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Our dependence on energy from fossil fuels is causing potentially disastrous global warming and posing fundamental questions about the commensurability of consumer capitalism and a sustainable society. UK and Scottish governments have taken a lead in climate change legislation intended to avoid worst-case scenarios through low carbon transition. There are, however, considerable uncertainties about whether individualized, market-driven, materialistic societies can manage such radical transformations. Policies to cut household emissions focus on behaviour change through social marketing and incremental modifications to consumption. This technocratic model produces very little societal change, and seems likely to be self-defeating. The framing of the problem as one of behavioural adjustments to individual self-interest obscures alternative understandings of society as a collective accomplishment. Through simultaneous 'knowing and not knowing' about unsustainable consumerism, a behavioural model allows governing to proceed, while marginalizing awkward questions about the contradictions between economic growth and low carbon transitions.

This article brings together research on political consumerism, social movements and markets to analyse the phenomenon of fair trade coffee. It does this to demonstrate the influence of organised consumers in shaping markets, and to show that people are not inevitably individualised and seduced by the power of corporate marketing. The case of fair trade coffee is used because of the pivotal role of coffee in the global economy. 'Organised consumers' are treated as comprised of three inter-connecting, fluid, components: an activist core, responsible for building the campaign and its alternative trade networks; a widely dispersed alliance of civil society and social movement organisations, articulating the connections between trade justice, human rights and wellbeing; and an 'outer edge' of quasi-organised consumers acting as part of a largely imagined group by using economic capital to express cultural and political values. Despite saturated markets, and oligopoly among suppliers in a highly rationalised supply chain, such consumer movements have been instrumental in an emerging new trade paradigm, which has influenced the business and product strategies of trans-national corporations. The creation, and rising sales, of Fair Trade products are evidence of the role of consumers as sceptical actors, challenging consumerism and the ethics of a supply chain which impoverishes coffee farmers. Although the future trajectories of fair trade campaigns and products are uncertain, their growth indicates that people continue to draw on sources of social identity beyond that of 'consumer'.

The article examines the inter-relations between self-identity and organizational change in advanced capitalist societies characterized by deregulation of markets, privatization and globalizing economic relations. It compares two contrasting perspectives on selfhood: the reflexive self (Giddens, 1991) and the corroded self (Sennett, 1998). Giddens suggests that contemporary organizations, rather than eroding meaning, offer a greater degree of choice about self-identity, and enhance reflexivity and agency. Sennett suggests that new economic forms are corrosive of character and social relations. Using examples from predominantly British data, it is argued that both accounts offer relevant insights into the interplay between selfhood and organizations, but that each overstates their case. Giddens offers a persuasive account of the choice and voluntarism characterizing self-identity for at least a proportion of the population. His account of the 'project of the self', however, contributes to an ideology of the flexible, commodified self, and an overly inflated sense of the potential for individualized self-growth. Sennett over-emphasizes the extent of change in organization and employment relations, at least in the British case, but points to the damaging effects of an ideology of individualism, to which Giddens' model of the self as project potentially contributes. The article argues that short-termism is not the most damaging element of contemporary organization practices. Instead increased instrumentalism on the part of employers results in the experience of increased responsibility without meaningful discretion and authority. The gap between employers' promises to empower people at work and the experience of greater burdens and uncertain prospects has negative consequences for trust and morale. In conclusion, it is suggested that character is not necessarily undermined by such dynamics: encountering the limits of self-determination, reflexivity and individualism provides the material for critique of new economic forms, as evidenced by public concern with issues of care and mutual dependence.

The paper describes the current employment patterns of men and women in local government in Scotland, Wales and England, and examines the gender relations of work during a period of restructuring which is challenging the professionalised welfare bureaucracy and replacing it with a managerialised state informed by market principles. Men are declining as a percentage of employees, alongside decreasing numbers of full-time jobs and increasing part-time and temporary contracts, suggesting some decrease in the relative desirability of public service employment. Nevertheless the challenges to traditional conceptions of paternalistic, bureaucratic welfare have facilitated women's increasing access to professional and managerial grades, but men have continued to dominate most positions of power and authority. The continuing gender divisions of labour, and women's perceptions of a sharper axis of gender conflict surrounding the period of reorganisation into single tier authorities in Scotland and Wales, suggest that it is not simply a matter of time until a rational, functional state eradicates remaining inequalities between the sexes. Neither however can a radical feminist perspective, which treats the state as bound to reproduce women's subordination, account for the degree of progressive change. Instead it is argued that there is genuine indeterminacy in the restructuring process, which, given women's representation and participation, seems likely to disrupt further the legacy of patriarchal relations informing the trajectory of state bureaucracies.

This paper offers a critique of the argument that the category of `work' is no longer useful in theories of society and suggests that sociology needs to be able to explain why work is not in fact being decommodified, and why the new middle classes appear unable to offer substantive challenge to alienated work and the instrumentalism of modern societies. The central focus of the paper is an examination of the extent to which public service work is subject to processes of rationalisation and degradation. Qualitative data, on the restructuring of local government, illustrates the argument. Senior officers' responses to the double-edged requirement of justifying and implementing reforms, according to a cost-quality rhetoric, are explored. The paper asks to what extent the trust relationship, embodied in the service class contract, is eroded by market principles. It suggests that divisions are emerging within the public service class between the entrepreneurial `strategists' and the welfare professionals. It assesses the extent to which public servants continue to engage critically with processes of rationalisation and suggests that conservatism and defensiveness may be the predominant responses, particularly if expectations raised by devolution and democratic renewal are confounded by intensification and insecurity. In conclusion it contends that ongoing rationalisation and state policies to `remoralise work' suggest that Offe (1985) and others such as Beck (1999) are over-optimistic in forecasting the demise of `wage slavery'.

The paper examines the significance of Total Quality Management (TQM) as a new vocabulary of motive (Wright Mills 1940) for management. The relationship between such a vocabulary and substantive changes in workplace relations is examined by means of case study analysis of three firms: a disk drive manufacturer, a computer systems manufacturer and a drinks manufacturer. TQM was presented as a device for tackling the perceived dysfunctions of bureaucracy, and new forms of open management, teamwork, continuous improvement and partnership between customers and suppliers were espoused in each case. The specific application of TQM varied however and those changes introduced did not replace bureaucratic principles of standardisation, differentiation and control through a single chain of command. Nor was the historical tension between the technical/co-ordinating functions of management and the role of management in controlling and motivating labour overcome. TQM was used by senior management as a means of restructuring management roles, justifying increased corporate control and intensifying work. Overall it appeared to reinforce instrumental rationality and seems unlikely to contribute to authentic empowerment at work.

The paper argues the need for a sociology of management which relates the micro-sociology of management activities to the economic performance of the firm and to debates about power relations and the distribution of wealth. The substance of the paper is a study of a medium-sized British company in the computer components industry. The research focuses on the relationships between development engineers and managers, and analyses the structural reasons for the failure to innovate. In particular it shows that management, in attempting to pursue an instrumental rationality, undermined the achievement of their own objectives. The contradiction between the logic of short-term instrumental controls and the espoused organic, human resources model of management produced a damaging pattern of workplace relations characterised by distrust and defensiveness. The result was a motivational crisis over the management of innovation, which contributed to the eventual failure of the business.