Does what we consume define who we are? Harry Wallop takes a fresh look at society and shows you to your place in today's modern consumer world. Are you an Asda Mum, Wood Burning Stover or Sun Skittler? Do you know a Portland Privateer or Rockabilly? And exactly who are the Hyphen-Leighs? Journalist Harry Wallop has spent a disproportionate amount of his working life chronicling the buying habits of the British people. Taking a sweep through the seismic changes that have happened in the UK since the end of food rationing in 1954, he argues that our social standing in today's society is no longer determined by the accent you speak with, the school you attended, or your parents. Rather, it is determined by the food we eat, our choice of holiday destination, the clothes we wear, the size of the TV we sit in front of, and whether you use a plug-in air freshener or a smelly candle. He shows us how retailers and big business are making the most of how we fit into these new social categories, and offers up some intriguing insights into the state of Britain today.

The story of the Stuart dynasty is a breathless soap opera played out in just a hundred years in an array of buildings that span Europe from Scotland, via Denmark, Holland and Spain to England. Life in the court of the House of Stuart has been shrouded in mystery: the first half of the century overshadowed by the fall and execution of Charles I, the second half in the complete collapse of the House itself. Lost to time is the extraordinary contribution the Stuarts made to the fabric of sovereignty. Every palace they built, painting they commissioned, or artwork they acquired was a direct reflection of the lives that they led and the way that they thought. Palaces of Revolution explores this rich history in graphic detail, giving a unique insight into the lives of this famous dynasty. It takes us from Royston and Newmarket, where James I appropriated most of the town centre as a sort of rough-and-ready royal housing estate, to the steamy Turkish baths at Whitehall where Charles II seduced his mistresses. We see the intimate private lives of the monarchs, presented through the buildings in which they lived and the objects they commissioned, creating an entirely new narrative of the Stuart century. Palaces of Revolution traces this extraordinary period across the places and palaces on which the action played out, giving us a thrilling new history of this remarkable dynasty.

Originally published in 1932, this book presents a concise study of the Indian caste system. The text was created 'in the hope of adding to the ordinary man's knowledge of this peculiar form of social organization and of enabling him to form a judgment of its merits and defects'. Textual notes are included throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in anthropology and perspectives on the Indian caste system.

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.

In a world where frontiers are militarised and classifications systems defining rights and belonging are reinforced, transnational feminist agendas are fundamental. We use the concept of 'scholarships of hope' to analyse the diversity of feminist struggles and imaginaries in diverse geopolitical locations. Dreaming Global Change, Doing Local Feminisms explores subversive practices of knowledge production that challenge Eurocentric scientific models and agendas. The book also explores the tensions and challenges of doing transnational feminist theory at the crossroads between feminist scholarship and feminist activism. In conjunction, these chapters provide a solid analysis framed by feminist methodologies opening complexities and contradictions of individual and collective feminist and trans identity struggles in Argentina, Belarus, Pakistan, Sweden, Taiwan and Turkey. These identities and struggles are rooted in transnational and local genealogies that go beyond the narratives of the West as the origin for democracy and human rights, providing powerful agendas for alternative futures.

In this book, the author argues that a new form of capitalism is emerging at the threshold of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He asserts that we are in the midst of a transition from democratic capitalism to feudal capitalism and highlights how robotization and innovation is leading to a social crisis for the middle classes as economic inequality is on the rise. Johannessen outlines the three elements - Balkanization, the Great Illusion, and the plutocracy - which are referred to here as feudal structures. He describes, analyzes, and discusses these elements both individually and in interaction with each other, and asks: "What structures and processes are promoting and boosting feudal capitalism?" Additionally, the book serves to generate knowledge about how the middle class will develop in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It shows the various effects of robotization on the middle class, where middle class jobs are transformed, deconstructed, and re-constructed and new part-time jobs are created for the middle class. Given the interest in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the book will appeal to students of economic sociology and political economy as well as those in innovation and knowledge management courses focusing upon the emerging innovation economy. The topic will attract policymakers, and the accessible and engaging tone will also make the book of interest to the general public.

This book explores components of national identity in Victorian Britain by analyzing travel literature. It draws on published and unpublished travel journals by middle-class men and women from England, Scotland, and Wales. The main aim is to illustrate both the contexts that inspired the various collective identities of Britishness, Englishness, Scotsness, and Welshness, as well as the qualities Victorian men and women had in mind when they used such terms to identify and imagine themselves collectively.

In 1963, President Kennedy proposed making permanent a small pilot project called the Food Stamp Program (FSP). By 2013, the program's fiftieth year, more than one in seven Americans received benefits at a cost of nearly $80 billion. Renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2008, it currently faces sharp political pressure, but the social science research necessary to guide policy is still nascent. In SNAP Matters, Judith Bartfeld, Craig Gundersen, Timothy M. Smeeding, and James P. Ziliak bring together top scholars to begin asking and answering the questions that matter. For example, what are the antipoverty effects of SNAP? Does SNAP cause obesity? Or does it improve nutrition and health more broadly? To what extent does SNAP work in tandem with other programs, such as school breakfast and lunch? Overall, the volume concludes that SNAP is highly responsive to macroeconomic pressures and is one of the most effective antipoverty programs in the safety net, but the volume also encourages policymakers, students, and researchers to continue examining this major pillar of social assistance in America.

