati…
Resentment, class and social sentiments about the nation: The ethnic majority in England
The concepts of ‘class trajectory’ and ‘secondary properties of classes’, drawn from Bourdieu, are deployed in an attempt to explain orientations to nation. Interview material forms the basis of two characterisations of these orientations: the resentful nationalist and the liberal cosmopolitan. These two orientations are seen as being associated with declining and rising class situations
The sociology of ethnicity and national identity
In the last decade or two we have seen the remarkable rise of research interest in questions of 'national identity'. This preoccupation has shifted the ground so much that it is now difficult to think of a sociology of ethnicity without a key focus on nation, nationalism, and national identity. We could say it has taken us a long time to get here: as long ago as 1981 Anthony Smith was telling us that modern nations and their nationalist stories b…
What Makes Young Adults Happy? Employment and Non-work as Determinants of Life Satisfaction
Durkheim and subsequent commentators have argued for the'benign' influence of work and employment in modern life. Contemporary patterns of work and employment are thought to be fragmented and precarious and thus alienating and demoralizing - and this runs largely, but not wholly, counter to Durkheim's prognosis. If employment may be integrative or demoralizing, this raises the question of 'are employment factors key determinants of life satisfact…
Thinking across domains: Class, nation and racism in England and Britain
As Aughey comments in his paper in this issue, there was, until relatively recently, an assumption in UK political life that ‘class and distribution’ politics were ‘normal’ and ‘nationalist’ politics abnormal. Only Northern Ireland had nationalist politics grounded in religious and ethnic identities, and directed towards different views of nation and statehood. This was, so to speak, a deviation. We may now have to accept that the politics of ‘na…
Power, reflexivity and difference in a Multinational Corporation
The rationale for multinational corporations is the creation and sustenance of global networks to increase profits by enabling market expansion. Since corporate executives facilitate the transfer of knowledge, processes and practices across borders, they effectively embody the globalizing project. Yet do these people, who are employed to make globalization work, engage in everyday practices that denote distinctly ‘global’ modes of being? The proc…
Implementation of Social Goals in Labour Market Policy: The Case of Black Youth, Equal Opportunities and the Youth Training Scheme
The research reported briefly in this article attempted to explore further the relationship between the implementation of social goals in employment policy, the operation of segmentation in the labour market, and the fate of members of so-called ‘ethnic minorities’ in the labour market. Previous research had suggested that social goals in labour market policy were very difficult to defend against the power of economic efficiency criteria, which s…
Durkheim and Modern Sociology
Globalisation of researcher mobility within the UK Higher Education: Explaining the presence of overseas academics in the UK academia
In this paper, we argue that the power structure that lies within the UK elite universities dictates a division of labour through which the inflows of overseas academics into the UK academic labour markets are skewed towards these elite academic institutions where they are employed primarily in research-only posts. These posts, are less valued and are difficult to fill by UK academics. This explains the over-concentration non-UK academics within …
Ethnicity and Academia: Closure Models, Racism Models and Market Models
The paper addresses racism, discrimination, equal opportunities policies, institutional cultures, and the pressures of markets in influencing the position of minority ethnic groups in academia. The representation and position of minority ethnic groups among academic staff in UK higher education has previously been little studied. Data from the Higher Education Statistical Agency records and from new surveys are presented and analysed. Representat…
Self-assessed health, economic status and ethnic origin
