![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > Social classes
The concept of everyday struggles can enliven our understanding of the lives of young people and how social class is made and remade. This book invokes a Bourdieusian spirit to think about the ways young people are pushed and pulled by the normative demands directed at them from an early age, whilst they reflexively understand that allegedly available incentives for making the 'right' choices and working hard - financial and familial security, social status and job satisfaction - are a declining prospect. In Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles, the figures of those classed as 'hipsters' and 'bogans' are used to analyse how representation works to form a symbolic and moral economy that produces and polices fuzzy class boundaries. Further to this, the practices of young people around DIY cultures are analysed to illustrate struggles to create a satisfying and meaningful existence while negotiating between study, work and creative passions. By thinking through different modalities of struggles, which revolve around meaning making and identity, creativity and authenticity, Threadgold brings Bourdieu's sociological practice together with theories of affect, emotion, morals and values to broaden our understanding of how young people make choices, adapt, strategise, succeed, fail and make do. Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, of fields including: Youth Studies, Class and Inequality, Work and Careers, Subcultures, Media and Creative Industries, Social Theory and Bourdieusian Theory.
This book examines how middle class women in India engage with divergent cultural discourses of respectability and individualism to make sense of their work and family lives. Based on in-depth interviews amongst women employed in the Indian IT industry, it argues that women attempt to conform to the individualist values of reflexive modernity by drawing on collective bonds within their families. It contends that the expansion of personal and professional choices does not always result in greater individualization but increases women's sense of responsibility for the consequences of their choices. As a result women's narratives of self are collective rather than individual projects, which are created in relationship with others. In this manner the book highlights the gender specific and culturally specific consequences of reflexive modernity in neo-liberal India.
First book to use eight waves of Understanding Society longituidal data study to provide most comprehensive analysis to date of poverty and wealth distribution across the UK. 100 graphs and tables which present this information in a concise and readable form. Written by two academics whose work is regularly used by both the devolved Scottish government and at UK level e.g. their work was used in bring about universal provision of free school meals at primary level.
Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1974 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.
This book portrays the middle class in contemporary China with plain language and precise professional knowledge in an all-round, broad and responsible way from the perspectives of income, property, profession, education, consumption, investment, physiological and behavioral characteristics, history and development. It gives, in a logical order, the reasons for stimulating the rise of the middle class in contemporary China. It emphatically describes what the middle class is and what the middle class in contemporary China looks like. It also analyzes whether the middle class can rise in China and sheds light on the basic thinking, medium and long-term goals, main measures and current work priorities for achieving full rise of the middle class in contemporary China. As China becomes the world's largest economy, the new middle class will be the Chinese people facing the world; as such, this book will be of interest to sociologists, sinologists, political scientists, and economists.
Clark's groundbreaking study covers the period in Soviet political history from the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in late 1964 through the spring of 1987 and examines the forces affecting regional elite mobility throughout the Soviet Union during these years. Turning the explanatory focus away from the traditional areas of patronage and clientelism, Clark adopts a novel approach to the subject by concentrating on structural variables such as the economic, social, and demographic aspects of the regions themselves as key elements of an explanation for long-term mobility trends. In addition to his focus on non-traditional variables, the broad chronological scope of the study and the fact that all Soviet republics with equivalent party structures are examined make Clark's work especially valuable for graduate students and scholars of Soviet politics and government seeking a more general and inclusive explanation of regional elite mobility than has been available in previous studies of the subject. The study is based on an exhaustive examination of the careers of over 275 Obkom (regional party committees) First Secretaries. As a result of this analysis, the 129 regional party structures of the USSR are ranked hierarchically with respect to political mobility. Throughout the study, Clark seeks to isolate non-idiosyncratic variables to explain the significant variance in mobility opportunities offered by the various regional party units. Thus, rather than relying on the traditional personalistic variables, Clark seeks to identify independent variables that have explanatory value throughout the Soviet system. Finally, Clark examines the effects of background characteristics and functional career types on elite mobility at the Obkom tier, and analyzes changes in regional cadres policy after Brezhnev. Six appendices provide additional information for the student and researcher.
