This volume develops a historically informed phenomenology of caste and untouchability. It explores the idea of 'Brahmin' and the practice of untouchability by offering a scholarly reading of ancient and medieval texts. By going beyond the notions of purity and pollution, it presents a new framework of understanding relationships between social groups and social categories. An important intervention in the study of caste and untouchability, this book will be an essential read for the scholars and researchers of political studies, political philosophy, cultural studies, Dalit studies, Indology, sociology, social anthropology and Ambedkar studies.

Can a state empower its citizens by classifying them? Or do reservation policies reinforce the very categories they are meant to eradicate? Indian reservation policies on government jobs, legislative seats and university admissions for disadvantaged groups, like affirmative action policies elsewhere, are based on the premise that recognizing group distinctions in society is necessary to subvert these distinctions. Yet the official identification of eligible groups has unintended side-effects on identity politics. Bridging theories which emphasize the fluidity of identities and those which highlight the utility of group-based mobilizations and policies, this book exposes didactic enforcement of categorizations, while recognizing the social and political gains facilitated by group-based strategies.

eBook available with sample pages: 020340193X

First published in 1999, this volume examines the 'meanings' specific child protection cases involving the familial sexual abuse of adolescent girls hold for social workers. This is achieved through a qualitative analysis of a series of interviews with social workers regarding current or recent cases. The analysis reveals various influences on social workers' practice: the organisation and administrative structure of child protection, governmental requirements to interagency coordination, the abused girl, her family, and the skills and limitations of the social worker. The findings point to a series of tensions between social workers' perceptions of appropriate intervention practice on the one hand and organisational needs, the demands of the criminal justice system and client choice on the other. This leads to recommendations for improved in-service training, including joint training for social workers and police officers, and a review of the transitional procedures between child protection and adult services.

Class Strategies and the Education Market examines the ways in which the middle classes maintain and improve their social advantages in and through education.
Drawing on an extensive series of interviews with parents and children, this book identifies key moments of decision making in the construction of the educational trajectories of middle class children. Stephen J. Ball organises his analysis around the key concepts of social closure, social capital, values and principles and risk, while bringing a broad range of up-to-date sociological theory to bear upon his subject. From this thorough analysis, valuable and thought-provoking insights emerge into the assiduous care and considerable effort and expenditure which goes into ensuring the educational success of the middle class child
The middle classes are a sociological enigma, presenting the social researcher with considerable analytic and theoretical difficulties. Class Strategies and the Education Market provides a set of working tools for class analysis and the examination of class practices. Above all, it offers new ways of thinking about class theory and the relationships between classes in late modern society.

The author of this stunning set of essays on politics and public policy makes crystal clear the meaning of the title. "The revolutionaries of contemporary America do not seek to redistribute privilege from those who have it to those who do not. These radicals wish to arrange a transfer of power from those elites who now exercise it to another elite, namely themselves, who do not. This aspiring elite is of the same race (white), the same class (upper middle and upper), and the same educational background (the best colleges and universities) as those they wish to displace."
Wildavsky's bracing work takes a close look at these elites, who probably make up little more than one percent of the population. He sees their common denominator as hostility toward the masses, anti-American attitudes, derision of authority, and a belief in participatory rather than representative politics. The author carries through these themes in a variety of essays on black-white racial relations, social work orientations and black militancy, the politics of budgetary reform, elite and mass trends in the political party system, and the substitution of bureaucratic for democratic modes of advancing the policy process. This work is, in short, vintage Wildavsky: tough minded, spirited, and plain-spoken political analysis.
In his new Introduction, Irving Louis Horowitz examines what has changed and what continues to be salient in Wildavsky's line of analysis. Essentially, the report card on The Revolt Against the Masses is that the situation described in these essays has changed somewhat in style but hardly at all in substance. The nuclear shield replaces the ABM treaty, and Afghanistan replaces Vietnam as centers of political gravity-but the same coalition of forces across party and economy still dominate the American political process. The justifiably famous essay on "The Two Presidencies" shows how persistent is the gap between the conflict over domestic priorities and the consensus on foreign policy-and why. This is, in short, a classic text that continues to merit careful study by all those interested in political life.
Aaron Wildavsky was, until his death in 1993, professor of political science and public policy at the University of California in Berkeley. He was also director of its Survey Research Center. He served as director of the Russell-Sage Foundation, was a president of the American Political Science Association, and held a number of visiting professorships during his lifetime. Most recently, Transaction has posthumously published Wildavsky's complete essays and papers in five volumes.
Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt distinguished university professor emeritus at Rutgers, The State University, and longtime friend and associate of Aaron Wildavsky.

