Can sport serve as a vehicle for social mobility of disadvantaged social groups? How and to what extent are different forms of social capital created through sport participation? Sport and Social Mobility: Crossing Boundaries takes up these questions through a critical examination of the ways in which sport facilitates or inhibits upward social mobility. Drawing on four case studies, the book provides a rich sociological analysis of people's lived experiences of sport in diverse social, cultural and political contexts, ranging from sport-for-development programs in Brazil and the Netherlands to rural communities and the Somali diaspora in Australia. The first international comparison of and critical reflection on the relationship between social mobility and participation in non-professional sport, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in sport's potential for social inclusion.

This volume examines the role of education in shaping rates and patterns of intergenerational social mobility among men and women during the twentieth century. Focusing on the relationship between a person's social class and the social class of his or her parents, each chapter looks at a different country-the United States, Sweden, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. Contributors examine change in absolute and relative mobility and in education across birth cohorts born between the first decade of the twentieth century and the early 1970s. They find a striking similarity in trends across all countries, and in particular a contrast between the fortunes of people born before the 1950s, those who enjoyed increasing rates of upward mobility and a decline in the strength of the link between class origins and destinations, and later generations who experienced more downward mobility and little change in how origins and destinations are linked. This volume uncovers the factors that drove these shifts, revealing education as significant in promoting social openness. It will be an invaluable source for anyone who wants to understand the evolution of mobility and inequality in the contemporary world.

If "badneighborhoods are truly bad for children and families, especially the minority poor, can moving to better neighborhoods lead them to better lives? Might these families escape poverty altogether, beyond having a better quality of life to help them cope with being poor? Federal policymakers and planners thought so, on both counts, and in 1994, they launched Moving to Opportunity. The $80 million social experiment enrolled nearly 5,000 very low-income, mostly black and Hispanic families, many of them on welfare, who were living in public housing in the inner-city neighborhoods of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Yet five years after they had entered the program, many of the families in the favored experimentalgroup had returned to high poverty neighborhoods. Young women showed big drops in risky behavior and big improvements in mental health, on average, while young male movers did not. The males even showed signs of increased delinquency if they had lived, at least for a time, in the low poverty areas. Parents likewise showed major drops in anxiety and depression-two of the crippling symptoms of being chronically poor in high-risk ghettos-but not in employment or income. And many movers appeared to be maintaining the same limited social circles-mostly disadvantaged relatives and close friends-despite living in more advantaged neighborhoods. The authors of this important and engaging new book wanted to know why. Moving to Opportunity tackles the great, unresolved question of how to overcome persistent ghetto poverty. It mines a unique demonstration program with a human voice, not just statistics and charts, rooted in the lives of those who "signed upfor MTO. It shines a light on the hopes, surprises, achievements and limitations of a major social experiment-and does so at a time of tremendous economic, social, and political change in our nation. As the authors make clear, for all its ambition, MTO is a uniquely American experiment, and this book brings home its lessons for policymakers and advocates, scholars, students, journalists, and all who share a deep concern for opportunity and inequality in our country.

How should we understand the personal and social impacts of complex mobility systems? Can lifestyles based around intensive travel, transport and tourism be maintained in the 21st century? What possibility post-carbon lifestyles?

In this provocative study of "life on the move," Anthony Elliott and John Urry explore how complex mobility systems are transforming everyday, ordinary lives. The authors develop their arguments through an analysis of various sectors of mobile lives: networks, new digital technologies, consumerism, the lifestyles of globals, and intimate relationships at-a-distance. Elliott and Urry introduce a range of new concepts miniaturized mobilities, affect storage, network capital, meetingness, neighbourhood lives, portable personhood, ambient place, globals to capture the specific ways in which mobility systems intersect with mobile lives.

This book represents a novel approach in "post-carbon" social theory. It will be essential reading for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduates and teachers in sociology, social theory, politics, geography, international relations, cultural studies, and economics and business studies.

Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal--that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas B. Downey shows in How Schools Really Matter, achievement gaps have very little to do with what goes on in our schools. Not only do schools not exacerbate inequality in skills, they actually help to level the playing field. The real sources of achievement gaps are elsewhere. A close look at the testing data in seasonal patterns bears this out. It turns out that achievement gaps in reading skills between high- and low-income children are nearly entirely formed prior to kindergarten, and schools do more to reduce them than increase them. And when gaps do increase, they tend to do so during summers, not during school periods. So why do both liberal and conservative politicians strongly advocate for school reform, arguing that the poor quality of schools serving disadvantaged children is an important contributor to inequality? It's because discussing the broader social and economic reforms necessary for really reducing inequality has become too challenging and polarizing--it's just easier to talk about fixing schools. Of course, there are differences that schools can make, and Downey outlines the kinds of reforms that make sense given what we know about inequality outside of schools, including more school exposure, increased standardization, and better and fairer school and teacher measurements. How Schools Really Matter offers a firm rebuke to those who find nothing but fault in our schools, which are doing a much better than job than we give them credit for. It should also be a call to arms for educators and policymakers: the bottom line is that if we are serious about reducing inequality, we are going to have to fight some battles that are bigger than school reform--battles against the social inequality that is reflected within, rather than generated by--our public school system.

We think we know what upward mobility stories are about--virtuous striving justly rewarded, or unprincipled social climbing regrettably unpunished. Either way, these stories seem obviously concerned with the self-making of self-reliant individuals rather than with any collective interest. In "Upward Mobility and the Common Good," Bruce Robbins completely overturns these assumptions to expose a hidden tradition of erotic social interdependence at the heart of the literary canon.

Reinterpreting novels by figures such as Balzac, Stendhal, Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, Dreiser, Wells, Doctorow, and Ishiguro, along with a number of films, Robbins shows how deeply the material and erotic desires of upwardly mobile characters are intertwined with the aid they receive from some sort of benefactor or mentor. In his view, Hannibal Lecter of "The Silence of the Lambs" becomes a key figure of social mobility in our time. Robbins argues that passionate and ambiguous relationships (like that between Lecter and Clarice Starling) carry the upward mobility story far from anyone's simple self-interest, whether the protagonist's or the mentor's. Robbins concludes that upward mobility stories have paradoxically helped American and European society make the transition from an ethic of individual responsibility to one of collective accountability, a shift that made the welfare state possible, but that also helps account for society's fascination with cases of sexual abuse and harassment by figures of authority."

Calling for a broader, new approach to social mobility research, "Pathways to Social Class: A Qualitative Approach to Social Mobility" moves beyond pure statistics to use qualitative techniques--such as life stories and family case studies--to examine more closely the dynamics of mobility and address more fundamental sociological questions.
Up to now, the extensive sociological literature on mobility has been based around the survey method. As a result, we have access to abundant statistical data, but there is little information available to explain how and why people follow particular life paths. To overcome these limitations, Bertaux and Thompson have developed an alternative, complementary approach using life stories, case histories of whole families over several generations, or case studies of local communities. Employing the case-study approach does not prevent the identification of structural trends; on the contrary, it allows us to analyze those collective processes through their local effects, restoring the links with classics of sociological thought.
Bertaux and Thompson tackle such problems as: What exactly is transmitted between generations; is it wealth or land, occupational models or skills, social networks, or values and orientations? What kinds of assets can immigrants draw on? How can a social elite survive the upheaval of a popular revolution? What is the impact of marriage on the mobility of men and women? How far can belonging to one locality rather than another, or choosing a particular house, shape mobility paths and aspirations? Do dreams of mobility matter?
This volume promises to inspire other sociologists towards the richly revealing and highly significant findings that a broader-based-approach to social mobility will enable.
"Daniel Bertaux" is the director of research at the Centre d'?tude des Mouvements Sociaux of the CNRS and EHESS in Paris. His many publications on social mobility and on life stories include "Destins Personnels et Struture de Classe and Biography and Society."
"Paul Thompson" is a research professor in sociology at the University of Essex. His books include" The Edwardians, The Voice of the Past, I Don't Feel Old, and The Myths We Live By." His is co-editor with Bertaux of "Between Generations: Family Models, Myths and Memories.

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.

