Anomalous beasts and the sociology of education

Abstract

The author reflects on continuities and changes in the subdiscipline, using Mary Douglas and Basil Bernstein. In 2000 the millennial issue of Sociology, the generic journal of the British Sociological Association, included a paper about the sociology of education called ‘The anomalous beasts: Hooligans and the sociology of education’. It focused on hooligans as anomalous beasts in the sociology of education, and the sub-discipline as an anomalous beast within the discipline of sociology itself. It concluded with, very poor, predictions about the likely state of sociology of education and UK sociology in 2025. The fortieth anniversary of BJSE is a good time to revisit that millennial evaluation in order to offer a new sociologically informed re-evaluation of the field in 2020, set an agenda to highlight some of the current weaknesses in the sub-discipline and update the analysis of the uneasy relationship with the wider discipline of Sociology itself.

Keywords:

• Anti-school boys
• sociology
• grand narratives
• exclusions
• internal colonialism

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Mrs R.B. Jones for word processing the original two articles and this one. The referees were enormously helpful in pointing out where my paper was opaque and confused.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The subject overviews of sociology for RAE 1996 and 2001, and for REF 2008 and 2014 can be found in the HEFCE RAE and REF websites.