In 1963, President Kennedy proposed making permanent a small pilot project called the Food Stamp Program (FSP). By 2013, the program's fiftieth year, more than one in seven Americans received benefits at a cost of nearly $80 billion. Renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2008, it currently faces sharp political pressure, but the social science research necessary to guide policy is still nascent. In SNAP Matters, Judith Bartfeld, Craig Gundersen, Timothy M. Smeeding, and James P. Ziliak bring together top scholars to begin asking and answering the questions that matter. For example, what are the antipoverty effects of SNAP? Does SNAP cause obesity? Or does it improve nutrition and health more broadly? To what extent does SNAP work in tandem with other programs, such as school breakfast and lunch? Overall, the volume concludes that SNAP is highly responsive to macroeconomic pressures and is one of the most effective antipoverty programs in the safety net, but the volume also encourages policymakers, students, and researchers to continue examining this major pillar of social assistance in America.

This important book provides the first substantial analysis of white working class perspectives on themes of multiculturalism and change in the UK, creating an opportunity for these 'silent voices' to be heard. Based on over 200 interviews in multiple sites the results are startling - challenging politicians, policy makers and researchers. Improving our understanding of how this group went from 'hero to zero', became framed as racist, resistant to change and disconnected from politics, the book suggests a new and progressive agenda for white working class communities to become a fully inclusive part of a modern and diverse country in the 21st century.

No examination of contemporary urban communities would be complete without the discussion of class identity. But how did class identity inform the urban communities of yesteryear? Taking Newport, Rhode Island in the eighteenth century and Lowell, Massachusetts in the nineteenth century, at the peak of their economic powers when they represented some of the purist forms of capitalist production in North America, as case studies, this book explores the material and biological manifestations of class identity. Stephen Mrozowski uses a combination of documentary research, material cultural studies, and environmental archaeology to probe the lives of artisans, merchants, and mill workers in these urban communities. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to fully examine burgeoning notions of class, he offers significant insights into the factors shaping those notions. This engaging study, supported throughout by tables, illustrations and graphs, is required reading for all students of urban history and historical archaeology.

First published in 1990, Ideology and the New Social Movements provides an incisive and much-needed assessment of debates concerning the nature and motivation of social movements and collective action. In particular, Alan Scott focuses upon the competing theoretical explanations of the rise and character of the 'new social movements' in North America and Europe. After introducing the major themes in the debate about new social movements, the book reviews mainstream theories, both functionalist and neo-Marxist, then moves on to a discussion of sociological, economic and political writings. Specific examples, most notably the rise of the West German Greens, are used to assess the value of the different approaches. Alan Scott argues that theories of long-term change, such as the transition to the 'post-industrial' society, give insufficient attention to the political and organizational aspects of social movements, and exaggerate the differences between older, class based, movements and 'new' politics. He concludes by arguing that the idea of social closure that can accommodate questions of allegiance and identity, and control of resources has considerable explanatory power, and can encompass the cultural and political aspects of social movements. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, political science and urban studies.

When the postwar boom began to dissipate in the late 1960s, Mexico's middle classes awoke to a new, economically terrifying world. And following massacres of students at peaceful protests in 1968 and 1971, one-party control of Mexican politics dissipated as well. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party struggled to recover its legitimacy, but instead saw its support begin to erode. In the following decades, Mexico's middle classes ended up shaping the history of economic and political crisis, facilitating the emergence of neo-liberalism and the transition to democracy. Waking from the Dream tells the story of this profound change from state-led development to neo-liberalism, and from a one-party state to electoral democracy. It describes the fraught history of these tectonic shifts, as politicians and citizens experimented with different strategies to end a series of crises. In the first study to dig deeply into the drama of the middle classes in this period, Walker shows how the most consequential struggles over Mexico's economy and political system occurred between the middle classes and the ruling party.

Sir Frederick Morton Eden (1766 1809) was an English writer and a pioneer social researcher. Eden studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and subsequently worked in banking and insurance, inheriting a baronetcy from his father, who had been the governor of the American province of Maryland, in 1784. Arguing that poverty could not be tackled without knowing what it actually meant to be poor, this innovative three-volume work is an attempt to define what poverty meant in concrete terms. It is packed with data from across England, divided by county, and covering factors such as food prices, wages, diet and mortality rates. In Volume 1, Eden looks at the history of poverty, the lifestyles of the poor and the various measures introduced to tackle the problem at different periods. It also describes the methods used to collect the data that appear throughout the three volumes.

