Fifty years ago, familiar images of the lottery would have been strange, as no state lottery existed then. Few researchers have uncovered the obscure role lotteries play in the changing composition of American taxation. Even less is known about what role race plays in this process. More than simply taxing those on the social margins, the emergence of state lotteries in contemporary American history represents something much more fundamental about state fiscal policy. This book not only uncovers the underlying racial factors that contextualize lottery proliferation in the U.S., but also reveals the racial consequences that lotteries have in terms of redistributing tax liability.

This book challenges sociologists and sociology students to think beyond the construction of social problems to tackle a central question: What do sociologists do with the analytic tools and academic skills afforded by their discipline to respond to social problems? Service Sociology posits that a central role of sociology is not simply to analyse and interpret social problems, but to act in the world in an informed manner to ameliorate suffering and address the structural causes of these problems. This volume provides a unique contribution to this approach to sociology, exploring the intersection between its role as an academic discipline and its practice in the service of communities and people. With both contemporary and historical analyses, the book traces the legacy, characteristics, contours, and goals of the sociology of service, shedding light on its roots in early American sociology and its deep connections to activism, before examining the social context that underlies the call for volunteerism, community involvement and non-profit organisations, as well as the strategies that have promise in remedying contemporary social problems. Presenting examples of concrete social problems from around the world, including issues of democratic participation, poverty and unemployment, student involvement in microlending, disaster miitigation, the organization and leadership of social movements, homelessness, activism around HIV/AIDS and service spring breaks, Service Sociology and Academic Engagement in Social Problems explores the utility of public teaching, participatory action research, and service learning in the classroom as a contribution to the community.

There is hardly any discussion of class that does not in some way relate to the theories of Marx and Weber. So profound was the impact of their ideas, that their writings are often perceived as the only original and most reliable interpretations of class society. But Marx and Weber were neither the first, nor last, to talk about class and they did so based on the specific conditions prevalent in their own communities. 'Class' explains this complex field using cultural, sociological and feminist perspectives. It deepens our understanding of the problems of class and uses illuminating examples from media, popular culture and literature that explain current class analysis. 'Class' is an 'elegant, lucid comprehensive introduction' that broadens our understanding of the concept and the immense power that it exerts by way of in- and exclusions.

There is hardly any discussion of class that does not in some way relate to the theories of Marx and Weber. So profound was the impact of their ideas, that their writings are often perceived as the only original and most reliable interpretations of class society. But Marx and Weber were neither the first, nor last, to talk about class and they did so based on the specific conditions prevalent in their own communities. 'Class' explains this complex field using cultural, sociological and feminist perspectives. It deepens our understanding of the problems of class and uses illuminating examples from media, popular culture and literature that explain current class analysis. 'Class' is an 'elegant, lucid comprehensive introduction' that broadens our understanding of the concept and the immense power that it exerts by way of in- and exclusions.

The past decades have witnessed a surge of sociological interest in the body. From the focal point of aesthetic investment, political regulation and moral anxiety, to a means of redefining traditional conceptions of agency and identity, the body has been cast in a wide variety of sociological roles. However, there is one topic that proves conspicuously absent from this burgeoning literature on the body, namely its role in the everyday (re)production of class-boundaries. Distinctions in the Flesh aims to fill that void by showing that the way individuals perceive, use and manage their bodies is fundamentally intertwined with their social position and trajectory. Drawing on a wide array of survey-data - from food-preferences to sporting-practices and from weight-concern to tastes in clothing - this book shows how bodies not only function as key markers of class-differences, but also help to naturalize and legitimize such differences. Along the way, it scrutinizes popular notions like the 'obesity epidemic', questions the role of 'the media' in shaping the way people judge their bodies and sheds doubt on sociological narratives that cast the body as a malleable object that is increasingly open to individual control and reflexive management. This book will be of interest to scholars of class, lifestyle and identity, but also to social epidemiologists, health professionals and anyone interested in the way that social inequalities become, quite literally, inscribed in the body.

