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The book describes the English school, especially the secondary school, as a hierarchical community in which the head-teacher (principal) is an autocratic ruler. After explaining how that particular organisation of the school developed historically from the market situation faced by the English public (i.e. private) schools in the developing industrial society of the nineteenth century it provides empirical evidence demonstrating that the hierarchies of knowledge, teachers and students that developed then were still in place when the book was published in 1975. They are still present today. It

Conflict in Northern Ireland in August 1969 is seen as a consequence of the type and patterning of social relationships in that society. Social relations are personal and patterned primarily by the categories of Protestant and Catholic which are ascribed at birth. This patterning results in communities of Catholics and communities of Protestants. These communities form `congregations' in the `churches' of Republicanism and Loyalism respectively. Conflict between communities has two effects. First, it serves to clearly delineate the physical, social, and symbolic boundaries between communities. Second, it creates conditions conducive to the growth of `political sects' based on the `congregations' which may conflict with each other, sometimes violently, even though they belong to the same `church'.

Research among students with physical and sensory disabilities who have succeeded in continuing their education at post‐compulsory level as far as higher education, revealed that they have a high level of perceived personal control. This is strongly linked with educational attainment irrespective of severity of disability. The emphasis of these students upon self‐help groups, and institutional response to student needs within a discourse of rights, rather than of welfare, has lessons for equity policy and practice with respect to other disadvantaged groups. The wider implications of intervention strategies and compensation programs which label and further marginalise members of disadvantaged groups are explored in the paper, in the context of the social construction of categories of disadvantage and difference, the analysis of competing discourses and social trends of individualisation and globalisation.

AbstractThrough a detailed analysis of a Guild Day ceremony in early modern England we demonstrate that liminal points in this ritual are interrelated to form a "pattern" or "dance" of liminal pulsations. We argue it is the felt necessity, on the part of participants, to complete that pattern that provides a dynamic to any ritual event. It impels participants to continue the ritual to its conclusion and leads them to resist any interference with the "flow" of the ritual. "Flow", we assert, is thusbothan interior state of participantsandan exterior social characteristic of a ritual. It is created by the structuring of liminal points in a ritual, the liminal pulsations, but it achieves its dynamic by affecting the interior states of participants so that they feel impelled to "close off" the ritual and complete it.