Meritocracy today involves the idea that whatever your social position at birth, society ought to offer enough opportunity and mobility for 'talent' to combine with 'effort' in order to 'rise to the top'. This idea is one of the most prevalent social and cultural tropes of our time, as palpable in the speeches of politicians as in popular culture. In this book Jo Littler argues that meritocracy is the key cultural means of legitimation for contemporary neoliberal culture - and that whilst it promises opportunity, it in fact creates new forms of social division. Against Meritocracy is split into two parts. Part I explores the genealogies of meritocracy within social theory, political discourse and working cultures. It traces the dramatic U-turn in meritocracy's meaning, from socialist slur to a contemporary ideal of how a society should be organised. Part II uses a series of case studies to analyse the cultural pull of popular 'parables of progress', from reality TV to the super-rich and celebrity CEOs, from social media controversies to the rise of the 'mumpreneur'. Paying special attention to the role of gender, 'race' and class, this book provides new conceptualisations of the meaning of meritocracy in contemporary culture and society.

Thirty-five years after its initial publication, Harold Cruse's "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual," remains a foundational work in Afro-American Studies and American Cultural Studies. Published during a highly contentious moment in Afro-American political life, "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual" was one of the very few texts that treated Afro-American intellectuals as intellectually significant. The essays contained in Harold Cruse's "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Reconsidered" are collectively a testimony to the continuing significance of this polemical call to arms for black intellectuals. Each scholar featured in this book has chosen to discuss specific arguments made by Cruse. While some have utilized Cruse's arguments to launch broader discussions of various issues pertaining to Afro-American intellectuals, and others have contributed discussions on intellectual issues completely ignored by Cruse, all hope to pay homage to a thinker worthy of continual reconsideration.

Intersectionality and Ethnic Entrepreneurship brings together a group of eminent and up-and-coming young scholars who apply an intersectional perspective to the study of ethnic entrepreneurship. Against the traditional approach's emphasis on ethnicity and its primacy, which tends to conflate ethnicity with other social groupings (i.e., social class), considers their effect as an additive or secondary consequence only (i.e., gender), or ignores their influence altogether (i.e., race), the studies in this volume recognize that multiple dimensions of identity intermix to condition entrepreneurial outcomes. Starting with the premise that systems of oppression and privilege, specifically capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, are endemic to the American social structure, the works in this volume recognize that these interlocking systems of inequality condition the life chances of entrepreneurs from diverse social locations differently, even among members of the same ethnic group. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Americans believe economic opportunity is as fundamental a right as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. More concerned about a level playing field for all, they worry less about the growing income and wealth disparity in our country. "Creating an Opportunity Society" examines economic opportunity in the United States and explores how to create more of it, particularly for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill propose a concrete agenda for increasing opportunity that is cost effective, consistent with American values, and focuses on improving the lives of the young and the disadvantaged. They emphasize individual responsibility as an indispensable basis for successful policies and programs.

The authors recommend a three-pronged approach to create more opportunity in America:

- Increase education for children and youth at the preschool, K?12, and postsecondary levels

- Encourage and support work among adults

- Reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births while increasing the share of children reared by their married parents

With concern for the federal deficit in mind, Haskins and Sawhill argue for reallocating existing resources, especially from the affluent elderly to disadvantaged children and their families. The authors are optimistic that a judicious use of the nation's resources can level the playing field and produce more opportunity for all.

"Creating an Opportunity Society" offers the most complete summary available of the facts and the factors that contribute to economic opportunity. It looks at the poor, the middle class, and the rich, providing deep background data on how each group has fared in recent decades. Unfortunately, only the rich have made substantial progress, making this book a timely guide forward for anyone interested in what we can do as a society to improve the prospects for our less-advantaged families and fellow citizens.