In the Bristol Black and Ethnic Minority Groups Health Survey more than 500 interviews were completed. The study made it possible to measure the health status of a range of groups. The interview schedule was translated into seven languages; the main groups interviewed were ‘Indian’, ‘Pakistani’ and ‘Black Caribbean’. Ethnic groups differ from each other quite markedly in socio‐economic profile, and within any given ethnic group there is different…
New Ethnicities, Old Racisms
New Ethnicities, Old Racisms. Phil Cohen, ed. New York: St. Martins Press, 1999. vii + 243 pp., tables, figures, appendix, index
Race relations’ in the sociological enterprise (a review article)
Anthony Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory, Heinemann, London, 1977. E. C. Cuff and G. C. F. Payne, Perspectives in Sociology, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1977
How global is the UK academic labour market
One of the themes of the recent sociology of higher education has been the globalisation of knowledge and the professional transfer of scientists and researchers. In this paper we show how these transfers of people and knowledge are disproportionately characteristic of: (a) some institutions; and (b) some cost centres. We argue that universities form part of an international labour market for high skilled workers in prestige institutions. However…
Race, class and underclass (A review article)
John Rex and Sally Tomlinson, Colonial Immigrants in a British City, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, pp. 357, £4.95 p.b
Race, Class and Power
Books
The Urban Programme and snark‐hunting John Edwards and Richard Batley, The Politics of Positive Discrimination. Tavistock Publications, 1978, 287 pp., £9.95. Politics and race in Britain Robert Miles and Annie Phizacklea, Racism and Political Action in Britain, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1979, £3.75. The police and the public Peter Hain (ed.), Derek Humphrey, Brian Rose‐Smith, Policing the Police Vol. 1. Platform Books, 1979, 192pp., £2.95…
Haoles and Hawaiians: Ethnicity in the mid‐Pacific
(1979). Haoles and Hawaiians: Ethnicity in the mid‐Pacific. New Community: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 262-271
Race relations’ in the sociological enterprise (a review article)
Anthony Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory, Heinemann, London, 1977. E. C. Cuff and G. C. F. Payne, Perspectives in Sociology, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1977
Robert Park: His life and his sociological imagination (a review article)
W. Raushenbush, Robert E. Park: Biography of a Sociologist, Duke University Press, Durham, N. Carolina. 1979
Books
’Black second banana’ demands access to the media. Bernard Rubin (ed.). Small Voices and Great Trumpets : Minorities and the Media, Praeger, 1980, h.b. £ 16, p.b. £6.50, 295pp. From California to Jonestown ‐ the Naipaulean anti‐myth Shiva Naipaul, Black and White, Hamish Hamilton, 1980, £8.50, 215pp. Excluded Asians and returned rebels Hugh Johnson, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada's Colour Bar, Oxford University Pres…
Race and ethnicity: Perspectives, myths, revivals (a special review section)
Images of race in children's books Roy Preiswerk (ed.), The Slant of the Pen: Racism in Children's Books. World Council of Churches, Geneva, 1980. xvii + 154 pp
Race relations in the US: A deviant case (a review article)
Janet Sharp Hermann, The Pursuit of a Dream, Oxford University Press, 1981, £10.50,290 pp. Lawrence E. Gary (ed.), Black Men, Sage, Beverley Hills and London, 1981, £15.50 h.b., £6.50 p.b. Benjamin P. Bowser, Raymond G, Hunt (eds.), Impacts of Racism on White Americans, Sage, Beverley Hills and London, 1981, £ 15.50 h.b., £6.50 p.b., 288 pp. A. Russel Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, Clio Press, Oxford, 1981, £12.50, 148 pp. Elizabeth J…
Multi-something' education
Books
Indian jigsaw Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children. Jonathan Cape, 1981. £6.95, 446 pp. Third world predicaments Nuruddin Farah, Sardines. Alison and Busby, London, 1981, 250 pp, £7.95. Of servitude and tragedy Roy A. K. Heath, Genetha, Allison & Busby, 1981, 186 pp, £6.50 hb, £2.95 pb. The Murderer, Allison & Busby, 190 pp, £4.95 hb, £2.50 pb. George Lamming, Of Age and Innocence, Allison & Busby, 1981, 412 pp, £3.50 pb. The Emigrants, Allison & …
Books
