Richard Jenkins
Biographic Data
| ID | 3621992 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Jenkins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Jenkins |
| SIGNATURE | JENKINS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 89 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 965 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 87 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1952 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Wisdom Lives in our Communities: A Story of Learning and Reciprocity through the Feast Centre’s Community Fellowship Program
In the Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research’s Community Fellowship Program, wisdom is not something extracted from communities, but something that breathes within them—held in stories, carried in relationships, and shared in the spaces where Elders, Knowledge Holders, and community researchers gather. This paper shares the journey of the program as a living circle of reciprocity, where learning flows in many directions. Fellows bring the kn…
Pierre Bourdieu
This short critical introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s thought has been comprehensively brought up to date for the third edition. Where Bourdieu’s own writings are often complex, even ambiguous, Richard Jenkins is direct, concise and to the point. Emphasising Bourdieu’s contributions to sociological and anthropological epistemology, Jenkins also deals in detail with Bourdieu's substantive studies of education, social stratification, cultural consu…
The Unfortunate Rake’s Progress: A Case Study of the Construction of Folklore by Collectors and Scholars
This lecture explores the history of the British and Irish song family widely known as the ‘Unfortunate Rake’—which includes North American songs such as ‘Streets of Laredo’—from its earliest identification in 1911. Focusing on the contributions of Phillips Barry, Alan Lomax, and A. L. Lloyd, three widely-accepted elements of the folkloristic narrative about these songs are shown to be dubious, if not incorrect: first, the name itself, ‘The Unfor…
Ethnicity
The ancient Greek word ethnos , the root of “ethnicity,” referred to people living and acting together in a manner that we might apply to a people or a nation: a collectivity with a way of life – some manners and mores, practices and purposes – in common, whose members share something in terms of culture. Thus, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries , the anthropologist Fredrik Barth defined ethnicity as “the social organization of culture difference.” …
Fredrik Barth: An Ethnographer's Ethnographer and a Theorist's Theorist
Ethnicity: Anthropological Aspects
Black Magic and Bogeymen: Fear, Rumour and Popular Belief in Northern Ireland 1972-74
Pierre Bourdieu
Social Identity
Social Identity explains how identification, seen as a social process, works: individually, interactionally and institutionally. Building on the international success of previous editions, this fourth edition offers a concise, comprehensive and readable critical introduction to social science theories of identity for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates. All the chapters have been updated, and extra new material has been added where relevant…
Time to move beyond boundary making
Wimmer's Ethnic Boundary Making is a major contribution to constructivist thinking about how ethnicity works. However, it is time to move beyond the default focus on differentiation, and to think more critically about a number of important issues. These include the unclear ontological status of boundaries, and the importance of affect and identification with co-ethnics in the generation of ethnic solidarity
Pierre Bourdieu
This short critical introduction to Pierre Bourdieu's thought is a model of clarity and insight. Where Bourdieu's own writings are often complex, even ambiguous, Richard Jenkins is direct, concise and to the point. He emphasizes Bourdieu's contributions to theory and methodology while also dealing in detail with his substantive studies of education, social stratification and culture. His book provides the best short English-language introduction …
Contact, trust and social capital in Northern Ireland: A Qualitative Study of Three Mixed Communities
n In a recent paper, Robert Putnam (2007) challenges the contact hypothesis by arguing that ethnic diversity causes people to `hunker down? and essentially withdraw themselves from society. Drawing on qualitative data collected from three mixed communities in Northern Ireland, this paper explores the extent and quality of contact experienced by Protestants and Catholics in their everyday lives. Themes emerging from our data are generally consiste…
Questions of Competence: Culture, Classification and Intellectual Disability
Special Issue: Sexual Acquisition and Transmission of HIV Cooperative Agreement Program (SATHCAP), July 2009
Social Identity
Without social identity there is no society, because without such frameworks of similarity and difference people would be unable to relate to each other in a consistent and meaningful fashion. Richard Jenkins provides a clearly-written accessible introduction to this key concept for the study of society. Arguing that social identity must be seen as both individual and collective, Jenkins shows how the work of major theorists from Mead to Bourdieu…
The Ambiguity of Europe
This paper takes its starting point in the public discourse, of politicians and academics, that suggests that Europe, specifically the European Union, is suffering from a ‘crisis of identity’. This is believed to stem from the recent enlargements, the pending ‘problem of Turkey’, and disarray over the European Constitution. This issue is addressed in two ways: first, through an exploration of the main current models and meanings of ‘Europe’, and …