A critical examination of the complex system of college pricing-how it works, how it fails, and how fixing it can help both students and universities. How much does it cost to attend college in the United States today? The answer is more complex than many realize. College websites advertise a sticker price, but uncovering the actual price-the one after incorporating financial aid-can be difficult for students and families. This inherent uncertainty leads some students to forgo applying to colleges that would be the best fit for them, or even not attend college at all. The result is that millions of promising young people may lose out on one of society's greatest opportunities for social mobility. Colleges suffer too because losing these prospective students can mean lower enrollment and less socioeconomic diversity. If markets require prices to function well, then the American higher-education system-rife as it is with ambiguity in its pricing-amounts to a market failure. In A Problem of Fit, economist Phillip B. Levine explains why institutions charge the prices they do and discusses the role of financial aid systems in facilitating-and discouraging-access to college. Affordability issues are real, but price transparency is also part of the problem. As Levine makes clear, our conversations around affordability and free tuition miss a larger truth: that the opacity of our current college-financing systems is a primary driver of inequities in education and society. In a clear-eyed assessment of educational access and aid in a post-Covid economy, A Problem of Fit offers a trenchant new argument for educational reforms that are well within reach.

An empirical examination of contemporary refugee practices in Britain Innovative theoretical framework, weaving for the first time together the theories of hospitality and labeling and applying them to the refugee regime Expansion of the theoretical framework of hospitality, with development towards an understanding of externalized humanitarian hospitality Research underpinned by rich empirical material- 34 interviews and 30+years of archival research on government framing of the refugee Offers three, empirically grounded, case studies on the British asylum system from the national, regional and grass-roots level. This book provides a multi-faceted way of assessing the British approach to refuge on local, state and regional levels, by intertwining the theories of hospitality and labelling before applying them to the study of refugees. This novel method of looking at the British refugee regime allows for deeper insights into the notions of power, identification, responsibility, language and externalisation of refugee politics. The book argues that the British refugee regime has developed towards an externalised humanitarian hospitality whereby the practice is geographically projected beyond the territorial confines of the state in order to both control and exclude the refugee. In tandem, the book also engages with counter-discourses by examining local practices of British hospitality and showing acts of solidarity that challenge the statist logic. The result is a theoretically informed account of the British approach to externalisation and geographical seclusion of refugees, particularly in response to the current Mediterranean Crisis.

Family mobility decisions reveal much about how the public and private realms of social life interact and change. This sociological study explores how contemporary families reconcile individual members' career and education projects within the family unit over time and space, and unpacks the intersubjective constraints on workforce mobility. This Australian mixed methods study sampled Defence Force families and middle class professional families to illustrate how families' educational projects are necessarily and deeply implicated in issues of workforce mobility and immobility, in complex ways. Defence families move frequently, often absorbing the stresses of moving through 'viscous' institutions as private troubles. In contrast, the selective mobility of middle class professional families and their 'no go zones' contribute to the public issue of poorly serviced rural communities. Families with different social, material and vocational resources at their disposal are shown to reflexively weigh the benefits and risks associated with moving differently. The book also explore how priorities shift as children move through educational phases. The families' narratives offer empirical windows on larger social processes, such as the mobility imperative, the gender imbalance in the family's intersubjective bargains, labour market credentialism, the social construction of place, and the family's role in the reproduction of class structure.

The lives of wealthy people have long held an allure to many, but the lives of wealthy Russians pose a particular fascination. Having achieved their riches over the course of a single generation, the top 0.1 percent of Russian society have become known for ostentatious lifestyles and tastes. Nevertheless, as Elisabeth Schimpfoessl shows in this book, their stories reveal a bourgeois existence that is distinct in its circumstances and self-definition, and far more complex than the caricatures suggest. Rich Russians takes a deep and unprecedented look at this group: their personal stories, trajectories, ideas about life, and how they see their role and position both on top of Russian society as well as globally. These people grew up and lived through a historically unique period of economic turmoil and social change following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But when taken in a wider historical context, their lives follow a familiar path, from new money to respectable money; parvenus becoming part of Society. Based on interviews with millionaires, billionaires, their spouses and children, Rich Russians concludes that, as a class, they have acquired all sorts of cultural and social resources which help consolidate their personal power. They have developed distinguished and refined tastes, rediscovered their family history, and begun actively engaging in philanthropy. Most importantly, they have worked out a narrative to justify why they deserve their elitist position in society-because of who they are and their superior qualities-and why they should be treated as equals by the West. This is a group whose social, cultural, and political influence is likely to outlast any regime change. As the first book to examine the transformation of Russia's former "robber barons" into a new social class, Rich Russians provides insight into how this nation's newly wealthy tick.