These two volumes contain many significant writings from the second half of the 20th century on the culture and conceits of the samurai. The tradition naturally falls into two halves divided by the Tokugawa ascendancy, so the volumes are The Age of War and The Age of Peace.
In recent years China has experienced intense economic development. Previously a rapidly urbanising industrial economy, the country has become a post-industrial economy with a service sector that accounts for almost half the nation's GDP. This transformation has created many socio-political changes, but key among them is social mobilisation. This book provides a full and systematic analysis of social mobilisation in China, and how its use as part of state capacity has evolved. The first book on the topic written in English in recent decades, Social Mobilisation in Post-Industrial China provides readers with a thorough analysis covering all vertical administrative levels, as well as considering new participants. Bringing together interdisciplinary analyses of the current uses of social mobilisation in China, this book draws on empirically rich original research. It presents a clear picture of how boyi ('strategic game-playing') is acted out at different levels of society and within different sectors, and the social dynamics at work. This book is a unique resource, and will be invaluable for researchers and students of Asian and Chinese studies, Political Science, Public Policy and Management studies. Policy analysts, activists, strategists and educators will also find this book a useful tool for learning more about how social mobilisation mechanisms are utilised in China today.
This volume presents debates on class within an international context. Its particular focus is on women's theorized experience of social class from a variety of feminist perspectives, contextualized in relation to the countries and regions in which they live. Using personal experience as a basis, contributors cover Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Britain, Canada, Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, India, Israel, Korea, New Zealand, Poland, and the USA - iluminating the differences and similarities between regions. Challenging the view that "class is dead" as well as the idea that it is a British phenomenon, the book argues that class needs to be regarded as a key concept in any attempt to understand women's lives. It also reflects on personal and political experiences of class around the world in order to understand the mechanisms through which class discrimination operates and is mediated by gender, sexuality, ethnicity and racism.
Museums and the Working Class is the first book to take an intersectional and international approach to the issues of economic diversity and class within the field of museum studies. Bringing together 16 contributors from eight countries, this book has emerged from the significant global dialogue concerning museums' obligation to be inclusive, participate in meaningful engagement and advocate for social change. As part of the push for museums to be more accessible and inclusive, museums have been challenged to critically examine their power relationships and how these are played out in what they collect, whose stories they exhibit and who is made to feel welcome in their halls. This volume will further this professional and academic debate through the discussion of class. Contributions to the book will also reinforce the importance of the working class - not only in collection and exhibition policy, but also for the organisational psychology of institutions. Museums and the Working Class is essential reading for scholars and students of museum, gallery and heritage studies, cultural studies, sociology, labour studies and history. It will also serve as a source of honest and research-led inspiration to practitioners working in museums, galleries, libraries, archives and at heritage sites around the world.
First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
"Class, Culture and Social Change" challenges the notion of the "death of the working class." The author examines a number of key issues for working-class studies: the idea of the "death" of class; the importance of working-class writing; the significance of place and space for understanding working-class identity; and the centrality of work in working-class lives. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, Valentin Volosinov, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others, the book seeks to revive ways for thinking about working-class identity and experience.
First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Welfare offices usually attract negative descriptions of bureaucracy with their queues, routines, and impersonal nature. Are they anonymous machines or the locus of neutral service relationships? Showing how people experience state public administration, The Bureaucrat and the Poor provides a realistic view of French welfare policies, institutions and reforms and, in doing so, dispels both of these myths. Combining Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy theory with the sociology of Bourdieu and Goffman, this research analyses face-to-face encounters and demonstrates the complex relationship between welfare agents, torn between their institutional role and their personal feelings, and welfare applicants, required to translate their personal experience into bureaucratic categories. Placing these interactions within the broader context of social structures and class, race and gender, the author unveils both the social determinations of these interpersonal relationships and their social functions. Increasing numbers of welfare applicants, coupled with mass unemployment, family transformations and the so-called 'integration problem' of migrants into French society deeply affect these encounters. Staff manage tense situations with no additional resources - some become personally involved, while others stick to their bureaucratic role; most of them alternate between involvement and detachment, assistance and domination. Welfare offices have become a place for 're-socialisation', where people can talk about their personal problems and ask for advice. On the other hand, bureaucratic encounters are increasingly violent, symbolically if not physically. More than ever, they are now a means of regulating the poor.
