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 enjoyed them.

This study is based on an extensive programme of personal interviews among emigr? 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 concerned with the history, politics and sociology of the Soviet Union; it will also be of value to all those concerned with the age-old problem of social equality.

Bringing together for the first time sexual and industrial labour as the means to understand gender, work and class in modern Japan and Korea, this book shows that a key feature of the industrialisation of these countries was the associated development of a modern sex labour industry. Tying industrial and sexual labour together, the book opens up a range of key questions: In what economy do we place the labour of the former "comfort women"? Why have sex workers not been part of the labour movements of Korea and Japan? Why is it difficult to be "working-class" and "feminine"? What sort of labour hierarchies operate in hostess clubs? How do financial crises translate into gender crises? This book explores how sexuality is inscribed in working-class identities and traces the ways in which sexual and labour relations have shaped the cultures of contemporary Japan and Korea. It addresses important historical episodes such as the Japanese colonial industrialisation of Korea, wartime labour mobilisation, women engaged in forced sex work for the Japanese army throughout the Asian continent, and issues of ethnicity and sex in the contemporary workplace. The case studies provide specific examples of the way gender and work have operated across a variety of contexts, including Korean shipyard unions, Japanese hostess clubs, and the autobiographical literature of Korean factory girls. Overall, this book provides a compelling account of the entanglement of sexual and industrial labour throughout the twentieth century, and shows clearly how ideas about gender have contributed in fundamental ways to conceptions of class and worker identities.

This essay, first published in 1980, analyses the relationship between intellectuals' social locations and their political orientations. Dr. Brym provides a critical discussion of the various sociological views of intellectuals and specifies some of the social conditions which encourage intellectuals to follow various directions on the political compass. He also demonstrates that intellectuals are neither socially rootless nor tied to one particular class or group within society, concluding that it is only by an analysis of intellectuals' mobility patterns that we can hope to arrive at an adequate understanding of their politics. Clearly written, and assuming only a basic grounding in sociological theory, this book will thus be of special interest to students of political sociology, social movements, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of culture and the sociology of intellectuals.

This book is about the causes and consequences of economic inequality in the advanced market economies of today. It is commonplace that in market systems people choose their own individual economic destinies, but of course the choices people make are importantly determined by the alternatives available to them: economic disparity arises mainly from unequal opportunity. Yet this merely begs the question; from whence do the vast existing inequalities of opportunity arise? This book theorizes power and social class as the real crux of economic inequality. Most of mainstream economics studiously eschews questions involving social power, preferring to focus instead on "individual choice subject to constraint" in contexts of "well-functioning markets". Yet both "extra-market" power structures and power structures arising from within the market system itself are unavoidably characteristic of real-world market-based economies. The normal working of labor and financial markets engenders an inherent wealth-favoring bias in the distribution of opportunities for occupational choice. But that bias is greatly compounded by the economic, social, political and cultural power structures that constitute the class system. For those power structures work to distribute economic benefit to class elites, and are in turn undergirded by the disparities of wealth they thus help engender. Inequality and Power offers an economic analysis of the power structures constituting that class system: employers' power over employees; the power of certain businesses over others; professionals' power over their clients and other employees; cultural power in the media and education systems; and political power in "democratic" government. Schutz argues that a "class analysis" of the trend of increasing economic inequality today is superior to the mainstream economic analysis of that trend. After considering what is wrong with power-based inequality in term of criteria of distributive justice and economic functionality, the book concludes with an outline of various possible correctives. This book should be of interest to students and researchers in economics, sociology, political science and philosophy, as well as anyone interested in the theories of social class.

Can sport serve as a vehicle for social mobility of disadvantaged social groups? How and to what extent are different forms of social capital created through sport participation? Sport and Social Mobility: Crossing Boundaries takes up these questions through a critical examination of the ways in which sport facilitates or inhibits upward social mobility. Drawing on four case studies, the book provides a rich sociological analysis of people 's lived experiences of sport in diverse social, cultural and political contexts, ranging from sport-for-development programs in Brazil and the Netherlands to rural communities and the Somali diaspora in Australia. The first international comparison of and critical reflection on the relationship between social mobility and participation in non-professional sport, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in sport 's potential for social inclusion.

