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.

Social differentiation, poverty and the emergence of the newly rich occasioned by the collapse of the Soviet Union have seldom been analysed from a class perspective. Rethinking Class in Russia addresses this absence by exploring the manner in which class positions are constructed and negotiated in the new Russia. Bringing an ethnographic and cultural studies approach to the topic, this book demonstrates that class is a central axis along which power and inequality are organized in Russia, revealing how symbolic, cultural and emotional dimensions are deeply intertwined with economic and material inequalities. Thematically arranged and presenting the latest empirical research, this interdisciplinary volume brings together work from both Western and Russian scholars on a range of spheres and practices, including popular culture, politics, social policy, consumption, education, work, family and everyday life. By engaging with discussions in new class analysis and by highlighting how the logic of global neoliberal capitalism is appropriated and negotiated vis-A -vis the Soviet hierarchies of value and worth, this book offers a multifaceted and carefully contextualized picture of class relations and identities in contemporary Russia and makes a contribution to the theorisation of class and inequality in a post-Cold War era. As such it will appeal to those with interests in sociology, anthropology, geography, political science, gender studies, Russian and Eastern European studies, and media and cultural studies.

Research into social stratification and social divisions has always been a central component of sociological study. This volume brings together a range of thematically organised case-studies comprising empirical and methodological analyses addressing the challenges of studying trends and processes in social stratification. This collection has four themes. The first concerns the measurement of social stratification, since the problem of relating concepts, measurements and operationalizations continues to cause difficulties for sociological analysis. This book clarifies the appropriate deployment of existing measurement options, and presents new empirical strategies of measurement and interpretation. The conception of the life course and individual social biography is very popular in modern sociology. The second theme of this volume exploits the contemporary expansion of micro-level longitudinal data and the analytical approaches available to researchers to exploit such records. It comprises chapters which exemplify innovative empirical analysis of life-course processes in a longitudinal context, thus offering an advance on previous sociological accounts concerned with longitudinal trends and processes. The third theme of the book concerns the interrelationship between contemporary demographic, institutional and socioeconomic transformations and structures of social inequality. Although the role of wider social changes is rarely neglected in sociological reviews, such changes continue to raise analytical challenges for any assessment of empirical differences and trends. The fourth theme of the book discusses selected features of policy and political responses to social stratification. This volume will be of interest to students, academics and policy experts working in the field of social stratification.

Compared to much of the rest of the world, America and its citizens are rich. But many people are also deeply miserable at work, at home, or both. In this provocative book, author John Brueggemann unpacks why so many people are struggling, both emotionally and financially, in a nation that looks so prosperous on the surface. From a hospital patient reduced to a balance sheet to a parent working such long hours that he misses dinner, Brueggemann argues that market thinking has permeated every corner of our lives. In the pursuit of more and better, relationships erode, to the detriment of individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole. Rich, Free, and Miserable not only outlines these pressing social problems, but also offers practical suggestions for people looking to make a positive change. The paperback edition features a new Preface that discusses the widening wealth gap, the ongoing effects of the recent recession, as well as the implications of the Tea Party and Occupy movements."

Despite the growing significance of social movements worldwide, scholarship on the subject remains largely Western in nature, with studies written primarily by Western scholars and based on the experiences of Western cultures and societies. This book makes an important contribution to the study of social movements in non-Western societies by examining their development in Iran. With a particular focus on the recent environmental movement, the author sheds new light on the implications and significance of these movements. Drawing on in-depth original research, the case study of the environmental movement is integrated into a historical and comparative analysis. Implementing the new social movement theory of Touraine and Melucci in the Iranian context, the author shows that although the reform movement of Iran is unique, in some aspects it is a continuation of the past social movements. She places emphasis on the role of women in recent Iranian social movements, exploring the significance of social movements in civil society and in instigating social change. Using the case of Iran to offer a critical framework for studying social change and transformation of non-European countries, this book fills an important gap in the existing literature on the topic. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, political science and Middle Eastern studies.

Fitting into Place adopts a multi-dimensional interdisciplinary approach to explore shifting geographies and temporalities that re-constitute 'city publics' - and the place of the 'public sociologist'. Class, race and gender (dis)advantages are situated in relation to urban-rural contrasts, where 'future selves' are reconfigured in and through 'local' and 'global' sites: people inhabit shifting times and places, from industrial landscapes of the 'past', to a current present and (imagined) 'cosmopolitan' 'regenerated' future. The rhetorics and vocabularies of place, as affective and material, suggest a more complex 'fit' than the language of masculine 'crisis' for past-times, or 'feminised' fit into new-futures, suggests. Across the generations, women's labour is still effaced as maps of loyalty hold up families as reference points of belonging and 'fitting in'; such architecture of place complicates reified 'geographies of choice' which centre a middle-class mobile subject. Based upon funded empirical research, this book will be of interest to sociologists and geographers.

