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This book is about the development of sociology in Britain told through the story of its learned society, The British Sociological Association. Learned societies have been neglected in the history of the discipline, though they are a vital part of the social structure of academic life.

Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) was the best-known feminist theorist and writer of her time. Her writings spanned a number of conventionally separate genres (including the novel, short story, allegory, political essay, polemic and theoretical treatise), which she crafted to produce a highly distinctive feminist and analytical 'voice'. A feminist who was contemporaneously an internationally-renowned social commentator, Schreiner's developing political analysis was - and still is - highly original. She developed a materially-based socialist and feminist analysis of 'labour' which led her to theorise social and economic change, divisions of labour in society and between women and men, capitalism and imperialism, around innovative ideas about how -- and by whom -- economic and social value was produced. She combined with this a keen attention to inter-personal relations, between women as literally or politically sisters, between 'respectable' and sexually outcast women, between feminist women and the 'New Men', and within the family. Distinctively, Schreiner's writings on economic and political life in South Africa criticised the policies and practice of Rhodes in the Cape Colony and British imperialism in southern Africa more widely. She opposed the South African War of 1899-1902, promoted federation rather than union as the form the South African state should take and insisted on equal political rights for all. Schreiner steadfastly opposed the development of apartheid segregationist policies and provided a radical analysis of the relationship between 'race' and capital. Imperialism, Labour and the New Woman is based on primary archive research, making particular use of Schreiner's unpublished letters and other major manuscript sources to provide a major reconceptualisation of the scope and importance of her writings and innovative and experimental ideas about genre and form. It offers a major rethinking of Schreiner's political writings on South Africa, and it emphasises the distinctiveness of Schreiner's contribution as the major feminist theorist of her age and that which followed. The book will appeal particularly to readers interested in the development of social theory, in influential feminist ideas and writing of the fin de sicle period, in the contemporary critique of capitalism and imperialism, and in 'the age of imperialism' in Southern Africa, as well as to Women's Studies scholars across the academic disciplines.

The empirical study of individuals' life-course is one of the most promising areas of research within sociology today. Increased availability of large-scale longitudinal data and improved statistical methods have made it possible to address theoretically relevant questions about events such as entrance into the labour market, job mobility, divorce and death. This book consists of studies capturing the life-course from the cradle to the grave. The research questions include long-term consequences of childhood conditions; family formation and school-careers; work and parental leave; gender discrimination in job promotion; divorce and occupational career; persistence in poverty; and the intriguing question of why the highly educated tend to survive everyone else. The studies shed light on the relation between family and work, on gender inequality, social class differences, welfare state redistribution, and labour market processes. They do this in a particular context, namely Sweden in the post-war period that is, during the decades that formed one of the most advanced welfare states in modern history. One chapter provides a descriptive account of institutional and life-course change in Sweden during that period. Most authors use the Swedish level-of-living surveys, a unique data set providing ample opportunity to study social processes in a longitudinal perspective. The book will, therefore, be of relevance to those with interests in the Swedish welfare state as well as those with theoretical and reseacrh interests in the reproduction of inequality