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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Equal opportunities
Discussions of race are inevitably fraught with tension, both in
opinion and positioning. Too frequently, debates are framed as
clear points of oppositionOCous versus them. And when considering
white racial identity, a split between progressive movements and a
neoconservative backlash is all too frequently assumed. Taken at
face value, it would seem that whites are splintering into
antagonistic groups, with differing worldviews, values, and
ideological stances.
In recent years exclusionary policies of the Indian state have raised questions concerning social harmony and economic progress. During the last few decades the emergence of identity politics has given new lease of life to exclusionary practices in the country. Castes, communities and ethnic groups have re-emerged in almost every sphere of social life. This book analyses different aspects of social exclusion in contemporary India. Divided into three sections - 1. New Forms of Inclusion and Exclusion in Contemporary India; 2. Religious Identities and Dalits; 3. Ethnicity and Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion in the North-eastern Frontier - the book shows that a shift has taken place in the discourse on inclusion and exclusion. Chapters by experts in their fields explore issues of inclusion and exclusion that merit special attention such as dalit identity, ethnicity, territoriality and minorities. Authors raise questions about developmental programmes of the state aimed at making India more inclusive and discuss development projects initiated to alleviate socio-economic conditions of the urban poor in the cities. As far as North-east region is concerned, the authors argue that there is a tendency to highlight the homogenizing nature of the Indian culture by stressing one history, one language, one social ethos. Diversity is hardly accepted as a social reality, which has adversely affected the inclusive nature of the state. Against this development the final part of the book looks at questions regarding ethnic minorities in the northeast. Offering new insights into the debate surrounding social exclusion in contemporary India, this book will be of interest to academics studying anthropology, sociology, politics and South Asian Studies.
This book represents a truly innovative and empowering approach to social problems. Instead of focusing solely on a seemingly tireless list of major problems, Sara Towe Horsfall considers how select key issues can be solved and pays particular attention to the advocate groups already on the front lines. Horsfall first provides a r
Since the beginning of social life human societies have faced the problem how to distribute the results of collaborative activities among the participants. The solutions they found ranged from egalitarian to unequal but caused more dissension and conflict than just about any other social structure in human history. Social inequality also dominated the agenda of the new field of sociology in the 19th century. The theories developed during that time still inform academic and public debates, and inequality continues to be the subject of much current controversy. Origins of Inequality begins with a critical assessment of classical explanations of inequality in the social sciences and the political and economic environment in which they arose. The book then offers a new theory of the evolution of distributive structures in human societies. It examines the interaction of chance, intent and unforeseen consequences in the emergence of social inequality, traces its irregular historical path in different societies, and analyses processes of social control which consolidated inequality even when it was costly or harmful for most participants. Because the evolution of distributive structures is an open process, the book also explores issues of distributive justice and options for greater equality in modern societies. Along with its focus on social inequality the book covers topics in cultural evolution, social and economic history and social theory. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of sociology, economics and anthropology - in particular sociological theory and social inequality.
2012 Winner of the C. Calvin Smith Award presented by the Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc. 2014 Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Section Conventional wisdom holds that Christians, as members of a "universal" religion, all believe more or less the same things when it comes to their faith. Yet black and white Christians differ in significant ways, from their frequency of praying or attending services to whether they regularly read the Bible or believe in Heaven or Hell. In this engaging and accessible sociological study of white and black Christian beliefs, Jason E. Shelton and Michael O. Emerson push beyond establishing that there are racial differences in belief and practice among members of American Protestantism to explore why those differences exist. Drawing on the most comprehensive and systematic empirical analysis of African American religious actions and beliefs to date, they delineate five building blocks of black Protestant faith which have emerged from the particular dynamics of American race relations. Shelton and Emerson find that America's history of racial oppression has had a deep and fundamental effect on the religious beliefs and practices of blacks and whites across America.
