Professor Richard Jenkins

Professor of Sociology, (BA, PhD, AcSS)

Academic Profile

Born in 1952 in Liverpool, I was brought up in Northern Ireland. I moved to the Chair in Sociology at the University of Sheffield in 1995, coming from south Wales, where I had lived and worked for twelve years. Trained as a social anthropologist at the Queen's University of Belfast and the University of Cambridge, I worked for three years at the SSRC Research Unit on Ethnic Relations, at the University of Aston in Birmingham, before moving to the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University College of Swansea in 1983. In 2004, I was elected as an Academician of the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences.

Being an anthropologist who has never been impressed by the boundaries between that discipline and its intellectual neighbours - particularly sociology - my interests have always been in Europe and the British Isles, and I have done field research in Belfast, the West Midlands, south Wales, Denmark, and south-west England. The topics I have investigated include the transition to adulthood, ethnicity and racism, nationalism, informal economic activity, the social lives of people with learning difficulties, and modern supernatural and witchcraft beliefs.

At the moment I am developing these interests in theoretical and ethnographic explorations of the social construction and experience of 'collectivity', on the one hand, and enchantments in the modern world, on the other.

My over-arching theoretical project is a still evolving attempt to bring together interactional and institutional models of the human world into a useful and unified analytical framework.

Research

There is no substitute for personal participation in research. The messy and exhilarating business of going out there and gathering data - a combination of risk-taking and exploration - is epistemologically refreshing and theoretically challenging. I have done fieldwork in a number of places and contexts:

• In Belfast between 1976 and 1979, studying the transition to adulthood of protestant working-class youth (see Hightown Rules, 1982; and Lads, Citizens and Ordinary Kids, 1983).

• In the West Midlands conurbation, 1981-82, investigating the processes which allow discrimination to operate in employment recruitment (Racism and Recruitment, 1986)

• In south Wales, 1986-1986, researching the transition to adulthood during high unemployment (Taking the Strain, 1989, with Susan Hutson).

• In a small town in western Jutland, Denmark, 1996-7, exploring the social construction of individual and collective identities in everyday life (this research is being written up at the moment).

• In south-west England, since 2005, looking at the interplay between ‘traditional’ and ‘new age’ beliefs in the supernatural, particularly with respect to danger and healing.

I have also been involved in work based on desk or archival research, work which has relied upon the data gathering of colleagues, and work which has co-ordinated and edited the contributions of others. These projects have covered a range of topics:

• A 'black magic' scare in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s; this project has been occasionally active since the time of the scare itself and is finally coming to fruition.

• The formulation and implementation of equal opportunity policies, with John Solomos (Racism and Equal Opportunity Policies in the 1980s, 1987 and 1989).

• A critical study of models of informal economic activity, with Phil Harding (The Myth of the Hidden Economy, 1989).

• The transition to adulthood of young people with learning difficulties in south Wales, with Charlotte Davies; this project was particularly interesting because of its emphasis on talking to people with learning difficulties themselves, rather than relying on their carers' accounts.

• A comparative analysis of nationalism in Wales, Ireland, and Denmark.

• Cross-cultural variability in perceptions and models of intellectual competence and disability (Questions of Competence, 1998).

Recent Funded Research Projects
Date	Sponsor	Details
2005-2008	ESRC	Social identity and tolerance in mixed and segregated areas of Northern Ireland This is a team project drew on survey, in-depth interview and focus group data, bringing together social policy, social psychology and sociology. Funded by the ESRC Identities and Social Action programme, the data collection is complete and work has begun on analysis and publication.
2003-2004	UK Information Commissioner	What are Personal Data? A team project, based in the Law Department at Sheffield, this project involved an empirical study of the approach taken to the definition of ‘personal data’ by data protection authorities within various jurisdictions, and the development of a model defining the boundaries and definitions of ‘personal data’. A substantial report has been published.

Publications since 2005

(2011) Being Danish: Paradoxes of Identity in Everyday Life, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press (Copenhagen University’s academic press), xv + 355 pp.

with J. Hughes and A. Campbell (2011) 'Contact, trust and social capital in Northern Ireland: a qualitative study of three mixed communities', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34:6, pp. 967-985. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2010.526234

(2010) ‘Pierre Bourdieu: from the model of reality to the reality of the model’, in P. J. Martin and A. Dennis (eds.), Human Agents and Social Structures, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

(2010) ‘Beyond social structure’, in P. J. Martin and A. Dennis (eds.), Human Agents and Social Structures, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 133-151.

