Originally published in 1966, this is a sociological study of boys growing up in East London. Previous books from the Institute of Community Studies had looked at the lives of other residents of Bethnal Green - couples with young children, middle-aged 'Mums', old people, widows. Now the subject is adolescent boys - a study of them not in isolation nor primarily as a 'problem' group but as young people moving between childhood and adulthood in the setting of a particular local community. What is it like to grow up in a district like Bethnal Green? How do the boys adjust to the process? What part is played by school, work, youth club, family? What are the boys' relationships with their fellows and with girls? Where does delinquency fit in? To help answer such questions, a sample of 246 boys aged 14 to 20 were interviewed. The statistical analysis of this survey has been supplemented by illustrative material from diaries, tape-recorded interviews, and informal observation. The outcome is a vivid account, much of it in the boys' own words, which was rather different from some popular views of contemporary adolescence at the time. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

This collection contributes to an understanding of queer theory as a "queer share," addressing the urgent need to redistribute resources in a university world characterized by stark material disparities and embedded gendered, racial, national, and class inequities. From across a range of precarious and relatively secure positions, authors consider the changing politics of queer theory and the shifting practices of queers who, in moving from the margins toward the academic mainstream, differently negotiate resources, recognition, and returns. Contributors engage queer redistributions in all tiers of the class-stratified academy and across the UK, the US, Australia, Armenia, Canada, and Spain. They both indict academic hierarchy as a form of colonial knowledge-making and explore class contradictions via first-generation epistemologies, feminist care work in the pandemic, Black working-class visibility, non-peer institutional collaborations, and student labor. The volume reflects a commitment to interdisciplinary empirical and theoretical approaches and methodologies across anthropology, Black studies, cultural studies, education, feminist and women's studies, geography, Latinx studies, performance studies, postcolonial studies, public health, transgender studies, sociology, student affairs, and queer studies. This book is for readers seeking to better understand the broad class-based knowledge project that has become a defining feature of the field of queer studies.

This collection contributes to an understanding of queer theory as a "queer share," addressing the urgent need to redistribute resources in a university world characterized by stark material disparities and embedded gendered, racial, national, and class inequities. From across a range of precarious and relatively secure positions, authors consider the changing politics of queer theory and the shifting practices of queers who, in moving from the margins toward the academic mainstream, differently negotiate resources, recognition, and returns. Contributors engage queer redistributions in all tiers of the class-stratified academy and across the UK, the US, Australia, Armenia, Canada, and Spain. They both indict academic hierarchy as a form of colonial knowledge-making and explore class contradictions via first-generation epistemologies, feminist care work in the pandemic, Black working-class visibility, non-peer institutional collaborations, and student labor. The volume reflects a commitment to interdisciplinary empirical and theoretical approaches and methodologies across anthropology, Black studies, cultural studies, education, feminist and women's studies, geography, Latinx studies, performance studies, postcolonial studies, public health, transgender studies, sociology, student affairs, and queer studies. This book is for readers seeking to better understand the broad class-based knowledge project that has become a defining feature of the field of queer studies.

Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism. If the last seventy years saw a massive expansion of the middle class, not only in America but in much of the developed world, today that class is declining and a new, more hierarchical society is emerging. The new class structure resembles that of Medieval times. At the apex of the new order are two classes-a reborn clerical elite, the clerisy, which dominates the upper part of the professional ranks, universities, media and culture, and a new aristocracy led by tech oligarchs with unprecedented wealth and growing control of information. These two classes correspond to the old French First and Second Estates. Below these two classes lies what was once called the Third Estate. This includes the yeomanry, which is made up largely of small businesspeople, minor property owners, skilled workers and private-sector oriented professionals. Ascendant for much of modern history, this class is in decline while those below them, the new Serfs, grow in numbers-a vast, expanding property-less population. The trends are mounting, but we can still reverse them-if people understand what is actually occurring and have the capability to oppose them.

Migration of Rich Immigrants addresses flows of emigrants who establish themselves in other countries temporarily or permanently, in favorable economic conditions. Vailati and Rial explore these migratory paths and analyze how gender, class, age, sexual orientation and ethnicity influence these processes.