In When Did We All Become Middle Class?, Martin Nunlee discusses how a lack of class identity gives people a false sense of their relationship to power, which has made the US population accept the myth that they live in a meritocracy. This book examines social class within the framework of psychological tendencies, everyday interactions, institutions and pervasive cultural ideas to show how Americans have shifted from general concerns of social and economic equality to fragmented interests groups. Written in a conversational style, this book is a useful tool for undergraduate courses covering social class, such as inequality, stratification, poverty, and social problems.

Farewell to Work? presents the large process of capital's productive restructuring, triggered in the 1970s-a process with tendencies to both intellectualize labour power and increase the levels of the working class' precariousness on a global scale. This book hypothesizes that instead of work's loss of centrality in contemporary capitalism, when the world of production is analysed in its global dimension, including countries in the North and South, a substantial process of growing heterogeneity, complexity, and fragmentation is observed. The resulting configuration is a new morphology of the working class. Therefore, as new mechanisms are created to generate surplus labour, there is, simultaneously, an increment in casualisation and unemployment, pushed by the ongoing corrosion of labour rights in countries all across the globe.

In When Did We All Become Middle Class?, Martin Nunlee discusses how a lack of class identity gives people a false sense of their relationship to power, which has made the US population accept the myth that they live in a meritocracy. This book examines social class within the framework of psychological tendencies, everyday interactions, institutions and pervasive cultural ideas to show how Americans have shifted from general concerns of social and economic equality to fragmented interests groups. Written in a conversational style, this book is a useful tool for undergraduate courses covering social class, such as inequality, stratification, poverty, and social problems.

First published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1975, Robber Noblemen represents a break with traditional anthropological studies within the Indian subcontinent in the breadth of its coverage. A whole state, the Punjab, is discussed, with special reference to the social and political organization of its landowning Sikhs: the Jats. Joyce Pettigrew demonstrates that although the Punjab is included within the formal political framework of the Indian Union, it is nevertheless more closely allied to countries on its western border, by virtual of its social structure and value system. The caste system does not exist among the Sikhs. Values sustaining patterns of social and political action are not those pertaining to ritual purity and pollution but are those concerned with the extended family unit: honour, reputation, insult. The author shows how long-standing collaborative relationships between families compete with other similarly formed alliances or 'factions' for power and influence. This book will be of interest to students of anthropology, history, political science and South Asian studies.

An introductory account of the concept of class stratification, of contemporary approaches to the study of class, and of current debates about its role in the study of society. Definitions and an analysis of different theoretical approaches to class are accompanied by empirical material which compares the class structures of a range of countries and examines social mobility in cross-national perspective.

The Rise of Professional Society lays out a stimulating and controversial framework for the study of British society, challenging accepted paradigms based on class analysis. Perkins argues that the non-capitalist "professional class" represents a new principle of social organization based on trained expertise and meritocracy, a "forgotten middle class" conveniently overlooked by classical social theorists.

Through extensive archival research in eight different languages, Revolutionary Social Democracy introduces readers to the politics and practices of socialists in Tsarist Russia's imperial borderlands. These parties fought for democracy and workers' power across the entire span of the Russian Empire-from the factories of Warsaw, to the oil fields of Baku, to the autonomous parliament of Finland. Eric Blanc's incisive study of these parties shows that the Russian Revolution was far less Russian than is commonly assumed. And the implications of this discovery challenge the long-held assumptions of historians, sociologists, and activists about the dynamics of revolutionary change under both autocratic and democratic conditions.

The public culture of the Victorian middle class looks at the creation of a distinctive "high" culture in the industrial cities of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester in the mid-nineteenth century and its incipient decline from the 1880s.

