BRITISH SOCIOLOGYCHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIESThe growth of sociology in Britain was abruptly
impeded by a governmental investigation of high-
er-education research funding in 1981. One rec-
ommendation following the investigation was the
withdrawal of funding for any new departments of
sociology and those seen as ‘‘substandard.’’ Soci-
ologists were also limited in their representation
on the Social Science Research Council (SSRC),
with only two of the ninety-four members from
sociology departments. As a reflection of this
change in academic focus, the SSRC was renamed
the Economic and Social Research Council in
- Albrow (1989) argues that no other academ-
ic discipline was singled out in this way.
Governmental scrutiny of sociology programs
and departments has become an integral part of
British higher education. It is, however, not be-
cause it continues to be singled out for special
treatment as it was in previous decades but rather
it is part of the larger process of fiscal accountabili-
ty and quality assurance instituted by the govern-
ment. The first two Research Assessment Exer-
cises (RAE) were conducted in 1992 and 1996
respectively. Each RAE rated every department of
every subject on its research output. In 1996,
sociology at the universities of Essex and Lancaster
received 5* (the highest rank) ratings, while close
behind were the universities of Loughborough,
Manchester, Oxford, Surrey, Warwick, and Edin-
burgh, and the college of Goldsmiths, with ratings
of 5 each (RAE 1996). Most important about the
ratings is that the British government ‘‘... funding
bodies use the ratings to inform the distribution of
grants for research to HEIs’’ (higher education
institutions) (RAE 1996). It has been reported
that, ‘‘Some 20 percent of funding from the High-
er Education Funding Council for England is a
reward for research excellence, as a measured by
the ‘‘research assessment exercise’’ (Wolf 1999).
In fact, these funds are extremely important to the
day-to-day running of departments and in some
cases make them viable or not.
If research was to be assessed, then teaching
could not be far behind. The Teaching Quality
Assessment (TQA) exercise was instituted in 1993
with various subjects coming up for review in each
country of Britain over an eight-year period. In
England, sociology was reviewed between 1995
and 1996. At the time of TQA there were approxi-
mately 20,000 students studying sociology in eighty-
one institutions of higher education in England
alone. The Overview Report of all departments
reviewed in England noted that, ‘‘The overall pic-
ture that emerges from the assessment process of
the quality of education in sociology is a positive
one.... On the other hand there is little room for
complacency.’’ It was further noted that, ‘‘The
majority of institutions use a suitable range and
variety of teaching, learning and assessment meth-
ods. The assessors found considerable evidence of
innovative approaches to teaching, which encour-
aged and enthused students (HEFCE 1996, p. 14).Funding does not follow from high TQA scores.
Instead, high-scoring departments can bid for mon-
ey from the Fund for the Development of Teach-
ing and Learning. In sociology five consortium
projects were funded to a total of over £1,000,000.
The five projects publish a regular newsletter and
there are plans to launch an online journal for
teaching in 2000 (Middleton 1999).THE NEXT CENTURYAs British sociology enters a global age it is chal-
lenged with the ironies and complexities of under-
standing the current state of modernity that in-
cludes the increasing interconnectedness of the
world as a whole, the increasing choices each
individual has, and the resilience of national iden-
tities as evidenced by the increasing number of
nations that emerge year after year. Each of these
issues has been the subject of research by British
sociologists in the past decade. The 1990s saw an
‘‘explosion’’ of interest in studies of culture in-
formed by debates around the high-modern or
postmodern condition, albeit influenced by the
works of the French sociologists, Pierre Bourdieu,
and Michel Foucault (Swingewood 1998). Both the
study of nations and trends toward globalization
find British sociology in the lead as well. Ernest
Gellner (1983) and Anthony Smith (1986) have
claimed the territory of nations and nationalism.
At the same time, Anthony Giddens (1990), Ro-
land Robertson (British by birth) (1992), Leslie
Sklair (1995), and Martin Albrow (1996) have ad-
vanced theories of globalization. Emerging from
work on globalization is the sociology of human
rights. Two examples include: Anthony Woodiwiss’s
(1998) work on the compatibilities between Asian