The Rise of Professional Society lays out a stimulating and controversial framework for the study of British society, challenging accepted paradigms based on class analysis. Perkins argues that the non-capitalist 'professional class' represents a new principle of social organization based on trained expertise and meritocracy, a 'forgotten middle class' conveniently overlooked by classical social theorists.

First published in 1998, this volume asks: are new social classes in the making in eastern Europe? Are class issues withering away? How do different classes organize their lives, what kind of strategies do they adopt in East and West. Markku Kivinen brings Eastern Europe into the class debate. Recent sociological discussions have touched upon questions of class in Eastern Europe only very provisionally. On the other hand, old analyses of social stratification under conditions of 'actually existed socialism' are no longer relevant in the current situation. This book analyses processes of class relations in Eastern Europe from new theoretical vantage-points, using up-to-date empirical data. Under socialism, power was said to be vested in the working class. However, there was a constant tension between the 'holy proletariat' and the real life of the working class. Today, all political forces in Eastern Europe; leftist and liberal alike, are hankering for the middle class. This book explores the real processes in both East and West. This leads to more concrete political and even moral issues. The new 'sacred middle class' is challenged. The contributors adopt several conceptual approaches and perspectives which enter into a fruitful exchange in this book.

First published in 1997, this study of 9,000 people born in the same week in 1970, who have been followed up since birth, has produced a unique picture of life for those in their mid 20s - a year before the new Labour Government took office. The new survey shows a fractured society with clear evidence of an increasing gulf between those 'getting on' with their careers and blooming and those who are being left behind. The polarisation between those 'getting on' and those 'getting nowhere' was primarily about financial and career achievement but was also reflected in almost every other area of their lives. A theme running throughout the book is what characterises successful integration into adult life, as opposed to marginalisation and social exclusion which is encountered by increasing numbers of young people.

First published in 1998, this volume contains an edited selection of papers presented at the Fifth International Research Seminar on 'Issues in Social Security', held on 14-17 June 1997 in Sweden by the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security (FISS) in memory of Brian Abel-Smith. The chapters cover a wide range of subjects related to old age pension reform, family policy, employment, privatization of social security and health care. The authors form a body of well-established researchers and scholars of world-wide reputation as well as younger scientists, stemming from various continents, and representing a range of relevant disciplines. This volume is the fourth in a series on international studies of issues in social security. The series is initiated by the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security (FISS). One of its aims is to confront different academic approaches with each other, and with public policy perspectives. Another is to give analytic reports of cross-nationally different approaches to the design and reform of welfare state programs.

First published in 1998, this volume reflects that, ever since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism twenty years ago, scholars have tested his thesis against the wider application of his terms to cultural practices and the rhetoric of power. The cultural impact of the British on their colonies has been extensively investigated but only recently have scholars begun to ask in what ways British culture was transformed by its contact with the colonies. The essays in this volume demonstrate how influential the Empire was on British culture from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. They show how, from cross-cultural cross-dressing to Buddhism, British artists and writers appropriated unfamiliar and challenging aspects of the culture of the Empire for their own purposes. An examination is also made of the extent to which colonized people engaged in the orientalising discourse, amending and subverting it, even re-applying its stereotypes to the British themselves. Finally, two essays explore instances of the exchange of ideas between colonies. Several of the essays are based on papers given at the 1996 Conference of the College Arts Association.

The Izhavas are an ex-untouchable community in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Politically and economically weak, stigmatised as 'toddy tappers' and 'devil dancers', and considered unapproachable by clean caste Hindus, a century ago Izhavas were associated with other manual-labouring untouchable castes. In recent decades they have sought to improve their position by accumulating economic, symbolic and cultural capital through employment, religion, politics, migration, marriage, education and have tried to assert their right to mobility, often in the face of opposition from their high status Christian and Nayar neighbours. This study examines how Izhavas, through repudiation of their nineteenth-century identity and search for mobility, have come into complex relationships with modernity, colonialism and globalisation. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella highlight the complexities and contradictions of modern identity, both locally and globally. The authors' approach builds upon and goes beyond a south Asian focus, showing how the Izhavas represent the rise of formerly stigmatised groups who remain at the same time trapped by stereotype and material disadvantage. Absolute mobility, they argue, has not led to relative mobility within a society which remains stratified and prone to new forms of social exclusion.

The seventeenth century has always been seen as important for the development of the modern English state. Over the past twenty years, however, this view has been criticized heavily and no general account of the development of the state in this period has yet emerged. On the basis of a wide-ranging synthesis of specialist work in diverse fields of English, British and colonial history, this book makes a novel argument about the modernization of the seventeenth-century English state, and of the role of class and gender interests in its development.

