Here is a searing account-probably the best yet published-of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does. Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England, has seemingly seen it all. Yet in listening to and observing his patients, he is continually astonished by the latest twist of depravity that exceeds even his own considerable experience. Dalrymple's key insight in Life at the Bottom is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values, one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for victims. This culture persuades those at the bottom that they have no responsibility for their actions and are not the molders of their own lives. Drawn from the pages of the cutting-edge political and cultural quarterly City Journal, Dalrymple's book draws upon scores of eye-opening, true-life vignettes that are by turns hilariously funny, chillingly horrifying, and all too revealing-sometimes all at once. And Dalrymple writes in prose that transcends journalism and achieves the quality of literature.

This book examines the role of the family in intra and inter-generational social movement. The authors take a genealogical approach to researching social mobility, using a university chemistry department as a case study to explore participants' motives for pursuing a STEM undergraduate degree and the influences that have shaped them. Assessing the roles of genealogy, family and higher education in shaping their aspirations and careers, the authors examine the contributions of these variables to the students aspirations. With a wealth of empirically rich qualitative data, the authors identify areas where work is required to achieve greater equality of access to high performing chemistry departments and enhance career outcomes, which could be applied more widely. This book will appeal to scholars of educational inequalities and widening access, particularly in terms of STEM education.

When the Coalition Government came to power in 2010 in claimed it would deliver not just austerity, as necessary as that apparently was, but also fairness. This volume subjects this pledge to critical interrogation by exposing the interests behind the policy programme pursued and their damaging effects on class inequalities. Situated within a recognition of the longer-term rise of neoliberal politics, reflections on the status of sociology as a source of critique and current debates over the relationship between the cultural and economic dimensions of social class, the contributors cover an impressively wide range of relevant topics, from education, family policy and community to crime and consumption, shedding new light on the experience of domination in the early 21st Century.

The performing arts is one particular area of youth community practice can that can be effectively tapped to attract youth within schools and out-of-school settings, or what has been referred to as the "third area between school and family." These settings are non-stigmatizing, highly attractive community-based venues that serve youth and their respective communities. They can supplement or enhance formal education, providing a counter-narrative for youth to resist the labels placed on them by serving as a vehicle for reactivity and self-expression. Furthermore, the performing arts are a mechanism through which creative expression can transpire while concomitantly engaging youth in creative expression that is transformative at the individual and community level. Music, Song, Dance, Theater, and Social Work explores the innovative programs and interventions in youth community practice that draw on the performing arts as a way to reach and engage the target populations. The book draws from the rich literature bases in community development and positive youth development, as well as from performing arts therapy and group interventions, offering a meeting point where innovative programs have emerged. All in all, the text is an invaluable resource for graduate social work and performing arts students, practitioners, and scholars.

Long Lives Are for the Rich is the title of a silent ominous program that affects the lives of millions of people. In all developed countries disadvantaged and, especially, poor people die much earlier than the most advantaged. During these shorter lives they suffer ten to twenty years longer from disabilities or chronic disease. This does not happen accidentally: health inequalities – including those between healthy and unhealthy life styles – are mainly caused by social inequalities that are reproduced over the life course. This crucial function of the life course has become painfully visible during its neoliberal reorganization since the early 1980s. Studies about aging over the life course, from birth to death, show the inhumane consequences as people get older. In spite of the enormous wealth that has been piled up in the US for a dwindling percentage of the population, there has been growing public indifference about the needs of those in jobs with low pay and high stress, but also about citizens from a broad middle class who can hardly afford high quality education or healthcare. However, this ominous program affects all: recent mortality rates show that all Americans, including the rich, are unhealthier and dying earlier than citizens of other developed countries. Moreover, the underlying social inequalities are tearing the population apart with nasty consequences for all citizens, including the rich. Although the public awareness of the consequences has been growing, neoliberal policies remain tempting for the economic and political elites of the developed world because of the enormous wealth that is flowing to the top. All this poses urgent questions of social justice. Unfortunately, the predominant studies of social justice along the life course help to reproduce these inequalities by neglecting them. This book analyzes the main dynamics of social inequality over the life course and proposes a theory of social justice that sketches a way forward for a country that is willing to invest in its greatest resource: the creative potential of its population.

What enables the few working-class people who enter higher education to achieve against the odds? This book offers answers by comparing social contexts, educational institutions and policies in Austria and England to demonstrate a surprising number of similarities behind those who succeed using Bourdieu's concept of habitus.

