The year 2011 marks the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union. This may be an appropriate time to evaluate the adoption by previously state socialist societies of other economic and political models. The transition has sometimes been described in positive terms, as a movement to free societies with open markets and democratic elections. Others have argued that the transition has created weak, poverty-stricken states with undeveloped civil societies ruled by unresponsive political elites. Which is the more accurate assessment? David Lane examines a few of the theoretical approaches that help explain the trajectory of change from socialism to capitalism. He focuses on two main approaches in this volume--elite theories and social class. Theories dwelling on the role of elites regard the transformation from socialism to capitalism as a type of system transfer in which elites craft democratic and market institutions into the space left by state socialism. Lane contrasts this interpretation with class-based theories, which consider transformation in terms of revolution, and explain why such theories have not been considered the best way of framing the transition in the post-socialist states.

While recognizing that elites can play important roles and have the capacity to transform societies, Lane contends that elite theories alone are inadequate to explain a system change that brings free markets. In contrast, he proposes a class approach in which two groups characterize state socialism: an administrative class and an acquisition class.

This authoritative volume--a large-scale empirical work comparable to Pitirim Sorokin's "Social Mobility"--is a penetrating and comprehensive study of social stratification and mobility in traditional Chinese society and a highly significant addition to the theoretical and factual foundations of contemporary social science. It offers an authentic portrayal not only of social mobility but of social life in China in general at the time of its original publication in the 1960s. It includes the life histories of the upper class--scholars, active and retired officials, merchants, and wealthy landlords--and an analysis of social statistics drawn from one Chinese county, which provides new interpretations of the processes of social mobility, the relationship of this class to society as a whole, and the motives of upwardly mobile individuals. Each life history comprises at least five generations and its resulting accounts touch upon the lives of 1,200 persons, and help place the development of the gentry in illuminating context within the population as a whole. Chow's book offers a welcome method of comparison of two societies that have both birth and mobile elites. As China entered the world system, its open class system changed from fluidity to disorganization regarding its character. As such it was transformed into an innovating society in which the earlier system could not, or did not, work. "Social Mobility in Traditional Chinese Society" is unique in its field for the successful correlation of conceptual framework with its detailed wealth of empirical findings. It will be welcomed by all students of social science, international relations, and Asian studies.

Originally conceived by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 as a tool for the analysis of the ways in which different forms of social inequality, oppression and discrimination interact and overlap in multidimensional ways, the concept of 'intersectionality' has attracted much attention in international feminist debates over the last decade. Framing Intersectionality brings together proponents and critics of the concept, to discuss the 'state of the art' with those that have been influential in the debates that surround it. Engaging with the historical roots of intersectionality in the US-based 'race-class-gender' debate, this book also considers the European adoption of this concept in different national contexts, to explore issues such as migration, identity, media coverage of sexual violence against men and transnational livelihoods of high and low skilled migrants. Thematically arranged around the themes of the transatlantic migration of intersectionality, the development of intersectionality as a theory, men's studies and masculinities, and the body and embodiment, this book draws on empirical case studies as well as theoretical deliberations to investigate the capacity and the sustainability of the concept and shed light on the current state of intersectionality research. Presenting the latest work from a team of leading feminist scholars from the US and Europe, Framing Intersectionality will be of interest to all those with interests in gender, women's studies, masculinity, inequalities and feminist thought.

This book is about long-term changes to class and inequality in Poland. Drawing upon major social surveys, the team of authors from the Polish Academy of Sciences offer the rare comprehensive study of important changes to the social structure from the communist era to the present. The core argument is that, even during extreme societal transformations, key features of social life have long-lasting, stratifying effects. The authors analyse the core issues of inequality research that best explain "who gets what and why:" social mobility, status attainment and their mechanisms, with a focus on education, occupation, and income. The transition from communist political economy to liberal democracy and market capitalism offers a unique opportunity for scholars to understand how people move from one stratifi cation regime to the next. There are valuable lessons to be learned from linking past to present. Classic issues of class, stratification, mobility, and attainment have endured decades of radical social change. These concepts remain valid even when society tries to eradicate them.

