Comedy is currently enjoying unprecedented growth within the British culture industries. Defying the recent economic downturn, it has exploded into a booming billion-pound industry both on TV and on the live circuit. Despite this, academia has either ignored comedy or focused solely on analysing comedians or comic texts. This scholarship tends to assume that through analysing an artist's intentions or techniques, we can somehow understand what is and what isn't funny. But this poses a fundamental question - funny to whom? How can we definitively discern how audiences react to comedy? Comedy and Distinction shifts the focus to provide the first ever empirical examination of British comedy taste. Drawing on a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews carried out at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the book explores what types of comedy people like (and dislike), what their preferences reveal about their sense of humour, how comedy taste lubricates everyday interaction, and how issues of social class, gender, ethnicity and geographical location interact with patterns of comic taste. Friedman asks: Are some types of comedy valued higher than others in British society? Does more 'legitimate' comedy taste act as a tangible resource in social life - a form of cultural capital? What role does humour play in policing class boundaries in contemporary Britain? This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, social class, social theory, cultural studies and comedy studies.

This book was shortlisted for the 2015 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. Comedy is currently enjoying unprecedented growth within the British culture industries. Defying the recent economic downturn, it has exploded into a booming billion-pound industry both on TV and on the live circuit. Despite this, academia has either ignored comedy or focused solely on analysing comedians or comic texts. This scholarship tends to assume that through analysing an artist's intentions or techniques, we can somehow understand what is and what isn't funny. But this poses a fundamental question - funny to whom? How can we definitively discern how audiences react to comedy? Comedy and Distinction shifts the focus to provide the first ever empirical examination of British comedy taste. Drawing on a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews carried out at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the book explores what types of comedy people like (and dislike), what their preferences reveal about their sense of humour, how comedy taste lubricates everyday interaction, and how issues of social class, gender, ethnicity and geographical location interact with patterns of comic taste. Friedman asks: Are some types of comedy valued higher than others in British society? Does more 'legitimate' comedy taste act as a tangible resource in social life - a form of cultural capital? What role does humour play in policing class boundaries in contemporary Britain? This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, social class, social theory, cultural studies and comedy studies.

Politicians continually tell us that anyone can get ahead. But is that really true? This important, best-selling book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Friedman and Laurison show that a powerful 'class pay gap' exists in Britain's elite occupations. Even when those from working-class backgrounds make it into prestigious jobs, they earn, on average, 16% less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds. But why is this the case? Drawing on 175 interviews across four case studies - television, accountancy, architecture, and acting - they explore the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile. This is a rich, ambitious book that demands we take seriously not just the glass but also the class ceiling.

Politicians continually tell us that anyone can get ahead. But is that really true? This important, best-selling book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Friedman and Laurison show that a powerful 'class pay gap' exists in Britain's elite occupations. Even when those from working-class backgrounds make it into prestigious jobs, they earn, on average, 16% less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds. But why is this the case? Drawing on 175 interviews across four case studies - television, accountancy, architecture, and acting - they explore the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile. This is a rich, ambitious book that demands we take seriously not just the glass but also the class ceiling.

Seeking to Make the World Anew is a collection of poems that confront the crisis of modern society, that yearn for change, and that wonder about what kind of social order might replace the one we have. This compilation serves as a testament of the author's agonizing encounters with the degradations, insults, and diseases that this world abounds in and expresses his awe at how people come together and seek solutions through struggle. Sam Friedman includes an introductory essay about how his ideas and his art developed through his experiences in the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war movements, scientific research and activism around the AIDS epidemic, and through thinking, arguing, and writing about how a new-style, freedom-loving socialist movement might be the only way to save humanity."