This exploration of one of the most concentrated immigrant communities in Britain combines a fascinating narrative history, an original theoretical analysis of the evolving relationship between progressive left politics and ethnic minorities, and an incisive critique of political multiculturalism. It recounts and analyses the experiences of many of those who took part in over six decades of political history that range over secular nationalism, trade unionism, black radicalism, mainstream local politics, Islamism and the rise and fall of the Respect Coalition. Through this Bengali case study and examples from wider immigrant politics, it traces the development and adoption of the concepts of popular frontism, revolutionary stages theory and identity politics. It demonstrates how these theories and tactics have cut across class-based organisation and acted as an impediment to addressing socio-economic inequality; and it argues for a left materialist alternative. -- .

Money is an evil that does good, and a good that does evil. It inspires hymns to the prosperity it enables, manifestos about the poor it leaves behind, and diatribes for its corrosion of morality. In The Wisdom of Money, one of the world's great essayists guides us through the rich commentary that money has generated since ancient times-both the passions and the resentments-as he builds an unfashionable defense of the worldly wisdom of the bourgeoisie. Bruckner begins with the worshippers and the despisers. Sometimes they are the same people-priests, for example, who venerate the poor from within churches of opulence and splendor. This hypocrisy endures in our secular world, he says, not least in his own France, where it is de rigueur even among the rich to feign indifference to money. It is better to speak plainly about money in the old American fashion, in Bruckner's view. A little more honesty would allow us to see through the myths of money's omnipotence but also the dangers of the aristocratic, ideological, and religious systems of thought that try to put money in its place. This does not mean we should emulate the mega-rich with their pathologies of consumption, competition, and narcissistic philanthropy. But we could do worse than defy three hundred years of derision from novelists and poets to embrace the unromantic bourgeois virtues of work, security, and moderate comfort. It is wise to have money, Bruckner tells us, and wise to think about it critically.

Academic interest in cycling has burgeoned in recent years with significant literature relating to the health and environmental benefits of cycling, the necessity for cycle-specific infrastructure, and the embodied experiences of cycling. Based upon primary research in a variety of contexts such as London, Shanghai and Taipei, this book demonstrates that recent developments in urban cycling policy and practice are closely linked to broader processes of capital accumulation. It argues that cycling is increasingly caught up in discourses around smart cities that emphasise technological solutions to environmental problems and neoliberal ideas on individual responsibility and bio-political conduct, which only results in solutions that prioritise those who are already mobile. Accordingly, the central argument of the book is not that the popularisation of cycling is inherently bad, but that the manner in which cycling is being popularised gives cause for social and environmental concern. Ultimately the book argues that cycling has now become a vehicle for sustaining pro-growth agendas rather than subverting them or shifting to sustainable no-growth/de-growth and less technologically driven visions of modernity. This book makes an innovative contribution to the fields of Cycling Studies, Mobilities and Transport and will be of interest to students and academics working in Human Geography, Transport Studies, Urban Studies, Urban Planning, Public Policy, Sociology and Sustainability.

In the wake of an unparalleled housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, Glasgow Corporation rehoused the tens of thousands of private tenants who were living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in unimproved Victorian slums. Adopting the designs, the materials and the technologies of modernity they built into the sky, developing high-rise estates on vacant sites within the city and on its periphery. This book uniquely focuses on the people's experience of this modern approach to housing, drawing on oral histories and archival materials to reflect on the long-term narrative and significance of high-rise homes in the cityscape. It positions them as places of identity formation, intimacy and well-being. With discussions on interior design and consumption, gender roles, children, the elderly, privacy, isolation, social networks and nuisance, Glasgow examines the connections between architectural design, planning decisions and housing experience to offer some timely and prescient observations on the success and failure of this very modern housing solution at a moment when high flats are simultaneously denigrated in the social housing sector while being built afresh in the private sector. Glasgow is aimed at an academic readership, including postgraduate students, scholars and researchers. It will be of interest to social, cultural and urban historians particularly interested in the United Kingdom.

