In a recent edition of Sociology (34, February 2000), Sara Delamont provides an interesting account of the relationship between the sub-discipline, sociology of education, and parent discipline, sociology. It is refreshingly original because articles which reflect on the relational structure of sociology as a discipline are rare, especially those which focus on sociology of education. That said, I disagree with substantial parts of her characterisation of sociology of education and I believe that some parts of it are so misleading that they need to be corrected.

In brief, she argues that ‘the hooligan is an anomalous beast for sociologists of education, who paradoxically revere him: while the sociology of education is an anomalous beast for the parent discipline, whose practitioners reject and fear it’ (Delamont 2000:95). Essentially, the latter part of her argument amounts to the claim that the wider discipline of sociology has neglected sociology of education. In this respect, Delamont raises some important issues for reflection by sociologists across the discipline. However, my response is concerned with her unsatisfactory characterisation of British sociology of education.

As Bechhofer, McCrone, Kiely and Stewart point out, there has been a tendency in the study of nationalism in particular, and in the social sciences in general, to assume that national identity is simply conferred upon individuals by the nation-state. Their article ‘Constructing National Identity: Arts and Landed Elites in Scotland’ seeks to rectify this emphasis (Bechhofer et al. 1999). Through theoretical argument and discussion of survey work in Scotland, they arrive at the conclusion that, ‘National identity should not in our view be seen as a fairly passive means by which citizens are bound culturally and socially to the state, but a far more interactive process whereby individuals have available the means for constructing who they are and who they want to be’ (1999:530). National identity is not, they earlier claim, ‘essential, given, unproblematic and unchanging’, but is ‘constructed in the processes of everyday life’ (1999:521). Certain qualifications are placed upon these claims. The writers acknowledge that, on the one hand, the views (in themselves anticipated) of ‘significant others’ check the ability of the individual to successfully make a claim upon a particular identity, and, on the other, that most of the time for most people national identity is unproblematic and unquestioned. However, these concessions seem to make little impact upon their actual discussion and do not detract from the central claim advanced that the formulation and presentation of national identity is a matter of individual choice.

We are grateful to the Editors of Sociology for the opportunity to respond to Dr Sam Pryke's comments on our paper ‘Constructing National Identity’.

We are, of course, pleased that Dr Pryke has taken an interest in our work and by his acknowledgement that empirical enquiry is welcome in a field marked by, in our judgement, excessive theoretical abstraction. He acknowledges in his first paragraph that ‘there has been a tendency ... to assume that national identity is simply conferred to individuals by the nation-state’, and correctly observes that our article ‘seeks to rectify this emphasis’. However, this appreciation that we are simply trying to advocate a more balanced approach vanishes as the Comment goes on. Dr Pryke's comment is inconsistent and internally contradictory.

We should first take the blame for a misunderstanding. On p. 520 of our article we use the phrase ‘We take as our starting points . . .’. Dr Pryke has interpreted ‘starting points’ as meaning ‘prior to the research’, as being theoretical assumptions. The reality is more complex. Our general reading of the literature and such evidence as exists did lead us to the a priori view that national identity could not simply be ‘read off’ from ‘objective’ factors, or taken as imposed from above. For a comment on the author's argument that it can, see below. However, the detailed set of ‘starting points’ (pp. 520–1) are the starting points for our exposition of the argument in the paper, which is derived from close reading and analysis of our empirical evidence. It would have been better to describe them as ‘summary’ points.

Heine Andersen and Lars Bo Kaspersen (eds.) 2000. Classical and Modern Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 524 pp. (0-6312-1288-4)

Zygmunt Bauman 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 228 pp. (0-7456-2410-3)

Gary Browning, Abigail Halcli and Frank Webster (eds.) 1999. Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present. London: Sage, 502 pp. (0-7619-5926-2)

Gerard Delanty 2000. Modernity and Postmodernity. London: Sage, 194 pp. (0-7619-5904-1)

Roberta Garner (ed.) 2000. Social Theory: Continuity and Confrontation. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 592 pp. (1-5511-1235-3)

Trevor Noble 2000. Social Theory and Social Change. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 260 pp. (0-3339-1239-X)

There seems something oddly old-fashioned about assessing the contemporaneity of a critical text by the number of women writers that it recognises – but then there are times when only the bluntest of tools will do. I reached this conclusion while searching for a suitable core text for a social theory module. I had two key concerns: to find texts that offered thoughtful accounts of the different ways of theorising the relationship between modernity and postmodernity; and to find texts that would represent the full diversity of social theory. The second has not proved easy, and reading the most recent surveys of the field, one could be forgiven for thinking that gender played a negligible role in the functioning of contemporary society. Supposedly comprehensive surveys of the field, such as Callinicos's Social Theory: A Historical Introduction, manage to nod to such quaintly unreadable figures as Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer, without giving over a single page to feminism, and offer indexes that run on forever without mentioning the work of a single woman writer. What, then, is a good way forward for students?

Anthony Elliott, The Mourning of John Lennon, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, $45.00 hardback ($17.95 paperback), xi+219 pp. (ISBN 0-520-21549-4)

Adrian Kear and Deborah Lynn Steinberg (eds.), Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief, London: Routledge, 1999, £13.99 paperback, xi+218 pp. (ISBN 0-415-19393-1)

Tony Walter (ed.), The Mourning for Diana, Oxford: Berg, 1999, £14.99 paperback, xiii+286 pp. (ISBN 1-85973-238-0)

Within the last decade or so there has been a growing recognition among sociologists of the role played by emotions in various aspects of human behaviour (witness, for example, the range of articles appearing in Sociology alone, e.g. Jackson 1993; Craib 1995; Burkitt 1997, and the formation of a BSA study group devoted to the sociology of emotion). This burgeoning focus on emotions has challenged sociology to rethink its dominant conception of the human subject as governed by rational and conscious thought alone. In so doing it has raised a question mark both against the adequacy of the (theoretical) tools used for analysing emotions which have developed from these premises and the ability of sociology in general to provide answers to such questions.

B. Turner (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, 2nd edn, xx+566 pp. (ISBN 0-631-21366-X)

B. Turner, Classical Sociology, London: Sage, 1999, xi+291 pp. (ISBN 0-7619-6458-4)

A. Swingewood, A Short History of Sociological Thought, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 2000, 3rd edn, xi+269 pp. (ISBN 0-333-80199-7)

L. Ray, Theorizing Classical Sociology, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999, ix+218 pp. (ISBN 0-335-19865-1)

The editor of the newly revised Companion to Social Theory describes his volume as an ‘attempt to offer the student a prescriptive and critical, rather than bland and neutral, pathway through the literature’ (Turner 2000:xiv). The rest of the introduction certainly lives up to this promise. In a bold, incisive and sharply worded defence of sociology as a distinct mode of conceptualisation, with a unique object of enquiry – the social – Bryan Turner makes a passionate plea for social theory to engage with the central political issues of our times. Yet as I turned the pages of this skilfully edited, beautifully presented and lavishly referenced collection I grew increasingly uneasy. Then, in the opening of Terry Lovell's chapter on ‘Feminisms of the Second Wave’, I found my disquiet pointedly expressed. She recognises a further aspect of the role of a sociology text for students, the full appreciation of which is missing from several of the volumes under review.