Social Class and Education: Global Perspectives is the first empirically grounded volume to explore the intersections of class, social structure, opportunity, and education on a truly global scale. Fifteen essays from contributors representing the US, Europe, China, Latin America and other regions offer an unparralleled examination of how social class differences are made and experienced through schooling. By underscoring the consequences of our new global reality, this volume takes seriously the transnational migration of commerce, capital and peoples and the ramifications of such for education and social structure. Moving beyond national confines, internationally recognized scholars, Lois Weis and Nadine Dolby, offer a set of emblematic essays that break new theoretical and empirical ground on the ways class is produced and maintained through education around the world.

How were manorial lords in the twelfth and thirteenth century able to appropriate peasant labour? And what does this reveal about the changing attitudes and values of medieval England? Considering these questions from the perspective of the 'moral economy', the web of shared values within a society, Rosamond Faith offers a penetrating portrait of a changing world. Anglo-Saxon lords were powerful in many ways but their power did not stem directly from their ownership of land. The values of early medieval England - principally those of rank, reciprocity and worth - were shared across society. The Norman Conquest brought in new attitudes both to land and to the relationship between lords and peasants, and the Domesday Book conveyed the novel concept of 'tenure'. The new 'feudal thinking' permeated all relationships concerned with land: peasant farmers were now manorial tenants, owing labour and rent. Many people looked back to better days.

Mediated Images of the South: The Portrayal of Dixie in Popular Culture, edited by Alison F. Slade, Dedria Givens-Carroll and Amber J. Narro, is an anthology that explores the impact of the image of the Southerner within mass communication and popular culture. The contributors offer a contemporary analysis of the Southerner in the media. In most cases, previous literature situates these media images in the past, most notably through historic analyses of the Southerner during the Civil Rights movement. Mediated Images of the South breaks out of the box of the 1960s and 1970s by including the most recent and contemporary cultural examples of the Southerner. This book represents a long overdue analysis of those images, from both the past and the present. In addition, the discussions are not limited to one genre of media, but provide the reader with an opportunity to see how far-reaching the myth of the Southerner and the Southern image is in American society. While there is a long list of successful southern politicians, historical figures, businessmen and women, actors and actresses, sports figures and other national and world leaders, Slade, Givens-Carroll, and Narro find that there is still work to be done to present southerners as capable and educated.

Globalization and Technocapitalism considers the global reach of a new capitalist era, exploring the nature of 'technocapitalism' as grounded in new forms of accumulation, commodification, and corporate organization. As technological creativity, corporate research, and talent flows become more important than ever, this book explores the manner in which globalization acquires new contextual features that will become central to the macro-social dynamics of the twenty-first century. It thus sheds light on the resultant growth in global inequalities and more intrusive forms of global domination that are grounded in emerging sectors, such as nanotechnology, biotechnology and its diverse fields, such as genomics, synthetic bioengineering, bioinformatics and biopharmacology, and related advances in computing and telecommunications. A rigorous examination of developments in contemporary capitalism as driven by the forces of globalization, Globalization and Technocapitalism will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of social and political theory, international political economy, political philosophy, science and technology studies and globalization.

This book examines the rise of welfare markets in Western societies and explores their functioning, regulation and embeddedness by addressing the particular field of old age provision, including both retirement provision and elderly care. It goes beyond a mere social policy analysis by investigating major cultural underpinnings of the new (quasi-)markets, with these underpinnings embracing collective normative representations of how societies (should) institutionally handle old age. The book looks at whether pension and care systems are converging under the influence of globalization - with marketization being a key phenomenon - and to what extent this is creating a transnational culture of welfare markets. This book, the first book to systematically describe and analyse the phenomenon of welfare markets, elucidates the complex cultural underpinnings of care and pensions systems in an era of marketization, arguing that we are facing a cultural struggle over the way late modern societies conceptualize institutional old-age provision.

Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia is a major study of the impact of immigration on Australian society, and of the fragmentation that has developed along ethnic, class and gender lines. Rather than thumbnail sketches of ethnic groups or celebrations of multiculturalism, it offers detailed critiques of policy and practice, backed up by evidence from the experiences and research of the authors. This book confronts issues crucial to all Australians: the increasing fragmentation of the workforce; the class, gender and origin-based inequalities present in an 'egalitarian' country; and the ideologies, from racism to multiculturalism, designed to mask these inequalities. The authors also point to evidence of growing resistance to the status quo, and strategies for working towards a more genuine equality - to more positive education programmes, to political action at the workplace and beyond. The aim is to broaden readers' understanding of Australian society by including those who are so often omitted from analysis of that society.

Do writings about ethnicity, class and gender form a 'holy trinity' or challenge previous unidimensional analyses? Intersexions accepts the triple perspective but goes further. One aim is to understand the processes by which relations of power are maintained, reproduced and resisted. Intersexions also examines modes of representation: within social theory, feminism, development theory and discussions of capitalism and postcolonialism, as well as dominant ideological notions of caste, domesticity and 'success'. The writers' approaches are all critical but concerned also with providing alternatives. Comparative and specific analyses are combined, attention is paid to the written and spoken material of the people 'represented' and their own positions as commentators examined. Topics range from discussions of family ideology and paid and domestic work, to analyses of writings by Aboriginals, Vanuatuans and second generation Greek Australians and critiques of the cultural construction of gender and ethnicity in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia. Themes recur and overlap. Unitary categories are questioned and the processes by which relations described as 'class', 'ethnic', 'cultural' and 'gender' intersect and interact are demonstrated.

Revealing Britain's Systemic Racism applies an existing scholarly paradigm (systemic racism and the white racial frame) to assess the implications of Markle's entry and place in the British royal family, including an analysis that bears on visual and material culture. The white racial frame, as it manifests in the UK, represents an important lens through which to map and examine contemporary racism and related inequities. By questioning the long-held, but largely anecdotal, beliefs about racial progressiveness in the UK, the authors provide an original counter-narrative about how Markle's experiences as a biracial member of the royal family can help illumine contemporary forms of racism in Britain. Revealing Britain's Systemic Racism identifies and documents the plethora of ways systemic racism continues to shape ecological spaces in the UK. Kimberley Ducey and Joe R. Feagin challenge romanticized notions of racial inclusivity by applying Feagin's long-established work, aiming to make a unique and significant contribution to literature in sociology and in various other disciplines.

This book brings together a collection of essays by progressive global activists in response to Samir Amin's call for a new global organization of progressive workers and peoples. Amin's proposal is applauded, criticized and reformulated by these scholar-activists who are all proponents of ways forward toward a more egalitarian world society. Samir Amin, a leading scholar and co-founder of the world-system tradition, died on August 12, 2018. Just before his death, he published, along with close allies, a call for 'workers and the people' to establish a 'fifth international' to coordinate support for progressive movements. Amin, an Egyptian economist, was an intrepid intellectual and organizer of popular movements whose scholar activism provided inspiration to the global justice movement. The essays in this volume are by other prominent scholar activists who praise, critique and reconfigure Amin's proposal in order to help humanity confront the contemporary crisis of global capitalism and move toward a more egalitarian global society. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, Globalizations.

Since 2003, Hong Kong has witnessed a series of large-scale protests which have constituted the core of a reinvigorated pro-democracy movement. What drove tens of thousands of citizens to the street on a yearly basis to protest? What were the social and organizational bases of the protest movement? How did media and public discourses affect the protests formation and mobilization? How did the protesters understand their own actions and the political environment? This book tackles such questions by using a wide range of methods, including population and protest onsite surveys, media content analysis, and in-depth interviews with activists, politicians, and protest participants. It provides an account of the "self-mobilization processes" behind the historic July 1, 2003 protest, and how the protest kick-started new political dynamics and discursive contestations in the public arena which not only turned a single protest into a series of collective actions constituting a movement, but also continually shaped the movement 's characteristics and influence. The book is highly pertinent to readers interested in political development in Hong Kong, and as a case study on "the power of critical events," the book also has broad implications on the study of both media politics and social movements in general.

Bringing together the leading authors currently working at the intersection of social science and transport science, this volume provides a companion to the well-established and extensive international Transport and Society series. Each chapter, and the volume as a whole, offers closer and richer consideration of the issues, practices and structures of multiple mobilities which shape the current world but which have typically been overlooked or minimised. What this approach seeks to do is not only draw attention to many new areas of research and investigation relating to mobile lives, but also to point to new theories and methods by which such lives have to be researched and examined. Such new theories and methods are relevant both to rethinking 'transport' studies as such but are also recasting 'societal' studies as 'transport' so that it comes out of the ghetto and enters mainstream social science.