"A must-read for anyone interested in solutions to America's housing crisis."-Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City An in-depth look at America's largest rental assistance program and how it shapes the lives of residents in one low-income Baltimore neighborhood Housing vouchers are a cornerstone of US federal housing policy, offering aid to more than two million households. Vouchers are meant to provide the poor with increased choice in the private rental marketplace, enabling access to safe neighborhoods with good schools and higher-paying jobs. But do they? The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known as "Section 8," and how it shapes the lives of families living in a Baltimore neighborhood called Park Heights. Eva Rosen tells stories about the daily lives of homeowners, voucher holders, renters who receive no housing assistance, and the landlords who provide housing. While vouchers are a powerful tool with great promise, she demonstrates how the housing policy can replicate the very inequalities it has the power to solve. Rosen spent more than a year living in Park Heights, sitting on front stoops, getting to know families, accompanying them on housing searches, speaking to landlords, and learning about the neighborhood's history. Voucher holders disproportionately end up in this area despite rampant unemployment, drugs, crime, and abandoned housing. Exploring why they are unable to relocate to other neighborhoods, Rosen illustrates the challenges in obtaining vouchers and the difficulties faced by recipients in using them when and where they want to. Yet, despite the program's real shortcomings, she argues that vouchers offer basic stability for families and should remain integral to solutions for the nation's housing crisis. Delving into the connections between safe, affordable housing and social mobility, The Voucher Promise investigates the profound benefits and formidable obstacles involved in housing America's poor.
The fact that post-socialist European Union (EU) countries are struggling with implementation of the EU's social inclusion policy is well known. But why is that so? Are the problems solely connected with how inclusion policies are enforced, or could it just as likely be the way policies are designed that creates challenges? This book explores experiences with inclusion policy implementation in seven different post-socialist EU countries. It focuses particularly on two groups of people in constant danger of social exclusion: people with Roma background and people with disabilities. So far, researchers have studied these issues primarily through policy analysis, and thus not provided knowledge on what actually happens in local contexts where welfare services are produced. This book sheds light on implementation processes at different levels, both at the policy level and in local welfare production. The picture painted here is one of complex and conflicting considerations in inclusion policy implementation, between historical and cultural heritage from the communist period, and EU inclusion policy based on Western European political principles. This book will appeal to undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as postdoctoral students in social science, disability studies, educational science, and others. The book will also be useful for researchers and others interested in the development of inclusion policies and EU integration issues. Open Access Chapter 2 available at: https://www.routledge.com/EU-Social-Inclusion-Policies-in-Post-Socialist-Countries-Top-Down-and/Fylling-Baciu-Breimo/p/book/9781138352803
In this book, Wynne Walker Moskop addresses the practical and theoretical problem of how unequal political friendships evolve toward arrangements the parties consider reciprocal and just, a problem neglected by scholars of democracy who associate reciprocity and justice only with equal parties. Jane Addams insisted that Hull House was not a charity with philanthropic aspirations; rather it had to bring "two classes" to a shared purpose and more egalitarian relation. The problem was, and still is, how? Drawing on several bodies of scholarship-including Addams's writings, secondary works about her collaborations, literature on Aristotelian political friendship, and feminist scholarship on the global migration of care workers-Moskop shows the importance of Addams's practices to the continuing relevance of unequal economic relations for shaping political friendship. Contributing to a lively conversation about Addams's work as a pragmatist thinker and social reformer that began three decades ago, Jane Addams on Inequality and Political Friendship is an invaluable resource to students of democratic theory, feminist political theory and philosophy, and American pragmatism. It illuminates the importance of overlooked conditions for friendship and justice in unequal relations, given people's ongoing subordination because of race, class, gender, and citizenship status in the U.S. and transnationally.
How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights movement? Responses generally focus on Martin Luther King s pilgrimage to nonviolence or favorable social contexts and processes. This book, in contrast, highlights the role of collective learning in the Gandhian repertoire s transnational diffusion. Collective learning shaped the invention of the Gandhian repertoire in South Africa and India as well as its transnational diffusion to the United States. In the 1920s, African Americans and their allies responded to Gandhi s ideas and practices by reproducing stereotypes. Meaningful collective learning started with translation of the Gandhian repertoire in the 1930s and small-scale experimentation in the early 1940s. After surviving the doldrums of the McCarthy era, full implementation of the Gandhian repertoire finally occurred during the civil rights movement between 1955 and 1965. This book goes beyond existing scholarship by contributing deeper and finer insights on how transnational diffusion between social movements actually works. It highlights the contemporary relevance of Gandhian nonviolence and its successful journey across borders.
