It is a commonly-voiced opinion that opportunities for mobility undermine family in modern industrialized societies. Family and Intimate Mobilities challenges this assumption. Drawing on theoretical developments in mobilities, family practices and personal life and empirical studies of both individuals and families on the move, the book develops a more integrated approach to family mobility. This account considers how individual mobility over the life course is bound up with the formation and dissolving of intimate mobilities as well as how collective forms of mobility, from moving house, going on holiday and the school run, also sustain family life. The book considers how mobility is not just about bringing people together but how it also allows for time apart. Yet not all mobility is realized or chosen, and intimate mobilities can either be forced or entered into out of sense of obligation. In rejecting the assumption that mobility necessarily undermines family life, the book also resists any attempt to provide a grand narrative of social change of family mobility, but foregrounds the diversity of family practices and mobility.

New information technologies have, to an unprecedented degree, come to reshape human relations, identities and communities both online and offline. As Internet narratives including online fiction, poetry and films reflect and represent ambivalent politics in China, the Chinese state wishes to enable the formidable soft power of this new medium whilst at the same time handling the ideological uncertainties it inevitably entails. This book investigates the ways in which class, gender, ethnicity and ethics are reconfigured, complicated and enriched by the closely intertwined online and offline realities in China. It combs through a wide range of theories on Internet culture, intellectual history, and literary, film, and cultural studies, and explores a variety of online cultural materials, including digitized spoofing, microblog fictions, micro-films, online fictions, web dramas, photographs, flash mobs, popular literature and films. These materials have played an important role in shaping the contemporary cultural scene, but have so far received little critical attention. Here, the authors demonstrate how Chinese Internet culture has provided a means to intervene in the otherwise monolithic narratives of identity and community. Offering an important contribution to the rapidly growing field of Internet studies, this book will also be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese culture, literary and film studies, media and communication studies, and Chinese society.

This study, first published in 1979, analyses the attitude of various income and occupational groups to elementary schools both before and after the introduction of compulsory school attendance. It also discusses the efforts made by voluntary organisations to provide school meals, as well as examining the quality of the meals themselves, before the enactment of remedial legislation in the early twentieth century. This title will be of interest to students of history and education.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Few books are as urgent as Shon Faye's debut ... Faye has hope for the future - and maybe so should we' Independent 'Unsparing, important and weighty ... a vitally needed antidote' Observer 'A moving and impressively comprehensive overview of trans life' Vogue Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice. In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond. The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us. 'Fundamentally not a culture-war book. It operates outside the narrow coverage of trans people in the mainstream, and lays bare the inarguable facts' New Statesman 'Monumental and utterly convincing - crystal clear in its understanding of how the world should be' Judith Butler

Originally published in 1982 The Strategy of Equality examines public expenditure on the social services as a strategy for promoting social equality. Today there is a widespread belief that the strategy has worked and that public spending on the social services primarily benefits those less well off. However, there have been few attempts to examine whether this belief is founded in reality. This book attempts to rectify this. Examining four areas of social policy: health care, education, housing, and transport, the book looks at the distribution of public expenditure and the 'outcome' of that expenditure, as well as the implications for various conceptions of equality.

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.

Originally published in 1973, Social Security and Society examines of the dominant forces that form the British social security system and argues that social security provision is not the result of concern felt by the dominant groups in society. Instead the book suggests that it is the result of the threat posed to the status quo by the growing political power of the working class, and the realization by the dominant groups, that social security benefits are functional to economic growth and political stability. The book covers poverty, low pay, unemployment and equality, and demonstrates how social security measures reflect and reinforce the inequalities of the economic and social system - inequalities which are accepted, legitimised and approved by society.

This book maps how working class life was transformed in England in the middle years of the twentieth century. National trends in employment, welfare and living standards are illuminated via a focus on Brighton, providing valuable new perspectives of class and community formation. Based on fresh archival research, life histories and contemporary social surveys, the book historicises important cultural and community studies which moulded popular perceptions of class and social change in the post-war period. It shows how council housing, slum clearance and demographic trends impacted on working-class families and communities. While suburbanisation transformed home life, leisure and patterns of association, there were important continuities in terms of material poverty, social networks and cultural practices. This book will be essential reading for academics and students researching modern and contemporary social and cultural history, sociology, cultural studies and human geography. -- .

