The papers in this issue were all specially commissioned to mark the turn of the century. Contributors, well-known for their work in particular specialisms, were asked to engage in informed speculation about developments in those aspects of British society which fell within their areas of expertise. They were further encouraged to reflect on what the implications of those developments might be for the discipline of sociology. The topics covered represent those where the editors were successful in persuading colleagues to rise to this challenging brief. They also reflect an editorial decision not to marginalise ethnicity and gender by commissioning separate papers in these areas but instead to encourage all authors to take account of these issues in their reflections. We believe the final result is a stimulating and entertaining collection. The authors have risen to the daunting task of thinking themselves forward a quarter of a century. They have also succeeded in combining careful scholarship with the more risky task of futurology. We hope that, like us, our readers will find their arguments both provocative and timely.

The paper examines three aspects of demographic change and conjectures about their wider impact on British society. Two features of fertility behaviour are highlighted. The first deals with ethnic variations and the likely continuation of high fertility rates amongst women of South Asian origin. The second involves the continued bifurcation between career women and those for whom motherhood remains a central life project. International migration is also assessed and the contradictions within the ‘Fortress Britain’ strategy exposed. Britain will continue to receive migrants from overseas and British society will become increasingly multi-ethnic. The paper also examines the tensions between an increasingly ageing population and the development of increased ethnic and cultural diversity. The paper concludes with some implications of these changes for the discipline of sociology itself.

Nationality and citizenship are frequently confused but analytically distinct concepts. In the context of the United Kingdom they are especially problematic, for state identity (British) and national identities (English, Scottish, Welsh, etc.) have evolved in a highly implicit manner since the state was formed in the eighteenth century. The development of multiculturalism in the second half of the twentieth century adds to this complexity and diversity. At the end of the twentieth century, nation, state and society are increasingly differentiated, presenting particular problems for sociology whose orthodoxies usually treat them as synonymous. Today, fewer societies can be described as ‘nation-states’. On the other hand, the United Kingdom is a multi-national and multi-cultural state in which ethnic and national identities sit uneasily alongside citizenship or state identity. Compared with modern republican states such as the United States or France, as well as Germany, the United Kingdom faces particular challenges to its historically implicit and complex set of political, territorial and ethnic identities.

Trends in absolute rates of both career and intergenerational mobility in Britain since the 1950s are outlined and some of the cultural consequences of the resulting heterogeneity in class composition are briefly considered. It is argued that while supply-side factors – educational attainment, ability, etc. – may determine who has been mobile or not, aggregate rates and changes in aggregate rates are largely dictated by demand-side factors. But current trends in the composition of the working population are necessarily self-limiting. A forecast of the occupational structure in the first half of the twenty-first century together with the assumption of some continuity in the pattern of class advantages, indicates a ‘mobility transition’ in which trends are likely to reverse within the next thirty years or so. The long-run replacement of recruitment heterogeneity by homogeneity of social experience in the enlarged middle class suggests that, in contrast with present-day pluralism, there will emerge the structural conditions for a greater cultural uniformity and the onset of an era of orthodoxy.

Considering the prospects for poverty in the next twenty-five years, this article argues that trends in poverty over the last two decades or so are not a good guide for the future because the increase in poverty occurring during that time was exceptional in the context of this century. Further, it was not an experience common to most other industrialised countries. Three key factors will determine future prospects for poverty. First, demographic prospects are mainly good – children and the elderly are high risk groups: the number of children will fall and the proportion of older people does not increase as much as in the last two decades. However, family change will continue to generate poverty. Secondly, prospects for the economy look as good as they have been for decades and, in particular, competition for jobs will decline, increasing the opportunities for those excluded from the labour market. The third and key factor will be the impact of politics on policy. Reducing poverty and abolishing child poverty within twenty years are targets of the Labour Government. However there are anxieties about their reliance on labour market solutions. There will still need to be redistribution in favour of those who cannot get access to paid work. There is then a discussion of some of the challenges for social research. In conclusion, the prospects for reducing poverty are good, particularly if government regains an appetite for redistribution.