Erving Goffman: A major theorist of power
This article argues that Erving Goffman's interactional sociology offers many useful insights into what power is and how it actually works, and that in addition to his other reputations we ought to think of Goffman as a significant theorist of power. A critical Goffmanian approach potentially allows us to comprehend the normal, diffuse ubiquity of power while according full recognition to the practices of individuals, whether self‐conscious or ha…
Rethinking Ethnicity
The author suggests that a major weakness of established usages is that they fail to take serious account of the local, cultural context of ethnic identity. Drawing on case studies, he shows the everyday social construction of national identity
Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America
1. Some Questions About Flags 2. The Origin of European National Flags 3. Rebel With(Out) a Cause?: The Contested Meanings of the Confederate Battle Flag in the American South 4. The Star-Spangled Banner and 'Whiteness' in American National Identity 5. Union Jacks and Union Jills 6. Pride and Possession, Display and Destruction 7. Between the National and the Civic: Flagging Peace In, or a Piece of, Northern Ireland? 8. Inarticulate Speech of the…
The Transformations of Biddy Early: From Local Reports of Magical Healing to Globalised New Age Fantasies
The literatures dealing with legends and vernacular narratives, on the one hand, and collective memory, on the other, are rarely brought to bear on each other. Following a discussion of the classificatory focus of the legend literature, and the lack of agreement about classification in that literature, this paper draws on the collective memory literature to suggest a focus on process. In particular, it suggests that we should pay attention to a h…
Pierre Bourdieu
This short critical introduction to the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu is a model of clarity and insight. Where Bourdieu's original writings are often densely argued and ambiguous, Richard Jenkins is direct, concise and to the point. He emphasises Bourdieu's contirbutions to the theory and methodology while also dealing in detail with his substantive studies of education, social stratification and culture. His book provides the best short English-l…
When Politics and Social Theory Converge: Group Identification and Group Rights in Northern Ireland
How we conceptualize ethno-national groups is fundamental to understanding changing ethno-national identification and to political debates about identity-based collective rights. This article examines these issues in Northern Ireland, in the context of the Bill of Rights proposed by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Rejecting Brubaker's arguments that ethno-national groups are not "real," this article argues that what matters in Northern Ireland is…
Telling the forest from the trees: Local images of national change in a Danish town
How can ethnographers see the 'big picture', while they are busy with everyday minutiae? Awareness of the local impacts of history and globalisation has revived debates about the pragmatics of fieldwork. Arguing that most fieldwork remains, for most practitioners, 'local', this paper explores how it is possible to apprehend change ethnographically. Something of how local people understand and experience change, as it happens to them and around th…
The place of theory: John Rex's contribution to the sociological study of ethnicity and 'race
Social Identity
Without social identity there is no human world. Without frameworks of similarity and difference, people would be unable to relate to each other in a consistent and meaningful fashion. In the second edition of this highly successful text, Richard Jenkins develops his argument that identity is both individual and collective, and should therefore be considered within one analytic framework. Using the work of major social theorists, such as Mead Gof…
Rethinking ethnicity: Identity, categorization and power
This article argues that ethnic identity is to be understood and theorized as an example of social identity in general and that externally-located processes of social categorization are enormously influential in the production and reproduction of social identities. However, much research concerned with ethnicity, particularly social anthropological research, inspired, whether directly or indirectly, by Barth's Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, has co…
Rethinking Ethnicity
The author suggests that a major weakness of established usages is that they fail to take serious account of the local, cultural context of ethnic identity. Drawing on case studies, he shows the everyday social construction of national identity
Categorization: Identity, Social Process and Epistemology
Categorization is central to all classification and knowledge. It is also central to sociology. With respect to social identity - the classification of humans - it is defined as the identification of others (in contrast to self- and group identification). Social identification, involving both similarity and difference, is constituted in a dialectical interplay between internal and external identification. The latter is categorization. The impact …
Pierre Bourdieu and the Reproduction of Determinism
This paper is an attempt to critically examine the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu. His theoretical model is rooted in the attempt to dialectically transcend the opposition between objectivism and subjectivism. However, since his scheme remains essentially deterministic and circular - objective structures produce culture, which determines practice, which reproduces those objective structures-this project necessarily fails. The effect of Bourdieu…