The history of urban bourgeois culture has been relatively unexplored and under-theorized compared to popular culture. This volume therefore represents a significant contribution both to the study of middle-class cultural forms and to an understanding of the relationship between culture and power. In particular, it argues for the importance of ritualized modes of social behavior in understanding the construction of authority in the nineteenth-century city. As well as many original arguments, the book provides a clear and useful overview of the public cultures of Victorian "respectability."The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the areas of social history, cultural history, urban history, cultural studies, urban studies and the sociology of culture.

This reference volume reflects the changing world of work. It includes research on the various dimensions of work, such as the structure of the labour force, labour market segmentation, technology, employment/unemployment, trade unions, and industrial democracy. This book provides an integrated view of the various dimensions of work, its distinguishing characteristics and issues both peculiar, as well as common to industrialized countries. By adopting an interdisciplinary and interactional perspective, this volume provides the scholar and the lay reader with a range of approaches and debates that have made a significant contribution toward understanding the changing nature of work and its social impact.

China's agriculture and rural society has undergone rapid changes in recent years. Many poorer farmers and younger people have moved to cities, and yet China has an immense challenge to feed a growing and more affluent population. This book provides a 'bottom-up view' of China's agriculture, showing how the many millions of Chinese peasants make a living. It presents a vivid description of the mechanisms used by rural households to defend and sustain their livelihoods, increase their agricultural production and improve the quality of their lives. The authors examine the newly emerging trajectories of entrepreneurial and capitalist farming and assess whether such alternatives will be able to meet the enormous social, economic and environmental challenges that China faces. The book also explores the paradigm that has underpinned the organisation and development of China's agriculture from ancient times to the present day. This shows the importance of balancing in the Chinese model as compared to the one-sided imposition of continual modernization in the western model. It is argued that such balancing is at the core of the current Sannong policy, referring to the three ruralities of food sovereignty, wellbeing for peasant households and an attractive countryside.

This accessible introductory text offers an engaging and thought-provoking discussion of class in relation to several cultural, sociological and political schools of thought and draws upon the works of a broad range of key theorists as well as contemporary thinkers to restate the ongoing importance of class as a sociological concept. Class has long been a key focus of sociological and political studies. This book explores what it might mean today in a 21st century context. Is class really disappearing? Is class morally justifiable? What impact has globalisation and neoliberalism had on the restructuring of class-based social relationships? These questions and others are explored in this short but lively book. Stevenson reviews a number of normative traditions including anarchist, Marxist, social democratic and citizenship-based forms of understanding of class in order to shed light on the themes of class-based experiences, health and inequality, work, class struggle, social movements and the possibility of developing more egalitarian and just societies in the future. This short book will be invaluable to general readers and students in the humanities and social sciences seeking an accessible introduction to the central problems raised by discussions of class in the 21st century.

Criminal Capital explores the relationship between neoliberalism, criminality and the reshaping of class in modern India. It discusses how the political vocabularies of urban industrial workers reflect the processes by which power is distributed across the region. Based upon field research among a 'casualised' workforce in the industrial city of Jamshedpur, the book examines the links between the decline of employment security, and criminality in trade unions, corporations and the state. The volume compares popular discourses of corruption against the ethnography of local labour politics, business enterprise and debt collection, and shows how corruption and criminality consolidate class power in industrial environments. Using an interdisciplinary ethnographic approach, this study interrogates the relationship between capitalism, corruption, violence and labour politics in contemporary Indian society. An important intervention in the study of Indian political economy, this work will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Indian politics, social anthropology, economics, labour relations and criminology.

First published in 1984, This Mighty Dream traces and interprets the development of popular movements for social change in the United States. Agrarian protest, the labour struggle, the black freedom movement, and community organizing are vividly depicted. The authors address the practical dilemmas of organization and action including: the pursuit of immediate benefits versus broader social goals; divisions of race, gender, and class; leadership accountability; tensions between central direction and local autonomy; and the meshing of political strategies and direct action tactics. This Mighty Dream is richly illustrated with photographs, drawings, posters, cartoons, songs, and other movement artifacts. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, social work, history as well as activists.