(2010) ‘The 21st Century Interaction Order’, in M. Hviid Jacobsen (ed.) The Contemporary Goffman, London: Routledge, pp. 257-74.

(2009) ‘The ways and means of power: efficacy and resources’, in S. R. Clegg and M. Haugaard (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Power, London: Sage.

(2008) Social Identity, Routledge (Third Edition), 256pp.

(2008) ‘The ambiguity of Europe: “identity crisis” or “situation normal”?’, European Societies, vol. 10 (2008): 153-76.

(2008) ‘Erving Goffman: a major theorist of power?’, Journal of Power, vol. 1 no. 2.

(2008) Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations, Sage (Second edition), 224pp.

edited with T. Hylland Eriksen (2007) Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America, Routledge, 208pp.

(2007) ‘Inarticulate speech of the heart: nation, flag and emotion in Denmark’, in T. H. Eriksen and R. Jenkins (eds.) Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America, London: Routledge, pp. 115-35.

(2007) ‘The meaning of policy/policy and meaning’, in S. M. Hodgson and Z. Irving (eds.), Policy Reconsidered: Meaning, Politics and Practices, Bristol: Policy Press, 2007, pp. 21-36.

(2007)‘Continuity and change: social science perspectives on European witchcraft’, in J. Barry and O. Davies (eds.) Palgrave Advances in Witchcraft Historiography, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 203-224.

(2007) `The Social Anthropology of Witchcraft: Rationality and Function of Beliefs', in J. Barry and O. Davies (eds.) Palgrave Advances in Witchcraft Historiography, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

(2007)‘The transformations of Biddy Early: From local reports of magical healing to globalised new age fantasies’, Folklore, vol. 118 : 162-82.

(2006) ‘Telling the forest from the trees: local images of national change in a Danish town’, Ethnos, vol. 71, pp. 367-89.

(2006) ‘When politics and social theory converge: group identification and group rights in Northern Ireland’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, vol. 12, pp. 380-410.

(2006) ‘Problematising policy: culture, modernity and government’, Arbejdspapir 138-06, Århus: Center for Kulturforskning, 20 pp.

(2005) (edited, with Hanne Jessen and Vibeke Steffen) Managing Uncertainty: Ethnographic Studies of Illness, Risk and the Struggle for Control, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press (Copenhagen University’s academic press), 287 pp.

(2005) ‘The place of theory: John Rex's contribution to the sociological study of ethnicity and “race”’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 28, pp. 201-11.

A full list of publications can be downloaded by clicking the link on the right of this page.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• The Sociological Imagination. This is a ten-credit Level One module, which explores the similarities and differences between common sense and the sociological imagination.

• Introduction to Social Theory, taught jointly, with Dr Kate Reed. The organising theme is the connection between social structure and action, history and biography, public issues and private troubles. Based on clear introductions to the foundational ideas of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel and Mead, there are, among others, discussions of symbolic interactionism, Goffman, Berger and Luckman, Parsons, Bourdieu, Giddens, and the feminist contribution to social theory.

• Religion and Belief in a Changing World. This is a 20 credit 3rd year module. It introduces sociological and anthropological theories of religion and the 'great' religious traditions of the modern world, and then focuses on a number of substantive topics: secularisation, disenchantment and enchantment, fundamentalism, new religious movements and ritual and belief in everyday life.

See our Undergraduate Degree pages.

MA in Social Research

• Foundations of Social Inquiry, taught jointly with Dr Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, addressing basic methodological and epistemological questions and issues.

See our MA in Social Research page.

Postgraduate Supervision

I particularly welcome applications from students interested in the following very broad areas of research:

• Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland.

• The Scandinavian countries, particularly Denmark.

• The social construction of identification.

• Ethnicity, in all of its aspects.

• Modern enchantments and supernatural beliefs.

• Medical sociology and anthropology.

To find out more about our PhD programmes, go to:
Studying for a PhD in Sociology