The twenty-first century has so far been characterized by ongoing realignments in the organization of the economy around housing and real estate. Markets have boomed and bust and boomed again with residential property increasingly a focus of wealth accumulation practices. While analyses have largely focussed on global flows of capital and large institutions, families have served as critical actors. Housing properties are family goods that shape how members interact, organise themselves, and deal with the vicissitudes of everyday economic life. Families have, moreover, increasingly mobilized around their homes as assets, aligning household transitions and practices towards the accumulation of property wealth. The capacities of different families to realise this, however, are highly uneven with housing conditions becoming increasingly central to growing inequalities and processes of social stratification. This book addresses changing relationships between families and their homes over the latest period of neo-liberalization. The book confronts how transformations in households, life-course transitions, kinship and intergenerational relations shape, and are being shaped by, the shifting role of property markets in social and economic processes. The chapters explore this in terms of different aspects of home, family life and socioeconomic change across varied national contexts.

After the end of America's longest (20-year) war in Afghanistan and Iraq that cost more than $6 trillion and nearly half a million lives, what does the future hold for America and the American people in the 21st century? In this timely and important book, Berch Berberoglu provides an eye-opening account of the history of the American Empire from its inception to the present, with prospects for its future. Examining the worldwide expansion of the American Empire over the course of its turbulent history in great detail, Berberoglu assesses America's imperial legacy in a sober way, highlighting its failure to come to terms with the enormous cost of this adventure in imperial overreach. But Berberoglu sees light at the end of the long, dark tunnel, when the American people will awaken and lead the way to a new America after empire in the coming decades of the 21st century.

After the end of America's longest (20-year) war in Afghanistan and Iraq that cost more than $6 trillion and nearly half a million lives, what does the future hold for America and the American people in the 21st century? In this timely and important book, Berch Berberoglu provides an eye-opening account of the history of the American Empire from its inception to the present, with prospects for its future. Examining the worldwide expansion of the American Empire over the course of its turbulent history in great detail, Berberoglu assesses America's imperial legacy in a sober way, highlighting its failure to come to terms with the enormous cost of this adventure in imperial overreach. But Berberoglu sees light at the end of the long, dark tunnel, when the American people will awaken and lead the way to a new America after empire in the coming decades of the 21st century.

Most modern scholars recognize that there were great differences between China's ruling elite in the middle and late traditional period; many have called the period up through the T'ang dynasty aristocratic, in contrast to the more meritocratic and socially mobile age that followed. But until now there has been no serious effort to discover how the social elite was defined in medieval times, and who belonged to it. David Johnson discusses in detail medieval definitions of the social elite, and, with the help of several manuscripts of the ninth century, identifies the families that belonged to that class.

The Collectivity of Life is a study of autobiographical writing and oral histories situated in the late twentieth century United States. The central thesis is that by studying how the authors of these narratives articulate space in their stories, we can uncover a recurring critique of meritocratic individualism and reconstruct a counter-mythology that locates social mobility in collectivist experiences. Fourteen autobiographical works are studied, including those of Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Barack Obama, and numerous other from multiple ethnic and several regions of the U.S., ranging from 1964 through 2008. More than 40 oral histories housed in archives in several regions of the country help to establish the book's goal. By using a concept of space, this book shifts the focus of personal narrative from the internal resources of the individual to networks of support and collective efforts in the formation of their identities and the basis of their life accomplishments.

Originally published in 1976, this book is a sociological and historical study of class and race relations in a crucial sector of South Africa - the gold mining industry, during and following the First World War. The author develops a Marxist structuralist explanation of the system of racial discrimination, and then goes in to examine the significant historical events of this formative period, notably those surrounding the strike and uprising of the white workers in 1922. The book explains a system of racial domination essentially in terms of the class positions and problems of the dominating groups, and examines historical developments concerning race in terms of class.