Inequality is one of the most discussed topics of our times. Yet, we still do not know how to tackle the issue effectively. The book argues that this is due to the lack of understanding the structures responsible for the persistence of social inequality. It enquires into the mechanisms that produce and reproduce invisible dividing lines in society. Based on original case studies of Brazil, Germany, India and Laos comprising thousands of interviews, the authors argue that invisible classes emerge in capitalist societies, both reproducing and transforming precapitalist hierarchies. At the same time, locally particular forms of inequality persist. Social inequality in the contemporary world has to be understood as a specific combination of precapitalist inequalities, capitalist transformation and a particular class structure, which seems to emerge in all capitalist societies. The book links the configurations to an interpretation of global domination as well as to symbolic classification.

This book makes use of interesting case studies and photographs to describe everyday life in a squatter settlement in Delhi. The book helps to understand the marital experiences of these people most of whom belong to the Scheduled Caste and live in one identified geographical space. The author describes the shifts within their marriages, remarriages and other kinds of unions and their striking diversities, which have been described with care. Shalini Grover also examines the close ties of married women with their mothers and natal families. An important contribution of the book lies in the unfolding of the role of women-led informal courts, Mahila Panchayats and their influence in conflict resolution. This takes place in a distinctly different mode of community-based arbitration against the backdrop of mainstream legal structures and male-dominated caste associations. The book will be of interest to students of sociology and social anthropology, gender studies, development studies, law and psychology. Activists and family counsellors will also find the book useful.

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 2011, political protests sprang up across the world. In the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, the United States unlikely people sparked or led massive protest campaigns from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street. These protests were made up of educated and precariously employed young people who challenged the legitimacy of their political leaders, exposed a failure of representation, and expressed their dissatisfaction with their place in the aftermath of financial and economic crisis.This book interrogates what impacts-if any-this global protest cycle had on politics and policy and shows the sometimes unintended ways it continues to influence contemporary political dynamics throughout the world. Proposing a new framework of analysis that calls attention to the content and claims of protests, their global connections, and the responsiveness of political institutions to protest demands, this is one of the few books that not only asks how protest movements are formed but also provides an in-depth examination of what protest movements can accomplish. With contributions examining the political consequences of protest, the roles of social media and the internet in protest organization, left- and right-wing movements in the United States, Chile's student movements, the Arab Uprisings, and much more this collection is essential reading for all those interested in the power of protest to shape our world.

This book argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. It does so via a transdisciplinary approach that draws on case studies from Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Contributors illustrate and explain the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of dominance and subordination, such as gender and ethnicity as part of a wider project to revitalise class analysis in the study of development problems and experiences. Class is conceived as arising out of exploitative social relations of production, but is formulated through and expressed by multiple determinations. By illuminating the diversity of social formations, this book illustrates the depth and complexity present in Marx's method. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

An in-depth examination of the different forms of privilege perpetuating inequality within American society In this era of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, inequality is at the forefront of American thought like never before. Yet many of the systems of privilege upholding the status quo remain unchanged. Many Americans who advocate a merit-based, race-free worldview do not acknowledge the systems of privilege which benefit them. Men remain at the top of the gender wage gap and white people are five times less likely to be stopped by police than their Black neighbors. White families can build lives using social and financial inheritances that have been denied to Black Americans and immigrants for centuries. Individual chapters focus on language, the workplace, the implications of comparing racism and sexism, race-based housing privilege, the dream of diversity and the cycle of exclusion, the rule of law and invisible systems of privilege, and the power of law to transform society. Twenty-five years since its first publication, Privilege Revealed is more relevant than ever. With a new preface and substantive foreword, this book offers readers important insight into the inequalities still pervading American society and encourages us all to confront our own relationship to these too often invisible privileges.

