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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > Social classes
The Richer, The Poorer charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. This landmark book shows how, for 200 years, Britain's most powerful elites have enriched themselves at the expense of surging inequality, mass poverty and weakened social resilience. Stewart Lansley reveals how Britain's model of 'extractive capitalism' - with a small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic cake - has created a two-century-long 'high-inequality, high-poverty' cycle, one broken for only a brief period after the Second World War. Why, he asks, are rich and poor citizens judged by very different standards? Why has social progress been so narrowly shared? With growing calls for a fairer post-COVID-19 society, what needs to be done to break Britain's destructive poverty/inequality cycle?
In the wake of an unparalleled housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, Glasgow Corporation rehoused the tens of thousands of private tenants who were living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in unimproved Victorian slums. Adopting the designs, the materials and the technologies of modernity they built into the sky, developing high-rise estates on vacant sites within the city and on its periphery. This book uniquely focuses on the people's experience of this modern approach to housing, drawing on oral histories and archival materials to reflect on the long-term narrative and significance of high-rise homes in the cityscape. It positions them as places of identity formation, intimacy and well-being. With discussions on interior design and consumption, gender roles, children, the elderly, privacy, isolation, social networks and nuisance, Glasgow examines the connections between architectural design, planning decisions and housing experience to offer some timely and prescient observations on the success and failure of this very modern housing solution at a moment when high flats are simultaneously denigrated in the social housing sector while being built afresh in the private sector. Glasgow is aimed at an academic readership, including postgraduate students, scholars and researchers. It will be of interest to social, cultural and urban historians particularly interested in the United Kingdom.
First published in 1979, The Miners: A History of the National Union of Mineworkers 1939-46 describes the events and factors that led to the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1946. The World War had a creative as well as a destructive effect on the industry; it compressed fundamental changes into seven short years. By the end of the war, the federated trade unions had succeeded in bringing about the unification of their industry; and the various county, district and craft associations were themselves also unified in one single national body. Two rival plans emerged during 1945: a coal-owners' plan, in conjunction with an 'experts' report', approved by Churchill and his Caretaker Cabinet, and Labour's 'plan for the coal industry' which came into force in 1946 as the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act. Anew epoch in management had begun, with a National Coal Board, new industrial relations and a new National Union of Mineworkers. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, economics and political science.
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.
Using a gender-sensitive political economy approach, this book analyzes the emergence of new migration patterns between Central Mexico and the East Coast of the United States in the last decades of the twentieth century, and return migration during and after the global economic crisis of 2007. Based on ethnographic research carried out over a decade, details of the lives of women and men from two rural communities reveal how neoliberal economic restructuring led to the deterioration of livelihoods starting in the 1980s. Similar restructuring processes in the United States opened up opportunities for Mexican workers to labor in US industries that relied heavily on undocumented workers to sustain their profits and grow. When the Great Recession hit, in the context of increasingly restrictive immigration policies, some immigrants were more likely to return to Mexico than others. This longitudinal study demonstrates how the interconnections among class and gender are key to understanding who stayed and who returned to Mexico during and after the global economic crisis. Through these case studies, the authors comment more widely on how neoliberalism has affected the livelihoods and aspirations of the working classes. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in migration studies, gender studies/politics, and more broadly to international relations, anthropology, development studies, and human geography.
Originally published in 1975, Ralf Dahrendorf's Reith Lectures were an important contribution to public debate, exploring as they do the theme of the new liberty and being concerned to refashion liberalism to cope with the problems and tension of contemporary societies. The analysis covers endemic economic problems, such as growth, inflation and development, the complex nature of organizations, and the problems of political representation.
First published in English as part of the Essays in the Theory of Society, this volume reissues the stand-alone Homo Sociologicus for which the author wrote a new introduction when it was originally published in 1973. The controversial book deals with the history, significance and limits of the category of social role and discusses the dilemma posed by homo sociologicus. The author shows that for society and sociology, socialization invariably means depersonalization, the yielding up of man's absolute individuality and liberty to the constraint and generality of social roles. This volume includes the essay, Sociology and Human Nature, written as a postscript to Homo Sociologicus.