Drawing inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu's social space theory, this book provides an unprecedent overview of class relations, covering topics such as class polarisation, cultural reproduction, political orientations, and globalisation. The book applies Bourdieusian social space approach to show how class boundaries have been maintained or transformed in different European countries. Based on quantiative data, it proposes a renewal of the analysis of distances, divides, and relations of domination between social classes, documenting objective and symbolic boundaries that form the basis of individuals' living and working conditions in 11 European countries. Focusing on transformations of wealth inequalities, education strategies, and European labour markets, the book examines the role of cultural, economic and social capital. It will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, in particular to those studying social and wealth inequalities in a comparative perspective and Master's students in European studies.

This book examines the controversial 103rd Constitutional Amendment to the Indian Constitution that introduced an income and asset ownership-based new constitutional standard for determining backwardness marking a significant shift in the government's social and public policy. It also analyses state level policies towards backwardness recognition of upper-caste dominant groups through case studies of Maharashtra, Haryana, and Gujarat. It provides an analytical and descriptive account of the proliferation of reservation policy in India and critiques these interventions to assess their implication on constitutional jurisprudence. Further, it assesses the theoretical and empirical challenges such developments pose to the principle of substantive equality and scope of affirmative action policies in Indian constitutional law and general discrimination law theory. The monograph shows how opening up of reservations for dominant upper-caste groups and general category will have implications for the constitutional commitment to addressing deeply entrenched marginalisation emanating from the traditional social hierarchy and the understanding of substantive equality in Indian Constitutional law. Further, it highlights key contradictions, incoherence, and internal tension in the design of the reservations for Economically Weaker Sections Critical, comprehensive, and cogently argued, this book will contribute and shape ongoing constitutional policy and judicial debates. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of law, Indian politics, affirmative action, social policy, and public policy.

In Experiences from First Generation College Graduates, 31 alumni who were the first in their family to obtain a college degree share their experiences in college. These stories illuminate how the struggles of first-generation students are primarily due to a combination of multiple social inequities that are ignored, reinforced, and perpetuated by exclusive college systems. These authors speak directly to current and future first generation students, offering tips and advice for success, along with powerful words of encouragement in their emotionally rich narratives. College faculty and staff are challenged to shift their perspectives from viewing these students from a deficit lens or attempting to make them more like continuing-generation students, to instead having deeply honest confrontations with the pedagogies and structures of college, which are frequently so ingrained that they are invisible, and that cater to continuing-generation students, who are often predominantly white, middle- and upper-class. Colleges can create a more equitable system in which universities are enriched by the wisdom, experiences, and talents of first-generation students while promoting a generative culture for all students.

To date, scholars in higher education have examined the ways in which students' experiences in the classroom and the human capital they attain impact social class inequalities. In this book, Jenny Stuber argues that the experiential core of college life-the social and extra-curricular worlds of higher education-operates as a setting in which social class inequalities manifest and get reproduced. As college students form friendships and get involved in activities like Greek life, study abroad, and student government, they acquire the social and cultural resources that give them access to valuable social and occupational opportunities beyond the college gates. Yet students' social class backgrounds also impact how they experience the experiential core of college life, structuring their abilities to navigate their campus's social and extra-curricular worlds. Stuber shows that upper-middle-class students typically arrive on campus with sophisticated maps and navigational devices to guide their journeys-while working-class students are typically less well equipped for the journey. She demonstrates, as well, that students' social interactions, friendships, and extra-curricular involvements also shape-and are shaped by-their social class worldviews-the ideas they have about their own and others' class identities and their beliefs about where they and others fit within the class system. By focusing on student' social class worldviews, this book provides insight into how identities and consciousness are shaped within educational settings. Ultimately, this examination of what happens inside the college gates shows how which higher education serves as an avenue for social reproduction, while also providing opportunities for the contestation of class inequalities.