Contending that everyday sociability and social networks are central elements to an understanding of urban poverty, Opportunities and Deprivation in the Urban South draws on detailed research conducted in SAGBPo Paulo in an examination of the social networks of individuals who identify as poor. The book uses a multi-methods approach not only to test the importance of networks, but also to disentangle the effects of networks and segregation and to specify the relational and spatial mechanisms associated with the production of poverty. It thus explores the different types of network that exist amongst the metropolitan poor, the conditions that shape and influence them, their consequences for the production of poverty and the mechanisms through which networks influence daily living conditions. A rigorous examination of poverty in a contemporary megacity, Opportunities and Deprivation in the Urban South will appeal to sociologists, political scientists and geographers with interests in urban studies, poverty and segregation and social networks.

Equal Time, Equal Value is the first systematic investigation of Time Banking in the United States. Drawing upon detailed case studies and making use of a mix of qualitative and quantitative data this book explores the most popular type of what has been called 'community currencies', in which localized systems based on time or dollar equivalents act as the medium of exchange. As such, it offers rich insights into the challenge presented by Time Banking to both the traditional social service and economic models, through the creation of an environment of reciprocity in which everyone's work has equal value. Locating Time Banking within the context of community currencies more generally and investigating the particular characteristics that are central to the production of positive outcomes, Equal Time, Equal Value examines the organizational characteristics of Time Banks, as well as the motivations of members, types and patterns of exchanges, and the effects on members of Time Bank participation in the USA. A timely and detailed exploration of exchange systems at a time of rising unemployment and declining confidence in global economic structures, this book will appeal to sociologists, cultural geographers and anthropologists with interests in social movements, the sociology of work, health promotion and policy, inequality and questions of the creation of community and sustainability.

This book explores resilience, social capital and relationships of power in an examination of the manner in which capital can be converted from one form to another. Through a study of the survival of the Polish gentry, in spite of the communist regime's attempts to disempower and discredit them through land reform and high-profile trials, Patrons of History shows how the gentry managed not only to survive as a class, but also to remain influential. By revitalising older forms of cultural capital invested with education and transnational networks, the gentry were able to transform wealth, land, patronage, lifestyle and the ability to define patriotism and authorise a version of history, so as to ensure that noble heritage remained an advantageous resource in the face of communist opposition. Drawing on rich interview material spanning fifteen years, Patrons of History sheds light not only on communism as it existed and the stratification that persisted under such regimes, but also on the functioning of relationships of power and the ways in which privilege can be studied in the contemporary world. As such, this book will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists, ethnographers and historians interested in cultural and social capital, inequality and resistance.

The deep economic recession that has occurred in all major sectors of the U.S. and global economy is a manifestation of the underlying contradictions of the capitalist system that has resulted in the accumulation of vast fortunes on one side and impoverishment, debt, and destitution on the other. In short, the crisis of global capitalism is the result of the immense disparities in wealth and income and a consequent widening gap between capital and labor. This ground-breaking book brings together a team of experts on the contemporary global capitalist political economy who are able to shed light on the inner workings of global capitalism and the capitalist globalization process that has led to the growth and development of capitalism from the national to the global level, with all its fundamental internal dynamics and contradictions operating on a world scale. It will make an important contribution to understanding the underlying causes of the current global economic crisis and show the way out of this crisis by way of a powerful critique of the global capitalist system that will ultimately go through a major economic, political, and social transformation. Analysis of the global capitalist crisis raises questions regarding the process of capitalist globalization, especially now that neoliberal economic policies have failed. Does this signal the end of capitalist globalization and the collapse of the global capitalist system? This book will take up these questions and entertain the possibility of a new beginning in the global political economy through an analysis of the next period of post-capitalist developments worldwide that may set the stage for the rise of socialism across the globe.

Though Asian Indians are typically thought of as a "model minority", not much is known about the school experiences of their children. Positive stereotyping of these immigrants and their children often masks educational needs and issues, creates class divides within the Indian-American community, and triggers stress for many Asian Indian students. This volume examines second generation (America-born) and 1.5 generation (foreign-born) Asian Indians as they try to balance peer culture, home life and academics. It explores how, through the acculturation process, these children either take advantage of this positive stereotype or refute their stereotyped ethnic image and move to downward mobility. Focusing on migrant experiences of the Indian diasporas in the United States, this volume brings attention to highly motivated Asian Indian students who are overlooked because of their cultural dispositions and outlooks on schooling, and those students who are more likely to underachieve. It highlights the assimilation of Asian Indian students in mainstream society and their understandings of Americanization, social inequality, diversity and multiculturalism.