Auto/Biography in the Americas: Relational Lives brings together scholars from disparate geographic regions, cultural perspectives, linguistic frameworks, and disciplinary backgrounds to explore what connects narrated lives in the Americas. By interweaving scholarship on Afro-diasporic subjectivities, gendered narratives, lives in translation, celebrity auto/biographies, and pedagogical approaches to teaching auto/biographical narratives, this volume argues that connections between the contrasting locations of the Americas may be found in a shared history of diasporic movement that causes a heightened awareness of the need to belong and to thereby define the self in relation to others. Read together, the essays in this collection suggest that identities across the Americas are constructed with an emphasis on intersubjectivity and relationality. This transnational approach to reading life writing beyond the borders of the Americas-pertinent to comparative American studies and hemispheric studies as well as life writing and auto/biography studies-also demonstrates an interdisciplinary, international, and multilingual model for collaborative research in the humanities and social sciences. The scholars included in this volume work in the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, literature, and education, and furthermore, this book marks the first time that many of these scholars have had their work translated into and published in English. This book was originally published as a special issue of a|b: Auto|Biography Studies.

Like many countries around the world, China has been implementing policies aimed at improving parent-school relationships. However, unlike many developed countries, the historical context of family-school relationships has been limited and parents typically do not participate in the school context. Until now, there has been little research conducted in rural China on parental involvement in their children's education. This book investigates the nature of parental involvement in primary children's education in rural China by using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. It outlines the layered strategies of how rural parents are involved in their children's schooling, showing that rural parents strongly desire educational success for their children and view education as a means to their children gaining social mobility. It demonstrates that few rural parents engage in visible forms of parental involvement in their children's schools, such as attending parent-teacher meetings. Rather, they are more likely to engage strategies to support their children's education which are largely invisible to schools. It adds to the growing body of parental involvement research that suggests that culture, location, and socio-economic status influence different forms of parental involvement, and highlights nuances in invisible forms of parental involvement. Providing insights into how poor rural parents envision their role with their children, schools, and the larger society, and how these relationships can affect the social mobility of students and families, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Asian education, comparative and international education, and Chinese society.

Populations across the world are becoming increasingly mobile for many different reasons. Some are searching for a better and safer life, others migrate for economic or environmental purposes, education, or identity formation. While mobility may bring better life-chances, this book shows that for some it means experiencing vulnerability. Vulnerability in a Mobile World considers the notion of vulnerability from various standpoints including intercultural relationships, homelessness, urbanisation, refugee and asylum seekers, and the use of YouTube by young girls. The diversity of the circumstances and characteristics of the vulnerable enable this book to uniquely show just how broad the notion of vulnerability can be. Presenting an international perspective to social problems in various settings, the chapters are brought together in a coherent argument that shows vulnerability has many forms and is often associated with mobile populations. Vulnerability in a Mobile World is based on a collection of studies by new and emerging scholars focussing on the impacts of migration and mobility in contemporary contexts. Within this framework, each chapter presents new findings that provides poignant examples of vulnerability involving diverse populations, geographical locations and circumstances.

A method for measuring migration and occupational mobility in the community.

This book will be crucial reading for students across a variety of disciplines. A broadly socio-legal text, using a mixed-methods design combining grounded theory with an in-depth case study, this research explores a rarely-seen facet of the legal profession. Sociologists studying the practical effect of sociological concepts from theorists such as Bourdieu and Weber; those studying the legal profession from the sociological, law or psychological angles; anyone examining elite professions; management students examining the operation of professional associations and the ways in which these mobilise to take action on controversial topics; those studying the role and creation of outreach: all will find something of interest in this monograph. For those within the legal profession itself it also provides a look into an oft-hidden world: that of the English Bar. A notoriously secretiveprofession, traditional, elite and suspicious of research - the case study evaluatingan outreach programme sheds light on how this fascinating world operates when trying to engage in progressive steps. Through the eyes of a professional association seeking to improve socio-economic diversity in the profession through instituting an access programme focussed on work experience, it examines not just how professional association action may succeed or fail, but why. With foreword by Lord Neuberger, former President of the Supreme Court and Chair of the Working Party on Entry to the Bar.

