There has been a recent expansion of interest in cultural approaches to rural communities and to the economic and social situation of rurality more broadly. This interest has been particularly prominent in Australia in recent years, spurring the emergence of an interdisciplinary field called 'rural cultural studies'. This collection is framed by a large interdisciplinary research project that is part of that emergence, particularly focused on what the idea of 'cultural sustainability' might mean for understanding experiences of growth, decline, change and heritage in small Australian country towns. However, it extends beyond the initial parameters of that research, bringing together a range of senior and emerging Australian researchers who offer diverse approaches to rural culture. The essays collected here explore the diverse forms that rural cultural studies might take and how these intersect with other disciplinary approaches, offering a uniquely diverse but also careful account of life in country Australia. Yet, in its emphasis on the simultaneous specificity and cross-cultural recognisability of rural communities, this book also outlines a field of inquiry and a set of critical strategies that are more broadly applicable to thinking about the "rural" in the early twenty-first century. This book will be valuable reading for students and academics of Geography, History, Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Anthropology and Sociology, introducing rural cultural studies as a new dynamic and integrative discipline.

This book provides fresh insights into the study of Chinese elites at the county level and below. By shifting the analytical focus onto the agency of elites at the local level and away from the institutional structures within which they operate, it fills a number of significant gaps in the field. In particular, this book addresses the lacunae through an empirically rich and diverse set of case studies. It proceeds from the premise that the study of local elites can be most fruitful through examining their relations with each other and with the groups that wield power in the community. Particularly pertinent to the analyses are three major relations, namely the relationship between the elites and their environment, between particular types of elites, and between the locality and the upper and lower scales. Ultimately, it concludes that these relations are not only essential to understanding local elites in post-Mao China but also in accounting for socio-political change and in distinguishing China from other types of societies. As a study of local elites in China, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Chinese politics, political sociology and Chinese Studies in general.

On the 14th June 2017, a fire engulfed a tower block in West London, seventy-two people lost their lives and hundreds of others were left displaced and traumatised. The Grenfell Tower fire is the epicentre of a long history of violence enacted by government and corporations. On its second anniversary activists, artists and academics come together to respond, remember and recover the disaster. The Grenfell Tower fire illustrates Britain's symbolic order; the continued logic of colonialism, the disposability of working class lives, the marketisation of social provision and global austerity politics, and the negligence and malfeasance of multinational contractors. Exploring these topics and more, the contributors construct critical analysis from legal, cultural, media, community and government responses to the fire, asking whether, without remedy for multifaceted power and violence, we will ever really be 'after' Grenfell? With poetry by Ben Okri and Tony Walsh, and photographs by Parveen Ali, Sam Boal and Yolanthe Fawehinmi. With contributions from Phil Scraton, Daniel Renwick, Nadine El-Enany, Sarah Keenan, Gracie Mae Bradley and The Radical Housing Network.

This classic study on the sociology of Japan remains the only in-depth treatment of the Japanese middle class. Now in a 50th-anniversary edition that includes a new introduction by William W. Kelly, this seminal work paints a rich and complex picture of the life of the salary man and his family. In 1958, Suzanne and Ezra Vogel embedded themselves in a Tokyo suburb, living among and interviewing six middle-class families regularly for a year. Tracing the rapid postwar economic growth that led to hiring large numbers of workers who were guaranteed life-long employment, the authors show how this phenomenon led to a new social class, the salaried men and their families. It was a well-educated group that prepared their children rigorously for the same successful corporate or government jobs they held. Secure employment and a rising standard of living enabled this new middle class to set the dominant pattern of social life that influenced even those who could not share it, a pattern that remains fundamental to Japanese society today.

First published in 1969, Studies in British Society contains excerpts from seven major studies of modern British society - studies that demonstrate the special techniques used by sociologists in researching various aspects of social behaviour. The selections reflect the full spectrum of life in modern Britain. Included are the studies of the impact of new industry on the structure of an old English town; management-labour relations in the coal industry; the nature of a minor religious sect; democratic participation in a retail cooperative society; life in an English prison; class factors in education; and child-rearing practices in an urban community. This book will introduce the reader to some of the major work of modern British sociologists, and also help him to gain greater insights into the nature of life in Britain.