Within the broader context of the global knowledge economy, wherein the "college-for-all" discourse grows more and more pervasive and systems of higher education become increasingly stratified by social class, important and timely questions emerge regarding the future social location and mobility of the working classes. Though the working classes look very different from the working classes of previous generations, the weight of a universal working-class identity/background amounts to much of the same economic vulnerability and negative cultural stereotypes, all of which continue to present obstacles for new generations of working-class youth, many of whom pursue higher education as a necessity rather than a "choice." Using a sociological lens, contributors examine the complicated relationship between the working classes and higher education through students' distinct experiences, challenges, and triumphs during three moments on a transitional continuum: the transition from secondary to higher education; experiences within higher education; and the transition from higher education to the workforce. In doing so, this volume challenges the popular notion of higher education as a means to equality of opportunity and social mobility for working-class students.

First published in 1982, this collection of essays provides an analysis of education's contradictory role in social reproduction. It looks at the complex relations between the economic, political and cultural spheres of society, both historically and at the time of publication, and hones the wider range of debate in on education. This volume will be of interest to those studying sociology and equality in education.

Over the past decade, Laos' exposure to global capitalism has resulted in extensive economic and social transformations. Precapitalist social structures both persist and are transformed into a particular configuration of classes. This entails increasing social inequality, a widening range of habitus and new forms of ethos. This book pursues the theoretical aim of shedding light on the old question raised by Max Weber about the relation between capitalism, ethos and society. The empirical study consists of a description of the social structures, their embodiment in the habitus and world-views in Laos against the background of a critical revision of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. To achieve these aims, the author develops a qualitative methodology as neither Weber nor Bourdieu explained how to empirically study habitus and ethos. The empirical material for the book was gathered over a period of more than five years and comprises several hundred life-course interviews in all sections of Lao society as well as a representative quantitative survey. The author argues that precapitalist social structures persist and continue to shape the social fabric of contemporary Laos. At the same time, they are transformed by global and local capitalism. The book shows how the hierarchies contained in each structure shape the habitus of the Lao population and how these in turn influence the development of a capitalist and a religious ethos. The argument makes use of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology and adapts it to the setting of Laos by introducing new as well as indigenous concepts. While social structure, habitus and beliefs are subject to a capitalist transformation and unification, the newly emerging classes and milieus are not copies of Western forms but retain their local history. Filling a gap in the literature on Laos and offering new perspectives on core concepts such as habitus, class, lifestyle, work ethic and its religious underpinnings, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Sociology, Religious Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies.

Examining how Marxist theory is lacking but much needed in a variety of analytical contexts, this book traces the theoretical maze in which Marxism currently finds itself, and from which it is trying to exit while remaining epistemologically intact. Scholar Tom Brass cogently argues that when Marxism is stripped of any or all of its core elements-such as class formation/consciousness/struggle, and a socialist transition-it ceases to be recognizable as Marxism at all. Consequently, the book constitutes an attempt by Marxist political economy to extricate itself from mistaken attempts to conflate it with the cultural turn, identity politics, bourgeois economics, or varieties of populism and nationalism, while grappling with the danger of not mapping Marxism in relation to those discourses.