The more citizens trust their government, the better democracy functions. However, African Americans have long suffered from the lack of equal protection by their government, and the racial discrimination they have faced breaks down their trust in democracy. Rather than promoting democracy, the United States government has, from its inception, racially discriminated against African American citizens and other racial groups, denying them equal access to citizenship and to protection of the law. Civil rights violations by ordinary citizens have also tainted social relationships between racial groups-social relationships that should be meaningful for enhancing relations between citizens and the government at large. Thus, trust and democracy do not function in American politics the way they should, in part because trust is not color blind. Based on the premise that racial discrimination breaks down trust in a democracy, Trust in Black America examines the effect of race on African Americans' lives. Shayla Nunnally analyzes public opinion data from two national surveys to provide an updated and contemporary analysis of African Americans' political socialization, and to explore how African Americans learn about race. She argues that the uncertainty, risk, and unfairness of institutionalized racial discrimination has led African Americans to have a fundamentally different understanding of American race relations, so much so that distrust has been the basis for which race relations have been understood by African Americans. Nunnally empirically demonstrates that race and racial discrimination have broken down trust in American democracy.
The fads, fashions, and media in popular consumer culture frequently make recreational and ideological "fun" of poverty and lower class living. It is a phenomenon that puts poor whites, poor blacks, women, gays, handicapped people, and other traditional minorities back in "their place" by prioritizing self-aggrandizing materialism and individual desires over the collective good and constitutes a form of cultural denial. In this book, Halnon delineates how incarceration, segregation, stigmatization, cultural and social consecration, and carnivalization work in the production and consumption of inequality.
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Few books are as urgent as Shon Faye's debut ... Faye has hope for the future - and maybe so should we' Independent 'Unsparing, important and weighty ... a vitally needed antidote' Observer 'A moving and impressively comprehensive overview of trans life' Vogue Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice. In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond. The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us. 'Fundamentally not a culture-war book. It operates outside the narrow coverage of trans people in the mainstream, and lays bare the inarguable facts' New Statesman 'Monumental and utterly convincing - crystal clear in its understanding of how the world should be' Judith Butler
Building on and going far beyond W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century and Du Bois's Dialectics, Reiland Rabaka's Africana Critical Theory innovatively identifies and analyzes continental and diasporan African contributions to classical and contemporary critical theory. This book represents a climatic critical theoretical clincher that cogently demonstrates how Du Bois's rarely discussed dialectical thought, interdisciplinarity, intellectual history-making radical political activism, and world-historical multiple liberation movement leadership helped to inaugurate a distinct Africana tradition of critical theory. With chapters on W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Negritude (Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor), Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, Africana Critical Theory endeavors to accessibly offer contemporary critical theorists an intellectual archaeology of the Africana tradition of critical theory and a much-needed dialectical deconstruction and reconstruction of black radical politics. These six seminal figures' collective thought and texts clearly cuts across several disciplines and, therefore, closes the chasm between Africana Studies and critical theory, constantly demanding that intellectuals not simply think deep thoughts, develop new theories, and theoretically support radical politics, but be and constantly become political activists, social organizers and cultural workers - that is, folk the Italian critical theorist Antonio Gramsci referred to as "organic intellectuals." In this sense, then, the series of studies gathered in Africana Critical Theory contribute not only to African Studies, African American Studies, Caribbean Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Postcolonial Studies, but also to contemporary critical theoretical discourse across an amazingly wide-range of "traditional" disciplines, and radical political activism outside of (and, in many instances, absolutely against) Europe's ivory towers and the absurdities of the American acade
A TLS, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 The new bestseller from the acclaimed author of Justice and one of the world's most popular philosophers "Astute, insightful, and empathetic...A crucial book for this moment" Tara Westover, author of Educated These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favour of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the promise that "you can make it if you try". And the consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fuelled populist protest, with the triumph of Brexit and election of Donald Trump. Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the polarized politics of our time, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalisation and rising inequality. Sandel highlights the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success - more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility, and more hospitable to a politics of the common good.
Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. As such, this volume investigates the ways in which existing social categories are both maintained and transformed at the intersection of the natural (sciences) and the cultural (politics). The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.
The European Union has committed itself to combating racism as a
general objective of law and policy. EU legislation requires Member
States to introduce laws prohibiting racial discrimination in many
aspects of everyday life, including employment, education,
healthcare, and housing. Alongside legislation requiring action at
national level, the EU institutions have also made periodic
commitments to 'mainstream' racial equality: taking anti-racism
objectives into account within all areas of EU law and policy.