An award-winning journalist's investigation into Amazon's true impact on inequality. The market value of Amazon.com has exceeded one trillion dollars. In 2020, its annual revenue increased by over 100 billion dollars. As the company insinuates itself ever further into our lives, Alec MacGillis investigates how it is reshaping society. With empathy and breadth, he tells the stories of those who've thrived and struggled in this rapidly changing environment, and shows how Amazon has even become a force in Washington, DC. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, and its remaking of our world with every click.

The first and only monograph focusing on intergeneration mobility in the context of China's poverty alleviation. Studies the relationship between education and intergenerational social mobility Uses large-scale social survey data including the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), and the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP)

In the years 1849 and 1850, Henry Mayhew was the metropolitan correspondent of the Morning Chronicle in its national survey of labour and the poor. Only about a third of his Morning Chronicle material was included in his later and better known, publication, London Labour and the London Poor. First published in 1981, this series of six volumes constitutes Henry Mayhew's complete Morning Chronicle survey, in the sequence in which it was originally written in 1849 and 1850. It addresses a wealth of topics from cholera in the Jacob's Island area to the food markets of London. The publication of this complete survey represented the first time in which the whole of Mayhew's pioneering work was available in one place. The set is introduced by Dr Peter Razzell, who was co-editor of the national Morning Chronicle survey. This second volume contains letters from November 1849 to January 1850. This series will be of interest to those studying the history of social welfare, poverty and urbanisation.

In the years 1849 and 1850, Henry Mayhew was the metropolitan correspondent of the Morning Chronicle in its national survey of labour and the poor. Only about a third of his Morning Chronicle material was included in his later and better known, publication, London Labour and the London Poor. First published in 1981, this series of six volumes constitutes Henry Mayhew's complete Morning Chronicle survey, in the sequence in which it was originally written in 1849 and 1850. It addresses a wealth of topics from cholera in the Jacob's Island area and to the food markets of London. The publication of this complete survey represented the first time in which the whole was Mayhew's pioneering work was available in one place. The set is introduced by Dr Peter Razzell, who was co-editor of the national Morning Chronicle survey. This first volume contains letters from October to November 1849. This series will be of interest to those studying the history of social welfare, poverty and urbanisation.

"William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, the author of this small, paradigm-shifting book, was a brilliant polymath, a pioneering historian and sociologist, a fierce advocate for racial justice, and a towering social philosopher, widely regarded as one of the greatest black geniuses of the modern era. In The Souls of Black Folk, he sought to synthesize the different modes of inquiry that he was trained in-philosophy, history, rhetoric, and sociology-in order to produce a sweeping mural of epic history and local color telling the story of black life in America." -JESSE MCCARTHY, from the Introduction

Rachel Spronk has written a well composed, highly interesting and maybe even path-breaking book... It is innovative in its focus on sexuality as bodily experience and implications for 'the gendered sense of self' of these young men and women and] is also innovative in terms of methodology; first and foremost by its focus on a group of young professional men and women. . Signe Arnfred, Roskilde University

Spronk's theoretical take on this theme is seminal and challenging. She convincingly shows that a constructivist approach - emphasizing the social and historical construction of people's practices and views on sex and sexuality - is highly relevant to understanding how people navigate their lives. But she emphasizes also its limitations because her informants' insistence that the natural, bodily power of sexual feelings has to be brought in as well. . Peter Geschiere, University of Amsterdam

Among both male and female young urban professionals in Nairobi, sexuality is a key to achieving a 'modern' identity. These young men and women see themselves as the avant garde of a new Africa, while they also express the recurring worry of how to combine an 'African' identity with the new lifestyles with which they are experimenting. By focusing on public debates and their preoccupations with issues of African heritage, gerontocratic power relations and conventional morality on the one hand, and personal sexual relationships, intimacy and self-perceptions on the other, this study works out the complexities of sexuality and culture in the context of modernity in an African society. It moves beyond an investigation of a health or development perspective of sexuality and instead examines desire, pleasure and eroticism, revealing new insights into the methodology and theory of the study of sexuality within the social sciences. Sexuality serves as a prism for analysing how social developments generate new notions of self in postcolonial Kenya and is a crucial component towards understanding the way people recognize and deal with modern changes in their personal lives.