Originally published in 1968, these ten essays by one of Europe's leading sociological theorists deal with important issues on the borderline between sociology and social philosophy and demonstrate the author's deep insight into history and political analysis. The author maintains that the structures of power in which the political process takes place not only originate change and give it direction, but also produce the fertile conflicts that give expression to the fundamental uncertainty of human existence. Through an examination of various concepts inherent in this dynamic process - power, resistance, conflict, change, freedom, uncertainty - a coherent theory of society emerges.
Originally published in England in 1959, this book evolves a new theory of conflict in industrial society. By way of illustrating and testing this theory, the book provides detailed analyses of various social phenomena. The author carries out a full critique of Marx in the light of history and modern sociology and discusses the theories of class-conflict of James Burnham, Fritz Croner and Karl Renner.
This accessible introductory text offers an engaging and thought-provoking discussion of class in relation to several cultural, sociological and political schools of thought and draws upon the works of a broad range of key theorists as well as contemporary thinkers to restate the ongoing importance of class as a sociological concept. Class has long been a key focus of sociological and political studies. This book explores what it might mean today in a 21st century context. Is class really disappearing? Is class morally justifiable? What impact has globalisation and neoliberalism had on the restructuring of class-based social relationships? These questions and others are explored in this short but lively book. Stevenson reviews a number of normative traditions including anarchist, Marxist, social democratic and citizenship-based forms of understanding of class in order to shed light on the themes of class-based experiences, health and inequality, work, class struggle, social movements and the possibility of developing more egalitarian and just societies in the future. This short book will be invaluable to general readers and students in the humanities and social sciences seeking an accessible introduction to the central problems raised by discussions of class in the 21st century.
--Uses a fascism frame to explain new forms of fascism today and why solutions need be bold enough to meet these new challenges. --Explains how Trump tapped reactionary tendencies embedded in the nation's founding and frontier history which rose to the fore dues to the crisis of social cohesion and bourgeois democracy imposed by late 20th and 21st century capitalism. --Traces the mainstream intellectual's remarkable and stubborn denial of the fascist nature of the Trump presidency.
Drawing on the concept of the somatic self, Castro-Vazquez explores how Japanese men think about, express and interpret their experiences concerning bodyweight control. Based on an extensive ethnographic investigation, this book offers a compelling analysis of male obesity and overweight in Japan from a symbolic interactionism perspective to delve into structure, meaning, practice and subjectivity underpinning the experiences of a group of middle-aged, Japanese men grappling with body weight control. Castro-Vazquez frames obesity and overweight within historical and current global and sociological debates that help to highlight the significance of the Japanese case. By drawing on evidence from different locations and contexts, he sustains a comparative perspective to extend and deepen the analysis. A valuable resource for scholars both of contemporary masculinity and of medical sociology, especially those with a particular interest in Japan.
Individuals are equipped with a wide range of knowledge that enhances their employability, health, family life, and social engagement. On this basis, providing equality for all has been set to be achieved as one of the United Nations sustainable development priorities. However, the international understandings are not only of what equality and inclusivity entail but also the social vision to achieve social justice. Best practices provide a meaningful cross-national discussion with respect to the following topics: power relations within research, social inequalities in society, science research for social justice, the redefinition of the notion of social justice, education for social justice, spatial justice, the research of gender and marginalized groups, the re-conceptualization of the epistemological foundation of research, hegemonic discourses on research, science technology for social justice and welfare, as well as culture and social justice. This edited book aims to provide a new perspective for other benefits of research because generally, the research carried out only aims to answer scientific problems and often override aspects of humanities. In response to these concerns, the book attempts to re-map the main objectives of the research. The authors in this book offer new perspectives, especially in formulating the purposes of the studies they will perform. Therefore, this book presents a unique review of research with a variety of approaches that are coherent with the state of society in the world, followed by eleven scopes of various cases from a variety of perspectives that highlight theoretical and methodological questions about research and social justice. This book presents outstanding applications through multiple types of approaches that are relevant to the current context of world community issues. The articles in this book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers who are interested in the social field, especially research for social justice.
