Lifestyle Migration and Residential Tourism represent a major trend in individualized societies worldwide, which is attracting a rapidly growing interest from the academic community. This volume for the first time, critically analyses the spatial, social and political consequences of such leisure-oriented mobilities and migrations. The book approaches the topic from a multidisciplinary and international perspective, unifying different branches of research, such as lifestyle migration, amenity migration, retirement migration, and second home tourism. By covering a variety of regions and landscapes such as mountain and coastal areas, rural and inland communities this volume productively engages with the formal and analytical variations of the phenomenon resulting in an enriching debate at the intersection of different areas of research. Amongst others, topics like political contest and civic participation of lifestyle migrants, their impacts on local communities, social tensions and inequalities induced by the phenomenon, as well as modes of transnational living, home and belonging will be thoroughly explored. This thought provoking volume will provide deep analytical and conceptual insights into the contested geographies of lifestyle migration and further knowledge into the spatial, social and political consequences of leisure-oriented mobilities. It will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics from a plethora of academic disciplines.

Business leaders exert extraordinary influence on institution building in market economies but they think and act within institutional settings. This book combines both an elite approach with a varieties-of-capitalism approach. Comparing Poland, Hungary and East and West Germany, we perceive the transformations in East Central Europe and in Germany after 1989 as being intertwined. Based on a joint survey, this book seeks to measure the level of the convergence of ideas among European business leaders, assuming it to be more extensive than the institutional convergence expected under the dominance of neoliberal discourse. Analyzing the institutional framework, organizational features like size, ownership and labour relations, and subjective characteristics like age, social origin, career patterns and attitudes of the recent business elites, we found significant differences between countries and the types of organization. The growing importance of economic degrees and internationalization shows astonishingly little explanatory power on the views of business leaders. The idea of a coordinated market economy is still relatively widespread among Germans, while their Hungarian and Polish counterparts are more likely to display a minimalist view of corporate responsibility to society and adverse attitudes towards employee representation. However, their attitudes frequently tend to be inconsistent, which mirrors the mixed type of capitalism in East Central Europe.

This study, first published in 1986, provides a systematic account of the processes and structure of class formation in the major advanced capitalist societies. The focus is on the organizational mechanisms of class cohesion and division, theoretically deriving from a neo-Marxian perspective. Chapters consider the organization and structure of the 'corporate ruling class', the middle class and the working class, and are brought together in an overarching analysis of the organization of class in relation to the state and the economy. This title will be of particular interest to students researching the impact of recession on societal structure and the processes of political class struggle, as well as those with a more general interest in the socio-economic theories of Marx, Engels and Weber.

The contributions to this edited collection, first published in 1983, are based on two underlying themes. The first examines the major recession that took hold of the global economy during the 1980s and assesses its effects on key areas of social structure, including political and economic democracy and trade union representation. The second theme considers the limitations of state intervention in such changing circumstances, with particular reference to the welfare state. This is a comprehensive title, which is of great relevance to those with an interest in the current global economic situation and the potential impact of this on the welfare state and class structure.

When King looked over into the promised land and tried to discern how we would get there, he called the poor to lead the way. The Poor People's Campaign was part of a political strategy for building a movement expansive enough to tackle the enmeshed evils of racism, poverty, and war. In Freedom Church of the Poor: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign, Colleen Wessel-McCoy roots King's political vision solidly in his theological ethics and traces the spirit of the campaign in the community and religious leaders who are responding to the devastating crises of inequality today.

As increased access to employment and educational opportunities brought dramatic changes to women's lives, sociologists began to look at the effect of women's changing roles on their children and families. Based on empirical investigations and personal experience, the studies included in The Sociology of Gender and the Family set of the International Library of Sociology set out to establish patterns and regularities in social behaviour, and to understand the social roles of kinship groups, mothers, wives, children and the elderly.