New Labour deployed community as a conceptual framework to rearticulate the state / citizen relationship to be enacted at and through new spaces of governance. An important example of this was how successive New Labour governments sought to renovate the social, political and economic cultures of poor neighbourhoods and generate trajectories of strong, empowered and ordered civic space. This was pursued through programmes such as the New Deal for Communities (NDC) that sought to invigorate and embed socially excluded citizens within localised regeneration projects. In attempting to construct community as a space through which personal and spatial renewal could be achieved, New Labour relied on problematic assumptions about the nature, scope and meaning of community and its relationship with individual social agents. Drawing on original research conducted in an NDC neighbourhood, Remaking Community addresses the interlinking uses of community in government rhetoric and practice. It explores why this concept was so central to the New Labour governing project and what it meant for individuals enveloped in the 'regeneration' of their citizenship and locality. It seeks to understand how community is conceptualised, applied, constructed, misunderstood, exploited, experienced, contested, mobilised and activated by both policy actors and neighbourhood residents and situates this discussion within an examination of the political, emotional and cultural impact of the regeneration experience. Offering a timely analysis of New Labour, regeneration and the politics of community, this book makes an original and important contribution to debates around new spaces of governance, citizen participation and the tackling social exclusion in poor neighbourhoods.

Welfare offices usually attract negative descriptions of bureaucracy with their queues, routines, and impersonal nature. Are they anonymous machines or the locus of neutral service relationships? Showing how people experience state public administration, The Bureaucrat and the Poor provides a realistic view of French welfare policies, institutions and reforms and, in doing so, dispels both of these myths. Combining Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy theory with the sociology of Bourdieu and Goffman, this research analyses face-to-face encounters and demonstrates the complex relationship between welfare agents, torn between their institutional role and their personal feelings, and welfare applicants, required to translate their personal experience into bureaucratic categories. Placing these interactions within the broader context of social structures and class, race and gender, the author unveils both the social determinations of these interpersonal relationships and their social functions. Increasing numbers of welfare applicants, coupled with mass unemployment, family transformations and the so-called 'integration problem' of migrants into French society deeply affect these encounters. Staff manage tense situations with no additional resources - some become personally involved, while others stick to their bureaucratic role; most of them alternate between involvement and detachment, assistance and domination. Welfare offices have become a place for 're-socialisation', where people can talk about their personal problems and ask for advice. On the other hand, bureaucratic encounters are increasingly violent, symbolically if not physically. More than ever, they are now a means of regulating the poor.

Despite the current recession, the frequency of second home ownership is still surprisingly high throughout the western world. While the UK and Ireland previously had lower occurrences of multiple dwellings compared to the rest of Europe, they are quickly catching up with a current surge in the ownership of second homes. The recent MP expenses scandal in the UK has also drawn attention to the prevalence of second homes (or more) within the middle classes, and the fact that the concept is becoming increasingly popular.

Chris Paris uses this text to address the reasons behind why second homes are becoming more popular, both within the usual domicile of the individuals, and in international locations. The socioeconomic factors and historical contexts of homes in cultures across the world are fundamental to explaining the choices in transnational home ownership, and Paris case studies and comparisons between additional homes in Europe, Australia, America and Asia expand upon the motivation for people to own a second home.

Affluence, Mobility and Second Home Ownership draws together debates on gentrification, globalisation, consumerism, environmental factors and investment to provide a balanced look at the pros, and cons, of second home ownership, and what implications it has for the future. An ideal text for students studying geography, urbanism and planning, this book is also of interest to individuals interested in the changing ways in which we make choices on our places of residence.