This paper explores the possible patterns of crime and control in the twenty-first century, drawing on an analysis of current and recent developments. These suggest a dystopian prospect of permanently high crime rates, and control strategies that reinforce social division and exclusion. Current ‘third way’ policies for crime reduction may achieve modest success, in part because they indirectly encourage agencies to manipulate statistically recorded outcomes to their advantage. They do not however tackle the underlying sources of crime in the political economy and culture of global capitalism, offering only actuarial analyses of risk variation, and pragmatic preventive interventions to reduce these. In the absence of any broader changes to the social patterns which generate high-crime societies the prospect is of marginal palliatives for crime, which themselves have the dysfunctional consequences of increasing segregation, distrust and anxiety.

This paper argues that the subspecialism of sociology of education has, for a century, been ambivalent about the ‘hooligan’. It has both celebrated and excoriated the anti-school working-class boy. Similarly, the mainstream of sociology has been ambivalent about sociologists of education, both relying on them and ignoring them. Thirdly, the paper speculates on the position of hooligans in Britain in 2025 and the relationship between mainstream sociology and the sociology of education in that year.

This article starts with a discussion of two books published in the mid-1990s; these are publications that provide a benchmark for later comparisons. Some subsequent ‘episodes’ in the life of modern Britain are then considered, all of which throw light on the religious situation in this country and its likely futures. The empirical data that emerge from these case studies provide a framework for a discussion of (a) increasing religious pluralism, and (b) church and state. The article concludes by placing Britain in its European context, underlining the theoretical questions that arise if this approach is adopted.

Medical autonomy in the United Kingdom has declined over the last twenty-five years, whether considered at the micro level (such as control over treatment and work patterns), the meso level (in terms of corporatist relations with the state) or the macro level (in terms of the ‘biomedical model’). After a period in the early 1990s when the National Health Service displayed a mix of Fordist and post-Fordist controls, the emphasis has swung sharply towards the former, suggesting the continued explanatory value of theories which focus on the state's need both to contain welfare expenditure and to maximise the political legitimacy derived from it. The analysis of this relatively narrow area of sociology has implications for the study of much broader questions about the capacity and legitimacy of the state in the twenty-first century.

Urban and rural sociology is currently dominated by two relatively separate approaches. One perspective emphasises political economy and increasing globalisation. Another focuses on the meaning of urban and rural areas in people's lives. This paper argues for a fusion between these two views. Urban and rural sociology should be concerned with the relations between political economy on the one hand and the biological and psychological bases of human behaviour on the other. Recent developments in the human sciences and psychology assist in making this link. They can be used to extend the original insights of the early Chicago School of sociology, particularly as regards the formation of human identities. Nevertheless, there remain substantial arguments as to how ‘the Chicago School's biotic level’ should be conceptualised and how we envisage its links to the more conscious, pre-planned, aspects of human behaviour. Early Marx and Williams's now somewhat neglected work on the country and the city offer provocative yet helpful ways forward.

This article explores the social impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). It argues that they are best understood, not as heralding a substantially new ‘information society’, but as significant technologies emerging in but inherently part of late modernity. This argument is developed by examining themes from post-materialism, globalisation and information society theories. It is suggested there are two types of technology, those changing and extending existing processes and those facilitating wholly new activities, and that recent innovations in information and communication technology are rather better construed as the former. By examining empirically questions of identity, inequality, power and change the recent and future impact of ICT's is explored, and it is argued that current trends suggest increasing convergence (economic and organisational as much as technological), differentiation and deregulation.

This paper argues that notions of the future and social change have been central to the sociological enterprise since its inception. However, sociology developed with the modern project and the rise of nation-states. This is reflected in the way that sociology has consistently taken for granted the geography of the nation-state as a basic organising principle for the understanding of social formations, producing ‘national’ sociologies. Thus, while providing a view of Britain in 2025, this paper also asks questions about the imaginary that constitutes Britain and the ways in which it will be re-visioned as part of the ‘global cosmopolitan society’. This re-visioning is not, however, the preserve of sociology and the paper elaborates popular imaginaries on the future of Britain. A recurring theme within visions of the future is the binary between utopias and dystopias, reframed in relation to the impact of new technologies and discussions of cyberspace. The paper examines the impact of these debates on the sociological imagination and the future of the sociological enterprise.