This book examines the interface between Buddhism and the caste system in India. It discusses how Buddhism in different stages, from its early period to contemporary forms-Theravada, Mahayana, Tantrayana and Navayana-dealt with the question of caste. It also traces the intersections between the problem of caste with those of class and gender. The volume reflects on the interaction between Hinduism and Buddhism: it looks at critiques of caste in the classical Buddhist tradition while simultaneously drawing attention to the radical challenge posed by Dr B. R. Ambedkar's Navayana Buddhism or neo-Buddhism. The essays in the book further compare approaches to varna and caste developed by modern thinkers such as M. K. Gandhi and S. Radhakrishnan with Ambedkar's criticisms and his departures from mainstream appraisals. With its interdisciplinary methodology, combining insights from literature, philosophy, political science and sociology, the volume explores contemporary critiques of caste from the perspective of Buddhism and its historical context. By analyzing religion through the lens of caste and gender, it also forays into the complex relationship between religion and politics, while offering a rigorous study of the textual tradition of Buddhism in India. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of Indian philosophy, Buddhist studies, Indology, literature (especially Sanskrit and Pali), exclusion and discrimination studies, history, political studies, women studies, sociology, and South Asian studies.

Around 5.6 million British nationals live outside the United Kingdom: the equivalent of one in every ten Britons. However, social science research, as well as public interest, has tended to focus more on the numbers of migrants entering the UK, rather than those leaving. This book provides an important counterbalance, drawing on the latest empirical research and theoretical developments to offer a fascinating account of the lives, experiences and identities of British migrants living in a wide range of geographic locations across Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia. This collection asks: What is the shape and significance of contemporary British migration? Who are today's British migrants and how might we understand their everyday lives? Contributions uncover important questions in the context of global and national debates about the nature of citizenships, the 'Brexit' vote, deliberations surrounding mobility and freedom of movement, as well as national, racial and ethnic boundaries. This book challenges conventional wisdoms about migration and enables new understandings about British migrants, their relations to historical privileges, international relations and sense of national identity. It will be valuable core reading to researchers and students across disciplines such as Geography, Sociology, Politics and International Relations.

This book offers both a philosophical and sociological model for understanding the constitution of identity in general, and black social identity in particular, without reverting to either a social or racial deterministic view of identity construction. Using a variant of structuration theory (phenomenological structuralism) this work, against contemporary postmodern and post-structural theories, seeks to offer a dialectical understanding of the constitution of black American and British life within the class division and social relations of production of the global capitalist world-system, while accounting for black social agency.

Through an in-depth case study of the black professional middle class in Oakland, this book provides an analysis of the experiences of black professionals in the workplace, community, and local politics. Brown shows how overlapping dynamics of class formation and racial formation have produced historically powerful processes of what he terms "racialized class formation," resulting in a distinct (and internally differentiated) entity, not merely a subset of a larger professional middle class.

There is a saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, implying that beauty is subjective. But can it be said that 'better looking' people have more social power? This book provides a fascinating insight into the social stratification of people based on looks - the artificial placement of people into greater and lesser power strata based on physical appearance. The author analyzes different aspects of physical appearance such as faces, breasts, eye shapes, height and weight as they are related to social power and inequality. For example, tall people are often associated with power, with tall people being seen publicly as more capable and thus more deserving of power than shorter people. The author moreover assesses how people's physical appearance affects their chances of marriage, employment, education, and other social and economic opportunities. The book contributes to and differentiates itself from current literature by emphasizing sociological theory - including constructionism and critical theory - and research to understand the phenomenon of social aesthetics, a term coined by the author to refer to the social reaction to physical appearance.

This book investigates the life, working conditions, and urban experiences of support service workers, such as janitors, security guards, culinary workers and carpool drivers, in the information technology (IT) sector of India. Largely omitted from academic discourse, support service workers are crucial to the Indian IT industry. Drawing on interviews with such workers in seven Indian cities with a large concentration of software service companies, this volume: Uses quantitative and qualitative analyses to map and assess workers' responses to migration from rural occupations to a modern urban employment setting; Explores the everyday grind of migrant workers in the context of the homogenizing effects of globalization in an alienating urban environment and discusses how their dislodgment from the structures of rural life - gender and caste roles - has placed them in a space of contestation between traditions and the opportunities and challenges offered by digital society in the form of freedom, individualism, flexibility and innovation; Traces the evolution of new areas of class, and identity formations, as well as the hegemonic relations within that ethos imposed by contractors and corporations. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of sociology and social anthropology, urban studies, development studies, labour studies, social exclusion and South Asian studies.

This much revised and reorganized edition of "Intellectuals and Society "is more than half again larger than the first edition. Four new chapters have been added on intellectuals and race, including a chapter on race and intelligence.