Identity politics has been a smear for decades. The right use it to lament the loss of free speech, while many on the left bemoan it as the end of class politics. It has been used to dismiss movements such as Black Lives Matter and brought seemingly progressive people into the path of fascism. It has emboldened the march of the transphobes. In Fractured, the authors move away from the ahistorical temper of the identity politics debate. Instead of crudely categorising race, gender and sexuality as fixed and immutable identities, or forcing them under the banner of 'diversity', they argue that these categories are inseparable from the history of class struggle under British and US capitalism. Through an appraisal of pivotal historical moments in Britain and the US, including Black feminist and anticolonial traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, the authors question the assumptions of the culture war, offering a refreshing and reasoned way to understand how historical class struggles were formed and continue to determine the possibilities for new forms of solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world.

The anthropological study of elites has gained increasing prominence with the issues of power, prestige and ststus in the societies of of anthropologists themselves. However, our understanding of elites is often partial, obscured as it is by the theoretical weaknesses of Western models on the one hand and, on the other, by the difficulties in studying elites from the 'inside'. Drawing on a diverse, comparative ethnographic literature, this new volume examines the intimate spaces and cultural practices of those elites who occupy positions of power and authority across a variety of different settings.

Drawing on a diverse, comparative ethnographic literature, this new volume examines the intimate spaces and cultural practices of those elites who occupy positions of power and authority across a variety of different settings.
Using ethnographic case studies from a wide range of geographical areas, including Mexico, Peru, Amazonia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Europe, North America and Africa, the contributors explore the inner worlds of meaning and practice that define and sustain elite identities. They also provide insights into the cultural mechanisms that maintain elite status, and into the complex ways that elite groups relate to, and are embedded within, wider social and historical processes.

Contents:
Introduction 1. Problems and Perspectives: A Picture of Maryland Elites Part One: Wealth 2. A Gentleman's Competence: The Ambitions of the Maryland Elite 3. 'A Species of Capital Attached to Certain Mercantile Houses': Elite Debts and the Significance of Credit Part Two: Family 4. The Demography and Character of Elite Families 5. Arrows Over Time: Elite Inheritance Practices Part Three: Society 6. The Progression of Provincial Politics 7. The Development of Provincial Consciousness: The Formation of Elite Identity Conclusion: Towards a History of Elites in the Eighteenth Century British Empire

While much recent scholarship has been examined the colonial Chesapeake's slave culture, little attention to the class of landowners who dominated this society. Trevor Burnard has corrected this oversight by undertaking the first systematic study of an agricultural elite in any British colony, providing a fascinating glimpse into the lives of 460 of the wealthiest men who lived in colonial Maryland during this era.

In this comprehensive volume, authors from across the social sciences explore how housing wealth transfers have impacted the integration of families, society and the economy, with a focus on the (re)negotiation of the 'generational contract'. While housing has always been central to the realization and reproduction of families, more recently, the mutual embedding of home and family has become more obvious as realignments in housing markets, employment and welfare states have worked together to undermine housing access for new households, enhancing intergenerational interdependencies. More families have thus become involved in smoothening the routes of younger adult members into and up the 'housing ladder'. While intergenerational support appears to have become much more widespread, it remains highly differentiated across countries, cities and regions, as well as uneven between social and income classes. This book addresses the increasing role that family support, and intergenerational transfers in particular, are playing in sustaining the formation of new households and the transition of young adults towards social and economic autonomy. The authors draw on diverse international cases and a variety of methodologies in order to advance our understanding of housing as a key driver of contemporary social relations and inequalities. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780367262822_oachapter1.pdf Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780367262822_oachapter6.pdf Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780367262822_oachapter9.pdf Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780367262822_oachapter8.pdf

Ever since the rise of mass labor movements in the late nineteenth century, socialism has been seen as an inevi- table and antagonistic response to capitalism and the spread of industrialization. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, socialism's failure to gain ground in the United States and most of the non-Western world exposed the limited, Eurocentric views of socialist theorists, and also the inadequacy of the theory as it applied to Europe as well. John Kautsky argues that a key factor in the development of social democratic labor movements was the persistence of powerful remnants of aristocratic institutions and ideologies whose survival into the industrial age preserved exclusionary hierarchies. These led, in turn, to radicalism and class consciousness among workers.

