African American homebuyers continue to pay more for and get less from homeownership. This book explains the motivations for pursuing homeownership amongst working-class African Americans despite the structural conditions that make it less economically and socially rewarding for this group. Fervent adherence to the American Dream ideology amongst working-class African Americans makes them more vulnerable to exploitation in a structurally racist housing market. The book draws on qualitative interviews with sixty-eight African American aspiring homebuyers looking to buy a home in the Chicago metropolitan area to investigate the housing-search process and residential relocation decisions in the context of a racially segregated metropolitan region. Working-class African Americans remained committed to homeownership, in part because of the moral status attached to achieving this goal. For African American homebuyers, success at the American Dream of homeownership is directly related to the long-standing dream of equality. For the aspiring homebuyers in this study, delayed homeownership was a practical problem for the same reasons, but they also experienced this as a personal failing, due to the strong cultural expectation in the United States that homeownership is a milestone that middle-class adults must achieve. Furthermore, despite using perfectly reasonable housing search strategies to locate homes in stable or improving racially integrated neighborhoods, the structure of racial segregation limits their agency in housing choices. Ultimately, policy solutions will need to address structural racism broadly and be attuned to the needs of both homeowners and renters.

First published in 1983, Problems in Class Analysis presents a coherent theory of labour's domination by capital, based upon the notion of the capitalist nature of both the product relations and of the productive forces themselves, including science and technology. The author demonstrates that all knowledges are a product, direct or indirect, of economic relations, so that different knowledges will be the product of different social classes as determined by their position within economic production relations. By posing and re-solving fundamental problems in class analysis, Dr. Carchedi forms a bridge between the theory of the production process and contemporary debates in economics, sociology and epistemology.

The subjugation of millions of people in a caste system that is a radical form of apartheid has long had its critics, both from within India and from outside it. Although the government has introduced equal opportunity legislation in an effort to right some of history's wrongs, untouchability is an accident of birth that continues to stigmatize and ostracize more than one hundred and forty million people. Untouchables remain on the bottom of the socioeconomic scale and are found, more often than not, in unskilled, low status occupations. They are forbidden to enter temples, often beg for their food, must leave their chests uncovered and silently endure public humiliations and insults. They remain on the fringes of society and it is even said by some that their shadows pollute passersby.
This excellent book addresses the problem of untouchability by providing an overview of the subject as well as penetrating insights into its social and religious origins. The author persuasively demonstrates that untouchability is a deeply ambiguous condition: neither inside nor outside society, reviled yet indispensable, untouchables constitute an original category of social exclusion. This is reflected in the various social movements they have led over the last century and more.
The situation of untouchables is crucial to the understanding of caste dynamics, especially in contemporary circumstances, but emphasis, particularly within anthropology, has been placed on the dominant aspects of the caste system rather than on those marginalized and excluded from it. This important book redresses this problem and represents a vital contribution to studies of India, Hinduism, human rights, history, sociology and anthropology.

Inspired by Bourdieu's thought, this book explores the notion of cultural capital, offering insights into its various definitions, its evolution and the critical theories that engage with it. Designed for use by students and teachers, it addresses the limitations and expansion of Bourdieu's theory of capital and power, considering the relationship between cultural, social and human capital, the distinctions between capital and capitalism, and the conflicts that exist among theories that have emerged in response to - or can be brought to bear on - Bourdieu's work. Engaging with the thought of Max Weber, Fernand Braudel, Daniel Bell, Herbert Marcuse, Jean Baudrillard, Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Gilles Lipovetsky, Cultural capital and Creative Communication represents the first book to develop a field of research and study that is devoted to cultural capital. Richly illustrated with empirical examples and offering assessment exercises, it will appeal not only to scholars and students of sociology, philosophy and social theory, but also to corporate communities who seek to develop training modules on the increase of their cultural capital.

This is the study of the status of intellectuals in the People's Republic of China during and after the events of Tiananmen Square. Currently intellectuals find themselves on the cusp of change as the socialist state monopoly on academia, scientific and technical research is yielding to market pressures. Universities must be, at least partially, self-sustaining. Entrepreneurial niches, outside of state control, are opening for intellectuals as industry privatizes. The entire society has shifted its focus from ideology to material wealth. These dramatic changes have forced choices on China's thought workers. English-Lueck, in conducting over a hundred interviews, highlights the choices and constraints of nonestablishment Chinese intellectuals at the end of the 20th century as they establish a new identity for themselves, and perhaps even for China.