In a just society the law not only applies to all equally, but also arises from the consent of the people it embraces. As such, justice implies that people have access to governance. A just society provides and guards social and individual rights for all its members. The freedom of speech, therefore, is a right of all, and society has institutionalized processes to guarantee that freedom.

Due to the American people's understanding of exclusion and rank, the meaning of justice was fragmented by social status and class. While this book views American justice through a prism of social-class conflict, Gregory C. Leavitt argues that it would be incorrect to portray this perspective as somehow whole. American justice is relative to many cultural groupings and conditions and is thus at the same distance from its encompassing ideal understood by common Americans.

Beginning with the late eighteenth century and ending in the late twentieth century, Leavitt traces the history of class conflict and the struggle for justice among Americans. He argues that class struggles remain a significant factor in American social problems, because the American situation grew out of government promises of freedom and liberty to the lower class and the development of a powerful middle class. This is a provocative contribution to the debate over the future of social justice in America.

Homelessness is now a much greater problem than twenty years ago. In Britain today around half a million homeless people form a regrettable permanent 'underclass'. This study spells out their similarities with the spurned vagrant of bygone days. It traces how for centuries emergent laws have combated alleged threats from unruly vagrants while largely ignoring causal factors like economic fluctuation, bad harvests, disease and war. It is argued that only educational and social reform will alleviate the homeless plight.

This book examines representations of working-class masculine subjectivity in Victorian autobiography and fiction. In it, Ying focuses on ideas of domesticity and the male body and demonstrates that working-class masculinities differ substantially from those of the widely studied upper classes. The book also maps the relationship between two trends: the early nineteenth-century efflorescence of published working-class autobiographies (in which working men construct their identities for a broad readership); and a contemporaneous surge of public interest in "the lower orders" that finds reflection in the depiction of working-class characters in popular novels by middle-class authors. The book mimics this point of convergence by pairing three working-class autobiographies with three middle-class novels. Each chapter focuses on a particular type of work: domestic service, manual (not artisanal) labour, and literary labour (and the opportunities it offers for social advancement). Ying considers the specific ways in which classed and gendered consciousness emerges autobiographically and its significance in the writing of working-class subjectivity for public consumption. Then mainstream novels by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Kingsley are re-read from the perspective of these autobiographical pressure points.

On the Dark Side of the Archive examines nineteenth-century nation building through narratives that are not part of the romantic or realist traditions, specifically those associated with the critique of traditional ideas often portrayed in Decadentism and modernismo. The study focuses on the "non-canonical" works of turn-of-the-century authors-including Jose Maria Vargas Vila, Horacio Quiroga, Clemente Palma, and Jose Marti-and concludes with a study that compares the literary portrayal of doomed societies in the nineteenth century with the work of contemporary authors, such as Fernando Vallejo. Gonzalez Espitia establishes a critique of the concept of nation building in the romantic narratives of South America. These narratives are generally characterized by underlying erotic discourses meant to set the recently liberated countries of Latin America on a path toward class harmony, racial integration, socially beneficial marriage, and demographic expansion. An analysis of nation-building narratives understood as erotic discourses must also consider novels that manifest a dynamics of self-destruction. The authors included in this book subvert the idea of "nation" as a clear, positive, and fruitful space, bringing a dose of reality to this elusive concept. These authors design alternative futures for Latin America, futures that were seen as fruitless, obscure, contemptible, or doomed.

First published in 2006. This book contributes towards a more just appreciation of the relative importance of the different major social groups in the life of the country. It deals in the main with the economic history of the landed interest, and with its role as a social group and includes much agrarian and some industrial history as seen from the landowners' point of view. The first seven chapters of the book aim to present an analysis and description of the main elements in the institutions and way of life of the landed classes, suggesting their significance for society at large, and emphasizing the forces of change which were at work within an order which in many ways presented a remarkably stable appearance to the outside world. The last five chapters take up the theme of change and examine the dynamic elements in the economic social and political life of the group, in a sequence of chronological subdivisions of the century and a half with which this book is concerned.