This book represents a truly innovative and empowering approach to social problems. Instead of focusing solely on a seemingly tireless list of major problems, Sara Towe Horsfall considers how select key issues can be solved and pays particular attention to the advocate groups already on the front lines. Horsfall first provides a r

Hailed as the beneficiary, driving force and result of globalisation, India's middle-class is puzzling in its diversity, as a multitude of traditions, social formations and political constellations manifest contribute to this project. This book looks at Indian middle-class lifestyles through a number of case studies, ranging from a historical account detailing the making of a savvy middle-class consumer in the late colonial period, to saving clubs among women in Delhi's upmarket colonies and the dilemmas of entrepreneurial families in Tamil Nadu's industrial towns. The book pays tribute to the diversity of regional, caste, rural and urban origins that shape middle- class lifestyles in contemporary India and highlights common themes, such as the quest for upward mobility, common consumption practices, the importance of family values, gender relations and educational trajectories. It unpacks the notion that the Indian middle-class can be understood in terms of public performances, surveys and economic markers, and emphasises how the study of middle-class culture needs to be based on detailed studies, as everyday practices and private lives create the distinctive sub-cultures and cultural politics that characterise the Indian middle class today. With its focus on private domains middleclassness appears as a carefully orchestrated and complex way of life and presents a fascinating way to understand South Asian cultures and communities through the prism of social class.

About 1.5 million households filed bankruptcy in the last year, making bankruptcy as common as college graduation and divorce. The recession has pushed more and more families into financial collapse--with unemployment, declines in retirement wealth, and falling house values destabilizing the American middle class. "Broke" explores the consequences of this unprecedented growth in consumer debt and shows how excessive borrowing undermines the prosperity of middle class America.
While the recession that began in mid-2007 has widened the scope of the financial pain caused by overindebtedness, the problem predated that large-scale economic meltdown. And by all indicators, consumer debt will be a defining feature of middle-class families for years to come. The staples of middle-class life--going to college, buying a house, starting a small business--carry with them more financial risk than ever before, requiring more borrowing and new riskier forms of borrowing. This book reveals the people behind the statistics, looking closely at how people get to the point of serious financial distress, the hardships of dealing with overwhelming debt, and the difficulty of righting one's financial life. In telling the stories of financial failures, this book exposes an all-too-real part of middle-class life that is often lost in the success stories that dominate the American economic narrative.
Authored by experts in several disciplines, including economics, law, political science, psychology, and sociology, "Broke" presents analyses from an original, proprietary data set of unprecedented scope and detail, the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project. Topics include class status, home ownership, educational attainment, impacts of self-employment, gender differences, economic security, and the emotional costs of bankruptcy. The book makes judicious use of illustrations to present key findings and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the data for contemporary policy debates.

This book sets out to redress the balance of history in favor of the peasants. Reminding us that peasants made up the vast majority of the population in medieval Europe, R&oumlsener's research illustrates that their lives were just as complex and interesting as those of the nobility.
R&oumlsener first considers the social, economic and political foundations of peasant life, in particular how occupational and land divisions determined the relative freedom of the rural population. At the height of the Middle Ages, the peasant condition improved as the seigneurial system was gradually replaced by tenant farming and progress in agricultural technology increased productivity. Peasant colonists now left overcrowded villages to farm less fertile or barely populated terrains. Forms of village settlement diversified and relationships among the peasants developed into more complex communal networks. Changes were also apparent in the quality and variety of clothing and the design of farmhouses and farmyards. The author also sheds new light on successful peasants who owned land and began to form "peasant republics" independent of the nobility. As the peasant population swelled, however, economic and ecological concerns became of vital importance to a community which derived its living from the soil.
This book is a lively refutation of those preconceptions which see peasant existence either as a rural idyll or a life of unmitigated oppression and poverty. R&oumlsener's detailed study has unearthed a rich peasant culture which flourished alongside and was frequently in conflict with the medieval nobility.
Peasants in the Middle Ages will be welcomed by historians of medieval Europe and by sociologists and anthropologists interested in the Middle Ages or comparative studies.