Immigration rules: Interpretation and critique Lawrence Grant and Ian Martin, Immigration Law and Practice, The Cobden Trust, London, 1982. £18.00p. Race, politics and policing David Cowell, Trevor Jones and Jock Young, Policing the Riots, Junction Books, London, 1982. 172 pp. Robert Baldwin and Richard Kinsey, Police Powers and Politics, Quartet Books, London, 1982. 309 pp. Policing in Handsworth John Brown, Policing by Multi‐Racial Consent: The…
Race, class and underclass (A review article)
John Rex and Sally Tomlinson, Colonial Immigrants in a British City, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, pp. 357, £4.95 p.b
Short reviews
Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and R. C. Lewontin, NOT IN OUR GENES: BIOLOGY, IDEOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1984, 240 pp., £3.95. R. J. May (ed.), MICRONATIONALIST MOVEMENTS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA (Political and Social Change Monograph 1), Canberra, Australian National University, 1982, xii 486 pp., $A9.50. D. P. Crook, BENJAMIN KIDD: PORTRAIT OF A SOCIAL DARWINIST, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, vii + 460 pp., £30. Er…
Durkheim and Modern Sociology
Implementation of Social Goals in Labour Market Policy: The Case of Black Youth, Equal Opportunities and the Youth Training Scheme
The research reported briefly in this article attempted to explore further the relationship between the implementation of social goals in employment policy, the operation of segmentation in the labour market, and the fate of members of so-called ‘ethnic minorities’ in the labour market. Previous research had suggested that social goals in labour market policy were very difficult to defend against the power of economic efficiency criteria, which s…
Durkheim and Modern Sociology
Short reviews
Anthony D. Smith, THE ETHNIC ORIGINS OF NATIONS, Basil Blackwell, 1986, xviii + 312pp. £25. Barry Troyna and Jenny Williams, RACISM, EDUCATION AND THE STATE, Croom Helm, 1986, 138 pp., £6.95 Madan Sarup, THE POLITICS OF MULTIRACIAL EDUCATION, Routledge, 1986, 140 pp., £6.95. Elvi Whittaker, THE MAINLAND HAOLE: THE WHITE EXPERIENCE IN HAWAII. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, 223 pp., $25 Silvia Pedraza‐Bailey. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC MIGR…
Ethnicity beyond Compare
Health, work and growing old: The Afro-Caribbean experience
(1988). Health, work and growing old: The Afro‐Caribbean experience. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: Vol. 14, Special Section: Cities in Transition: A Comparison of Ethnic Minorities in London and New York, pp. 426-443
Books
Duncan Forbes, Action on Racial Harassment: Legal Remedies and Local Authorities London: Legal Action Group and London Housing Unit, 1988, 308 pp., £10 p.b. Hondon B. Hargrove, Black Union Soldiers in the Civil War London: McFarland/Folkestone: Bailey Bros & Swinfen Ltd., 1989, 250 pp., £17.20 h.b. Robert Miles, Racism London: Routledge, 1988, 175 pp., £8.95 p.b. Kayleen M. Hazlehurst, Ivory Scales: Black Australians and the Law Kensington: New S…
Self-assessed health, economic status and ethnic origin
In the Bristol Black and Ethnic Minority Groups Health Survey more than 500 interviews were completed. The study made it possible to measure the health status of a range of groups. The interview schedule was translated into seven languages; the main groups interviewed were ‘Indian’, ‘Pakistani’ and ‘Black Caribbean’. Ethnic groups differ from each other quite markedly in socio‐economic profile, and within any given ethnic group there is different…
Culture, relativism and the expression of mental distress: South Asian women in Britain
Social anthropology and medical anthropology have presented a challenge to the belief that there are universal categories of mental illness. A relativist position would suggest that there are as many categories of mental health (or physical health) as there are languages and culture in which they are expressed. Intermediate arguments suggest that there may be common elements in ideas of mental illness but that cultural expression of syndromes may…
Ethnicity
Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change
Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change
Sociology (53 works) · Political science (36 works) · Gender Studies (28 works) · Law (27 works) · Ethnic group (24 works) · Anthropology (23 works) · Politics (20 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Law (13 works) · Gender Studies (12 works)