Based on two unique survey studies of elites in Norway, this book examines whether elite attitudes towards central national issues have changed in the wake of international and national events and developments since 2000. The chapters examine elite integration and relations between elites and citizens in Norway as a means to discuss the continued viability of the Nordic welfare state model. This insight into how elites relate to central issues in Norwegian society and how they look upon citizens' political interest and competence in general, will be of interest to academics within sociology and political science, as well as journalists and commentators and policy makers.

Decaying values. Sexually transmitted diseases.

Fatherless homes. Rampant drug use.

These aren't just problems for today's inner cities.

It's the plight of all America.

Much has been said about Bill Cosby's incendiary remarks about urban black culture and its "dirty laundry." But in this provocative book, Star Parker, one of today's most controversial commentators, goes even further, proving that urban plight simply reveals a decay that is gnawing its way throughout American society as a whole.

The sexual chaos, values disorientation, and social turmoil we see in our inner cities, Parker argues, is just a magnified reflection of the moral collapse happening all over America: in our schools, our churches, our homes. And this slide toward moral decrepitude is all due to a flagrant dismissal of and assault on America's tried-and-true values.

With startling statistics and disturbing stories about the increasing secularization and criminalization of the middle class, Parker holds a cracked mirror up to suburbia. Taking on tough subjects such as abortion, drug abuse, sexual politics, and religion, she offers a rousing exploration of the raging cultural war-taking you on a wild, eye-opening tour through the "White Ghetto."

Star Parker is the founder and president of CURE, the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education, a nonprofit organization that provides national dialogue on issues of race and poverty in the media, inner city neighborhoods, and public policy. Star is a regular commentator on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and the BBC, which reaches 300 million homes worldwide. Her articles and quotes have also appeared in major publications including the "Wall Street Journal," the "Washington Post," and the "New York Times," and is currently a weekly syndicated columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. Star is the author of "Pimps, Whores, and Welfare Brats" and "Uncle Sam's Plantation."

The research presented in this book explores the formation of the middle class in contemporary urban China. Including case studies on middle-class professionals living in Beijing, this book analyses how social and economic changes to Chinese society create a middle-class lifestyle and new forms of distinction with a particular focus on the social construction of identity. Looking through the lens of individuals' perception of life trajectories and ideological taxonomies generated within the framework of post-Maoist China, the book uncovers the role that the Chinese middle-class play in a state-sponsored discourse and where the distinctions identifying the middle-class lifestyle produce inequality, transfer privilege, and disadvantage in contemporary urban China. It goes on to question hegemonic discourses on class, arguing that a middle-class identity is progressively constructed in urban China not only though consumption practices, but through the experience of non-individualistic activities in both the public and private spheres. Analyzing how social distinctions are performed contributes to the understanding of the Chinese middle-class pre-pandemic, as well as the continual challenges this social group shall face in the years to come. As such, this is a must read for those interested in the Chinese middle-class, Chinese politics, and gender studies.

Based on qualitative research among industrial workers in a region that has undergone deindustrialisation and transformation to a service-based economy, this book examines the loss of status among former manual labourers. Focus lies on their emotional experiences, nostalgic memories, hauntings from the past and attachments to their former places of work, to transformed neighbourhoods, as well as to public space. Against this background the book explores the continued importance of class as workers attempt to manage the declining recognition of their skills and a loss of power in an "established-outsider figuration". A study of the transformation of everyday life and social positions wrought by changes in the social structure, in urban landscapes and in the "structures of feeling", this examination of the dynamic of social identity will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and geography with interests in post-industrial societies, social inequality, class and social identity.

Based on a critical Marxist ethnography, conducted at a state primary school in a former coalmining community in the north of England, this book provides insight into teachers' perceptions of the effects of deindustrialisation on education for the working class. The book draws on the notion of social haunting to help understand the complex ways in which historical relations and performances, reflective of the community's industrial past, continue to shape experiences and processes of schooling. The arguments presented enable us to engage with the 'goodness' of the past as well as the pain and suffering associated with deindustrialisation. This, it is argued, enables teachers and pupils to engage with rhythms, relations, and performances that recognise the heritage and complexities of working-class culture. Reckoning and harnessing with the fullness of ghosts is essential if schooling is to be refashioned in more encouraging and relational ways, with and for the working class. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in the sociology of education, and social class and education in particular. Those interested in schooling, ethnography, and qualitative social research will also benefit from the book

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351017558, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Few institutions in modern society are as significant as universities, yet our historical and sociological understanding of the role of higher education has not been substantially updated for decades. By revisiting the emergence and transformation of higher education since 1800 using a novel processual approach, this book recognizes these developments as having been as central to constituting the modern world as the industrial and democratic revolutions. This new interpretation of the role of universities in contemporary society promises to re-orient our understanding of the importance of higher education in the past and future development of modern societies. It will therefore appeal to scholars of social science and history with interests in social history and social change, education, the professions and inequalities.

