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The issue between individualism and collectivism is whether society involves the presence of any regularities or forces which compromise the picture of human beings as intentional agents – the picture charted in the first part of the book. Many social scientists, and many philosophers too, have suggested that did we have a full understanding of the factors at work in social life, we would realize that the common‐or‐garden, intentional image of human beings is radically mistaken. The thinkers who maintain this view are collectivists, in the terminology used here, while those who reject it, those who deny that social forces or regularities are inimical in this way to intentional autonomy or autarchy, are individualists. The chapter argues the case for individualism, contrasting it with the core theses defended by collectivists. Many doctrines thought to be implicit in individualism, however, are quite independent of the doctrine as it is described here; thus it does not entail the atomism rejected in Ch. 4, nor the methodological individualism rejected in Ch. 5.

This introductory chapter discusses the theoretical issues, starting with the impact of ‘difference’ and diversity. It points out the continuing significance of the ongoing structural forces that condition the choices of people, and looks at how to bring experiential diversity and the effects of structure together in a simple model. The discussion introduces two terms, social regulation and difference within difference, which are used further on in the book. The chapter also provides an analysis in relation to welfare state theory, which is then followed by an outline of the material on the policy context and a summary of the UK welfare state changes since the end of the 1970s.

This chapter claims that media managers frequently engage in storytelling practices known as “industry lore.” These practices not only serve as sense-making rituals in managing the circulation of culture, but also as a means of negotiating and rationalizing individual agency in relation to structural forces within production cultures. The chapter examines the role of industry lore in legitimating and challenging discourses about what types of television texts can circulate internationally and why. It draws on sociologist Anthony Giddens' post-structuralist concept of “structuration” as a middle-ground between structure and agency, as well as Michel Foucault's theories of power/knowledge. These allows for an examination of how knowledge about the audience and the kinds of media content that might appeal to it are produced through an interaction between structural and cultural forces.

Chapter 3 examines the aftermath of the war and the new environment in which merchants operated. It argues that a myriad of structural forces aligned to position interior general store merchants at the forefront of the cotton economy. Of particular importance was the collapse of traditional financing, as interior general store owners became the lifeblood of the Southern economy. But success was not guaranteed, nor was it linear. Rather, three distinct periods shaped mercantile life after the war, and the ebbs and flows of these eras very much dictated both when and how businesses could succeed. Businesses that had saved capital during the war year shad the reserves to draw upon when crop failures hit in 1866 and 1867, but new businesses often did not. The fortunes of the region ticked upward between 1868 and 1873, as crop yields and the economy grew and lien laws passed in response to the downturn greatly benefited merchants. These merchants grew their customer bases by working with freedmen, which made logical business sense. But the Panic of 1873 ushered in a period of uncertainty that lasted until 1879 and was accompanied by violence, political instability, disease outbreaks, and other challenges.

Chapter Four begins with a brief history of prostitution in KL and Malaysian women’s gradual displacement by transnational migrant women sex workers. This is followed by analysis of women from different nationalities, why and how they migrate for sex work, and their views of a largely stigmatized and illegal economic activity. An overwhelming majority of the women consider sex work to be a relatively quicker and less exploitative way (than other kinds of jobs open to them) of earning more income toward an end of improving their socioeconomic positions (that may include gaining an education or vocational skills, establishing a business, financially assisting family members, and/or ‘seeing the world’). The women’s decisions and perspectives are shaped by their understandings and experiences of structural forces, or their social locations in multiple intersecting and mutually constituting nationality, gender, class and racial-ethnic hierarchies.

Chapter Seven concludes the study by discussing major findings and their implications. Women’s transnational migration for sex work occurs in and is fueled by structural constraints and opportunities born from the marriage of patriarchal power with free market economies. Until and unless structural forces are acknowledged and addressed comprehensively, policies based explicitly on ‘either-or’ positions relating to sex trafficking, migration prostitution, illegal aliens, and so forth will obscure, if not perpetuate, contradictions.