Why is it that children from disadvantaged backgrounds find it so difficult - and often impossible - to achieve? Few questions are of such fundamental importance to the functioning of a fair and effective society than this one, yet the academic and political narratives that exist to explain the problem are fundamentally contradictory: some say the root of the problem lies in racial prejudice; others that the key factor is class; others again argue that we should look first at laziness, government's commitment to provide demotivating 'safety nets,' and to the appeal of easy money earned from a criminal lifestyle. Jay Macleod's seminal work of anthropology is one of the most influential studies to address this issue, and - in suggesting that problems of class, above all, help to fuel continued social inequality, Macleod is engaging in an important piece of problem-solving. He asks the right questions, basing his study on two different working class subcultures, one white and largely devoid of aspiration and the other black and much more ambitious and conformist. By showing that the members of both groups find it equally hard to achieve their dreams - that there really 'Ain't no makin' it,' as his title proposes - Macleod issues a direct challenge to the ideology of the American Dream, and by extension to the social contract that underpinned American society and politics for the duration of the twentieth century. His work - robustly structured and well-reasoned - is now frequently studied in universities, and it offers a sharp corrective to those who insist that the poor could control their own destinies if they choose to do so.

Franz Boas's 1940 Race, Language and Culture is a monumentally important text in the history of its discipline, collecting the articles and essays that helped make Boas known as the 'father of American anthropology.' An encapsulation of a career dedicated to fighting against the false theories of so-called 'scientific racism' that abounded in the first half of the 20th-century, Race, Language and Culture is one of the most historically significant texts in its field - and central to its arguments and impact are Boas's formidable interpretative skills. It could be said, indeed, that Race, Language and Culture is all about the centrality of interpretation in questioning our assumptions about the world. In critical thinking, interpretation is the ability to clarify and posit definitions for the terms and ideas that make up an argument. Boas's work demonstrates the importance of another vital element: context. For Boas, who argued passionately for 'cultural relativism,' it was vital to interpret individual cultures by their own standards and context - not by ours. Only through comparing and contrasting the two can we reach, he suggested, a better understanding of humankind. Though our own questions might be smaller, it is always worth considering the crucial element Boas brought to interpretation: how does context change definition?

Why is it that children from disadvantaged backgrounds find it so difficult – and often impossible – to achieve? Few questions are of such fundamental importance to the functioning of a fair and effective society than this one, yet the academic and political narratives that exist to explain the problem are fundamentally contradictory: some say the root of the problem lies in racial prejudice; others that the key factor is class; others again argue that we should look first at laziness, government's commitment to provide demotivating ‘safety nets,’ and to the appeal of easy money earned from a criminal lifestyle.

Jay Macleod's seminal work of anthropology is one of the most influential studies to address this issue, and – in suggesting that problems of class, above all, help to fuel continued social inequality, Macleod is engaging in an important piece of problem-solving. He asks the right questions, basing his study on two different working class subcultures, one white and largely devoid of aspiration and the other black and much more ambitious and conformist. By showing that the members of both groups find it equally hard to achieve their dreams – that there really ‘Ain't no makin' it,’ as his title proposes – Macleod issues a direct challenge to the ideology of the American Dream, and by extension to the social contract that underpinned American society and politics for the duration of the twentieth century. His work – robustly structured and well-reasoned – is now frequently studied in universities, and it offers a sharp corrective to those who insist that the poor could control their own destinies if they choose to do so.

Franz Boas’s 1940 Race, Language and Culture is a monumentally important text in the history of its discipline, collecting the articles and essays that helped make Boas known as the ‘father of American anthropology.’

An encapsulation of a career dedicated to fighting against the false theories of so-called ‘scientific racism’ that abounded in the first half of the 20th-century, Race, Language and Culture is one of the most historically significant texts in its field – and central to its arguments and impact are Boas’s formidable interpretative skills. It could be said, indeed, that Race, Language and Culture is all about the centrality of interpretation in questioning our assumptions about the world.

In critical thinking, interpretation is the ability to clarify and posit definitions for the terms and ideas that make up an argument. Boas’s work demonstrates the importance of another vital element: context. For Boas, who argued passionately for ‘cultural relativism,’ it was vital to interpret individual cultures by their own standards and context – not by ours. Only through comparing and contrasting the two can we reach, he suggested, a better understanding of humankind.

Though our own questions might be smaller, it is always worth considering the crucial element Boas brought to interpretation: how does context change definition?