Class is a particularly troublesome issue in the United States and other rich capitalist societies. In this feminist analysis of class, noted sociologist Joan Acker examines and assesses feminist attempts to include white women and people of color in discussions of class. She argues that class processes are shaped through gender, race, and other forms of domination and inequality. Class Questions: Feminist Answers outlines a theory of class as a set of gendered and racialized processes in which people have unequal control over and access to the necessities of life-processes including production, distribution, and paid and unpaid labor. Historically, gender and race-based inequalities were integral to capitalism and they are still fundamental aspects of the class system. Acker argues that capitalist organizations create gendered and racialized class inequalities and outlines a conceptual scheme for analyzing 'inequality regimes' in organizations. Finally, the book examines contemporary changes in work and employment and in economic/political processes, including current events like deregulation, downsizing, and off-shoring, that increase inequalities and alter racialized and gendered class relations. This book will appeal to readers interested in a feminist discussion of class as a racialized and gendered process intimately tied to the capitalist economic system.

Columbia University historian and political scientist Manning Marable has been one of the preeminent public intellectuals in the social sciences for decades. A tireless and prolific voice for progressive causes, such as the abolition of prisoner disfranchisement laws, Marable has generated a tremendous body of publications on the topics of race, class and social justice in the U.S., writing scores of lively, accessible articles for popular and academic audiences alike. A pioneering intellectual in the field of black studies and the founder of Columbia's Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Marable blends the disciplines of history, political science and sociology to address questions of racial justice, workers rights and other contemporary social issues. This new collection, a rich array of some of Marable's best writing from the last two decades, will prove invaluable to anyone who seeks better understanding of--and creative possible solutions to--the deep and enduring race, class and gender inequity in our society.

By the middle of the twenty-first century, more than fifty per cent of the world's population will live in an urban environment. Most of this new urban growth will take place in Asia and Africa, yet most governments in these two continents seem woefully unprepared for the challenges they will face in providing their urban citizens with the basic services and security from poverty, environmental degradation and crime. It is in this context that in-depth studies which lay bare the contours and characteristics of society and institutions in the urban setting of Third World countries assume importance and urgency. Most studies on urbanisation in developing countries concentrate on slums and shanty towns in isolation from the rest of the society. By contrast, Social Formation in Dhaka, 1985-2005 analyses urbanisation and urban society in a holistic manner, connecting the poor with the non-poor and delineating the change agents of the city. As the first longitudinal study of the social structure of any Third World Megacity, this book will be of interest to urban sociologists, policy-makers, NGOS, and researchers engaged in understanding the development in cities in the global south.

Columbia University historian and political scientist Manning Marable has been one of the preeminent public intellectuals in the social sciences for decades. A tireless and prolific voice for progressive causes, such as the abolition of prisoner disfranchisement laws, Marable has generated a tremendous body of publications on the topics of race, class and social justice in the U.S., writing scores of lively, accessible articles for popular and academic audiences alike. A pioneering intellectual in the field of black studies and the founder of Columbia's Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Marable blends the disciplines of history, political science and sociology to address questions of racial justice, workers rights and other contemporary social issues. This new collection, a rich array of some of Marable's best writing from the last two decades, will prove invaluable to anyone who seeks better understanding of--and creative possible solutions to--the deep and enduring race, class and gender inequity in our society.

This book was first published in 1971.

This book presents a series of essays that examine the ideological, personal, and political difficulties faced by the group variously termed the Anglo-Irish, the Protestant Ascendancy, or the English in Ireland, a group that existed in a world of contested ideological, political, and cultural identities. At the root of this conflicted sense of self was an acute awareness among the Anglo-Irish of their liminal position as colonial dominators in Ireland who were viewed as 'other' both by the Catholic natives of Ireland and their English kinsmen. The work in this volume is highly interdisciplinary, bringing to bear examination of issues that are historical, literary, economic, and sociological. Contributors investigate how individuals experienced the ambiguities and conflicts of identity formation in a colonial society, how writers fought the economic and ideological superiority of the English, how the cooption of Gaelic history and culture was a political strategy for the Anglo-Irish, and how literary texts contributed to the emergence of national consciousness. In seeking to understand and trace the complex process of identity formation in early modern Ireland, the essays in this volume attest to its tenuous, dynamic, and necessarily incomplete nature.