'Women so empowered are dangerous' Written with a 'black woman's anger' and the precision of a poet, these searing pieces by the groundbreaking writer Audre Lorde are a celebration of female strength and solidarity, and a cry to speak out against those who seek to silence anyone they see as 'other'. One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.

Integrating a focus on gender with Marx's surplus-based notion of class, this book offers a one-of-a-kind analysis of family farms in the United States. The analysis shows how gender and class struggles developed during important moments in the history of these family farms shaped the trajectory of U.S. agricultural development. It also generates surprising insights about the family farm we thought we knew, as well as the food and agricultural system today. Elizabeth A. Ramey theorizes the family farm as a complex hybrid of mostly feudal and ancient class structures. This class-based definition of the family farm yields unique insights into three broad aspects of U.S. agricultural history. First, the analysis highlights the crucial, yet under-recognized role of farm women and children's unpaid labor in subsidizing the family farm. Second, it allows for a new, class-based perspective on the roots of the twentieth century "miracle of productivity" in U.S. agriculture, and finally, the book demonstrates how the unique set of contradictions and circumstances facing family farmers during the early twentieth century, including class exploitation, was connected to concern for their ability to serve the needs of U.S. industrial capitalist development. The argument presented here highlights the significant costs associated with the intensification of exploitation in the transition to industrial agriculture in the U.S. When viewed through the lens of class, the hallowed family farm becomes an example of one of the most exploitative institutions in the U.S. economy. This book is suitable for students who study economic history, agricultural studies, and labor economics.

The Burden of Academic Success: Loyalists, Renegades, and Double Agents explores class identity reconstructions among working-class students attending a public university. Rather than focus on working-class failure, this book takes a critical look at the psychological and social costs of academic success. Based on several hours of interviews with a diverse group of working-class students, this book describes how successful students respond to, react to, and manage their academic success. The book does for class what other theorists have done for race, examining the dynamic interplay of class identity and educational success/social mobility. The distinguishing features of the book are rich narrative detail; compelling stories of student success and struggle; intersectional analysis exploring the ways class, race, and gender inform each other in students' understandings and narratives with an interwoven theory throughout; and a new typology for understanding working-class student responses to the burden of academic success. The Burden of Academic Success is ideal for courses on sociology, education, and American studies as well as for use by college educators and administrators.

First published in 1977. This book considers the nature of industrial society, contemporary capitalism and the impact of political ideas on social structure. These ideas are discussed by reference to the impact of social democracy on the structure of capitalist society in a comparative analysis of Britain and Sweden - including an interview survey of industrial workers socio-political attitudes. The study is concluded by a general discussion of the role of social democracy in capitalist society. It is argued that the development of social democracy generates 'strains' which, in the long term, question the legitimacy of capitalism among industrial manual workers.

Business leaders exert extraordinary influence on institution building in market economies but they think and act within institutional settings. This book combines both an elite approach with a varieties-of-capitalism approach. Comparing Poland, Hungary and East and West Germany, we perceive the transformations in East Central Europe and in Germany after 1989 as being intertwined. Based on a joint survey, this book seeks to measure the level of the convergence of ideas among European business leaders, assuming it to be more extensive than the institutional convergence expected under the dominance of neoliberal discourse. Analyzing the institutional framework, organizational features like size, ownership and labour relations, and subjective characteristics like age, social origin, career patterns and attitudes of the recent business elites, we found significant differences between countries and the types of organization. The growing importance of economic degrees and internationalization shows astonishingly little explanatory power on the views of business leaders. The idea of a coordinated market economy is still relatively widespread among Germans, while their Hungarian and Polish counterparts are more likely to display a minimalist view of corporate responsibility to society and adverse attitudes towards employee representation. However, their attitudes frequently tend to be inconsistent, which mirrors the mixed type of capitalism in East Central Europe.