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 leading, comprehensive text for courses on the sociology of work covers many vital new topics since the last edition (2015), just as it continues to offer foundational writings and discusses different types of jobs, inequality and intersectionality, work and family, and more. New to this edition: * The gig economy and new digital platforms and their effects on how work is organized. * Precarious work and precarious workers, changes that reflect fundamental changes in employment relationships, increased job insecurity, and how people think about their jobs. * The new retail, from customer interactions to a world where consumption is driven by data science. * The latest research on call centers as the archetypal 21st-century workplace, illustrating many important issues about interactive work, transnational workplaces, gender, etc. * The post-pandemic workplace, including essential workers and frontline workers, healthcare work and care workers; job flexibility, and implications for gender, work, and family.

First published in 1977, On the Economic Identification of Social Classes centres around the economic identification - the definition in terms of production relations - of social classes, focussing on the developed capitalist countries. The basic stages of capitalist development are considered, with special emphasis on monopoly capitalism. The book includes a detailed analysis of the functional element of the capitalist production relations; the identification, in terms of production and distribution relations, of the new middle class under monopoly capitalism; and the analysis of the process of proletarianism of this class. New theoretical concepts - of position, devaluation of labour power through dequalification of positions, and of capitalist and non-capitalist state activities - are developed to further the discussions, which, although fresh in approach, are immersed in the complex texture of Marxist thought. This book will be of interest to students of economics and sociology.

Originally published in 1966, this is a sociological study of boys growing up in East London. Previous books from the Institute of Community Studies had looked at the lives of other residents of Bethnal Green - couples with young children, middle-aged 'Mums', old people, widows. Now the subject is adolescent boys - a study of them not in isolation nor primarily as a 'problem' group but as young people moving between childhood and adulthood in the setting of a particular local community. What is it like to grow up in a district like Bethnal Green? How do the boys adjust to the process? What part is played by school, work, youth club, family? What are the boys' relationships with their fellows and with girls? Where does delinquency fit in? To help answer such questions, a sample of 246 boys aged 14 to 20 were interviewed. The statistical analysis of this survey has been supplemented by illustrative material from diaries, tape-recorded interviews, and informal observation. The outcome is a vivid account, much of it in the boys' own words, which was rather different from some popular views of contemporary adolescence at the time. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

'I can't believe I bought a toaster with no bagel setting!' 'Irritating... just done a massive pre-cleaner clean, and they've just texted to say they're not coming!' Have you ever had to buy cava because the shop's out of champagne? Ever put too much wasabi on your sushi? Or maybe your latest lifestyle post on social media didn't get enough likes? Well, the struggles are real and you're not alone. Cheekily illustrated throughout, this book showcases these and other first-world problems that might find you wincing in self-recognition.

This book explores the dynamics of the "middle-class global rebellion" born of the frustration at declining living standards. Addressing narratives constructed by different social and political agents and groups, it examines contexts of social crisis in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, understanding the middle classes as a set of complex and conflicting political relationships. With attention to the manner in which people create "situated habits", consolidating new expectations and desires through a concrete biography, it analyzes continuities and changes in classed self-perceptions based on performative use. With new perspectives, including historical and intersectional approaches, Middle Class Identities and Social Crisis transcends disciplinary boundaries to explore the hybridity of research methods and techniques and challenge established analytical frameworks. It will therefore appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in class and questions of class identity.

This book is a collection of empirical studies on China's middle class from top-ranking Chinese sociologists, discussing this newly identified social stratum with regard to the basic concept and scope of the group, its functions, formation, identity, consumption, behavior patterns and value system. As the first study of its kind, the analysis of most chapters is based on a rich body of empirical data gathered from rigorous large-scale surveys designed specifically for the Chinese middle class across megacities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The book traces the complex and dynamic formation process of China's middle class from different perspectives while dealing with issues of social concern such as "rigid social stratification". The findings shed light on the underlying logic of structural change in Chinese society over several recent decades, with significant policy implications. The book will attract sociologists, students and policymakers interested in social structure, social transformation and middle-income groups in China.