These new chapters show the radically different views of race prevailing among the intelligentsia at the beginning of the twentieth century and at the end-- and yet how each of these opposite views of race had the same dogmatic quality and the same refusal to countenance differing opinions among their contemporaries, much less engage dissenting opinions in serious debate. Moreover, each of these very different views of race produced flourishes of rhetoric and travesties of logic, leading to dire social consequences, though of very different sorts in the two eras. Other additions to this edition include a critique of John Rawls' conception or justice and a re-examination of the so-called "trickle-down theory" behind "tax cuts for the rich." There are other revisions, from the preface to the final chapter, the latter being extensively rewritten to bring together and highlight the themes of the other chapters, and to make unmistakably clear what "Intellectuals and Society "is, and is not, seeking to do.

Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City and this book is about them, the so-called mole people. They live alone and in communities, in subway tunnels and below subway platforms and this fascinating study presents how and why people move underground, who they are, and what they have to say about their lives and the "topside" world they've left behind.

This book brings together a diverse range of critical interventions in sexuality and gender studies, and seeks to encourage new ways of thinking about the connections and tensions between sexual politics, citizenship and belonging. The book is organized around three interlinked thematic areas, focusing on sexual citizenship, nationalism and international borders (Part 1); sexuality and "race" (Part 2); and sexuality and religion (Part 3). In revisiting notions of sexual citizenship and belonging, contributors engage with topical debates about "sexual nationalism," or the construction of western/European nations as exceptional in terms of attitudes to sexual and gender equality vis-a-vis an uncivilized, racialized "Other." The collection explores macro-level perspectives by attending to the geopolitical and socio-legal structures within which competing claims to citizenship and belonging are played out; at the same time, micro-level perspectives are utilized to explore the interplay between sexuality and "race," nation, ethnicity and religious identities. Geographically, the collection has a prevalently European focus, yet contributions explore a range of trans-national spatial dimensions that exceed the boundaries of "Europe" and of European nation-states.

Yours for the Union stands as a landmark history of the making of the black working class in South Africa. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it covers the crucial period of 1930-47, when South Africa's rapid industrialisation led to the dramatic growth of the working class, and uncontrolled urbanisation resulted in vast shanty towns which became a focal point for resistance and protest. Importantly, Hirson was one of the first historians to go beyond the traditional focus on the mines and factory workplaces, broadening his account to include the lesser known community struggles of the urban ghettoes and rural reserves. Written by an author with first-hand involvement in South African labour struggles, Yours for the Union broke new ground with its account of the effort to mobilise urban squatters, domestic workers and rural peasants, and remains an indispensable resource for the study of the South African labour movement.

Originally published in 1982 The Strategy of Equality examines public expenditure on the social services as a strategy for promoting social equality. Today there is a widespread belief that the strategy has worked and that public spending on the social services primarily benefits those less well off. However, there have been few attempts to examine whether this belief is founded in reality. This book attempts to rectify this. Examining four areas of social policy: health care, education, housing, and transport, the book looks at the distribution of public expenditure and the 'outcome' of that expenditure, as well as the implications for various conceptions of equality.

This book examines the politics of social, cultural and political recognition of caste groups in North India. It explores the factors that make some castes politically influential, while others continue to remain socially and economically marginalized. The author situates these groups within democracy and utilizes a multicultural framework to understand why and when various castes have sought to achieve recognition and redistributive justice; to what extent different castes have been able to achieve these goals; and how civil society has engaged with these issues. Unlike dominant discourses on caste and democracy, which give primacy to electoral/procedural democracy over the substantive one, this book views the relationship between castes and the state in both dimensions of democracy. An important addition to the study of caste politics in India, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social exclusion, development studies, minority studies, sociology and social policy, politics, and South Asian studies. It will also be of importance to politicians, policy makers, and civil society activists.

This provocative book addresses the ideological and political crisis of the Western left, comparing it with the problems facing leftist politics in Russia and other countries. The author presents a radical critique of the current state of the Western left which puts discourse above class interest and politics of diversity above politics of social change. The trajectory away from class politics towards feminism, minority rights and the coalition of coalitions led to the destruction of the basic strategic pillars of the movement. Some elements of this broad progressive agenda became mainstream, but in fact this made the crisis of the left even deeper and contributed to the disintegration of the left's identity. The author demonstrates that a simple return to 'the good old times' of classical socialist politics of the industrial age is not possible, suggesting that class politics must be redefined and reinvented through the experience of new radical populism. This book speaks directly to the way the identity politics/class politics divide has been framed within the English-speaking world. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of political science and political sociology, international relations, security studies and global studies, as well as socialist activists.