Rachel Spronk is Assistant Professor at the Sociology and Anthropology Department at the University of Amsterdam. She has published on intimacy and middle class formation in Kenya, on methodological questions of sexuality research and on the bounds of poststructural approaches to understand how sex(uality) is experienced.

The Netflix series Orange is the New Black has drawn widespread attention to many of the dysfunctions of prisons and the impact prisons have on those who live and work behind the prison gates. This anthology deepens this public awareness through scholarship on the television program and by exploring the real-world social, psychological, and legal issues female prisoners face. Each chapter references a particular connection to the Netflix series as its starting point of analysis. The book brings together scholars to consider both media representations as well as the social justice issues for female inmates alluded to in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. The chapters address myriad issues including cultural representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality; social justice issues for transgender inmates; racial dynamics within female prisons; gender and female prison structures/policies; treatment of women in prison; re-incarcerated and previously incarcerated women; self and identity; gender, race, and sentencing; and reproduction and parenting for female inmates.

The Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative (GCSWI), which is spearheaded by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), represents a major endeavor for the entire field of social work. GCSWI calls for bold innovation and collective action powered by proven and evolving scientific interventions to address critical social issues facing society. The purpose of GCSWI was modeled after the National Academy of Engineering, which aimed to identify some of the most persistent engineering problems of the day and then put the attentions, energies, and funding of the entire field to work on them for a decade. The GCSWI does the same for social issues, tackling problems such as homelessness, social isolation, mass incarceration, family violence, and economic inequality. Grand Challenges for Social Work and Society is an edited book that will present the foundations of the GCSWI, laying out the start of the initiative and providing summaries of each of the twelve challenges. The 12 main chapters that form the core of the book, one on each of the dozen Grand Challenges, are written by the primary research teams who are driving each GC project.

We live in a time of dynamic, but generally regressive regime change-a period in which major political transformations and a rollback of a half-century of legislation are accelerated under conditions of a prolonged and deepening economic crisis and a worldwide offensive against the citizenry and the working class. Written by two of the world's leading left-wing thinkers, Imperialism and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century takes the form of a number of analytical probes into some of the dynamics of capitalist development and imperialism in contemporary conditions of a system in crisis. It is too early to be definitive about the form that capitalism and imperialism -and socialism-might be or is taking, as we are in but the early stages of a new developmental dynamic, the conditions of which are too complex to anticipate or grasp in thought; they require a closer look and much further study from a critical development and Marxist perspective. The purpose of this book is to advance this process and give some form to this perspective.

The Mediation of Poverty: The News, New Media, and Politics discusses the influence of the increasing use of digital technologies on media and political responses to poverty in the United Kingdom and Canada. Considering poverty politics at symbolic and structural levels, Joanna Redden uses a frame analysis of mainstream and alternative news content to identify which narratives dominate poverty coverage, what is missing from mainstream news coverage, and what can be learned by looking at alternative sources of news and information. The Mediation of Poverty argues that news coverage privileges and embeds neoliberal approaches to the issue of poverty in Canada and the United Kingdom. Interviews with journalists, politicians, researchers, and activists enable discussion, on a micro level, of the changing nature of news, politics, and activism, and how these changes influences poverty politics. Redden raises concerns about how the speed of digitally-mediated working environments is reshaping even foreclosing opportunities for communication, reflection, and contestation in a way that reinforces the dominance of market-based thinking, and limits political responses to poverty."

