A new class is emerging in the wake of the information economy and is altering American culture. Instead of arguing about values in aesthetic taste or morality, this book sheds new light on the culture wars by examining the social sources of recent cultural developments. Both opponents and defenders of the current cultural scene have neglected the class factors in culture generally and in present society. If the new class is added to our picture of American society, its input into the cultural marketplace helps to explain present trends in postmodernism, mixtures of high and low culture, and other recent developments.

Both opponents and defenders of the cultural scene have neglected the class factors in culture generally and in present society. Instead of arguing about values in aesthetic taste or morality, this book offers a new perspective on the culture wars by inquiring into the social sources of the argument. When a new class is seen to have emerged in the wake of the information economy, its effects on cultural taste and style will help to explain both their strengths and weaknesses.

The book's message is that much of the heat generated in the culture wars may be lowered and clarification obtained by observing a principle in social and aesthetic matters: every class has its culture. When the social functions of both high and popular cultures are acknowledged, it becomes possible to criticize current offerings for their effectiveness or limitations in fulfilling those functions. If the new class is added to our picture of American society, its input into the cultural marketplace helps to explain present trends in postmodernism, mixtures of high and low culture, and other recent developments.

This book examines the close relationship between the portrayal of foreigners and the delineation of culture and identity in antebellum American writing. Both literary and historical in its approach, this study shows how, in a period marked by extensive immigration, heated debates on national and racial traits, during a flowering in American letters, encouraged responses from American authors to outsiders that not only contain precious insights into nineteenth-century America's self-construction but also serve to illuminate our own time's multicultural societies. The authors under consideration are alternately canonical (Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville), recently rediscovered (Kirkland), or simply neglected (Arthur). The texts analyzed cover such different genres as diaries, letters, newspapers, manuals, novels, stories, and poems.

Scholars from various disciplines have used key concepts to grasp mobilities, but as of yet, a working vocabulary of these has not been fully developed. Given this context and inspired in part by Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), this edited volume presents contributions that critically analyze mobility-related keywords: capital, cosmopolitanism, freedom, gender, immobility, infrastructure, motility, and regime. Each chapter provides an historical context, a critical analysis of how the keyword has been used in relation to mobility, and a conclusion that proposes future usage or research.

America's Irish Catholic rich have long enjoyed the designation of F.I.F., or First Irish Family or "Real Lace", as it delineates their place in the "Irishtocracy", where names such as Cuddihy, Murray, Doheny, and McDonnell inspire respect and awe. Yet, in almost every case, their origins in this country were humble. Fleeing the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, they found themselves penniless in the slums of New York and Boston where they were regarded as "invaders" and a curse, humiliated by signs that said 'No Irish Need Apply' and forced to accept jobs too degrading to be accepted by native and other immigrant populations. Nonetheless, they possessed one important advantage over other immigrants: they spoke the language. They were also, by nature and tradition, political. And they had ambition, courage, a fighting spirit, and-perhaps most important-Irish charm. Here, in this engrossing and often hilarious book, we read of how the Irish elite emerged-frequently in less than a generation's time-out of poverty into positions of both social and business prominence. One of the F.I.F., Robert J. Cuddihy, was behind one of the great publishing stories of the twentieth century, the rise and fall of the Literary Digest. Another, Thomas E. Murray, though little schooled, possessed an engineering genius that led to his control of a number of electrical and other patents, second only to Thomas Edison. Still another, Edward Doheny, was a key figure in the great Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding years. We read of the F.I.F.'s struggles to cling to their faith, and their determination to cope with the "Irish curse": alcohol. In Real Lace Stephen Birmingham recounts the ultimate rags-to-riches story of the American Irish in a social history as entertaining as it is important.

In this chatty, anecdotal, and often ironic inquiry, Stephen Birmingham investigates the nesting habits, enjoyments, and frustrations of American suburban life in the Seventies. He explores the social organism that is the American suburb-from Scottsdale Arizona, and Salt Lake City's suburbs, to New York's Westchester County and the suburbs surrounding the great industrial cities that fringe the Great Lakes. He has talked with householders great and small and gleaned their intensely personal views of the suburban experience: what they like, what they lament, what they fear. Much of what he records is agreeable gossip-as in his account of the relationship between the Pocantico Hills Rockefellers and the Greenwich Rockefellers; some is acute social criticism. Almost without exception, the suburbanites came to the suburbs with a dream. The reality they found was often less than what they envisioned, but occasionally it was more. Most have had to strike a compromise between the dream and the reality, the swimming pool and manicured lawn and soaring property tax, good public schools and out-of-sight school taxes. This compromise in its various manifestations, and the related problems of status, add a depth of perspective to a book that oozes the fun and charm of the Seventies.