Disability and Social Stratification
This paper suggests that, for a variety of reasons, the sociology of social stratification--and, as a consequence, mainstream sociology more generally--has neglected the topic of disability. Using material drawn from a range of sources, it is argued that disability is related in definite ways to social class. Further, it is also argued that disability must be considered as a factor contributing to the production and reproduction of stratification…
Hearts and Minds, Water and Fish: Support for the IRA and Inla in a Northern Irish Ghetto
Erving Goffman: A major theorist of power
This article argues that Erving Goffman's interactional sociology offers many useful insights into what power is and how it actually works, and that in addition to his other reputations we ought to think of Goffman as a significant theorist of power. A critical Goffmanian approach potentially allows us to comprehend the normal, diffuse ubiquity of power while according full recognition to the practices of individuals, whether self‐conscious or ha…
Ethnicityetcetera: Social anthropological points of view
This article draws upon Barth and Geertz to offer a general anthropological model of ethnicity which emphasizes cultural differentiation constructed in the course of social interaction; which understands ethnicity as neither fixed nor unchanging; and which views ethnic identity as collective and individual, external and internal. Three main areas of anthropological debate are discussed: the primordiality versus instrumentality debate; the relatio…
Negotiating Identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor, and Social Drama in Northern Ireland
Negotiating identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor, and Social Drama in Northern Ireland. Anthony D. Buckley and Mary C. Kenny. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. + 270 pp., figures, notes, bibliography, index
Time to move beyond boundary making
Wimmer's Ethnic Boundary Making is a major contribution to constructivist thinking about how ethnicity works. However, it is time to move beyond the default focus on differentiation, and to think more critically about a number of important issues. These include the unclear ontological status of boundaries, and the importance of affect and identification with co-ethnics in the generation of ethnic solidarity
In the present tense: Time, identification and human nature
To have personal and collective pasts and to posit individual and collective futures are aspects of what it means to be human. Our past is who we have been, and the future is fundamental to imagining who we will become. However, in order to have either past or future we need a stable present, the space of our everyday lives. In contrast to one understanding of time, I want to suggest that `the present' is a substantial and relatively unproblemati…
Information in the Labour Market: The Impact of Recession
Contact, trust and social capital in Northern Ireland: A Qualitative Study of Three Mixed Communities
n In a recent paper, Robert Putnam (2007) challenges the contact hypothesis by arguing that ethnic diversity causes people to `hunker down? and essentially withdraw themselves from society. Drawing on qualitative data collected from three mixed communities in Northern Ireland, this paper explores the extent and quality of contact experienced by Protestants and Catholics in their everyday lives. Themes emerging from our data are generally consiste…
Party Location and Party Support: Unpacking Competing Models
This article assesses the relative power of proximity and directional models in explaining party evaluation in 1993 and 1997 Canadian Election Study data. We first nest the competing models in an encompassing framework and then test the models under alternative representations of party location, where these alternatives lie at the heart of the debate. Fixing party locations at sample means favors directional outcomes, while allowing them to vary …
Ireland from Below: Social Change and Local Communities
How Campaigns Matter in Canada: Priming and Learning as Explanations for the Reform Party's 1993 Campaign Success
The 1993 Canadian election campaign clearly mattered; the fortunes of the Conservative and Reform parties underwent a fundamental re-orientation during the campaign. Previous research has indicated that Reform's success in 1993 was related to the activation of people who were opposed to the welfare state, but this represents only one dimension of Reform's appeal. This article examines the effect of issues on Reform support during the campaign and…
The Myth of the Hidden Economy: Towards a New Understanding of Informal Economic Activity
The Ambiguity of Europe
This paper takes its starting point in the public discourse, of politicians and academics, that suggests that Europe, specifically the European Union, is suffering from a ‘crisis of identity’. This is believed to stem from the recent enlargements, the pending ‘problem of Turkey’, and disarray over the European Constitution. This issue is addressed in two ways: first, through an exploration of the main current models and meanings of ‘Europe’, and …
She Has Different Fits to Me: How people with learning difficulties see themselves
People with learning difficulties often appear to experience significant incongruence between their categorical identity as someone with learning difficulties and their self-identity. This paper draws on research undertaken with 60 young adults, and their parents or carers to examine the nature of that incongruence. We conclude that it is based almost entirely in discursive relationships, whereas experiential and power relationships promote incor…