The twenty-first century has so far been characterized by ongoing realignments in the organization of the economy around housing and real estate. Markets have boomed and bust and boomed again with residential property increasingly a focus of wealth accumulation practices. While analyses have largely focussed on global flows of capital and large institutions, families have served as critical actors. Housing properties are family goods that shape how members interact, organise themselves, and deal with the vicissitudes of everyday economic life. Families have, moreover, increasingly mobilized around their homes as assets, aligning household transitions and practices towards the accumulation of property wealth. The capacities of different families to realise this, however, are highly uneven with housing conditions becoming increasingly central to growing inequalities and processes of social stratification. This book addresses changing relationships between families and their homes over the latest period of neo-liberalization. The book confronts how transformations in households, life-course transitions, kinship and intergenerational relations shape, and are being shaped by, the shifting role of property markets in social and economic processes. The chapters explore this in terms of different aspects of home, family life and socioeconomic change across varied national contexts.

After the end of America's longest (20-year) war in Afghanistan and Iraq that cost more than $6 trillion and nearly half a million lives, what does the future hold for America and the American people in the 21st century? In this timely and important book, Berch Berberoglu provides an eye-opening account of the history of the American Empire from its inception to the present, with prospects for its future. Examining the worldwide expansion of the American Empire over the course of its turbulent history in great detail, Berberoglu assesses America's imperial legacy in a sober way, highlighting its failure to come to terms with the enormous cost of this adventure in imperial overreach. But Berberoglu sees light at the end of the long, dark tunnel, when the American people will awaken and lead the way to a new America after empire in the coming decades of the 21st century.

After the end of America's longest (20-year) war in Afghanistan and Iraq that cost more than $6 trillion and nearly half a million lives, what does the future hold for America and the American people in the 21st century? In this timely and important book, Berch Berberoglu provides an eye-opening account of the history of the American Empire from its inception to the present, with prospects for its future. Examining the worldwide expansion of the American Empire over the course of its turbulent history in great detail, Berberoglu assesses America's imperial legacy in a sober way, highlighting its failure to come to terms with the enormous cost of this adventure in imperial overreach. But Berberoglu sees light at the end of the long, dark tunnel, when the American people will awaken and lead the way to a new America after empire in the coming decades of the 21st century.

What is 'the American Dream, ' and why is it ubiquitous in today's political rhetoric? In this thought-provoking book, Ghosh analyzes the integral role of the American Dream in contemporary American politics. He argues that the Dream's central political function is its ability to offer a politics of democratic inclusion that traces a middle ground between multiculturalism and state-neutrality. One compelling reason for the popularity of the concept is that its roots can be traced back to the primordial values of the nation: work, virtue, and happiness. Political elites across the ideological spectrum refer to the Dream in their appeals, but Ghosh concludes that in doing so they rely on very different interpretations of the Dream's basic tenets. Clear and evocative, The Politics of the American Dream is essential reading for both scholars and observers of contemporary American political culture.

Most modern scholars recognize that there were great differences between China's ruling elite in the middle and late traditional period; many have called the period up through the T'ang dynasty aristocratic, in contrast to the more meritocratic and socially mobile age that followed. But until now there has been no serious effort to discover how the social elite was defined in medieval times, and who belonged to it. David Johnson discusses in detail medieval definitions of the social elite, and, with the help of several manuscripts of the ninth century, identifies the families that belonged to that class.

This collection contributes to an understanding of queer theory as a "queer share," addressing the urgent need to redistribute resources in a university world characterized by stark material disparities and embedded gendered, racial, national, and class inequities. From across a range of precarious and relatively secure positions, authors consider the changing politics of queer theory and the shifting practices of queers who, in moving from the margins toward the academic mainstream, differently negotiate resources, recognition, and returns. Contributors engage queer redistributions in all tiers of the class-stratified academy and across the UK, the US, Australia, Armenia, Canada, and Spain. They both indict academic hierarchy as a form of colonial knowledge-making and explore class contradictions via first-generation epistemologies, feminist care work in the pandemic, Black working-class visibility, non-peer institutional collaborations, and student labor. The volume reflects a commitment to interdisciplinary empirical and theoretical approaches and methodologies across anthropology, Black studies, cultural studies, education, feminist and women's studies, geography, Latinx studies, performance studies, postcolonial studies, public health, transgender studies, sociology, student affairs, and queer studies. This book is for readers seeking to better understand the broad class-based knowledge project that has become a defining feature of the field of queer studies.

Michael Giffin offers a reading of Austen's six published novels against the background of a 'long 18th century' that stretched from the Restoration to the Regency. He demonstrates that Austen is a neoclassical author of the enlightenment who writes through the twin prisms of British Empiricism and Georgian Anglicanism. Giffin's focus is on how Austen's novels mirror a belief in natural law and natural order and how they reflect John Locke's theory of knowledge through reason, revelation, and reflection on experience.