Since the Gold Rush, California has represented a land of opportunity and bounty for a special breed of Americans. Heading west in pursuit of sunshine, riches, and elusive dreams, the early mavericks of California set out to make their fortunes--and often succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Prospectors became oil tycoons, squatters became cattle barons, and farmers' wives became grandes dames of a new rough-hewn society. In California Rich Stephen Birmingham explores this fascinating social history, showing how the ruling class of California was born, and how it evolved a lifestyle that continues to fascinate the world. Its colorful array of characters include: the despotic William Randolph Hearst, renowned for treating kings and copyboys with equal disdain; Governor Leland Stanford , who shamelessly used politics for the profit of his railroad; and the fiery James Irvine, who attended business meetings accompanied by an entire pack of hunting dogs. In exploring how these self-made millionaires acquired their money-and what they did with it-Birmingham provides a glimpse of the customs and quirks of California wealth, shedding light on how the state came to symbolize the easy, opulent life, that still entices seekers of fame and fortune today.

Astor. Rockefeller. McCormick. Belmont. All family names that still adorn buildings, streets and charity foundations. While the men blazed across America with their oil, industry, and railways, the matriarchs founded art museums, opera houses, and symphony houses that functioned almost as private clubs. These women ruled American society with a style and impact that make today's socialites seem pale reflections of their forbears. Linked by money, marriage, privilege, power and class, they formed a grand American matriarchy that dominated the social and cultural life of the nation between the 1870s and the Second World War. The Grandes Dames of America knew just what they wanted and precisely how to get it, and when faced with criticism, malice or jealousy, they would rise above their detractors and usually persevere. Preeminent social historian Stephen Birmingham takes us into the drawing rooms of these powerful women, providing keen insights into aspects of an American Society that no longer exists. Caroline Astor, when asked for her fare boarding a street car, responded, "No thank you, I have my own favorite charities." Edith "Effie" Stern decided that no existing school would do for her child, so she had a new one built. And the legendary Isabella Stewart Gardner replied to a contemporary who was overly taken with their Mayflower ancestors: "Of course, immigration laws are much more strict nowadays." These women had looks, manner, and style, but more than that they had presence-there was a sense that when one of them entered a room, something momentous was about to occur. Birmingham opens a window to the highest levels of American society with these eight profiles of American "royalty".

It's no secret that the rich are different from the rest of us. But the rich, as author Stephen Birmingham so insightfully points out, are also different from the very rich. There's Society, and then there's Real Society, and it takes multiple generations for families of the former to become entrenched in the latter. Real Society is not about the money-or rather, it's not only about the money-it is about history, breeding, tradition, and most of all, the name. The Right People is an engrossing and illuminating journey through the customs and habits of the phenomenally wealthy, from the San Francisco elite to the upper crust of New York's Westchester County. It is a marvelously anecdotal, intimately detailed overview of the lives of the American aristocracy: where they gather and dine; their games and sports, clubs and parties, friendships and feuds; their mating, marriage, and divorce rituals-a potpourri of priceless true stories featuring the Astors, Goulds, Vanderbilts, Dukes, Biddles, and other lofty names from the pages of the Social Register.

Tracing their origins to medieval Portugal and Spain, the Sephardic Jews consider themselves 'the nobility of Jewry,' in contrast to their pushier and more aggressive German counterparts. They were also the first Jews to inhabit the new world-first exiled from Spain and Portugal, and then forced out of Brazil, a ship bearing 23 Sephardic Jews was blown off its course to Holland, beset by pirates, and then captured by a French captain before being ransomed for the 'payment of their freight' in the City of New Amsterdam. And so the American Sephardic Jewish story begins. Here Stephen Birmingham tells the rich and varied history of this insular group of bewilderingly interrelated families, spiced with gossip and the gentle rattling of family skeletons. We find tales of fortunes made in the fur trade long before the Astors, revolutionary heroes and heroines, and poetic spinster Rebecca Gratz, thought to be Scott's model for Rebecca in Ivanhoe. Through it all emerges a picture of a proud haughty people, who have chosen to remain aloof from the later-arriving Jews from Europe, and have staunchly refused to be swept up in the movement of Reform Judaism, preferring to adhere to their Orthodox rituals. Stephen Birmingham weaves a vibrant tapestry of the Sephardic experience in America, working in threads of their history in medieval Europe as he depicts the lives of these extraordinary Americans.