Value is typically theorized from the frameworks of economic theory or of moral/ethical theory, but we need to instead think about value foremost as political. Alena Wolflink uncovers a tension in value discourses between material and aspirational life. As she shows, erasing this tension, as has been the historical tendency, can entrench existing configurations of power and privilege, while acknowledging the tension is a vital part of democratic practice. Using genealogical, conceptual-historical, and interpretive approaches, and drawing from such diverse sources as Aristotle, Anna Julia Cooper, Michael Warner, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Wolflink argues that abstractions of value discourse in both economic theory and moral philosophy have been complicit in devaluing the lives of women, queer people, and people of color. Yet she further argues that value claims nonetheless hold democratic potential as a means of asserting and defining priorities that center the role of political economy in the making of political communities. With many real-world examples vividly portrayed, Claiming Value is an unusually accessible work of political theory accessible to students in courses on political theory, moral philosophy, social theory, economic theory, democracy, social inequality, and more.

First published in 1977, Puritan, Paranoid, Remissive investigates the process of the transformation of Western society in the twentieth century. The author questions assumptions of sociological fashion and goes beyond the descriptions of changes in the economy, government, education, the family, work, leisure and the arts, to a deeper level of historical cause. He proposes three-character types, or patterns of psychological disposition, to indicate respectively the 'Puritan' past that is waning, the immediate 'paranoid' past that has exemplified society's crisis of transition, and the 'remissive' future, whose ideology already permeates the present. These types reflect his leading theme - the historical decline of the authority of the individual. John Carroll believes that culture has moved faster than character. Focusing on what is conventionally the upper middle class - the bourgeoisie - he proposes the emergence of a new 'remissive' culture from the ruins of the old Puritan order, and concludes that the pathology, the remiss nervousness of contemporary Westerners, results from their futile attempts to adapt their enduring Puritan disposition to their hedonist ideals. The twenty-first century carries remnants of this transformation and will be of interest to students of sociology, philosophy, history and political science.

The sources and nature of China's transformation from a traditional to modern society - accelerated in the early twentieth century by the downfall of the Qing dynasty, the advent of foreign technology and increasing commercialization - are critical issues for the study of modern China. In this book, Xin Zhang uses the case of local elites and the power structure of Henan province in north-central China to demonstrate how local politics first transformed local society, challenged the state and eventually influenced change across China. Rather than focusing separately on elite mobility, social mobilization or state-making, Zhang observes changes in all three categories as interrelated aspects of a single, self-generating phenomenon of social change. Zhang's application of social science theory and rich, original, empirical data, sheds light on the sources of China's modernization, political and social identity, and the shifting relationship between the state and local elites.

Value is typically theorized from the frameworks of economic theory or of moral/ethical theory, but we need to instead think about value foremost as political. Alena Wolflink uncovers a tension in value discourses between material and aspirational life. As she shows, erasing this tension, as has been the historical tendency, can entrench existing configurations of power and privilege, while acknowledging the tension is a vital part of democratic practice. Using genealogical, conceptual-historical, and interpretive approaches, and drawing from such diverse sources as Aristotle, Anna Julia Cooper, Michael Warner, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Wolflink argues that abstractions of value discourse in both economic theory and moral philosophy have been complicit in devaluing the lives of women, queer people, and people of color. Yet she further argues that value claims nonetheless hold democratic potential as a means of asserting and defining priorities that center the role of political economy in the making of political communities. With many real-world examples vividly portrayed, Claiming Value is an unusually accessible work of political theory accessible to students in courses on political theory, moral philosophy, social theory, economic theory, democracy, social inequality, and more.

Caste in India, despite its historical resilience, has been undergoing transformation since independence. If caste as a system of rigid stratification has been on the decline, castes as autonomous interest-serving groups have been on ascendance. This book critically engages with the changing notions of caste and its intersection with public policy in India. It discusses key issues such as social security, internal reservation, the idea of Most Backward Classes, caste issues among non-Hindu religious communities, caste in census, caste in market, and service castes and urban planning. Drawing on in-depth case studies from states including Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and West Bengal, the volume explores the cyclical process of how caste drives policies, and how policies in turn shape the reality of caste in India. It looks at the impact of factors like protective discrimination, adult franchise and democratic decentralisation, horizontal and vertical mobilisation, land reforms, and religious conversion on social mobility, and traditional hierarchy in India. Empirically rich and analytically rigorous, this book will be an excellent reference for scholars and researchers of public policy, public administration, sociology, exclusion studies, social work, law, history, economics, political science, development studies, social anthropology, and political sociology. It will also be of interest to public policy and development practitioners.