Inclusion and Exclusion of Young Adult Migrants in Europe presents analyses of research carried out during the course of the EUMARGINS research project, exploring the inclusion and exclusion of young adult immigrants across a range national contexts, including the Nordic welfare states, old colonial countries, Southern European nations and the Eastern European region. Scrutinising legal, policy and historical sources, as well as participation in labour market and education systems, this volume engages with multiple social arenas and spheres, to integrate research and provide a cohesive investigation of the dynamics of each national setting. In addition to the chapters focused on individual national contexts (Estonia, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK), the book also provides a comprehensive transnational analysis, developing a comparative perspective and explaining the overarching research framework. A carefully organized and comprehensive exploration of the exclusion and inclusion of young adult migrants in Europe, Inclusion and Exclusion of Young Adult Migrants in Europe will appeal to social scientists with interests in migration, population change, integration and exclusion.

This pioneering collection brings together an international group of scholars to explore the Vietnamese middle class. From the leisure pursuits of the colonial middle class to the impact of the new urban rich on landscape of the countryside, this interdisciplinary volume explores the ways in which middle classness has been practiced in a wide range of contexts throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. In addition to offering insights into how middle classness was and is constituted and negotiated, this collection illuminates the cultural and social conditions of two distinctive periods in Vietnamese history. Three historical chapters consider how middle class status was experienced and displayed under French colonialism and in 1960s republican. These chapters offer examinations of middle classness through recreation, consumption, and associational life. Six contemporary studies examine the modes of experimentation and practice within middle class urban Vietnam. Still a sensitive topic politically, the contemporary middle class, nascent but increasingly powerful, is exerting a strong impact on the shape of contemporary society and culture, as well as on urban and rural landscapes. This volume offers a series of studies which critically interrogate the practices of those who engage in or aspire to urban middle-class lifestyles in Vietnam both in the past and in the present.

For the past four decades, increasing numbers of Americans have started paying greater attention to the food they eat, buying organic vegetables, drinking fine wines, and seeking out exotic cuisines. Yet they are often equally passionate about the items they refuse to eat: processed foods, generic brands, high-carb meals. While they may care deeply about issues like nutrition and sustainable agriculture, these discriminating diners also seek to differentiate themselves from the unrefined eater, the common person who lives on junk food. Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads. Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser, Finn identifies the key ways that "good food" has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class's larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.

Watchfulness shapes many Chicanxs' and other People of Color's everyday lives in San Diego. Experiencing racist discrimination can lead to becoming vigilant, which frames their subjectivity. Focusing particularly on Chicanxs, we show how they seek to intervene against structural inequalities and threats in their lives, such as by re-claiming space, consciousness raising, participating in protests, and healing practices. We argue that contestations surrounding belonging create particularly watchful selves and that this is a significant aspect of borderland lifeworlds more broadly. The book advances the Anthropology of borders, coloniality, subjectivity, and race, as well as contributing to Chicano and Latino Studies, and Urban Studies. Pushing the boundaries of conventional approaches, this book is methodologically innovative by including team fieldwork, digital ethnography, and illustrative work by a local artist. It fills a gap in Security Studies by examining peer-to-peer vigilance beyond top-down surveillance and bottom-up "sousveillance," and expanding previous understandings of watchfulness as an ambivalent practice that can also express care and contribute to community building, as well as representing a "way of life."

This new volume explores the limits and possibilities of economic change in transforming the lives of women in rural Greece at a time of great economic and political change. It is based on ethnographic research conducted in two communities of Western Crete: Nohia and Platanos, where Lazaridis concentrates on three activities women are involved in: handcrafts, market-gardening and olive-growing.