Combines discussion of a theoretical model with essays about social class and classism experience, offering a unique approach that helps students learn theory and apply it to different contexts. Accompanied by an Instructors' Guide which offers more in-depth exploration and commentary, as well as discussion questions, writing prompts, and activity suggestions, making this the ideal resource for lecturers teaching courses on social class. Addresses the gap in psychological literature in terms of considering social class in relation to psychology and shows how the SCWM-R model can be applied to real life scenarios.
Middle class executives are the people who've done everything right - gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills and build up impressive resumes - yet they have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster. In Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich enters a shadowy world of Internet job searches, lonely networking events and costly career-coaching sessions, a world in which 'professional' mentors and trainers offer pop-psychology and self-help mantras to desperate would-be employees. Poignant and blackly funny, Bait and Switch delivers a stark warning about the future that faces corporate employees everywhere and calls for collective action to guard against it.
1) First of its kind, this book studies astrology in India from sociological parameters. 2) Rich in ethnographic case studies, it not only looks at the industry of astrology but also role of class, caste, gender and religion. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of sociology and South Asian Studies.
At this crucial moment in American history, when voting rights could be expanded to include all citizens, or legislatively limited, this significantly updated edition of Who Rules America? shows precisely how the top 1% of the population, who own 43% of all financial wealth, and receive 20% of the nation's yearly income, dominate governmental decision-making. They have created a corporate community and a policy-planning network, made up of foundations think-tanks, and policy-discussion groups, to develop the policies that become law. Through a leadership group called the power elite, the corporate rich provide campaign donations and other gifts and favors to elected officials, serve on federal advisory committees, and receive appointments to key positions in government, all of which make it possible for the corporate rich and the power elite to rule the country, despite constant challenges from the inclusionary alliance and from the Democratic Party. The book explains the role of both benign and dark attempts to influence public opinion, the machinations of the climate-denial network, and how the Supreme Court came to have an ultraconservative majority, who serve as a backstop for the corporate community as well as a legitimator of restrictions on voting rights, union rights, and abortion rights, by ruling that individual states have the power to set such limits. Despite all this highly concentrated power, it will be the other 99.5%, not the top 0.5%, who will decide the fate of the United States in the 2020s on all the important issues.
Based on a carefully contextualized and critical study, this book tells how France's dominant social and political ideology and prevailing cultural conventions abate the effects of race and anxiety within school choice, here focused on public-school middle-class parents living among immigrants in the diverse Paris suburbs. The study employs innovative techniques to tackle the presence of race, a difficult topic in France, and to address the impact of global risk from which social anxiety springs. Interviews for this book took place when a wave of deadly terrorism, mass migration of refugees, and the divisiveness of a presidential election made topics around the study poignant. It demonstrates how race operates in French education policy and practices by directing attention to how experienced and more qualified teachers move over their careers to less diverse schools, seen by teachers as having better students. The book explores how social anxiety created through global risk is culturally resisted within the French context by viewing this resistance theoretically through parental dispositions. It presents the racist perception in French school choice by revealing the education policies and parental choices that often segregate immigrants into schools with inexperienced and unqualified teachers. This book will be of interest to academics at upper-level undergraduate as well as graduate courses, policymakers, educators who are interested in inequality, sociology of education, transnational and critical perspectives on race, schooling, and school choice.