This is the first book dedicated to Australian youth gangs, exploring the subtleties and nuances of street life for young men and their quest for social respect. It focuses specifically on group violence and the ways in which the 'gang' provides a forum for the expression of this violence. White argues that what happens on the street demands a holistic analysis which takes into account the interrelationships between class circumstance, masculinity, race and ethnicity. Gangs and gang violence are thus 'made' in the crucible of specific histories, specific neighbourhoods and specific social contexts. Based upon many years of research, and drawing upon the theoretical insights of international literature in this area, this book provides a sustained analysis and portrayal of youth violence and youth gangs - one that includes and highlights the voices and viewpoints of the young people themselves.

High technology capitalism utilizes computers, robots, and global information networks. It has engendered new classes - technocrats, bureaucrats, service and office workers - who will impact the structure and values of society. The question most central for us is that of the survival of democracy on this new base. Will the New Middle Class become the carrying class for a modern form of democracy utilizing the sophisticated communications technology, or, will democracy decline under the weight of the managerial and technocratic strata essential to the functioning of the modern economic and political institutions?

This book argues that the dominant descriptions of the 'caste system' are rooted in the Western Christian experience of India. Thus, caste studies tell us more about the West than about India. It further demonstrates the imperative to move beyond this scholarship in order to generate descriptions of Indian social reality. The dominant descriptions of the 'caste system' that we have today are results of originally Christian themes and questions. The authors of this collection show how this hypothesis can be applied beyond South Asia to the diasporic cultures that have made a home in Western countries, and how the inheritance of caste studies as structured by European scholarship impacts on our understanding of contemporary India and the Indians of the diaspora. This collection will be of interest to scholars and students of caste studies, India studies, religion in South Asia, postcolonial studies, history, anthropology and sociology.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the People's Republic of China experienced dramatic growth and expansion that altered the educational environment of children. Rapid economic development increased prosperity and educational opportunities for children expanded in a wealthier society. Yet, a by-product of rising wealth was rising inequality. While the children of the emerging urban middle and elite classes enjoyed new prosperity, the children of hte persistently poor in rural communities continued to experience challenges such as food insecurity, illness, hardships of family separation, and migrant life on the margins of the cities. This time period saw a large resource gap emerge between the home conditions of poor rural children compared with those of their wealthier urban counterparts. This book highlights the complexities China has experienced in seeking to extend full educational access to rural children- including rural- to- urban migrant and ethnic minority children-during a momentous period in China. Chapters delve into the experiences, perceptions, strategies, and diffi culties of rural- origin children and their families in the school system, and lay bare the challenges of policy initiatives designed to support rural education. We hope the experiences detailed here will be of interest to students and scholars of rural educational policy and practice in China and worldwide.

Fighting Global Neo-Extractivism: Fossil-Free Social Movements in South Africa analyzes social struggles over damaging new fossil fuel projects in the Global South with a focus on South Africa, Africa's biggest fossil fuel emitter. Fossil fuel extraction in South Africa has reached a new accelerated phase in which the fossil fuel frontier is moving beyond historical 'sacrifice zones' into non-traditional spaces, such as conservation parks and middle-class neighbourhoods, and provoking fervent opposition from grassroots activists. This book examines campaigns such as Frack Free South Africa and Save our iMfolozi Wilderness, viewing them as struggles against neo-extractivism driven by the state and industry. Through a series of detailed case studies, it highlights the shaping of mobilisation patterns by prior land use practices and the capacity to mobilize different social groups across race and class. Developing the notion of the fossil fuel frontier as the material and political boundary that activists in South Africa and elsewhere in the world render visible, this volume provides a theoretical framework to understanding global mobilization patterns. This timely and impassioned book will appeal to students and researchers interested in a range of subjects, including environmentalism, social movements, political ecology, and development studies.