How are social inequalities experienced, reproduced and challenged in local, global and transnational spaces? What role does the control of space play in distribution of crucial resources and forms of capital (housing, education, pleasure, leisure, social relationships)? The case studies in Geographies of Privilege demonstrate how power operates and is activated within local, national, and global networks. Twine and Gardener have put together a collection that analyzes how the centrality of spaces (domestic, institutional, leisure, educational) are central to the production, maintenance and transformation of inequalities. The collected readings show how power--in the form of economic, social, symbolic, and cultural capital--is employed and experienced. The volume's contributors take the reader to diverse sites, including brothels, blues clubs, dance clubs, elite schools, detention centers, advocacy organizations, and public sidewalks in Canada, Italy, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Mozambique, South Africa, and the United States. Geographies of Privilege is the perfect teaching tool for courses on social problems, race, class and gender in Geography, Sociology and Anthropology.

How are social inequalities experienced, reproduced and challenged in local, global and transnational spaces? What role does the control of space play in distribution of crucial resources and forms of capital (housing, education, pleasure, leisure, social relationships)? The case studies in Geographies of Privilege demonstrate how power operates and is activated within local, national, and global networks. Twine and Gardener have put together a collection that analyzes how the centrality of spaces (domestic, institutional, leisure, educational) are central to the production, maintenance and transformation of inequalities. The collected readings show how power--in the form of economic, social, symbolic, and cultural capital--is employed and experienced. The volume's contributors take the reader to diverse sites, including brothels, blues clubs, dance clubs, elite schools, detention centers, advocacy organizations, and public sidewalks in Canada, Italy, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Mozambique, South Africa, and the United States. Geographies of Privilege is the perfect teaching tool for courses on social problems, race, class and gender in Geography, Sociology and Anthropology.

This study of twenty first century girlhoods and womanhoods charts a new area of scholarship on Kenya. The chapters investigate questions related to how new rituals of girlhood and womanhood that materialize when religious, indigenous, and foreign worlds encounter each other are re-structuring family and society, recasting roles, and informing fresh conceptualizations of African girlhood and womanhood. The author's interdisciplinary analysis and writing journeys through the different stages of girlhood and womanhood as ritualized by Kenya's 21st century middle class, and teases out the implications of these peculiarities to identity (re)creation and the restructuring of societies' organs, and traditionally gendered institutions. Applying a critical African studies lens, the arguments in this book center women as originators of action and thought without inquiring into a male other. Essentially, this work disrupts patri-centered constructions and examinations of female bodies and identities. The resulting deductions inform on the substratum of Kenyan girls and women's self-definitions as manifest through their experiences and ritualized practices, and articulate the impact of the performances of these bodies and identities on Kenyan and global societies.

First published in 1978, this unique work throws much-needed light upon the exact nature of privilege and elite life-styles in the contemporary Soviet Union, under the Communist regime. Dr Matthews' study places these life-styles in a historical perspective, and characterises, in sociological terms, the people who enjoy them. Dr Matthews has lived for some years in the Soviet Union and this study is based on an extensive programme of personal interviews among emigre groups and a close analysis of original and little-known legal historical sources. There are special sections on the nature of change in the Soviet elite and on social mobility. This reissue will attract interest amongst students and scholars in the fields of history, politics and sociology who specialise in the Soviet Union; it will also be of interest to all those concerned with the age-old problem of social equality.

Debates over who belongs in Europe and who doesn't increasingly speak the language of mixing, but how are the figures commonly described as 'mixed' actually embodied? The Biopolitics of Mixing invites us to reckon with the spectres of pathologization past and present, placing the celebration of mixing beside moral panics over terrorism and trafficking and a post-race multiculturalism that elevates some as privileged members of the neoliberal community, whilst ghosting others from it. Drawing on a broad archive including rich qualitative interviews conducted in Britain and Germany, media and policy debates, popular culture, race-based research and queer-of-colour theories, this book imagines into being communities in which people and places normally kept separate can coexist in the same reality. As such, it will appeal to scholars across a range of sociological and cultural studies, including critical race, ethnic and migration studies, transnational gender and queer studies, German and European studies, Thai and Southeast Asian studies, and studies of affect, performativity, biopolitics and necropolitics. It should be read by all those interested in thinking critically on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and disability.