Sir Frederick Morton Eden (1766 1809) was an English writer and a pioneer social researcher. Eden studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and subsequently worked in banking and insurance, inheriting a baronetcy from his father, who had been the governor of the American province of Maryland, in 1784. Arguing that poverty could not be tackled without knowing what it actually meant to be poor, this innovative three-volume work is an attempt to define what poverty meant in concrete terms. It is packed with data from across England, divided by county, and covering factors such as food prices, wages, diet and mortality rates. It begins with an explanation of the methods of data collection used, and outlines the various measures taken against poverty in different periods. Volume 2 presents the first set of reports on living conditions of the poor in the various English counties, sorted alphabetically, from Bedfordshire to Suffolk.

Sir Frederick Morton Eden (1766 1809) was an English writer and a pioneer social researcher. Eden studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and subsequently worked in banking and insurance, inheriting a baronetcy from his father, who had been the governor of the American province of Maryland, in 1784. Arguing that poverty could not be tackled without knowing what it actually meant to be poor, this innovative three-volume work is an attempt to define what poverty meant in concrete terms. It is packed with data from across England, divided by county, and covering factors such as food prices, wages, diet and mortality rates. Volume 3 presents the second set of reports on living conditions of the poor in the various English counties, sorted alphabetically from Surrey to Yorkshire, and the Welsh counties. A study of Scotland's poor is included in an appendix.

Class in the New Millennium paints a fresh and comprehensive picture of social class in Britain today. Anchored in a broad repertoire of methods and pursuing a distinctive theoretical agenda, it not only painstakingly maps the structure, transformation and effects of the UK's key fault lines but goes behind closed doors to see how they play out in everyday family life. Throughout the book Atkinson throws new light on a diverse array of themes, including: the continued effects of deindustrialisation, educational expansion, feminisation of the workforce and surging employment insecurity; the persistence of lifestyle cleavages despite cultural and technological change; the growth of political disengagement, the transformation of the Labour Party and the rise of nationalism; the entwinement of class with space, place and physical movement; and the way in which class interacts with intimate relations to shape not just the way we decorate our walls or talk over the dining table but the very reproduction of the class structure itself. This innovative title will appeal to scholars as well as advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in the fields of sociology, politics and political science, cultural studies, cultural geography, social policy and social work.

Crime, Inequality and Power challenges the dominant definitions of crime and the criminal through its uniquely comparative approach. In this book Eileen Leonard analyzes multiple forms of criminal behavior in the United States, including violence, sexual assault, theft, and drug law violations, whilst also asking readers to consider the parallels between crimes that are rarely thought comparable. Leonard's juxtaposition of familiar street crimes, such as car theft, alongside large-scale corporate theft, vividly exposes profound inequalities in the way crime is defined, and the treatment it receives within the criminal justice system. Leonard's analysis also reveals the underlying inequalities of race, class, and gender which enable the perpetuation of such crimes, as well as calling into question the reality of fundamental American ideals of fairness and equal justice. Moreover, the book questions whether current policies that punish street crime excessively while minimizing the crimes of the powerful, fail to keep the public safe. A broader consideration of crime, and the inequalities that underlie it, offers a fresh opportunity to rethink public policies and enduring issues of crime and criminal justice. Challenging the many persistent inequalities in the perception of and response to crime, this critique of American crime and punishment will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as scholars, in the fields of criminology, sociology and law.

The relative deprivation construct has been widely used in the social sciences to explain phenomena from experiencing psychosomatic stress to participating in urban riots. It is currently a valuable tool in research, being used especially to understand processes of social identity and responses to disadvantage by both disadvantaged minorities and privileged majorities. Originally published in 2001, this book assembles chapters by leading relative deprivation researchers in order to present comprehensive synthesis of knowledge. Featuring integrative theoretical and empirical work from social psychology, sociology, and psychology, the book provides a highly detailed reference work. It is relevant to researchers in intergroup relations, prejudice, racism, social identity, group processes, social comparison, collective behavior, and social movements. The book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the topic and its practical application.

In his controversial 1973 book, Is God a White Racist?, William R. Jones sharply criticized black theologians for their agnostic approach to black suffering, noting that the doctrine of an ominibenevolent God poses very significant problems for a perennially oppressed community. He proposed a "humanocentric theism" which denies God's sovereignty over human history and imputes autonomous agency to humans. By rendering humans alone responsible for moral evil, Jones's theology freed blacks to revolt against the evil of oppression without revolting against God. Sherman Jackson now places Jones's argument in conversation with the classical schools of Islamic theology. The problem confronting the black community is not simply proving that God exists, says Jackson. The problem, rather, is establishing that God cares. No religious expression that fails to tackle the problem of black suffering can hope to enjoy a durable tenure in the black community. For the Muslim, therefore, it is essential to find a Quranic/Islamic grounding for the protest-oriented agenda of black religion. That is the task Jackson undertakes in this pathbreaking work. Jackson's previous book, Islam and the Blackamerican (OUP 2006) laid the groundwork for this ambitious project. Its sequel, Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering, solidifies Jackson's reputation as the foremost theologian of the black American Islamic movement.