Where are the Right Places, those exclusive locations where the privileged live and play? You may be in for a surprise. For as Stephen Birmingham shows, in the same witty, penetrating style that characterized his other studies of the elite, the Right Places could be just about anywhere, from exclusive chalets in Sun Valley, Idaho to the traditionally swank estates of Fairfield County, Connecticut, to the nascent avant-garde art scene in Kansas City, Missouri. Birmingham goes to great lengths to unveil the secret enclaves of the rich for his readers, from the secret hideaway of Maria Callas after Aristotle Onassis deserted for the lovely widowed Jacqueline Kennedy, to Elizabeth Taylor's habits at home, including her favorite recipe for chili. The late Stephen Birmingham renders the walls between the reader and the rich transparent, giving us a glimpse into their lives and abodes beyond what is seen in paparazzi photos.

America has always been a constitutionally classless society, yet an American aristocracy emerged anyway-a private club whose members run in the same circles and observe the same unwritten rules. Renowned social historian Stephen Birmingham reveals the inner workings of this aristocracy and identifies which families in which cities have always mattered and how they've defined America. America's Secret Aristocracy offers an inside look at the estates, marriages and financial empires of America's most selective club and a gallery of vivid portrait of its members: the William Randolphs, the first of the first families of Virginia; the Carillos and Ortegas, the premier ranchero families of California; Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt; the Boston Brahmins, including the Lowells, "who speak only to Cabots, and the Cabots, who speak only to God". With countless anecdotes about our nation's elite, including interviews with their modern-day descendants, this is a social history both insightful and entertaining. Scores of social chroniclers have tried to define America's aristocracy with various Social Registers and Who's Whos. Stephen Birmingham outdoes these lists as his colorful portraits go far beyond simply naming names; they capture the true definition, essence and customs of America's aristocratic families.

The volumes in this set, originally published between 1933 and 1988, come from sociology, politics, philosophy, economics, health and education. They: Explore a particular level at which the concept of equality must be applied if educational equality is to be realised. Present a philosophical analysis of the principle of equality. Provide a detailed examination of the correlation between health and wealth, or ill-health and deprivation in Britain. Include an important contribution to the study of social mobility in Australia. Evaluate the effects of converting rental housing into owner occupancy in the USA, the UK and Germany. Presents a detailed empirical analysis of the key dimensions of inequality and poverty in Wales.

Pearl Jephcott (1900–1980) was a pioneer of sociological research, largely forgotten in recent times, her works paved the way for many of the subsequent developments that were to come in the sociology of gender, women’s’ studies, urban sociology, leisure studies and the sociology of youth. An originator and an early adopter of many research methods, Pearl Jephcott, deserves to be rediscovered. This collection of 5 books, each with a new foreword, were originally published between 1954 and 1971. Including one previously unpublished work from 1954, they are a selection of her most important work and a fascinating record of sociological research in action.

In Middle-Class Pentecostalism in Argentina: Inappropriate Spirits Jens Koehrsen offers an intriguing account of how the middle class relates to Latin Americas most vibrant religious movement. Based on pervasive field research, this study suggests that Pentecostalism stands in tension with the social imaginary of the middle class and is perceived as an inappropriate lower class practice. As such, middle class Pentecostals negotiate the appropriateness of their religious belonging by demonstrating distinctive tastes and styles of Pentecostalism. Abstaining from the expressiveness, emotionality, and strong spiritual practice that have marked the movement, they create a milder and socially more acceptable form of Pentecostalism. Increasingly turning into a middle class movement, this style has the potential to embody the future shape of Pentecostalism.

The 16th volume in a series on advances in stratification research. Topics addressed include: the changing international context of social stratification; race, immigration and life chances; and the distinctiveness of independent business as a locus of social stratification.

The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France analyses the process by which class society developed in post-revolutionary France. Focusing on bourgeois men and on their voluntary associations, Carol E. Harrison addresses the construction of class and gender identities, and shows how the sociable interaction of male citizens was the crucial bridge between the destruction of Frances's old regime and the development of a mature industrial class society.

Colonial Capital Theory at Work: The Case of Jamaica contributes to our understanding of the emerging Caribbean and explains how some have intentionally used "sociological imagination," or the links between history and biography, to achieve prosperity. O. Alexander Miller examines how potential immigrants from the Caribbean employ sociological imagination and, by so doing, achieve sustained intergenerational financial prosperity even while living in relatively poor home societies. The book focuses on Jamaicans because they are one of the largest groups of black Caribbean immigrants in the United States and England. Furthermore, their home society illustrates how well sociological imagination works for those who employ it, even in a post-colonial society where there are historical disparities between the socially approved goals of society and the structural means for reaching those goals. Colonial Capital Theory at Work is written not only for scholars in sociology, migration studies and Caribbean studies, but also for members of immigrant communities, especially of African ancestry.