Is it possible for a democracy to include a tiny group of citizens who are vastly richer than the rest of us? What does that do to our cherished ideal of democratic equality? This timely and provocative book addresses a great paradox at the core of the American Dream: a passionate belief in the principles of democracy combined with an equally passionate celebration of wealth. Americans treasure an open, equal society, yet we also admire those fortunate few who amass riches on a scale that undermines social equality. In today's era of "too big to fail" investment banks, "vulture capitalist" hedge fund managers, Internet fortunes, and a growing concern over inequality in American life, should we cling to both parts of the paradox? Can we? To understand the problems that vast individual fortunes pose for democratic values, Robert Dalzell presents an intriguing cast of wealthy individuals from colonial times to the present, including George Washington, one of the richest Americans of his day, the "robber baron" John D. Rockefeller, and Oprah Winfrey, for all of whom extreme wealth is inextricably tied to social concerns. In the process Dalzell uncovers the sources of our contradictory feelings toward the very rich, how they have sought to be perceived as "the good rich," and the reality behind the widespread notion that wealth and generosity go hand in hand in America. Finally, in a thoughtful and balanced conclusion, the author explores the cost of our long-standing attitudes toward the rich.

Compared to much of the rest of the world, America and its citizens are rich. But many people are also deeply miserable at work, at home, or both. In this provocative book, author John Brueggemann unpacks why so many people are struggling, both emotionally and financially, in a nation that looks so prosperous on the surface. From a hospital patient reduced to a balance sheet to a parent working such long hours that he misses dinner, Brueggemann argues that market thinking has permeated every corner of our lives. In the pursuit of more and better, relationships erode, to the detriment of individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole. Rich, Free, and Miserable not only outlines these pressing social problems, but also offers practical suggestions for people looking to make a positive change."

This book examines the "who, what, when, where, and how" of elite-white-male dominance in U.S. and global society. In spite of their domination in the United States and globally that we document herein, elite white men have seldom been called out and analyzed as such. They have received little to no explicit attention with regard to systemic racism issues, as well as associated classism and sexism issues. Almost all public and scholarly discussions of U.S. racism fail to explicitly foreground elite white men or to focus specifically on how their interlocking racial, class, and gender statuses affect their globally powerful decisionmaking. Some of the power positions of these elite white men might seem obvious, but they are rarely analyzed for their extraordinary significance. While the principal focus of this book is on neglected research and policy questions about the elite-white-male role and dominance in the system of racial oppression in the United States and globally, because of their positioning at the top of several societal hierarchies the authors periodically address their role and dominance in other oppressive (e.g., class, gender) hierarchies.

Flapjacks and Feudalism: Social Mobility and Class in The Archers is an excavation into the family and class politics found in the clans of the residents of Ambridge, in BBC Radio 4's The Archers. A whole section of the book is devoted to 'The Fall of the House of Aldridge', with Brian's ethical misdemeanours and fall from grace, looking at how Brian could have hidden his scandals and changed the impressions surrounding him as a 'feckless farmer'. Another section sees the parenting skills, or complete lack of them, of the Ambridge clans put on trial, and used to predict the future leaders of Ambridge. Chapters in the book discuss the power of family and community networks, the oppression of the Grundys by the lords of the manor, and Emma Grundy's housing woes and the importance of housing in the success and security of those in the village. This book explores how far housing, intergenerational wealth, skills and access to employment shape life chances of characters and shows that, perhaps more than anywhere else, its not what you know but who you know.

American Mythologies examines eleven myths that form part of the storehouse of present-day American mythologies, elucidating the nature of contemporary myths by investigating their ideological sub-terrain. Grounded in a semiological approach, which explores the displacement of information and the transformation of signs that characterise mythic communication, this book sheds light on the socio-economic, gendered, national and racial interests that lie behind myth-making. Presenting rich case studies from popular culture and public discourse, it demonstrates the manner in which these myths, and American mythology in general, promote the core values of everyday life under capitalism: rugged individualism, the unfettered right to accumulate wealth, the superior moral character of free-enterprise democracy, and its abundant opportunities for every citizen. By the same token, that same mythology negates the corruption endemic to the capitalist social order, an order that also promotes inescapable class, racial, and gender inequalities which confine the majority of Americans to a life of constant economic struggle. A fresh critique of the foundations of American culture, American Mythologies will appeal to those with interests in sociology, social and cultural theory, and cultural and media studies.