This book develops a novel approach to distributive justice by building a theory based on a concept of desert. As a work of applied political theory, it presents a simple but powerful theoretical argument and a detailed proposal to eliminate unmerited inequality, poverty, and economic immobility, speaking to the underlying moral principles of both progressives who already support egalitarian measures and also conservatives who have previously rejected egalitarianism on the grounds of individual freedom, personal responsibility, hard work, or economic efficiency. By using an agnostic, flexible, data-driven approach to isolate luck and ultimately measure desert, this proposal makes equal opportunity initiatives both more accurate and effective as it adapts to a changing economy. It grants to each individual the freedom to genuinely choose their place in the distribution. It provides two policy variations that are perfectly economically efficient, and two others that are conditionally so. It straightforwardly aligns outcomes with widely shared, fundamental moral intuitions. Lastly, it demonstrates much of the above by modeling four policy variations using 40 years of survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
More the 1.46 million people in the United States have hearing losses in sufficient severity to be considered deaf; another 21 million people have other hearing impairments. For many deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, sign language and voice interpreting is essential to their participation in educational programs and their access to public and private services. However, there is less than half the number of interpreters needed to meet the demand, interpreting quality is often variable, and there is a considerable lack of knowledge of factors that contribute to successful interpreting. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that a study by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) found that 70% of the deaf individuals are dissatisfied with interpreting quality. Because recent legislation in the United States and elsewhere has mandated access to educational, employment, and other contexts for deaf individuals and others with hearing disabilities, there is an increasing need for quality sign language interpreting. It is in education, however, that the need is most pressing, particularly because more than 75% of deaf students now attend regular schools (rather than schools for the deaf), where teachers and classmates are unable to sign for themselves. In the more than 100 interpreter training programs in the U.S. alone, there are a variety of educational models, but little empirical information on how to evaluate them or determine their appropriateness in different interpreting and interpreter education-covering what we know, what we do not know, and what we should know. Several volumes have covered interpreting and interpreter education, there are even some published dissertations thathave included a single research study, and a few books have attempted to offer methods for professional interpreters or interpreter educators with nods to existing research. This is the first volume that synthesizes existing work and provides a coherent picture of the field as a whole, including evaluation of the extent to which current practices are supported by validating research. It will be the first comprehensive source, suitable as both a reference book and a textbook for interpreter training programs and a variety of courses on bilingual education, psycholinguistics and translation, and cross-linguistic studies.
This book constitutes a critical engagement with debates on the possibilities and limits of fighting racism with the help of criminal law. With in-depth analyses of cases of anti-Muslim violence in Sweden-a mosque fire, hate speech and of a series of assaults-Anti-Muslim Racism on Trial sheds light on issues central for understanding the ways in which racism is approached in court. It also illustrates the different forms that Islamophobia can take. Departing from a definition of law as a knowledge regime that embodies the power to decide on the meaning of the acts on trial and to establish a valid version of these events, the author explores the possibility of justice and recognition in court. From within a post-Holocaust and post-colonial context, this book recounts the complex and ambiguous history of laws against racism, examining the ways in which racist practices change in a society where certain manifestations of racism have come to be treated as crimes. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and criminology with interests in Islamophobia, race and ethnicity and violence.
During the tech boom, Silicon Valley became one of the most concentrated zones of wealth polarization and social inequality in the United States--a place with a fast-disappearing middle class, persistent pockets of poverty, and striking gaps in educational and occupational achievement along class and racial lines. Low-wage workers and their families experienced a profound sense of exclusion from the techno-entrepreneurial culture, while middle class residents, witnessing up close the seemingly overnight success of a "new entrepreneurial" class, negotiated both new and seemingly unattainable standards of personal success and the erosion of their own economic security. "The Burdens of Aspiration" explores the imprint of the region's success-driven public culture, the realities of increasing social and economic insecurity, and models of success emphasized in contemporary public schools for the region's working and middle class youth. Focused on two disparate groups of students--low-income, "at-risk" Latino youth attending a specialized program exposing youth to high tech industry within an "under-performing" public high school, and middle-income white and Asian students attending a "high-performing" public school with informal connections to the tech elite--Elsa Davidson offers an in-depth look at the process of forming aspirations across lines of race and class. By analyzing the successes and sometimes unanticipated effects of the schools' attempts to shape the aspirations and values of their students, she provides keen insights into the role schooling plays in social reproduction, and how dynamics of race and class inform ideas about responsible citizenship that are instilled in America's youth.