What happens when an immigrant believes the lies they're told about their own racial identity?

For Cathy Park Hong, they experience the shame and difficulty of "minor feelings".

The daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up in America steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality. With sly humour and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche - and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth.

This set of 23 volumes, originally published between 1934 and 1994 shed much light on the history of industrial relations and working-class organisation in the UK. They analyse trade union structure, organization and government and look at the pattern of union activity in the workplace. Containing fascinating insider accounts of developments in British industrial relations they analyse the impact of the changing economic and political climate on trade unions in Europe and use a series of comparative case studies to examine change in the government, growth, mergers, character and bargaining structures of British unions. They provide an introduction to the characteristics and styles of trade unionism in Europe and offer a comprehensive guide to the complex structure and administration of British Trade Unions as well as analysing the relationship between political parties and trade unions in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.

This book enables readers to better understand, explain, and predict the future of the nation's overall economic health through its examination of the black working class-especially the experiences of black women and black working-class residents outside of urban areas. How have the experiences of black working-class women and men residing in urban, suburban, and rural settings impacted U.S. labor relations and the broader American society? This book asserts that a comprehensive and critical examination of the black working class can be used to forecast whether economic troubles are on the horizon. It documents how the increasing incidence of attacks on unions, the dwindling availability of working-class jobs, and the clamoring by the working class for a minimum wage hike is proof that the atmospheric pressure in America is rising, and that efforts to prepare for the approaching financial storm require attention to the individuals and households who are often overlooked: the black working class. Presenting information of great importance to sociologists, political scientists, and economists, the authors of this work explore the impact of the recent Great Recession on working-class African Americans and argue that the intersections of race and class for this particular group uncover the state of equity and justice in America. This book will also be of interest to public policymakers as well as students in graduate-level courses in the areas of African American studies, American society and labor, labor relations, labor and the Civil Rights Movement, and studies on race, class, and gender. Contributes new information and fresh perspectives on the ongoing debate regarding the significance of race versus class Suggests a number of lessons all Americans can learn from the black working class Provides a insightful critique of the first black American president's record on race and addressing socioeconomic class differences Supplies an unprecedented examination that simultaneously examines the diversity of the black working class as well as its historical impact on shaping and foreshadowing the U.S. economy over many generations

'It's fascinating and moving to discover and identify those LGBT people in less happy times, who fought for the freedoms LGBT people now enjoy in the UK. This book will make you look back with gratitude and astonishment for what has been achieved.' Sir Ian McKellen LGBT activist and civil rights history from the 1960s to the 2000s has had a huge impact on our social and political landscape in the UK, yet much of this history remains hidden. Prejudice and Pride: LGBT Activist Stories from Manchester and Beyond explores aspects of LGBT activist history. It covers educational activism, youth work activism and the history of the LGBT Centre in Manchester. Through personal stories of activists, heard and recorded by young people from LGBT Youth North West, the book explores the 'wibbly wobbly' nature of people's histories. It reveals how they interlink in surprising and creative ways to form the current landscape of both prejudice and pride. Also contains exercises for interpreting and ideas for collecting activist histories within youth work.

Caste is a contested terrain in India s society and polity. This book explores contemporary realities of caste in rural and urban India. Presenting rich empirical findings across north India, it presents an original perspective on the reasons for the persistence of caste in India today. "

Global forces and accountability once again converge in this volume, illustrating the significant and multifaceted nature of the role of accounting in societies. The accounting discipline in its numbers, its silences, its privileging of select classifications over others, it is continually constructing knowledge, cultivates meaning, and impacts public policy in the intersection of socio-political-economic realms. The research in this volume responds to calls for examining accounting as an interdisciplinary role in neoliberal governance by examining migration, race, gender, class and the creation of the 'other'. Each paper uniquely contributes toward significantly exploring accounting's role in disenfranchising populations while identifying participants actualized and potential role in emancipatory struggles. By recognizing marginalized groups embedded power rather than casting them as victims, the authors reject an inevitability of widening inequalities and forms of violence to world populations. Rather these critical accounting researchers seriously tackle the task of transformation, providing pathways for thinking differently and aspiring for change.