Ernest Aves (1857-1917) was an influential social analyst and civil servant. This title, first published in 1907, during Aves' work for the Board of Trade, investigates the different forms of industrial co-operation within Britain; the fundamental principle of this is stated as "equitable association", leading to increased profitability and the strengthening of industry. Chapters discuss such areas as centralisation, co-operative production and co-operative agriculture. This interesting reissue will be of particular value to students of economics with an interest in co-operative industry and the history of economic thought.

This comprehensive, interdisciplinary collection examines diverse forms of anti-social behaviour in Victorian and contemporary Britain, providing a unique comparison of the methods which have been employed by governments to control it.

Drawing on case studies from the global South, this book explores the politics of mediated citizenship in which citizens are represented to the state through third party intermediaries. The studies show that mediation is both widely practiced and multi-directional and that it has an important role to play in deepening democracy in the global South.

Relative deprivation is the experience of being deprived of something to which you think you are entitled. It has important consequences for both behavior and attitudes, including feelings of stress, political attitudes, and participation in collective action. This book assembles chapters by leading international researchers, who present innovative, integrative, theoretical and empirical advances in the area. It is relevant to researchers and students in social psychology, sociology, economics, politics, and other social sciences, especially those interested in intergroup relations, prejudice, social identity, group processes, social comparison, social justice, and social movements.

This is a classic study of Philadelphia's business aristocracy of colonial stock with Protestant affiliations. It is also an analysis of how fabulously wealthy nineteenth-century family founders produced a national upper-class way of life. But as that way of life came to an end, the upper-class outlived its function; this, argues E. Digby Baltzell, is precisely what took place in the Philadelphia class system. For sociologists, historians, and those concerned with issues of culture and the economy, this is indeed a classic of modern social science.

In his recent work, Guy Standing has identified a new class which has emerged from neo-liberal restructuring with, he argues, the revolutionary potential to change the world: the "precariat." This, according to Standing, is a class-in-the-making, internally divided into angry and bitter factions consisting of a multitude of insecure people, living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs, without a narrative of occupational development, including millions of frustrated educated youth, millions of women abused in oppressive labour, growing numbers of criminalised tagged for life, millions being categorised as "disabled" and migrants in their hundreds of millions around the world. They are denizens; they have a more restricted range of social, cultural, political and economic rights than citizens around them . This present book explores the nature, shape and context of precariat, evaluating the internal consistency and applications of the concept. Demonstrating the sheer breadth and depth of application, the chapters cover a wide-range of topics, from the relationships between precariat and authoritarianism, multitude (another concept to achieve popular consciousness), and place as well as the nature of precarious identities and subjectivities among those working in immaterial labour. The book concludes with a reply by Standing to reviews of "Precariat."

This book was published as a special issue of Global Discourse."

In the emotional public debate about women and work, conventional wisdom holds that middle-class women "choose" whether or not to work, while working class "need" to work. Yet, despite the recent economic crisis, national trends show that middle-class women are more likely to work than working-class women. In this timely volume, Sarah Damaske debunks the myth that financial needs determine women's workforce participation, revealing that financial resources make it easier for women to remain at work, not easier to leave it. Departing from mainstream research, Damaske finds not two (working or not working), but three main employment patterns: steady, pulled back, and interrupted. Looking at the differences between women in these three groups, Damaske discovers that financial resources made it easier for middle-class women to remain at work steadily, while working-class women often found themselves following interrupted work pathways in which they experienced multiple bouts of unemployment. While most of the national attention has been focused on women who leave work, Damaske shows that both middle-class and working-class women found themselves pulling back from work, but for vastly different reasons. For the Family? concludes that the public debate about women's work remains focused on need because women themselves emphasize the importance of family needs in their decision-making. Damaske argues that despite differences in work experiences, class, race, and familial support, most women explained their work decisions by pointing to family needs, connecting work to family rather than an individual pursuit. In For the Family?, Sarah Damaske at last provides a far more nuanced and richer picture of women, work, and class than conventional wisdom offers.

These sociologists and theorists, long concerned with the critical role in society of the middle class, trace its historical, structural, and cultural links with democracy since ancient times. They show how the middle class has been instrumental in spawning industrialization and capitalism. They consider the rise and decline of fascism and communism and the development of multinational capitalism. They reflect upon the decline of the working class, the growth of an underclass, and the need today to counterbalance the power of the rich and big business. They ponder how to break an "iron cage" of bureaucracy and to revitalize democracy. This socio-historical analysis from a neo-Weberian perspective deals with issues that are central to sociologists, political theorists, and historians.

