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Life: Cycle, Trajectory or Pilgrimage? A Social Production Approach to Marxism, Metaphor and Mortality

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Part of the book series: Explorations in Sociology ((EIS))

Abstract

It has sometimes seemed to me that our subject is not always held in such high esteem or taken with that seriousness which as a practitioner I feel it deserves. There may be many reasons for this ranging from inelegance of language to a fear of that radicalism it has hardly ever expressed. There may be technological and stylistic as well as sociological reasons why even such best sellers as the ‘Bethnal Green’ studies (Young and Wilmott, 1957) fail to reach the mass audiences of ‘East Enders’ or the Adrian Mole books.

Life is a terminal illness for all of us. It is just that some know the end before others.

Bluebond-Langer (1978)

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© 1987 British Sociological Association

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Frankenberg, R. (1987). Life: Cycle, Trajectory or Pilgrimage? A Social Production Approach to Marxism, Metaphor and Mortality. In: Bryman, A., Bytheway, B., Allatt, P., Keil, T. (eds) Rethinking the Life Cycle. Explorations in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18919-9_8

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