Kautsky traces the evolution of socialist labor movements in Europe and Japan where aristocratic elements were still strong, detailing the survival of aristocratic privilege and the concomitants of worker class consciousness and demands for equality. He shows how social democratic reliance on free elections was primarily a weapon against the aristocracy rather than capitalism. Contradicting socialist theory, working-class growth came to an end, class lines became blurred, and a considerable degree of equality was achieved through the welfare state.

Kautsky turns to those countries that were sufficiently industrialized to have large numbers of workers, but also had reasonably free elections, civil liberties, and less repression of trade unions. Though the United States, Canada, post-Soviet Russia, Mexico, and India have very different histories and societies, their workers have not confronted a powerful aristocracy. Great Britain, the first and for long the most advanced industrial country, was virtually the last to develop a socialist labor movement. In contrast, socialist movements in Canada and the United States, where egalitarian traditions were strong, found little support. Kautsky's concluding chapters treat the spread of corruption, the rise of new oligarchies in Russia, and the position of workers no longer honored and politically weak.

In its innovative perspective on long-held theories and its currency for contemporary problems, "Social Democracy and Aristocracy" is an important contribution to political thought in the post-Marxist world. Its global approach makes it uniquely valuable for the comparative study of labor history and economic development.

Successfully bringing together accessible readings that cover the broad range of issues of importance to those studying politics and society, this new edition of Power and Inequality provides a unique mix of theoretical and empirical pieces, such as state and electoral politics, that address both classic issues in political sociology and more recent developments, such as globalization. With strong integration of race and gender throughout, this collection offers a coherent analysis of power that reflects the contributions of a variety of critical perspectives, including Marxism, feminism, critical race theory, postmodernism, and power structure theory.

"Natural Hierarchies" adopts a highly original approach to trace the emergence and development of social rank in our present-day world. The author draws upon traditional methods used in the social sciences, detailed accounts of historical events in Europe, the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, and mainland America, to illustrate how meanings of race and caste have been transformed mainly through political struggles, and particularly in the context of colonialism.

This new and highly provocative analysis looks at ideas of hierarchy in the light of the latest historical, anthropological, and sociological evidence to generate understanding of present struggles in race and ethnic relations. It is a well-reasoned account that illuminates the strong historical links between the idea of hierarchy and concepts of race and caste.

Contents:
1. Poverty, Ethnicity and Achievement in American Schools: Bruce J. Biddle; 2. First Person Plural: Education as Public Property: Peter W. Cookson Jr; 3. Poverty, Welfare Reform, and Children's Achievement: Greg J. Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn; 4. Linking Bordieu's Concept of Capital to the Broader Field: The Case of Family-School Relationships: Annette Lareau; 5. Defensive Network Orientations as Internalized Oppression: How Schools Mediate the Influence of Social Class on Adolescent Development: Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar: 6. Family Disadvantage, The Self, and Academic Achievement: David DuBois; 7. Policy, Poverty and Capable Teaching: Assumptions and Issues in Policy Design: Michael S. Knapp; 8. Social Class, Poverty and Schooling: Social Contexts, Educational Practices and Policy Options: Peter M. Hall

This book traces the phenomenon of class from the medieval to the postmodern period, uniquely examining its relevance to literary and cultural analysis. Drawing on historical, sociological and literary writings, Gary Day:
* gives an account of class at different historical moments
* shows the role of class in literary constructions of the social
* examines the complex relations between 'class' and 'culture'
* focuses attention on the role of class in constructions of 'the literary' and 'the canon'
* employs a revived and revised notion of class to critique recent theoretical movements.

Work and Authority in Industry analyzes how the entrepreneurial class responded to the challenge of creating, and later managing, an industrial work force in widely differing types of industrial societies: the United States, England, and Russia. Bendix's penetrating re-examination of an aspect of economic history largely taken for granted was first published in 1965. It has become a classic. His central notion, that the behavior of the capitalist class may be more important than the behavior of the working class in determining the course of events, is now widely accepted. The book explores industrialization, management, and ideological appeals; entrepreneurial ideologies in England's early phase of industrialization; entrepreneurial ideologies in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia; the bureaucratization of economic enterprises; and the American experience with -industrialization. This essential text will interest those in the fields of political science, industrial relations, management studies, as well as comparative sociologists and historians.

This book traces the phenomenon of class from the medieval to the postmodern period, uniquely examining its relevance to literary and cultural analysis. Drawing on historical, sociological and literary writings, Gary Day:
* gives an account of class at different historical moments
* shows the role of class in literary constructions of the social
* examines the complex relations between 'class' and 'culture'
* focuses attention on the role of class in constructions of 'the literary' and 'the canon'
* employs a revived and revised notion of class to critique recent theoretical movements.