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The article attempts to advance a definition of proletarianism which will allow the reader to grasp the precise nature of the process with particular reference to the economic and technical aspects. Proletarianisation is identified with a loss of the work of supervision and management, congruents of the work experience of the new middle class. This is followed by a critique of some current notions of proletarianisation as evidenced in the study of clerical labour. Finally, the article discusses proletarianisation in experiential terms.

Public health decisions are often based on short-term demands rather than long-term study, and policies & programs are sometimes developed from anecdotal evidence. To enhance evidence-based practice, this book provides practical guidance on the methodology and evaluation of such programs & policies.

One -- 1 Introduction: Sociology and Engineering -- 2 Engineering and the Social Process -- 3 Engineering and the British Economic Problem -- 4 The British Economy in Context -- 5 The Legal and Political Context of Engineering -- Two -- 6 Engineering Education -- 7 Theories of Work Motivation and Job Satisfaction -- 8 The Colleagues of the Engineer -- 9 The Organization and Experience of Engineering -- 10 Engineers, Professional Associations and Trade Unions -- 11 Engineering Work: The Division of Labour -- 12 Conclusions -- References -- Authorlndex.

The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are still working through health systems worldwide, and further reflections about the nature of health and disease, and about how to design and implement effective public health interventions are much needed. For numerous diseases and conditions, as well as for COVID-19, our knowledge base is rich. We know a lot about the biology of the disease, and we have plenty of statistics that relate health to socio-economic factors. In this paper, we argue that we need to add a third dimension to this knowledge base, namely a thorough description of the lifeworld of health and disease, in terms of the mixed biosocial mechanisms that operate in it. We present the concepts of lifeworld and of mixed mechanisms, and then illustrate how they can be operationalised and measured through mixed methodologies that combine qualitative and quantitative approaches. Finally, we explain the complementarity of our approach with the biological and statistical dimensions of health and disease for the design of public health interventions.

AbstractResearch in the health sciences has been highly successful in revealing the aetiologies of many morbidities, particularly those involving the microbiology of communicable disease. This success has helped form a narrative to be found in numerous public health documents, about interventions to reduce the burden of non‐communicable diseases (e.g., obesity or alcohol related pathologies). These focus on tackling the purported pathogenic factors causing the diseases as a means of prevention. In this paper, we argue that this approach has been sub‐optimal. The mechanisms of aetiology and of prevention are sometimes significantly different and failure to make this distinction has hindered efforts at preventing non‐communicable diseases linked to diet, exercise and alcohol consumption. We propose a sociological approach as an alternative based on social practice theory. (A virtual abstract for this paper can be found at:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_979cmCmR9rLrKuD7z0ycA).

This article outlines a set of methodological, theoretical, and other issues relating to the conduct of good outcome studies. The article begins by considering the contribution of evidence-based medicine to the methodology of outcome research. The lessons which can be applied in outcome studies in nonmedical settings are described. The article then examines the role of causal pathways between interventions and outcomes and especially the importance of delineating them in advance of undertaking investigations. The development of designs based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with fully articulated causal pathways is described. Ways of supplementing RCTs with methods to highlight elements in the causal pathway in outcome studies are indicated. The importance of adhering to best practice in reporting and analysis is also noted.

The paper analyzes autobiographical accounts of the experience of chronic illness and its treatment to develop a sociological theory of the self. It is suggested that 'self' is not a biologistic or psychologistic thing. Rather self is autobiographical narrative – hence the narrative self. It is argued that four elements constitute such narrative selves in autobiographical discourse: evaluative relationships between events in time; cosmology; power relationships; and conceptualisation of self as object.

The earliest human societies relied for their subsistence on the hunting of animals and the gathering of food. The small bands of people who lived together pursuing these activities appear to have been the prototype of all human organisation. Hunting and gathering was the predominant type of social organisation until perhaps 12,000 years ago. Tools and weapons were not made of metal till around 4,000 B.C., the plough was not in use until about a thousand years later, and iron tools and weapons were not used until around 1,000 B.C. (Lenski and Lenski, 1978). The history of the human race has been intextricably bound up with that of engineering when this is very broadly defined as the making of tools and other contrivances as aids and adjuncts to life. From the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages at one end of human experience to the Steam, Jet, Atomic and Computer Ages at the other, technical‐engineering achievements have defined and delimited whatever is possible for human beings. Thus throughout the long historical transition from a predominantly agricultural to a predominantly industrial society engineers, or rather anyone whose principal activity was making and tinkering with three‐ dimensional artefacts, played a crucial role.

AbstractWhat are the historical conditions under which a sociologically informed understanding of health inequality can emerge in the public sphere? We seek to address this question through the lens of a strategically chosen historical puzzle—the stubborn persistence of and salient variation in high infant mortality rates across British industrial towns at the dawn of the previous century—as analysed by Arthur Newsholme, the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board. In doing so, we retrace the historical processes through which the evolving public health movement gradually helped crystallise a scientific understanding of the social causes of excess mortality. We map the dominant ideology of the public sphere at the time, chart the shifting roles of the state, and retrace the historical origins and emergence of 'public health' as a distinctive category of state policy and public discourse. We situate the public health movement in this historical configuration and identify the cracks in the existing ideological and administrative edifice through which this movement was able to articulate a novel approach to population health—one that spotlights the political economy of social inequality. We relate this historical sequence to the rise of industrial capitalism, the social fractures that it spawned, and the organised counter‐movements that it necessitated.

AbstractIn this article we argue that social practices, which consist of sayings and doings that extend across space and time, generate and sustain distinctive patterns of microbial interaction. In taking this approach, we position practice theory within and not outside the realm of contemporary biological processes, including processes that matter for human health. In working towards this conclusion, we show how categories and distinctions (e.g. between communicable and non-communicable disease) are embedded in medical responses and in the lives of potentially harmful bacteria like Helicobacter Pylori. Our next step is to explain how social practices engender patterns of cohabitation, interaction and mutual adaptation between microbes within and beyond the body, processes we illustrate with reference to anti-microbial resistance. The conclusion that human and microbial coexistence is, in various ways, defined by the lives of social practices provides an important bridge between the social and natural sciences and a starting point from which to approach fundamental questions about the dynamics of biosocial becoming, and the part that public policies play in these processes.

This article is concerned with a description of the way in which a small group of Civil Service trade unionists attempted to participate in the 1981 pay campaign by the British Civil Service trade unions. The problems faced by the group are analysed and the group members' experiences of their activity explored.