Until the early 1990s, Japanese education was widely commended for achieving outstanding outcomes in global comparison. At the same time, it was frequently criticized for failing to cultivate 'individuality' and 'creativity' in students. Wide-ranging education reforms were enacted during the 1990s to remedy these perceived failings. However, as this book argues, the reforms produced a different outcome than intended, contributing to growing disparity in learning motivation and educational aspiration of students from different class backgrounds instead.

Takehiko Kariya demonstrates by way of empirical sociological analysis that educational inequality in Japan has been expanding, and that a new mechanism of educational selection has begun to operate, which he calls the 'incentive divide'. Casting light on recent changes in Japanese society to critically reassess educational policy choices, this book's quantitative and qualitative analyses of the 'mass education society' in post-war Japan offer important insights also for understanding similar problems faced in other parts of the world at present.

Translated into English for the first time, the Japanese language version of "Education Reform and Social Class in Japan "won the first Osaragi Jir Prize for Commentary sponsored by the "Asahi shinbun." This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Asian studies, Japanese studies, education, sociology and social policy.

Academics often direct their research 'across' in order to examine issues that grip members of the middle classes, or 'down' in order to understand the difficulties workers and other marginalized groups endure. Research that is directed 'up' at individuals and groups with positions of greater wealth and power is less common, yet 'studying up' can contribute to our understanding of growing inequality, economic polarization and social change by studying the rich, powerful and elite in our society. Presenting the latest empirical case studies from Canada, The USA and Australia, this volume explores the challenges and difficulties involved in conducting research amongst the rich and elite, whilst shedding light on the manner in which power is harnessed, protected and controlled to manage and manipulate resources. A demonstration of the importance of studying up to our understanding of decision-making, governance and the nature of contemporary democracy in the global economy, Researching Amongst Elites will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists and geographers working in areas such as social research methods, social stratification, the sociology of elites and relations of class, wealth and power.

Since the late 1970s, China's move towards neoliberalism has made it not only one of the world's fastest growing economies, but also one of the most polarised states. This economic, social and political transformation has led to the emergence of a new Chinese middle class, and understanding the development and the role of this new social group is crucial to understanding contemporary Chinese society. Investigating the new politics of the middle class in China, this book addresses three major questions. First, how does the Chinese state deal with problems of national sovereignty and political representation to create the middle class both as a legitimate category of the people and as an ideal norm of citizenship? Second, how does the recognition of the middle class norm take place in the practice of everyday life? Finally, what kind of risks does the politics of the middle class generate not only for middle class subjects but also for the disenfranchised? In answering these questions, this book examines a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient the behaviours, gestures, and thoughts of Chinese citizens. This investigation contributes not only to the understanding of the Chinese middle class society but also to the scholarly debate over the relationship between governmental apparatuses, subjectification, and life-building. Drawing on ethnographic information, historical archives, and the media, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Chinese studies, Chinese politics, ethnic studies and urban studies, as well as those interested in culture, society, class and welfare.

Poverty is an issue facing countries around the globe, yet it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon caused by a variety of factors, differing from context to context with no linear chain of cause and effect. The occurrence and persistence of poverty is influenced by an interrelated web of economic, social, psychological, cultural, and political factors.

Focusing on countries-in-transition belonging to the former Soviet bloc where the existence of poverty was officially denied until the collapse of the Soviet Union, this volume examines the ways in which each country is dealing with its newly acknowledged and rapidly increasing poverty. The transition from socialism to democracy and market economies has proved more difficult and costly than anyone imagined. Scholars from the six countries examined here profile and evaluate current social policies and programs on poverty eradication and provide a comparative perspective that ensures that culturally specific solutions can be found in place of borrowed solutions from abroad -- solutions which have thus far ignored the cultural factor and have thus failed to deliver.