Social and economic changes around the globe have propelled increasing numbers of people into situations of chronic waiting, where promised access to political freedoms, social goods, or economic resources is delayed, often indefinitely. But there have been few efforts to reflect on the significance of "waiting" in the contemporary world.
"Timepass" fills this gap by offering a captivating ethnography of the student politics and youth activism that lower middle class young men in India have undertaken in response to pervasive underemployment. It highlights the importance of waiting as a social experience and basis for political mobilization, the micro-politics of class power in north India, and the socio-economic strategies of lower middle classes. The book also explores how this north Indian story relates to practices of waiting occurring in multiple other contexts, making the book of interest to scholars and students of globalization, youth studies, and class across the social sciences.

How do the media represent obesity and eating disorders? How are these representations related to one another? And how do the news media select which scientific findings and policy decisions to report? Multi-disciplinary in approach, Obesity, Eating Disorders and the Media presents critical new perspectives on media representations of obesity and eating disorders, with analyses of print, online, and televisual media framings. Exploring abjection and alarm as the common themes linking media framings of obesity and eating disorders, Obesity, Eating Disorders and the Media shows how the media similarly position these conditions as dangerous extremes of body size and food practice. The volume then investigates how news media selectively cover and represent science and policy concerning obesity and eating disorders, with close attention to the influence of pre-existing framings alongside institutional and moral agendas. A rich, comprehensive analysis of media framings of obesity and eating disorders - as embodied conditions, complex disorders, public health concerns, and culturally significant phenomena - this volume will be of interest to scholars and students across the social sciences and all those interested in understanding cultural aspects of obesity and eating disorders.

This project provides an in-depth study of the role of worker-activist leaders in industrial strikes in China, a country where labor rights face significant challenges from state and industry suppression and by current lack of formal organization.

First published in 1976. This book covers working-class history from the decline of Chartism to the formation of the Labour Party and its early development to 1914. It gives a historical perspective to the essentially defensive, materialist orientation of twentieth century working-class politics. David Kynaston has sought to synthesise the wealth of recent detailed research to produce a coherent overall view of the particular dynamic of these formative years. He sees the course of working-class history in the second half of the nineteenth century as a necessary tragedy and suggests that a major reason for this was the inability of William Morris as a revolutionary socialist to influence organised labour. The treatment is thematic as much as chronological and special attention is given not only to the parliamentary rise of Labour, but also to deeper-lying intellectual, occupational, residential, religious, and cultural influences. The text itself includes a substantial amount of contemporary material in order to reflect the distinctive 'feel' of the period. The book is particularly designed for students studying the political, social and economic background to modern Britain as well as those specialising in nineteenth-century English history.

This book examines the changing relationship between social class and voting behavior in contemporary America. At the end of the 20th century, working-class white voters were significantly more Democratic than their middle-class counterparts, as they had been since the 1930s. By the second decade of the 21st century, that long-standing relationship had reversed: Republicans now do better among working-class whites. While Trump accentuated this trend, the change began before 2016, something that has not been fully appreciated or understood. Charles Prysby analyzes this development in American politics in a way that is understandable to a wide audience, not just scholars in this field. Drawing on a wealth of survey data, this study describes and explains the underlying causes of the change that has taken place over the past two decades, identifying how social class is directly related to partisan choice. Attitudes on race and immigration, on social and moral issues, and on economic and social welfare policies are all part of the explanation of this 21st century development in American political trends. Rich Voter, Poor Voter, Red Voter, Blue Voter: Social Class and Voting Behavior in Contemporary America is essential reading for scholars, students, and all others with an interest in American elections and voting behavior.

Fifty years ago, familiar images of the lottery would have been strange, as no state lottery existed then. Few researchers have uncovered the obscure role lotteries play in the changing composition of American taxation. Even less is known about what role race plays in this process. More than simply taxing those on the social margins, the emergence of state lotteries in contemporary American history represents something much more fundamental about state fiscal policy. This book not only uncovers the underlying racial factors that contextualize lottery proliferation in the U.S., but also reveals the racial consequences that lotteries have in terms of redistributing tax liability.

Originally published in 1978 The Origins of British Social Policy arose dissatisfaction with conventional approaches to the subject of welfare responsibilities in the state. This volume stresses the complexity of conscious and unconscious influences upon policy, which include such political imperatives as the wish to maintain social order, to maintain and increase economic and military efficiency and to preserve and strengthen the family as a central social institution. It suggests that the break between unsympathetic nineteenth-century Poor Law attitudes towards the poor and modern 'welfare state' approaches has been less sharp or complete than is often assumed.