The place of theory: John Rex's contribution to the sociological study of ethnicity and 'race
Nations and Nationalisms: Towards More Open Models
Starting from the proposition that nationalism is bound up with ethnicity, Barth's view that ethnicity is defined by actors and that ethnicities are situationally variable is drawn upon to argue that narrow definitions of nationalism – as a specifically modem political ideology which is bound up with the nation‐state – overstate their case. Instead of nationalism we should be talking about nationalisms, which can only be understood in their local…
Countering Prejudice - Anthropological and Otherwise
The Sectarian Divide in Northern Ireland Today
Understanding Northern Ireland
ALL the best news is bad news. That has been particularly true with respect to Northern Ireland and 'the troubles'. From being a relatively obscure almost Ruritanian backwater of the British Isles prior to 1968, the Province has generated a vast amount of journalistic, political and academic analysis in the last fifteen years. The books under review here are a small sample of the recent additions to this literature. Reviewing a collection of pape…
Social Skills, Social Research Skills, Sociological Skills: Teaching Reflexivity
La formation aux methodes de recherche tient une place centrale dans l'enseignement des sciences sociales. Pourtant bien que les competences sociales et les competences communicatives soient epistemologiquement essentielles a la reussite d'une recherche, elles ne sont pas abordees lors des enseignements methodologiques. L'A. developpe ses arguments en faveur d'une prise en compte de ces competences et en discute les implications
Pierre Bourdieu
Shorter Notices
Pierre Bourdieu and the Reproduction of Determinism
This paper is an attempt to critically examine the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu. His theoretical model is rooted in the attempt to dialectically transcend the opposition between objectivism and subjectivism. However, since his scheme remains essentially deterministic and circular - objective structures produce culture, which determines practice, which reproduces those objective structures-this project necessarily fails. The effect of Bourdieu…
Shorter Notices
The Ethnic Phenomenon
Information in the Labour Market: The Impact of Recession
Ethnic communities in business: Strategies for Economic Survival
Acceptability, Suitability and the Search for the Habituated Worker: How Ethnic Minorities and Women Lose Out
In this article I intend to investigate the meaning of recruitment for managers in the manufacturing, retailing and public service employment sectors in the West Midlands. In particular I shall examine two specific problems. First, what are recruiters looking for in selecting candidates for manual and routine clerical jobs? Secondly, why do organisations persist in the use of informal, word‐of‐mouth recruitment strategies? In closing I shall disc…
The New Working Class? White Collar Workers and Their Organizations: A Reader
Understanding Northern Ireland
ALL the best news is bad news. That has been particularly true with respect to Northern Ireland and 'the troubles'. From being a relatively obscure almost Ruritanian backwater of the British Isles prior to 1968, the Province has generated a vast amount of journalistic, political and academic analysis in the last fifteen years. The books under review here are a small sample of the recent additions to this literature. Reviewing a collection of pape…
Lads, Citizens, and Ordinary Kids: Working-Class Youth Life-Styles in Belfast
Accounts and Action: Surrey Conference on Sociological Theory and Method 1
School Leavers and Their Prospects: Youth and the Labour Market in the 1980s
Race' and Ethnicity: Some Recent Publications
Ethnic Communities in Business: Strategies for Economic Survival
Contributors Preface Part I. The Context of Ethnic Business: 1. Ethnic business development in Britain: opportunities and resources Gerald Mars and Robin Ward 2. Small entrepreneurs in contemporary Europe Jeremy Boissevain 3. Small business vulnerability, ethnic enclaves and ethnic enterprise Ellen Auster and Howard Aldrich Part II. Diversity in Ethnic Business: 4. Ethnicity and the rise of capitalism in Ulster Richard Jenkins 5. The development …
The Formation of Craft Labor Markets
The Politics of Ethnicity
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Countering Prejudice - Anthropological and Otherwise
The Sectarian Divide in Northern Ireland Today
Youth, Maturation and Ageing: The 1988 ASA Conference
The Ethnic Origins of Nations
Short reviews
Wayne Patterson, THE KOREAN FRONTIER IN AMERICA, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 1988 Ivan Light and Edna Bonacich, IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS: KOREANS IN LOS ANGELES, 1965–1982, Berkeley, Calif.: University of Califoria Press, 1988. Pyong Gap Min, ETHNIC BUSINESS ENTERPRISE: KOREAN SMALL BUSINESS IN ATLANTA, New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1988. Louis‐Jacques Dorais, Lise Pilon‐Le and Nguyen Huy, EXILE IN A COLD LAND: A VIETNAMESE COMM…
Rural Aristocracy in Northern Ireland
Language, Symbolic Power and Communication: Bourdieu's Homo Academicus
Ireland from Below: Social Change and Local Communities
Sociology (70 works) · Political science (36 works) · Philosophy (31 works) · Law (29 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · Anthropology (26 works) · Law (24 works) · History (21 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Ethnic group (19 works)