Based on the approaches of questionnaire and interview, this book studies the urban subalterns formed with a considerable scale in China since the 1990s. By investigating their living status in detail, it depicts the mental conditions, class consciousness, migration, living difficulties and dilemmas of the subaltern class. It's worth noting that in addition to the group at the bottom of the economic pyramid, this book expands the definition of subaltern by including the deviant underclass. Then it examines the factors causing the living dilemmas and provides suggestions aiming to mitigate them from the perspective of social succor. In the last chapter, this book focuses on the theoretical discussions on subaltern studies. New concepts such as the deviant subaltern group and social vigilance are created, and new theories such as production and transmission mechanism of the subaltern group are put forward.

India's economic growth has brought opportunities for many but to what extent has it benefitted its ethnically-shaped underclass: the Dalits? Have Dalits fared better in a neoliberal India or have structural economic and social changes served to magnify Dalit disadvantage? This volume offers a varied picture of Dalit experience in different states

Community meetings seldom lead to significant change in urban policies, and have been accused of being sterile, sedative, or manipulative. This book starts from a simple question: Why do people then continue to participate in these meetings, sometimes massively, and on a regular basis? Authors from a variety of disciplines explore the multiple roles of these `invited' spaces of participation. From consolidation of individual social status and networks, to the construction and framing of the local `community', the display of political or group loyalties and maintenance of client list exchange, access to information, rumors or gossip but also forms of education on who and what is the state, invited spaces of participation are also, crucially, places of emergence of collective awareness, through shared expressions of frustration, that can lead to political mobilisation and other, less institutionalised forms of participation. This book, unpacking community politics and rethinking the complex articulations between ``invited' and invented' spaces of participation, is of relevance for international and national audiences interested in urban governance and local democracy.

How often do working-class children obtain college degrees and then pursue professional careers? Conversely, how frequently do the children of doctors and lawyers fail to enter high status careers upon completion of their schooling? As inequalities of wealth and income have increased in industrialized nations over the past 30 years, have patterns of between-generation mobility changed?
In this volume, leading sociologists and economists present original findings and conceptual arguments in response to questions like these. After assessing the range of mobility patterns observed in recent decades, the volume considers the mechanisms that generate mobility, focusing on both the training and skills that are rewarded in the labor market as well as the role of educational institutions in certifying graduates for professional positions. The volume concludes with chapters that assess the contexts of social mobility, examining the impact of macroeconomic conditions and societal levels of inequality on social and economic mobility.

Poverty is an issue facing countries around the globe, yet it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon caused by a variety of factors, differing from context to context with no linear chain of cause and effect. The occurrence and persistence of poverty is influenced by an interrelated web of economic, social, psychological, cultural, and political factors.

Focusing on countries-in-transition belonging to the former Soviet bloc where the existence of poverty was officially denied until the collapse of the Soviet Union, this volume examines the ways in which each country is dealing with its newly acknowledged and rapidly increasing poverty. The transition from socialism to democracy and market economies has proved more difficult and costly than anyone imagined. Scholars from the six countries examined here profile and evaluate current social policies and programs on poverty eradication and provide a comparative perspective that ensures that culturally specific solutions can be found in place of borrowed solutions from abroad -- solutions which have thus far ignored the cultural factor and have thus failed to deliver.

Originally published in 1971, Homes in High Flats was written at a time when multi-storey flats were a popular solution to the world-wide need for mass housing because they could be produced with speed. However, the social implications of domestic housing in high flats were causing local authorities in Western Europe to reconsider their efficiency. Original research into this question forms the basis of this book which concentrates on Glasgow but gives attention to other examples both in Britain and abroad. The text attempts to encompass all the social and practical aspects of life in high flats by studying tenants’ views on the physical character of the flats and estates, and by examining the success of tenants’ associations and extra-mural classes designed to develop community life. Practical problems are dealt with in chapters on facilities and services, families, children, the elderly and the case for investment in staff. The authors also compare multi-storey flats with other types of household and discuss the reasons for tenants’ movement out of the estate. Perhaps the most eloquent social comment on the shortcomings of high flat life is expressed in the lyrics of the Jeely Piece Song which is included in the Appendix.

Poverty is an issue facing countries around the globe, yet it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon caused by a variety of factors, differing from context to context with no linear chain of cause and effect. The occurrence and persistence of poverty is influenced by an interrelated web of economic, social, psychological, cultural, and political factors.