In the Introduction, the editor gives an historical overview of the tradition of the political involvement of intellectuals in these countries, especially in the 19th Century. The chapters which follow describe the typical political and social attitude of Central European intellectuals, including writers, poets, artists, and scientists.
The struggle to create and sustain meaning in our everyday lives is fought using cultural ingredients to spin the webs of meaning that keep us going. To help reveal the complexity and intricacy of the webs of meaning in which they are suspended, Tom Inglis interviewed one-hundred people in their native home of Ireland to discover what was most important and meaningful for them in their lives. Inglis believes language is a medium: there is never an exact correspondence between what is said and what is felt and understood. Using a variety of theoretical lenses developed within sociology and anthropology, Inglis places their lives within the context of Ireland's social and cultural transformations, and of longer-term processes of change such as increased globalisation, individualisation, and informalisation.
This book analyses how racism and anti-racism affects Black British middle-class cultural consumption. In doing so, it challenges the dominant understanding of British middle-class identity and culture as being 'beyond race'. Paying attention to the relationship between cultural capital and cultural repertoires, Meghji argues that there are three modes of black middle-class identity: strategic assimilation, ethnoracial autonomous, and class-minded. Individuals within each of these identity modes use specific cultural repertoires to organise their cultural consumption. Those employing strategic assimilation draw on repertoires of code-switching and cultural equity, consuming traditional middle-class culture to maintain equality with the white middle-class in levels of cultural capital. Ethnoracial autonomous individuals draw on repertoires of 'browning' and Afro-centrism, self-selecting traditional middle-class cultural pursuits they decode as 'Eurocentric' while showing a preference for cultural forms that uplift black diasporic histories and cultures. Lastly, class-minded individuals draw on repertoires of post-racialism and de-racialisation, polarising between 'Black' and middle-class cultural forms. Black middle class Britannia examines how such individuals display an unequivocal preference for the latter, lambasting other black people who avoid middle-class culture as being culturally myopic or culturally uncultivated. -- .
In recent years historians and other social scientists have widely questioned the continued relevance of social class - as historical relationship, as sociological category, as philosophical concept, and in terms of its enduring political significance. The success of the British Conservative Party since 1979, combined with the weaknesses and failures of the Labour movement, have led historians and social scientists to reconsider the general nature of connections between the 'social' and the 'political' and the specific relations between the working class and socialist and Labour politics. This collection of essays is a multi-disciplinary critique of the new revisionism, which demonstrates the continued vitality and promise of non-reductionist and non-determinist modes of class analysis.
Develops the debate on the professional and managerial service class, and their importance as a determining force in social structure and social change.
Professionalism is currently undergoing a process of radical change. Changes in the welfare state and in the market place have impacted upon professional organizations forcing them to change the ways in which they perform their jobs. This book analyzes these changes in relation to the legal industry and other professions such as doctors and accountants. It argues that the shift is being driven by the powerful and informed corporate client whilst it downgrades consideration for the weaker uninformed client with many casualties as a result. It highlights how this shift has become an important political issue as the different camps seek support from political parties. It suggests that the resulting contest will be one of the key political struggles of the first decade of the next century. |
You may like...
The Art of Music Production - The Theory…
Richard James Burgess
Hardcover
R3,845
Discovery Miles 38 450
The Bohemian Girl - Opera In Three Acts…
Michael William Balfe, Alfred Bunn, …
Hardcover
R665
Discovery Miles 6 650
|