Why is it getting harder to secure a job that matches our qualifications, buy a home of our own and achieve financial stability? Underprivileged people have always faced barriers, but people from middle-income families are increasingly more likely to slide down the social scale than climb up. Duncan Exley, former Director of the Equality Trust, draws on expert research and real life experiences - including from an actor, a politician, a billionaire entrepreneur and a surgeon - to issue a wake-up call to break through segregated opportunity. He offers a manifesto to reboot our prospects and benefit all.

This book presents the latest research on status generalization in a variety of settings, examining new interventions for its negative effects. Drawing from research on status processes in sociology, social psychology, education, organizations, mental health, and other fields, the book connects to several bodies of research that include stigma and stereotyping, exchange and power, and organizations. The first part of the book establishes the foundations and recent developments. Next, the book delves into elaborations, variants, and interrelations. Throughout, the book illustrates how status processes are evident in settings like school classrooms and others, where interventions can improve interaction and participation between advantaged and disadvantaged students, genders, organizational positions, races, other dynamics that may be impacted by social status and expectation. The book concludes with chapters on applications and interventions to reduce unwanted inequalities in social interactions and institutions. With its balanced, multidisciplinary approach to the challenges of social hierarchies and deep-rooted expectations, Unequals is an essential volume for all academic and scholarly readers interested in status processes and inequalities in our social lives.

In these crisscrossing threads are woven the fabric of a community, a society, an economy, a nation. And beyond that, the world itself. But the technology isn't the dream. The dream is what you can do with it.' Three revolutions changed the face of South Africa, the economic powerhouse of the African continent, in 1994. The first was democracy, as millions of newly-enfranchised citizens went to the polls to elect a new government. The second was the internet, bringing information, learning and entertainment into millions of homes. But the real signal of change in the air was the arrival of an electronic device that would put undreamed-of power into the hands of the people. The cellular phone. In a country where less than four per cent of the population had access to a landline phone, mobile telephony opened the gateway to new ways and new worlds of communication. Today, more than 90 per cent of South Africans own at least one mobile phone, and they're not just using them to talk to each other. Mobiles have become tools of education, entrepreneurship, trade, empowerment, activism, media and upliftment. With the advent of the mobile internet, mobiles have also become the hubs of the most powerful force in modern communication. The social network, bringing people together in an interchange of ideas, opinions, chatter and commerce that is changing the way we understand and define communities. This is the story of the biggest and fastest-growing social network in Africa. A network that took shape in the townships of the Western Cape and has grown to be part of the lives of more than 50 million users in 120 countries, sending more than 23 billion messages a month. This is the story of Mxit. A cultural force, a community of millions, with its own economy, its own infrastructure, its own language and its own traditions. This is the story of Mobinomics, the new economy of mobile, and how it is connecting people and changing lives. Read it and learn. Read it and understand. Read it and be moved by the power of mobile.

Economic inequality is at a record high in the United States, but public demand for redistribution is not rising with it. Meghan Condon and Amber Wichowsky show that this paradox and other mysteries about class and US politics can be solved through a focus on social comparison. Powerful currents compete to propel attention up or down--toward the rich or the poor--pulling politics along in the wake. Through an astute blend of experiments, surveys, and descriptions people offer in their own words, The Economic Other reveals that when less-advantaged Americans compare with the rich, they become more accurate about their own status and want more from government. But American society is structured to prevent upward comparison. In an increasingly divided, anxious nation, opportunities to interact with the country's richest are shrinking, and people prefer to compare to those below to feel secure. Even when comparison with the rich does occur, many lose confidence in their power to effect change. Laying bare how social comparisons drive political attitudes, The Economic Other is an essential look at the stubborn plight of inequality and the measures needed to solve it.

This book is an ethnography of labor mobility and its challenges to the idea of the nation. Using the example of francophone Canada, it examines how social difference-race, ethnicity, language, gender-has been used to sort out who must (or can) be mobile and who must (or can) remain in place in the organization of global circulation of human and natural resources. It argues that "francophone Canada" can best be understood as an ethnoclass category that has embedded francophones into specific forms of labor mobility since the beginnings of European colonization, even as their social difference has been constructed as national in the interests of gaining political power. The result has been an erasure both of francophone mobilities and of their contribution to the rooted community that lies at the heart of the idea of the nation, and of francophone capacity to resist economic marginalization and exploitation. By following French Canadian workers back and forth between eastern and central Canada and the frontiers of the Canadian northwest, Sustaining the Nation explores how contemporary forms of labor mobility make it increasingly difficult for national structures and discourses to produce the francophone nation. By following the ideological tensions between language as a skill and language as a marker of belonging, the authors present grounded evidence of how the globalized new economy challenges the nation-state, and how mobilities and immobilities are co-constructed.