Two groundbreaking sociologists explore the way the American dream is built on the backs of working poor women Many Americans take comfort and convenience for granted. We eat at nice restaurants, order groceries online, and hire nannies to care for kids. Getting Me Cheap is a riveting portrait of the lives of the low-wage workers-primarily women-who make this lifestyle possible. Sociologists Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman follow women in the food, health care, home care, and other low-wage industries as they struggle to balance mothering with bad jobs and without public aid. While these women tend to the needs of well-off families, their own children frequently step into premature adult roles, providing care for siblings and aging family members. Based on years of in-depth field work and hundreds of eye-opening interviews, Getting Me Cheap explores how America traps millions of women and their children into lives of stunted opportunity and poverty in service of giving others of us the lives we seek. Destined to rank with works like Evicted and Nickle and Dimed for its revelatory glimpse into how our society functions behind the scenes, Getting Me Cheap also offers a way forward-with both policy solutions and a keen moral vision for organizing women across class lines.

Originally published in 1987 Not Only the Poor explores the self-interested involvement of the non-poor in the welfare state, particularly the middle class. Using evidence from Britain, America, and Australia, they show that the non-poor were crucial in the founding of the welfare state, and in all three countries the non-poor benefit extensively from key welfare programmes, including those ostensibly targeted on the poor. Goodin and Le Grand conclude that the beneficial involvement of the non-poor in the welfare state is probably inevitable, but this may be no bad thing, depending on the alternative and on the nature of the egalitarian ideal adopted.

Social Mobility for the 21st Century addresses experiences of social mobility, and the detailed processes through which entrenched, intergenerationally transmitted privilege is reproduced. Contributions include (but are not limited to) family relationships, students' encounters with higher education, narratives of work careers, and 'mobility identities'. The book intends to challenge both the framework of the more traditional approach, and the politicisation of mobility which casts 'mobility' as a possession, a commodity or a character trait, and threatens to castigate the 'non-mobile' as carrying a personal responsibility for their situation. This book presents critical analyses of routes into social mobility, the experience of social mobility, and the political and social implications of social mobility's 'panacea' status. Drawing on the work of established scholars and more recent entrants, the chapters offer a fresh look at social mobility, opening up the topic to a wider readership among the profession and beyond, and stimulating further debate. This book will appeal to higher level students and scholars of sociology alike, as well as having a broad cross-disciplinary appeal.

Originally published in 1974, The Social Analysis of Class Structure is an edited collection addressing class formation and class relations in industrial society. The range and variety of the contributions provide a useful guide to the central concerns of British sociology in the 1970s. Encompassing general theorizing and empirical investigation, the book examines the treatment of crucial issues of the day, such as the relationships between race and class formation, and sexual subordination, as well addressing historical questions such as the Victorian labour aristocracy and the incorporation of the working class.

Not all council estates are the same. A detailed historical account of the birth and social evolution of the Whitley council estate in Reading, Working-Class Suburb challenges many of the more depressing images and cultural stereotypes about council housing in twentieth and twenty-first century England. Key areas covered by the study are housing and politics; community campaigns; women and the corporate life of council estates; the uses of leisure; the relationships between tenants, residents and the local authority, and continuities in working-class life despite economic, demographic and political change. The book will be of interest to anyone studying urban history and social history, to professionals working in the fields of housing policy and housing studies, and to the growing number of academics interested in suburban studies. -- .

In a front-page review in the Washington Post Book World, John Judis wrote: "Political analysts have been poring over exit polls and precinct-level votes to gauge the meaning of last November's election, but they would probably better employ their time reading the late Christopher Lasch's book." And in the National Review, Robert Bork says The Revolt of the Elites "ranges provocatively [and] insightfully." Controversy has raged around Lasch's targeted attack on the elites, their loss of moral values, and their abandonment of the middle class and poor, for he sets up the media and educational institutions as a large source of the problem. In this spirited work, Lasch calls out for a return to community, schools that teach history not self-esteem, and a return to morality and even the teachings of religion. He does this in a nonpartisan manner, looking to the lessons of American history, and castigating those in power for the ever-widening gap between the economic classes, which has created a crisis in American society. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy is riveting social commentary.

Jefferson Cowie's edgy and incisive book makes new sense of the 1970s as a crucial and poorly understood transition from New Deal America, with its large, optimistic middle class, to the widening economic inequalities, poverty and dampened expectations of the 1980s and into the present. Cowie also connects politics to culture, showing how the big screen and the juke box can help understand how the US turned away from the radicalism of the 1960s toward the patriotic promise of Ronald Reagan.