Western-educated Elites in Kenya, proposes to conduct a critical examination of the emergence of the American-educated Kenyan elites (the Asomi) and their role in the nationalist movement and eventually their Africanization of the Civil and Private sectors in Kenya.

Social class has been at the forefront of sociological theories of crime from their inception. It is explicitly central to some theories such as anomie/strain and conflict, and nips aggressively at the periphery of others such as social control theory. Yet none of these theories engage in a systematic exploration of what social class is, how individuals come to be placed in one rung of the class ladder rather than another, or the precise nature of the class-crime relationship. This book avers that the same factors that help to determine a person's class level also help to determine that person's risk for committing criminal acts. Social class is a modern outcome of primordial status-striving and requires explanation using the modern tools of genetics, neurobiology, and evolutionary biology, and this is what this book does. Many aspects of criminal behavior can be understood by examining the shared factors that lead to the success or failure in the workplace and to pro- or antisocial activities. A biosocial approach requires reducing sociology's "master variable" to a lower level analysis to examine its constituent parts, which is resisted by many criminologists as highly controversial. However, this book makes plain that the more we know about the nature side of behavior the more important we find the nurture side to be. It makes clear how the class/crime relationship and criminology in general, can benefit from the biosocial perspective; a perspective that many criminological luminaries expect to be the dominant paradigm for the twenty first century.

Poverty is an issue facing countries around the globe, yet it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon caused by a variety of factors, differing from context to context with no linear chain of cause and effect. The occurrence and persistence of poverty is influenced by an interrelated web of economic, social, psychological, cultural, and political factors.

Focusing on countries-in-transition belonging to the former Soviet bloc where the existence of poverty was officially denied until the collapse of the Soviet Union, this volume examines the ways in which each country is dealing with its newly acknowledged and rapidly increasing poverty. The transition from socialism to democracy and market economies has proved more difficult and costly than anyone imagined. Scholars from the six countries examined here profile and evaluate current social policies and programs on poverty eradication and provide a comparative perspective that ensures that culturally specific solutions can be found in place of borrowed solutions from abroad -- solutions which have thus far ignored the cultural factor and have thus failed to deliver.

Equal Time, Equal Value is the first systematic investigation of Time Banking in the United States. Drawing upon detailed case studies and making use of a mix of qualitative and quantitative data this book explores the most popular type of what has been called 'community currencies', in which localized systems based on time or dollar equivalents act as the medium of exchange. As such, it offers rich insights into the challenge presented by Time Banking to both the traditional social service and economic models, through the creation of an environment of reciprocity in which everyone's work has equal value. Locating Time Banking within the context of community currencies more generally and investigating the particular characteristics that are central to the production of positive outcomes, Equal Time, Equal Value examines the organizational characteristics of Time Banks, as well as the motivations of members, types and patterns of exchanges, and the effects on members of Time Bank participation in the USA. A timely and detailed exploration of exchange systems at a time of rising unemployment and declining confidence in global economic structures, this book will appeal to sociologists, cultural geographers and anthropologists with interests in social movements, the sociology of work, health promotion and policy, inequality and questions of the creation of community and sustainability.

Politically adrift, alienated from Weimar society, and fearful of competition from industrial elites and the working class alike, the independent artisans of interwar Germany were a particularly receptive audience for National Socialist ideology. As Hitler consolidated power, they emerged as an important Nazi constituency, drawn by the party's rejection of both capitalism and Bolshevism. Yet, in the years after 1945, the artisan class became one of the pillars of postwar stability, thoroughly integrated into German society. From Craftsmen to Capitalists gives the first account of this astonishing transformation, exploring how skilled tradesmen recast their historical traditions and forged alliances with former antagonists to help realize German democratization and recovery.