Rising exclusion rates indicate the continuing marginalisation of many young people in education in the UK. Working-class boys, children living in poverty, and children with additional/special educational needs are among those experiencing a disproportionate rate of exclusion. This book traces the processes of exclusion and alienation from school and relates this to a changing social and economic context. Jean Kane argues that policy on schooling, including curricular reform, needs to be re-connected to the broad political pursuit of social justice, and presents compelling case studies of excluded pupils, showing the multi-faceted identities of pupils, with a particular focus on masculine and feminine identities. This invaluable contribution to the literature offers an alternative analysis where the social identities of pupils are shown to be tied up with their exclusion from school. Themes investigated include: the meanings of school exclusions social class, gender and schooling social identities of excluded pupils negotiating identities in school: moving towards exclusion exclusions and young people's lives improving participation in schooling. Providing fascinating reading for teachers, social workers, researchers and policy-makers this book considers how educational disadvantage might be addressed through recognition of the gender and class identities of pupils.

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.

As the population ages, this book reveals how divides that are apparent through childhood and working life change and are added to in later life. Two internationally renowned experts in ageing look beyond longstanding factors like class, gender and ethnicity to explore new social divisions, including contrasting states of physical fitness and mental health. They show how differences in health and frailty are creating fresh inequalities in later life, with significant implications for the future of our ageing societies. This accessible overview of social divisions is essential reading for those interested in the sociology of ageing and its differences, diversities and inequalities.

The second edition of this strong collection brings together classical statements on social stratification with current and original scholarship, providing a foundation for theoretical debate on the nature of race, class, and gender inequality. Designed for students in courses on social stratification, inequality, and social theory, this new edition includes a revised and updated editor's introduction and conclusion, along with five new chapters on race and gender from distinguished scholars in the field.

In his scathing The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen produced a landmark study of affluent American society that exposes, with brilliant ruthlessness, the habits of production and waste that link invidious business tactics and barbaric social behavior. Veblen's analysis of the evolutionary process sees greed as the overriding motive in the modern economy, and with an impartial gaze he examines the human cost paid when social institutions exploit the consumption of unessential goods for the sake of personal profit. Fashion, beauty, animals, sports, the home, the clergy, scholars--all are assessed for their true usefulness and found wanting. Indeed, Veblen's critique covers all aspects of modern life from dress, class, the position of women, home decoration, industry, business, and sport, to religion, scholarship, and education. The targets of Veblen's coruscating satire are as evident today as they were a century ago, and his book still has the power to shock and enlighten. Martha Banta's introduction illuminates Veblen's uncompromising arguments as it highlights the literary force of Veblen's writing and its influence on later American writers such as Edith Wharton, Henry James, Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She also sheds light on his critique of the plight of women and his evolutionary arguments as they relate to modern society.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This essay, first published in 1980, analyses the relationship between intellectuals' social locations and their political orientations. Dr Brym provides a critical discussion of the various sociological views of intellectuals and specifies some of the social conditions which encourage intellectuals to follow various directions on the political compass. He also demonstrates that intellectuals are neither socially rootless nor tied to one particular class or group within society, concluding that it is only by an analysis of intellectuals' mobility patterns that we can hope to arrive at an adequate understanding of their politics. Clearly written, and assuming only a basic grounding in sociological theory, this book will thus be of special interest to students of political sociology, social movements, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of culture and the sociology of intellectuals.

How should we understand the personal and social impacts of complex mobility systems? Can lifestyles based around intensive travel, transport and tourism be maintained in the 21st century? What possibility post-carbon lifestyles?

In this provocative study of "life on the move," Anthony Elliott and John Urry explore how complex mobility systems are transforming everyday, ordinary lives. The authors develop their arguments through an analysis of various sectors of mobile lives: networks, new digital technologies, consumerism, the lifestyles of ?globals?, and intimate relationships at-a-distance. Elliott and Urry introduce a range of new concepts ? miniaturized mobilities, affect storage, network capital, meetingness, neighbourhood lives, portable personhood, ambient place, globals ? to capture the specific ways in which mobility systems intersect with mobile lives.

This book represents a novel approach in "post-carbon" social theory. It will be essential reading for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduates and teachers in sociology, social theory, politics, geography, international relations, cultural studies, and economics and business studies.