In an era in which class divisions are becoming starker than ever, some individuals are choosing to marry across class.The Power of the Past traces the lives of a subset of these individuals - highly-educated adults who married a partner raised in a class different from their own, primarily between those from blue- and white-color backgrounds. Drawing upon detailed interviews with spouses who revealed the inner workings of their marriages, Jessi Streib shows that crossing class lines is not easy, and that even though these couples shared bank accounts, mortgages, children, and friends, each spouse was still shaped by the class of their past, and consequently, so was their marriage. Streib reveals what was rarely apparent to the husbands and wives she interviewed. The class of their past did not only matter in determining the amount of money they had as children or what job their parents went off to each morning; It also mattered in more subtle ways, by systematically shaping their ideas of how to go about their daily lives. Upwardly mobile spouses who grew up in blue-collar families learned to take a laissez-faire approach to the world around them: they preferred to go with the flow, make the most of the moment, and avoid self-imposed constraints. Their spouses, who grew up in professional white-collar families, however, wanted to manage the world around them: they organized, planned, monitored, and oversaw. Living with a spouse who was born into a different class means navigating these differences - differences that appeared across nearly every aspect of their lives, from how they manage their finances, to how they manage their time - both at home and on vacation - to ideas about how their children should be raised. The Power of the Past illustrates that when individuals are raised in different classes, merged lives do not lead to merged ideas about how to lead those lives. Individuals can come together across class lines, but their enduring class characteristics cannot be left behind.

First published in 1976, the essays in this volume are concerned with the distribution of income and wealth. The papers were first presented at the Royal Economic Society's conference in 1974, which examined the evidence concerning the personal distribution of earnings, compared the distributions apparent in different periods and societies, and studied the association between personal attributes and income. The contributions, from internationally-renowned authors, reflect these areas, and address the questions surrounding inequality, the taxation of wealth and capital transfers that remain relevant in twenty-first century society.

Since the legalisation of off-course cash betting in 1960, and the rise of varying forms of gambling, the British have come to be known as a nation of gamblers. Until this study was published in 1976, barely any evidence existed against which to assess the claim that gambling had become a major social problem. The authors present data drawn from area surveys carried out in Swansea, Sheffield, Wanstead and Woodford, and explore how well previous sociological theories of gambling agree with their findings, particular in connection with certain aspects of work and leisure. Examining different forms of gambling, including betting, bingo and gaming machines, the chapters consider how gambling choices vary between different social groups, and how much time and money is spent on them. With the internet making it easier than ever before to place bets, this title is especially relevant, and provides a systematic basis for an explanation of gambling in relation to social structure.

With the move to a market-oriented economy, the growth of large scale internal migration has created new forces for institutional change in China. By 2010, 260 million citizens were living outside of their permanent hukou (household registration) location, a major challenge to the constrictive Mao-era system of migration and settlement planning and the rigid intuitional division of rural and urban China. Jason Young shows how these new forces have been received by the state through analysis of major hukou reforms. He documents the dynamic process of institutional change and explains the ongoing importance of China's enduring hukou system to socioeconomic and political development in the world's largest developing country.

The economy's struggles to overcome the lingering effects of the Great Recession presented unique but essential questions. This book considers a full range of data which considers how this recent experience has impacted households, providing a thorough and contemporary treatment of how the assets perspective has prompted changes within social policy.

The history of American universities is punctuated by shifts in the terms on which the mission of higher education is defined and debated. A dramatic moment with lasting effects came with the introduction of German-speaking exile intellectuals in the Hitler era. In Germany, the academic culture of the early twentieth century was torn by the struggle between Wissenschaft and Bildung, two symbolic German terms, whose lack of precise English equivalents is a sign of the different configuration in America. The studies in this book examine the achievements of numerous influential emigre intellectuals against the background of their mediation between the two cultural traditions in science and liberal studies. In showing the richness of reciprocal influences, the book challenges claims about the disruptive influence of exile culture on the American mind.

With respect to the developing and threshold economies, it is no longer the poor who are the only focus of media attention. Today, the new middle classes are about to take centre stage, too. With their lifestyles and attitudes, the new middle classes are considered to be both the products as well as the promoters of globalization. They are a highly heterogeneousgroup in socio-economicterms as well as in habits 1 and preferences, including their societal role as consumers and citizens. The ?rst wave of scholarly and political attention can be traced back to the mid-nineties. The focal point was surprise and unease about indubitable symptoms of consumerism which, until then had been seen as a characteristic of the richest western societies. However, since the nineties, consumerism has run rampant in - velopingcountriestoo.Thishasparticularlybeennotedwithrespecttotheemerging middle classes in South East Asia. The "will to consume seemed inexhaustible, and appetites insatiable. This rage to consume ...] was both celebrated and feared by political leadersand other social/moralgatekeepers, who beganto condemnthe p- cess as 'Westernization' and even 'westoxi?cation"' (Chua 2000: xii). Ever since, the debate about the lifestyles of the new middle classes and their role in society has gained momentum.