The International Journal of Urban Labour and Leisure

Volume 2, Issue 1

Hello and welcome to the second edition of The International Journal of Urban Labour and Leisure.

In this issue Ian Atkin and Graham Bradley take a look at the relationship between lyrics in male songs and the way they express male desire for women they no longer have. In doing so they explore the unrequited nature of male desire as a form of theraputic dalliance.

Brehony's paper examines the way in which schooling, teachers and the teacher-pupil relations are, or more accurately have been, represented in pop and rock songs. Behony beleives that rather than wring their hands, sociologists should engage with cultural studies and learn from the methods released by the linguistic turn and its
emphasis on texts no matter how circumscribed that emphasis turns out to be.

Contents Volume 1 Issue 2:

I Atkin, G Bradley 'She’s Gone' Men and the Remembrance
of the Unattainable Women.

K. Brehony "I Used to get Mad at My School":
Representations of Schooling in Rock and
Pop Music.

Caffarella, R., Clark, C., Ingram, P. Life at the Glass Ceiling: Women in Mid-Level Management Positions.

Sophie Gibson Habitat : an Examination of the Relationship Between Self Identity and the Possession and Display of Household Goods.

Moreover, Behony feels cultural studies has opened up new fields of enquiry particularly in the field of popular culture and sociologists, even sociologists of education, which, after all is intimately bound up with culture, need to engage with them. It is in this spirit that I offer this sortie into the terrain of pop and rock music.

Caffarella et al argue that through hearing the stories of women they hope to better understand the boundary within which they have either chosen or been forced to remain within organisations. They begin with the glass ceiling, the boundary which most women are rarely able to negotiate in leadership positions in adult education and related fields. While there has been some serious speculation about how women 'lead' at this mid-leadership level and in organisations in general. The majority of work on women leaders has been descriptions of, or prescriptions for practice. This has resulted in many 'ought to's' or 'should do's' being adopted by those who have advocated advancement for women in leadership positions. The purpose of their study is to learn how women currently in mid-level positions (those who work just under the glass ceiling) understood themselves as leaders.

In her paper, Sophie Gibson investigates the theoretical and methodological problems associated with the sociology of consumption. In particular she attempts to clarify the ‘meaning’ of goods. Whilst previous approaches have obviously varied between disciplines in accordance with their ‘concerns’ such as, producing a catalogue of objects of a past age, sociology itself has experienced diversities and ambiguities. Consumption for sociology has been approached from various theoretical positions, adopting different methodologies, touching upon wide-ranging topics. This article operates within a Material Culture framework, investigating one particular area of consumption: the meanings behind the consumption and display of household goods. This covers the importance of material culture: the relationship between people and objects. It also explores how gender and age affect how we think about our homes. Throughout their lives, couples occupy a number of homes and the responses given here relate to which home they are currently occupying. This inquiry demonstrates how best to understand the ways in which individuals relate to their homes and possessions, revealing that there is a multiplicity of meanings about what the home ‘means’ to people. 

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