Focusing on countries-in-transition belonging to the former Soviet bloc where the existence of poverty was officially denied until the collapse of the Soviet Union, this volume examines the ways in which each country is dealing with its newly acknowledged and rapidly increasing poverty. The transition from socialism to democracy and market economies has proved more difficult and costly than anyone imagined. Scholars from the six countries examined here profile and evaluate current social policies and programs on poverty eradication and provide a comparative perspective that ensures that culturally specific solutions can be found in place of borrowed solutions from abroad -- solutions which have thus far ignored the cultural factor and have thus failed to deliver.

David Downes' early work on delinquency in East London made an original contribution to the comparative study of anomie and subcultural theory, and social policy on education and employment. His research and writing went on to include the study of gambling, drugs policy and the state of criminological theory. His later work broke new ground in detailed, cross-national, comparative analysis of criminal justice and penal policy, in particular in relation to England and the Netherlands. A related endeavour was to contribute (with Rod Morgan) to the burgeoning study of the politics of crime control. He was a founding member of the National Deviancy Conference in 1968 and of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice at the LSE in 1989. He edited the British Journal of Criminology from 1985 until 1990. His most recent work (with Tim Newburn and Paul Rock) has been on the official history of criminal justice policy in England and Wales 1960-1997.

The problem of citizenship has long affected Latin America, simultaneously producing inclusion and exclusion, division and unity. Its narrative and practice both reflect and contribute to the region's profound inequalities. However, citizenship is usually studied on the margins of society. Despite substantial public interest in recent mass mobilizations, the middle and upper classes are rarely approached as political agents or citizens. As the region's middle classes continue to grow and new elites develop, their importance can only increase. This interdisciplinary volume addresses this gap, showcasing recent ethnographic research on middle- and upper-class citizenship in contemporary Latin America. It explores how the region's middle and upper classes constitute themselves as citizens through politics and culture, and questions how these processes interact with the construction of difference and commonality, division and unity. Subsequently, this collection highlights how elite citizenships are constructed in dialogue with other identities, how these co-constructions reproduce or challenge inequality, and whether they have the potential to bring about change. Citizenship in the Latin American Upper and Middle Classes will appeal to scholars, advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as Latin American Studies, Citizenship Studies, Political Science and Cultural Studies; and to a general readership interested in Latin American politics and society.

During the tech boom, Silicon Valley became one of the most concentrated zones of wealth polarization and social inequality in the United States--a place with a fast-disappearing middle class, persistent pockets of poverty, and striking gaps in educational and occupational achievement along class and racial lines. Low-wage workers and their families experienced a profound sense of exclusion from the techno-entrepreneurial culture, while middle class residents, witnessing up close the seemingly overnight success of a "new entrepreneurial" class, negotiated both new and seemingly unattainable standards of personal success and the erosion of their own economic security.

"The Burdens of Aspiration" explores the imprint of the region's success-driven public culture, the realities of increasing social and economic insecurity, and models of success emphasized in contemporary public schools for the region's working and middle class youth. Focused on two disparate groups of students--low-income, "at-risk" Latino youth attending a specialized program exposing youth to high tech industry within an "under-performing" public high school, and middle-income white and Asian students attending a "high-performing" public school with informal connections to the tech elite--Elsa Davidson offers an in-depth look at the process of forming aspirations across lines of race and class. By analyzing the successes and sometimes unanticipated effects of the schools' attempts to shape the aspirations and values of their students, she provides keen insights into the role schooling plays in social reproduction, and how dynamics of race and class inform ideas about responsible citizenship that are instilled in America's youth.

Inequality is back on the academic and political agenda. This book considers the extent and impact of social protection - including social assistance, social insurance, universal allowances and mandates - on inequality. The author illustrates how effectively designed and implemented forms of social protection can make significant contributions to reducing inequalities, promoting egalitarian ideals and achieving social justice. Critical and incisive, this book is essential reading for students and academics studying social protection and inequality. It will also be of interest to scholars in social policy, international social welfare and development studies, as well as practitioners and professionals in government and international agencies.