***Evening Standard's best non-fiction 2021*** 'A brilliant, searing expose of the lies underpinning work' - Owen Jones 'Work hard, get paid.' It's simple. Self-evident. But it's also a lie-at least for most of us. For people today, the old assumptions are crumbling; hard work in school no longer guarantees a secure, well-paying job in the future. Far from a gateway to riches and fulfilment, 'work' means precarity, anxiety and alienation. Amelia Horgan poses three big questions: what is work? How does it harm us? And what can we do about it? While abolishing work altogether is not the answer, Lost in Work shows that when we are able to take control of our workplaces, we become less miserable, and can work towards the transformative goal of experimenting with 'work' as we know it.

This book explores the origins of the influential view of modern society that places a "middle class" at its center, as it developed in Britain during the so-called "Industrial Revolution." Using a wider variety of sources and closer methods of textual analysis than previous studies of languages of class, the author develops a nuanced model for the interplay of social reality and social language. He demonstrates that a "middle class"-based language of social description did not simply reflect changes in social structure, but was rather the outcome of political circumstances in a period of radical political change.

Narrating Love and Violence is an ethnographic exploration of women's stories from the Himalayan valley of Lahaul, in the region of Himachal Pradesh, India, focusing on how both, love and violence emerge (or function) at the intersection of gender, tribe, caste, and the state in India. Himika Bhattacharya privileges the everyday lives of women marginalized by caste and tribe to show how state and community discourses about gendered violence serve as proxy for caste in India, thus not only upholding these social hierarchies, but also enabling violence. The women in this book tell their stories through love, articulated as rejection, redefinition and reproduction of notions of violence and solidarity. Himika Bhattacharya centers the women's narratives as a site of knowledge-beyond love and beyond violence. This book shows how women on the margins of tribe and caste know both, love and violence, as agents wishing to re-shape discourses of caste, tribe and community.

A rigorous, compelling and balanced examination of the British public school system and the inequalities it entrenches.

Private schools are institutions that children who are already privileged attend and have those privileges further entrenched, almost certainly for life, through a high-quality, richly-resourced education.

The Engines of Privilege contends that in a society that mouths the virtues of equality of opportunity, of fairness and of social cohesion, the continuation of this educational apartheid amounts to an act of national self-harm that does all of us serious damage. Intrinsic to any vision of the future of Britain has to be the nature of our educational system. Yet the quality of conversation on the issue of private education remains surprisingly sterile, patchy and highly subjective.

Accessible, evidence-based and inclusive, Engines of Privilege aims to kick-start a long overdue national debate. Clear, vigorous prose is combined with forensic analysis to compelling effect, illuminating the painful contrast between the importance of private schools in British society and the near-absence of serious, policy-making debate, above all on the left.

Black Millennials is an edited collection of writings that speak to the unique experience of the black millennial surrounding aspects of identity, career, and social engagement in modern society and business. This book is unique in that it is written by black millennials who are using their knowledge and expertise to speak and give voice to a generation of people that is being overlooked in both research and in the community. This book aptly functions as the a start of a deeper conversation that needs to be had for a generation that is stuck in-between what the future can be and what the past has already created.

Research on late nineteenth and early twentieth century German society has concentrated overwhelmingly on life in the cities. By contrast, and despite the fact that almost one third of Germans were still working in agriculture as late as 1914, Germany's rural society remains relatively unexplored. Although historians have begun to correct this imbalance, very few full-length studies of social relations east of the Elba in this period have been published. This book concentrates on social relations in the 1,500 estate villages (GutsdArfer) of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. 'Social relations' include the chains of command and obedience, the relative legal positions of owner and workers, contractual-relations, economic relations; the mutual economic dependency of estate owners and workforce, as well as the value systems of owners and labourers which informed these relationships. With its focus on both rural elites and workers, this study differs from much other work on rural Germany. For while a number of historians have examined the rural elites, few have chosen to investigate the lower strata of rural society. This book makes use of overlooked autobiographical accounts, statements given by workers at labour exchanges and before military authorities, as well as confiscated letters, jokes and anecdotes to provide greater insight into the perspective of rural workers.