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.

What kinds of experiences do we have with the poor and the oppressed around the world? What do we really know about the ins and outs of the lives of those who exist in a world of extreme poverty or oppression? Global Scenes of Biblical Injustice simplifies and synthesizes the bewildering array of research and technical data which exists regarding these issues. Through the use of colorful, informative, and thoughtful vignettes, this book paints an easily understandable picture of the true nature of what may be called biblical injustice. This thought-provoking book incorporates challenges for a Christian response regarding those whose daily plights fly in the face of what Scripture teaches about justice.

Domestic and care work in private households is now the largest employment sector for migrant women. This book sheds light on these households through its focus on the interpersonal relationships between Latin American "undocumented migrant" domestic workers and employers in Austria, Germany, Spain and the UK. The personal experiences of these women form the basis for Gutierrez-Rodriguez's decolonial analysis of the feminization of labor in private households and cultural analysis of domestic work as affective labor. This book will be a necessary voice in the debates on citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and migrant workers' rights.

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.

This book explores the relation between democracy and industrialization in United States history. Over the course of the 1930s, the political center almost disappeared as the Democratic New Deal became the litmus test of class, with blue collar workers providing its bedrock of support while white collar workers and those in the upper-income levels opposed it. By 1948 the class cleavage in American politics was as pronounced as in many of the Western European countries-such as France, Italy, Germany, or Britain-with which we usually associate class politics. Working people created a new America in the 1930s and 1940s which was a fundamental departure from the feudalistic and hierarchical America that existed before. They won the political rights of American citizenship which had been previously denied them. They democratized labor-capital relations and gained more economic security than they had ever known. They obtained more economic opportunity for them and their children than they had ever known and they created a respect for ethnic workers, which had not previously existed. In the process, class politics re-defined the political agenda of America as-for the first time in American history-the political universe polarized along class lines. Eric Leif Davin explores the meaning of the New Deal political mobilization by ordinary people by examining the changes it brought to the local, county, and state levels in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and Pennsylvania as a whole.

A provocative and timely case for how the science of genetics can help create a more just and equal society In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health-and in ways that matter for educational and economic success in our current society. In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society. Reclaiming genetic science from the legacy of eugenics, this groundbreaking book offers a bold new vision of society where everyone thrives, regardless of how one fares in the genetic lottery.

Agrarian transformations, market integration and globalization processes are impacting upon rural Southeast Asia with increasingly complex and diverse consequences. In response, local inhabitants are devising a broad range of resistance measures that they feel will best protect or improve their livelihoods, ensure greater social justice and equity, or allow them to just be left alone. This book develops a multi-scalar approach to examine such resistance occurring in relation to agrarian transformations in the Southeast Asian region.

The contributors take a fresh look at the diversity of sites of struggle and the combinations of resistance measures being utilized in contemporary Southeast Asia. They reveal that open public conflicts and debates are taking place between dominators and the oppressed, at the same time as covert critiques of power and everyday forms of resistance. The book shows how resistance measures are context contingent, shaped by different world views, and shift according to local circumstances, the opening and closing of political opportunity structures, and the historical peculiarities of resistance dynamics.

By providing new conceptual approaches and illustrative case studies that cut across scales and forms, this book will be of interest to academics and students in comparative politics, sociology, human geography, environmental studies, cultural anthropology and Southeast Asian studies. It will also help to further debate and action among academics, activists and policymakers.

The book is a very detailed work on the relationship between movements for autonomy by indigenous peoples (the so-called 'tribes') and violence in Assam, in northeast India. The book addresses some of the reasons for the failure of ethnic conflict management and for the frequent emergence of violence in the region. In particular, the historical description of movements by the Dimasas, Misings and Bodos is well compiled and provides a good summary for the readers. At the same time, the work offers a good understanding of ethnic violence in contemporary India. The volume offers some new research data based on comparative analysis of different trajectories followed by three important movements among Assam's ethnic minorities. While the pieces of the argument are based on the existing literature on ethnic violence and contentious politics, they are effectively connected to materials drawn from northeast India. Furthermore, the book raises significant concerns on the debates on crafting of decentralised institutions and executive opportunities that may facilitate ethnic accommodation thereby reducing the likelihood of such groups to pursue their goals through channels that are radical or extreme.