Comparing Canada and the Americas: From Roots to Transcultural Networks covers the Americas in a comparative perspective spanning from the 19th century to the 21st century. It explores socio-cultural dynamics changing considerably in the Americas, which are progressively shedding their original fascination for Europe and slowly recognizing the importance of Indigenous, Afro-descendants, and immigrant cultures. The Americas have many dynamics in common, such as the presence of shared dualistic paradigms, like civilization/barbarism, which is a synonym for self/others. From the invention of the Nation States to globalization, the valorization of taking roots has transformed into the valorization of the legitimacy of geo-symbolic displacements. A comparative study of Canada, Quebec, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the USA reveals both the exclusions and the inclusions that, in literary, artistic, and media productions as well as political essays, are founded on the opposition between interior and exterior. The current era has seen the displacement of these oppositions within the context of the recognition of the others. This recognition is rooted in multicultural, intercultural, and transcultural perspectives. In the current networked and complex contemporary world, literary, artistic, political, and media texts go beyond dichotomous oppositions and historical master narratives legitimating exclusions. Instead, they valorize "chameleoning" and the surprise of encounters with different cultures, thus creating new perspectives linked to a techno-cultural and democratic future based on the desire to share and to belong to oneself.

The colonization of Spanish America resulted in the mixing of Natives, Europeans, and Africans and the subsequent creation of a "casta" system that discriminated against them. Members of mixed races could, however, free themselves from such burdensome restrictions through the purchase of a "gracias al sacar"--a royal exemption that provided the privileges of Whiteness. For more than a century, the whitening "gracias al sacar" has fascinated historians. Even while the documents remained elusive, scholars continually mentioned the potential to acquire Whiteness as a provocative marker of the historic differences between Anglo and Latin American treatments of race. "Purchasing Whiteness" explores the fascinating details of 40 cases of whitening petitions, tracking thousands of pages of ensuing conversations as petitioners, royal officials, and local elites disputed not only whether the state should grant full whiteness to deserving individuals, but whether selective prejudices against the "castas" should cease.
"Purchasing Whiteness" contextualizes the history of the "gracias al sacar" within the broader framework of three centuries of mixed race efforts to end discrimination. It identifies those historic variables that structured the potential for mobility as Africans moved from slavery to freedom, mixed with Natives and Whites, and transformed later generations into vassals worthy of royal favor. By examining this history of "pardo" and "mulatto" mobility, the author provides striking insight into those uniquely characteristic and deeply embedded pathways through which the Hispanic world negotiated processes of inclusion and exclusion.

When Dominic Sandbrook quoted Samuel Smiles extensively in his TV series on nineteenth-century work and leisure; when Ian Hislop flourished a copy of Smiles's Self-Help ("the book that launched the genre") in his programme on 'Workers or Shirkers?'; when Andy Burnham reflected publicly on "lack of aspiration" as a main cause of Britain's north-south divide - all were testifying to the intense topicality of the work and ideas of Samuel Smiles. This is the first full biography of the man who, in the industrial on-rush of the 19th century, gave the world the idea of self-help as a go-to strategy in an age of frenzied change. Using Smiles's unpublished correspondence with family, friends and publishers, and drawing extensively on his writing, The Spirit of Self-Help tells the very human story of how Samuel Smiles came from a small-town, small-time family in Scotland to become, by turn and sometimes together, medical doctor, campaigning journalist, railway executive, best-selling author, and global celebrity. This is both a biography and a reflection on themes of success and failure, the individual and society, moral and material worth, and the relationships between these sets of ideas. Driven by its subject, The Spirit of Self-Help revolves around the oldest idea of all - the possibility of happiness, for everyone, in all possible circumstances. In that sense, though set in the 19th century, this is an intensely topical book.