As the racial hierarchy shifts and inequality between Americans widens, it is important to understand the impact of social class on the rapidly growing multiracial population. Multiracial Americans and Social Class is the first book on multiracial Americans to do so and fills a noticeable void in a growing market.

In this book, noted scholars examine the impact of social class on the racial identity of multiracial Americans, in highly readable essays, from a range of sociological perspectives. In doing so, they answer the following questions: Who is multiracial? How does class influence racial identity? How does social class status vary among multiracial populations? Do you need to be middle class in order to be an "honorary white"? What is the relationship between social class, culture, and race? How does the influence of social class compare across multiracial backgrounds? What are multiracial Americans' explanations for racial inequality in the United States?

Multiracial Americans and Social Class is a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and academics in the fields of sociology, race and ethnic studies, social stratification, race relations, and cultural studies.

As the racial hierarchy shifts and inequality between Americans widens, it is important to understand the impact of social class on the rapidly growing multiracial population. Multiracial Americans and Social Class is the first book on multiracial Americans to do so and fills a noticeable void in a growing market.

In this book, noted scholars examine the impact of social class on the racial identity of multiracial Americans, in highly readable essays, from a range of sociological perspectives. In doing so, they answer the following questions: Who is multiracial? How does class influence racial identity? How does social class status vary among multiracial populations? Do you need to be middle class in order to be an "honorary white"? What is the relationship between social class, culture, and race? How does the influence of social class compare across multiracial backgrounds? What are multiracial Americans' explanations for racial inequality in the United States?

Multiracial Americans and Social Class is a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and academics in the fields of sociology, race and ethnic studies, social stratification, race relations, and cultural studies.

Classed Intersections examines the salience, transformation and tension of class analysis at a crucial juncture in its return to and reinvention of sociological agendas. The contributors, including both established and emerging academics, examine class as produced through combined social, cultural and economic practices but are clear not to reify class over and above other paradigms; instead a number of key intersections are fore grounded including gender, ethnicity and sexuality. The collection draws on a variety of methodological positions, including in-depth interviews, ethnographies, and auto-biographical approaches. It scrutinizes classed intersections across a wide range of social spheres and practices, including education, the workplace, everyday life, citizenship struggles, consumption, the family and sexuality. Taken together, this volume will enhance efforts to establish 'new' working class studies both in the UK and around the world.

This book examines the complexities of lifestyles of the upwardly mobile middle classes in India in the context of economic liberalisation in the new millennium, by analysing new social formations and aspirations, modes of consumption and ways of being in contemporary urban India.

Rich in ethnographic material, the work is based on empirical case-studies, research material, and illustrations. Offering a model of how urban cosmopolitan India might be studied and understood in a transnational and transcultural context, the book takes the reader through three panoramic landscapes: new ?world-class? real estate advertising, a unique religious leisure site ? the Akshardham Cultural Complex, and the world of themed weddings and beauty/wellness, all responses to India's new middle classes? tryst with cosmopolitanism.

The work will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers in sociology, South Asian studies, media studies, anthropology and urban studies as also those interested in religion, performance and rituals, diaspora, globalisation and transnational migration.

In fulfilling the long-awaited need for a constructive and critical rethinking of Dalit theology this book offers and explores the synoptic healing stories as a relevant biblical paradigm for Dalit theology in order to help redress the lacuna between Dalit theology and the social practice of the Indian Church. Peniel Rajkumar's starting point is that the growing influence of Dalit theology in academic circles is incompatible with the praxis of the Indian Church which continues to be passive in its attitude towards the oppression of the Dalits both within and outside the Church. The theological reasons for this lacuna between Dalit theology and the Church's praxis, Rajkumar suggests, lie in the content of Dalit theology, especially the biblical paradigms explored, which do not offer adequate scope for engagement in praxis.