Tracing the evolution of state military institutions from the seventh through the twelfth centuries, this book challenges much of the received wisdom of Western scholarship on the origins and early development of warriors in Japan. This prelude to the rise of the samurai, who were to become the masters of Japan's medieval and early modern eras, was initiated when the imperial court turned for its police and military protection to hired swords--professional mercenaries largely drawn from the elites of provincial society. By the middle of the tenth century, this provincial military order had been handed a virtual monopoly of Japan's martial resources. Yet it was not until near the end of the twelfth century that these warriors took the first significant steps toward asserting their independence from imperial court control. Why did they not do so earlier? Why did they remain obedient to a court without any other military sources for nearly 300 years? Why did the court put itself in the potentially (and indeed, ultimately) precarious situation of contracting for its military needs with private warriors? These and related questions are the focus of the author's study. Most of the few Western treatments see the origins of the samurai in the incompetence and inactivity of the imperial court that forced residents in the provinces to take up arms themselves. According to this view, a warrior class was spontaneously generated just as one had been in Europe a few centuries earlier, and the Japanese court was doomed to eventually perish by the sword because of its failure to live by it. Instead, the author argues that it was largely court activism that put swords in the hands of rural elites, thatcourt military policy, from the very beginning of the imperial state era, followed a long-term pattern of increasing reliance on the martial skills of the gentry. This policy reflected the court's desire for maximum efficiency in its military institutions, and the policy's success is shown by the court retaining to itself for centuries the exclusive right to sanction the use of coercive force.

In Normalized Financial Wrongdoing, Harland Prechel examines how social structural arrangements that extended corporate property rights and increased managerial control opened the door for misconduct and, ultimately, the 2008 financial crisis. Beginning his analysis with the financialization of the home-mortgage market in the 1930s, Prechel shows how pervasive these arrangements had become by the end of the century, when the bank and energy sectors developed political strategies to participate in financial markets. His account adopts a multilevel approach that considers the political and legal landscapes in which corporations are embedded to answer two questions: how did banks and financial firms transition from being providers of capital to financial market actors? Second, how did new organizational structures cause market participants to engage in high-risk activities? After careful historical analysis, Prechel examines how organizational and political-legal arrangements contribute to current record-high income and wealth inequality, and considers societal preconditions for change.

This book examines ways in which cancer health disparities exist due to class and context inequities even in the most advanced society of the world. This volume, while articulating health disparities in the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area, including East St. Louis, Illinois, seeks to move beyond deficit models to focus on health equity. As cancer disparities continue to persist for low-income and women of color, the promotion and attainment of health equity becomes a matter of paramount importance. The volume demonstrates the importance of place and the historical inequity in socio-environmental settings that have contributed to marked health disparities. Through original research, this volume demonstrates that addressing the causes and contributors to women's health disparities is a complex process that requires intervention from a socio-ecological framework, at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of influence. The book highlights critical aspects of a practical multidimensional model of community engagement with important influences of the various levels of research, policy and practice. More pointedly, the authors support a new model of community engagement that focuses on individuals in their broader ecological context. In so doing, they seek to advance the art and science of community engagement and collaboration, while disavowing the 'parachute' model of research, policy and practice that reinforces and sustains the problems associated with the status quo. The book concludes with broader national policy considerations in the face of the erosion of the social safety net for America's citizenry.

It is often asserted that the ruling elite in Western capitalist economies now consists of liberal intellectuals and their media sympathisers. By contrast, this book looks at the real elite in Australian and New Zealand society and shows that there is still a ruling class based upon economic dominance. From an analysis of corporate and public records, interviews, and other primary and secondary data, it develops a picture of networks of power that are changing but are as real as any network in the past.