Since the publication of the Coleman report in the US many decades ago, it has been widely accepted that the evidence that schools are marginal in the grand scheme of academic achievement is conclusive. Despite this, educational policy across the world remains focused almost exclusively on schools. With contributions from such figures as Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Doris Entwistle and Richard Arum this book is an important contribution to a debate that has implications across the board in social sciences and policy-making. It will be required reading for students and academics within sociology, economics and education and should also find a place on the bookshelves of education policy-makers.

Contents:
1. How Do Parents Matter
2. Family Background, Education Determination and Policy Implications
3. Young Children's Achievement in School and Socioeconomic Background
4. Macro Causes, Micro Effects
5. Fathers: An Overlooked Resource for Children's Educational Success
6. Intergenerational Assets and the Black/White Test Score Gap
7. Teenage Employment and High School Completion
8. School-Community Relationships...

Politics and the Past offers an original, multidisciplinary exploration of the growing public controversy over reparations for historical injustices. Demonstrating that 'reparations politics' has become one of the most important features of international politics in recent years, the authors analyze why this is the case and show that reparations politics can be expected to be a major aspect of international affairs in coming years. In addition to broad theoretical and philosophical reflection, the book includes discussions of the politics of reparations in specific countries and regions, including the United States, France, Latin America, Japan, Canada, and Rwanda. The volume presents a nuanced, historically grounded, and critical perspective on the many campaigns for reparations currently afoot in a variety of contexts around the world. All readers working or teaching in the fields of transitional justice, the politics of memory, and social movements will find this book a rich and provocative contribution to this complex debate.

The family is our haven, the place where we all start off on equal footing -- or so we like to think. But if that's the case, why do so many siblings often diverge widely in social status, wealth, and education? In this groundbreaking and meticulously researched book, acclaimed sociologist Dalton Conley shatters our notions of how our childhoods affect us, and why we become who we are. Economic and social inequality among adult siblings is not the exception, Conley asserts, but the norm: over half of all inequality is "within" families, not "between" them. And it is each family's own "pecking order" that helps to foster such disparities. Moving beyond traditionally accepted theories such as birth order or genetics to explain family dynamics, Conley instead draws upon three major studies to explore the impact of larger social forces that shape each family and the individuals within it.
From Bill and Roger Clinton to the stories of hundreds of average Americans, here we are introduced to an America where class identity is ever changing and where siblings cannot necessarily follow the same paths. This is a book that will forever alter our idea of family.

"Being Black, Living in the Red" demonstrates that many differences between blacks and whites stem not from race but from economic inequalities that have accumulated over the course of American history. Property ownership - as measured by net worth - reflects this legacy of economic oppression. The racial discrepancy in wealth holdings leads to advantages for whites in the form of better schools, more desirable residences, higher wages, and more opportunities to save, invest, and thereby further their economic advantages. A new afterword by the author summarizes Conley's recent research on racial differences in wealth mobility and security and discusses potential policy solutions to the racial asset gap and America's low savings rate more generally.

Class differences permeate the neighborhoods, classrooms, and workplaces where we lead our daily lives. But little is known about how class really works, and its importance is often downplayed or denied. In this important new volume, leading sociologists systematically examine how social class operates in the United States today. Social Class argues against the view that we are becoming a classless society. The authors show instead the decisive ways social class matters from how long people live, to how they raise their children, to how they vote. The distinguished contributors to Social Class examine how class works in a variety of domains including politics, health, education, gender, and the family. Michael Hout shows that class membership remains an integral part of identity in the U.S. in two large national surveys, over 97 percent of Americans, when prompted, identify themselves with a particular class. Dalton Conley identifies an intangible but crucial source of class difference that he calls the opportunity horizon children form aspirations based on what they have seen is possible. The best predictor of earning a college degree isn t race, income, or even parental occupation it is, rather, the level of education that one s parents achieved. Annette Lareau and Elliot Weininger find that parental involvement in the college application process, which significantly contributes to student success, is overwhelmingly a middle-class phenomenon. David Grusky and Kim Weeden introduce a new model for measuring inequality that allows researchers to assess not just the extent of inequality, but also whether it is taking on a more polarized, class-based form. John Goldthorpe and Michelle Jackson examine the academic careers of students in three social classes and find that poorly performing students from high-status families do much better in many instances than talented students from less-advantaged families. Erik Olin Wright critically assesses the emphasis on individual life chances in many studies of class and calls for a more structural conception of class. In an epilogue, journalists Ray Suarez, Janny Scott, and Roger Hodge reflect on the media s failure to report hardening class lines in the U.S., even when images on the nightly news such as those involving health, crime, or immigration are profoundly shaped by issues of class. Until now, class scholarship has been highly specialized, with researchers working on only one part of a larger puzzle. Social Class gathers the most current research in one volume, and persuasively illustrates that class remains a powerful force in American society."

"In this engagingly written work on an important topic, the authors argue, quite convincingly, that the social and biological determinants and consequences of low birth weight have not been adequately explored by social scientists or natural/life scientists."--Brian Powell, Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology, Indiana University

"Conley and colleagues make a major contribution to knowledge of the causes and consequences of low birth weight and draw on that knowledge to formulate public policies for prevention and intervention. The book provides for the broad field of the social determinants of health a fresh framework for research that interacts social and biological factors and health consequences into an intergenerational life course understanding of human development and health. Their work is an integrative triumph of major dimension."--Alvin R. Tarlov, M.D., Director of the Texas Institute for Society and Health, Rice University

""The Starting Gate provides a sophisticated, yet easily accessible, understanding of how biological and social factors interact across lives and generations to affect birth weight and future life chances."--David Mechanic, Rene Dubos Professor of Behavioral Science, Rutgers University

This vivid memoir captures how race, class, and privilege shaped a white boy’s coming of age in 1970s New York—now with a new epilogue.   “I am not your typical middle-class white male,� begins Dalton Conley’s Honky, an intensely engaging memoir of growing up amid predominantly African American and Latino housing projects on New York’s Lower East Side. In narrating these sharply observed memories, from his little sister’s burning desire for cornrows to the shooting of a close childhood friend, Conley shows how race and class inextricably shaped his life—as well as the lives of his schoolmates and neighbors.   In a new afterword, Conley, now a well-established senior sociologist, provides an update on what his informants’ respective trajectories tell us about race and class in the city. He further reflects on how urban areas have (and haven’t) changed over the past few decades, including the stubborn resilience of poverty in New York. At once a gripping coming-of-age story and a brilliant case study illuminating broader inequalities in American society, Honky guides us to a deeper understanding of the cultural capital of whiteness, the social construction of race, and the intricacies of upward mobility.