Apart from Sedgefield and Mr Clinton, the other main influence on Mr Blair came from the communitarian ideas of the philosopher John Macmurray and later thinkers, such as the American sociologist, Amitai Etzioni, whom he met in 1995.

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The author of that, American sociologist Jonathan Church, spent time on the Shetland Islands investigating what he called "confabulations of community".

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Into this sadness, in the late 1960s, came Janice Perlman, a young American sociologist and self-confessed lover of favelas.

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Seymour Martin Lipset, a world-class sociologist and no liberal (he was closely associated with the American Enterprise Institute), advanced the argument most cogently some years ago.

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"Up until then, the studios owned the artists and had unspoken agreements with celebrity magazines so they would tread lightly on people, " says Karen Steinheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, and author of Celebrity Culture and the American Dream.

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