Intergenerational income mobility is of great societal importance due to its relevance to equal socio-economic opportunity and future economic efficiency. In her book Dr Hou explores the potential role of education policy in reducing intergenerational transmission of poverty and promoting intergenerational income mobility in China. Her research investigates the extent to which intergenerational income persists in China, the mechanisms behind intergenerational inequality, and premises for policy intervention. The interaction between families, labour markets, and public policies that structure a child's opportunities and determine the extent to which income is related to family background are discussed in detail. The book comprises of three separate empirical studies examining the relationship between parents' income and the long-term welfare of their children for two birth cohorts; the role education plays in the intergenerational income relationship; and possible policy intervention channels to facilitate intergenerational income mobility. The lessons learnt from the empirical studies in this book offer the basis for a discussion of current educational policies and provide guidance for developing more appropriate public policies to promote intergenerational income mobility in China in the future. This book contributes to the international discussion by providing evidence in Chinese context, and also provides guidance for policymakers attempting to develop more appropriate public policies to promote intergenerational income mobility in China.
The second volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies maps the distribution of social powers and associated properties and lifestyles in unparalleled detail by examining the results of a brand-new survey delivered in Sweden, Germany and the US. Continuing the cross-national investigation of the shape and effects of class systems across capitalist nations, the analyses in Volume 2 are embedded in a novel sociological theory of international relations, sustained reflections on the relationship between national standing and class structure and extensive reconstruction of the histories of class in each of the three nations studied. The ultimate conclusion, however, is that not only that the fundamental structure of class today the same across the three cases, for all their unique cultural and historical features, but their translation into differences of taste, practice and symbolic violence, always cross-cut by gender, follow highly familiar patterns too. This volume will appeal to scholars and advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology, politics and demography and is essential reading for all those interested in social class across the globe.
This handbook, - presents an authoritative account of the development of movements, thoughts, and policies of OBCs (Other Backward Classes) in India, - is a comprehensive work on the politics of identity and plurality of experiences of OBCs in India, and is the first of its kind, - will be essential reading for scholars and researchers of exclusion and discrimination studies, diversity and inclusion studies, Global South Studies, affirmative action, sociology, Indian political history, Dalit Studies, political sociology, public policy, development studies, and political studies.
1) First of its kind, this book studies astrology in India from sociological parameters. 2) Rich in ethnographic case studies, it not only looks at the industry of astrology but also role of class, caste, gender and religion. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of sociology and South Asian Studies.
This book is the first of its kind: a historical inquiry into the family life of British diplomats between 1945 and 1990. It examines the ways in which the British Diplomatic Service reacted to and were influenced by the radical social changes that took place in Britain during the latter half of the twentieth century. It asks to what extent diplomats, who strove to protect their enclosed and elite circles, were suitable to represent this changing nation. Drawing on previously unseen primary sources and interview testimony, this book explores themes of societal change, end of empire, second wave feminism, new approaches to childcare, and developments in the civil service. It explores questions of belonging and identity, as well as enduring perceptions of this organisation that is (often mistakenly) understood to be quintessentially 'British'. Offering new and fresh insights, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in history, historical geography, political studies, sociology, feminist studies and cultural studies.
For decades, Charles Lemert has been the leading voice in social theory. In Capitalism and its Uncertain Future he teams up with one of the most creative emerging social theorists, Kristin Plys, to examine how social theory imagines capitalism. This engaging and innovative book provides new perspectives on well known theorists from Adam Smith, and Frantz Fanon, to Gilles Deleuze, while also introducing readers to lesser known theorists such as Lucia Sanchez Saornil, Mohammad Ali El Hammi, and many more. The book examines theories of capitalism from four perspectives: macro-historical theories of the origins of capitalism; postcolonial theories of capitalism that situate capitalism as seen from the Global South; theories of capitalism from the perspective of labor; and prospective theories of capitalism's uncertain future. This provocative and ambitious, yet accessible, perspective on theories of capitalism will be of interest to anyone who wants to explore where we've been and where we're headed. |
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