In an alternate reality a lot like our world, every person's physical size is directly proportional to their wealth. The poorest of the poor are the size of rats, and billionaires are the size of skyscrapers. Warner and his sister Prayer are destitute - and tiny. Their size is not just demeaning but dangerous: day and night they face mortal dangers that bigger, richer people don't ever have to think about, from being mauled by cats to their house getting stepped on. There are no cars or phones built small enough for them, or schools or hospitals, for that matter - there's no point, when no one that little has any purchasing power, and when salaried doctors and teachers would never fit in buildings so small. Warner and Prayer know their only hope is to scale up, but how can two littlepoors survive in a world built against them? Brilliant, warm and funny, this is a social novel for our times in the tradition of 1984 or the work of Douglas Adams.

This volume focuses on intersections of race, class, gender, and nation in the formation of the fin-de-siecle Spanish and Spanish colonial subject. Despite the wealth of research produced on gender, social class, race, and national identity few studies have focused on how these categories interacted, frequently operating simultaneously to reveal contexts in which dominated groups were dominating and vice versa. Such revelations call into question metanarratives about the exploitation of one group by another and bring to light interlocking systems of identity formation, and consequently oppression, that are difficult to disentangle. The authors included here study this dynamic in a variety of genres and venues, namely the essay, the novel, the short story, theater, and zarzuelas. These essays cover canonical authors such as Benito Perez Galdos and Emilia Pardo Bazan, and understudied female authors such as Rosario de Acuna and Belen Sarraga. The authors included here study this dynamic in a variety of genres and venues, namely the essay, the novel, the short story, theater, and zarzuelas. The volume builds on recent scholarship on race, class, gender, and nation by focusing specifically on the intersections of these categories, and by studying this dynamic in popular culture, visual culture, and in the works of both canonical and lesser-known authors.

This powerful book presents a fresh and compelling set of portraits that bring to life the human dimension of the vast and growing social and economic divides in urban China. Leading scholars explore the increasing rigidity of class and social boundaries, focusing on two new "castes" in contemporary China's cities-the immensely wealthy and the abjectly poor. Much has been made of the rise in incomes, the elimination of much rural poverty, and the expansion of an urban middle class over almost forty years of spectacular economic growth. But what often has been overlooked is the polarization, exclusion, and exclusiveness in cities that have accompanied this rise, along with the threat that these trends will extend to future generations. The book considers five cases that emblematize these castes and depict their varying degrees of agency. Highlighting the social groups at opposite ends of the social hierarchy, the contributors illuminate the growing inequality in urban China today.

..".a fresh and an important contribution ...this book presents an ethnographically rich and conceptually strong account of recent transformations in the educational field and their implications for class relations in Turkey." . Middle East Journal

..".the book critically draws attention to a number of key issues that are often taken for granted in the literature on neoliberalism...Co-written by an economist and an anthropologist, Reproducing Classis a refreshing attempt to integrate the analytical perspectives of macroeconomics with the ethnographic traditions of anthropology." . JRAI

Middle classes are by definition ambiguous, raising all sorts of paradoxical questions, perceived and real, about their power and place relative to those above and below them in a class-structured society. Focusing on families of the new middle class in Istanbul, the authors of this study address questions about the social construction of middle-class reality in the context of the rapid changes that have come about through recent economic growth in global markets and the global diffusion of information technology. After 1980, Turkey saw a structural transformation from state-owned and managed industry, banking, and media and communications to privatization and open markets. The idea of being middle class and the reality of middle-class practices became open for negotiation and interpretation. This study therefore offers a particularly interesting case study of an emergent global phenomenon known as the transnational middle class, characterized by their location of work in globalizing cities, development of transnational social networks, sumptuary consumption habits, and residences in gated communities. As the authors show, this new middle class associates quality education, followed by property and lifestyle issues, with the concept of a comfortable life."

First published in 1997. Considerable research has been done to identify neighbourhood influences on children's affective states, motivation, and behaviour. This population, along with the elderly, are the nation's largest dependent groups. In contrast, little research has been done to determine what impact living among poor neighbours has upon older Americans, specifically upon their psychological well-being and neighbourhood satisfaction. In this study the author has sought out to explore this deficit, using a sociological standpoint to examine quality-of-life issues relevant to elderly inner-city residents. This title will be of interest to students of sociology and urban studies.