This volume explores the emergence, evolution and definition of the middle class in India. As a class created as the interpreters between the colonial rulers and the millions whom they governed in the pre-Independence era, the Indian middle class has existed in congruence with the state, occupying vital positions in state administration. Since Independence, this middle class underwent major sociological change as they live independent of the state, which affected their social, economic and political position, reaping benefits of liberalisation and globalisation through education and employment. An otherwise internally differentiated and heterogeneous group, the new Indian middle class often unifies itself to shape socio-political discourse that affects politics and policymaking, from domestic to international affairs. This volume analyses this class phenomenon through a close study of a new metropolitan middle class in India - the software professionals, emblematic of the 'new India'. It discusses this emerging class as a political category and their engagements with the state, democracy, political parties, issues of gender, basic necessities and social justice. Further, it discusses their social action and 'middle class activism' for issues such as environment, cleanliness and corruption, particularly highlighting its presence in the private sector and electronic media. A fresh perspective on India's political milieu, this volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of sociology, modern Indian history, political science, economics and South Asia studies.

This ethnographic study examines the lives of Japanese workers in small firms and analysis their experiences of working life, leisure and education. This unique case study of the Shintani Metals Company illustrates the ways in which employees lives extend beyond their work. Japanese Working Class Lives provides a valuable alternative view of working life outside the large corporations. Roberson demonstrates that the Japanese working class is more diverse than Western stereotypes of be-suited salary-men would suggest.

The application of probability and statistics to an ever-widening number of life-decisions serves to reproduce, reinforce, and widen disparities in the quality of life that different groups of people can enjoy. As a critical technology assessment, the ways in which bad luck early in life increase the probability that hardship and loss will accumulate across the life course are illustrated. Analysis shows the ways in which individual decisions, informed by statistical models, shape the opportunities people face in both market and non-market environments. Ultimately, this book challenges the actuarial logic and instrumental rationalism that drives public policy and emphasizes the role that the mass media play in justifying its expanded use. Although its arguments and examples take as their primary emphasis the ways in which these decision systems affect the life chances of African-Americans, the findings are also applicable to a broad range of groups burdened by discrimination.

Making use of archival resources in the United Kingdom and the United States, Regina B. Oost examines advertisements, promotional materials, and programs, as well as letters, diaries, and account books, to reconstruct the ways in which Richard D'Oyly Carte, W.S. Gilbert, and Arthur Sullivan attracted and shaped the expectations of theatergoers. Her findings place the Savoy operas in the context of other West End productions, considering similarities between Carte's promotional methods and those of managers Henry Irving, John Hollingshead, and Marie and Squire Bancroft. While all of these managers astutely understood patronage of a middle-class audience to be key to their success, the Savoy collaborators made strategic use of circumstances unique to their situation to distinguish Gilbert and Sullivan operas from contemporary theatrical fare. From Trial by Jury (1875) through The Grand Duke (1896), the Savoy operas celebrated the commodity culture beloved of the urban middle classes, validated a moral code that secured the social privileges audience members cherished, and ultimately provided a new model of British national identity that replaced the agrarian ideal espoused by earlier generations. Written in admirably accessible and jargon-free prose, Oost's book will appeal to scholars of theater history, literature, music, and popular culture, as well as general readers interested in Gilbert and Sullivan and the history of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

The French writer Arnold van Gennep first called attention to the phenomena of status passages in his "Rites of Passage" one hundred years ago. In "Status Passage, " first published in 1971, the movement of individuals and groups in contemporary society from one status to another is examined in the light of Gennep's original theory. Glaser and Strauss demonstrate that society emerges as a comparative order. In this order, every organized action, collective or individual, can be seen as a form of status passage.

From one status to another-from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, from being single to being married, movement from one income group, social class or religion to another-there are passages that entail movement into different parts of a social structure and loss or gain in privileges. Types of status passage are described by their proper ties. The authors present a formal theory of status passage in the form of a running theoretical discussion.

The concepts and categories discussed in "Status Passage" are illuminated by a large number of examples chosen from a wide range of human behavior, and the applicability of the theory to still other examples is made apparent. The result is a stimulating and provocative book that will interest a wide range of sociologists, social psychologists, and other social scientists, and will be useful in a variety of courses.