The recent manifestation of exclusionism in Japan has emerged at a time of intensified neoliberal economic policies, increased cross-border migration brought on by globalization, the elevated threat of global terrorism, heightened tensions between East Asian states over historical and territorial conflicts, and a backlash by Japanese conservatives over perceived historical apologism. The social and political environment for minorities in Japan has shifted drastically since the 1990s, yet many studies of Japan still tend to view Japan through the dominant discourses of "ethnic homogeneity (tanitsu minzoku shakai)" and "middle-class society (so-churyu--shakai)" which positions the exclusion of minorities as an exceptional phenomenon. While exclusionism has been recognized as a serious threat to minority groups, it has not often been considered a representative issue for the whole of Japanese society. This tendency will persist until the discourses of tanitsu minzoku shakai and so-churyu--shakai are systematically debunked and Japan is widely recognized as both multiethnic and socio-economically stratified. Today, as with most advanced capitalist countries, serious social divides occasioned by the impacts of globalization and neoliberalism have destabilized Japanese society. This book explores not only how Japanese society is diversified and unequal, but also how diversity and inequality have caused people to divide into separate realities from which conflict and violence have emerged. It empirically examines the current situation while considering the historical development of exclusionism from the interdisciplinary viewpoints of history, policy studies, cultural studies, sociology and cultural anthropology. In addition to analyzing the realities of division and exclusionism, the authors propose theoretical alternatives to overcome such cultural and social divides.
In her fourth full-length book, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, Kiki Petrosino turns her gaze to Virginia, where she digs into her genealogical and intellectual roots, while contemplating the knotty legacies of slavery and discrimination in the Upper South. From a stunning double crown sonnet, to erasure poetry contained within DNA testing results, the poems in this collection are as wide-ranging in form as they are bountiful in wordplay and truth. In her poem 'The Shop at Monticello, ' she writes: 'I'm a black body in this Commonwealth, which turned black bodies/ into money. Now, I have money to spend on little trinkets to remind me/ of this fact. I'm a money machine & my body constitutes the common wealth.' Speaking to history, loss, and injustice with wisdom, innovation, and a scientific determination to find the poetic truth, White Blood plants Petrosino's name ever more firmly in the contemporary canon.
This book examines the question of class formation and social inequality within tribal groups in North-East India. Focussing on the Nagas, it analyses and challenges common perceptions about them as a class-less society with a uniform culture. It looks at the previously neglected themes of class formation and structure, division of work, emerging social milieus and cultural differentiation among the Naga youth - and presents fresh arguments about notions of modernity. Providing a theoretical understanding of inequality, this volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of North-East India, tribal studies, exclusion studies, sociology, social anthropology, political studies, development studies, cultural studies and South Asian studies.
This book examines how identities are formed and expressed in political, social and cultural contexts across South Asia. It is a comprehensive intervention on how, why and what identities have come to be, and takes a closer look at the complexities of their interactions. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach, combining methodologies from history, literary studies, politics, and sociology, this book: * Explores the multiple ways in which personal and collective identities manifest and engage, are challenged and resisted across time and space.; * Highlights how the shared history of colonialism and partition, communal violence, bloodshed and pogrom are instrumental in understanding present-day developments in identity politics.; * Sheds light on a number of current themes such as borders and nations, race and ethnicity, identity politics and fundamentalism, language and regionalism, memory and community, and resistance and assertion. A key volume in South Asian Studies, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern South Asian history, politics, sociology, literary studies and social exclusion.
Japanese youth and foreign migrants face stringent institutionalised controls in Japan. This book questions the efficacy of such social controls, focusing on the interrelation of inequality (powerlessness, discriminate controls and class inequality) and deviance (largely derived from power and the violation of informal and formal norms). It provides a comprehensive detailed description and explanation of inequality and deviance of Japanese youth and 17 foreign migrant groups. The book is aimed at individuals, students and academicians interested in Japan area studies. |
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