 New
Working-class Studies
Book by John Russo (Editor), Sherry Lee Linkon (Editor) - April 1, 2005
Talk
That Counts: Age, Gender, and Social Class Differences in Discourse Book by Ronald K.
S. MacAulay - 2005
In Talk That Counts, distinguished sociolinguist Rinals Macaulay provides a new way of
examining sociolinguistic variation. Linguists traditionally take a limited sample of
linguistic data from a given population and look at phonological and morphological
variables. Macaulay proposes a much different and highly quantitative approach to the
study of variation, which correlates features of discourse with three social categories:
social class, gender, and age. He uses as data a sample from 33 speakers of English in
Glasgow, and his conclusions indicate that age accounts for the greatest number of
differences, followed by gender, with social class accounting for the most variation
within a group. Macaulay's work offers a new methodological paradigm to an audience of
sociolinguists and others like sociologists concerned with discourse analysis.
The
Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq : Third Edition Book by
Hanna Batatu - 2004
"An indispensable foundation for any thoughts regarding the creation of a new Iraqi
political order"--Christian Science Monitor
"Batatu's book is by far the best book written on the social and political history of
modern Iraq."--Ahmad Dallal, Stanford University
Social
Inequality: Patterns and Processes
Book by Martin Marger - June 18, 2004
This text provides an introduction to key concepts, current research findings, and
theories in social inequality.
Class
and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White
Achievement Gap
Book by Richard Rothstein - May, 2004
Arthur E. Levine, president, Teachers College, Columbia University
... powerful volume that needs to be read by scholars, policy makers, and practitioners
who have the capacity to shape tomorrow.
Book Description
It seems to be a common-sense argument that, if teachers know how to teach reading, or
math, or any other subject, and if schools emphasize the importance of these tasks and
permit no distractions, children should be able to learn regardless of their family income
or skin color. But this perspective is misleading and dangerous. It ignores how social
class characteristics in a stratified society like ours influence learning in school. For
nearly half a century, the association between social and economic disadvantage and the
student achievement gap has been well known to economists, sociologists, and educators.
Most, however, have avoided the obvious implication of this understanding, that raising
the achievement of lower-class children requires that public policy address the social and
economic conditions of these children’s lives, not just school reform.
Boston
Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s
Book by Ronald P. Formisano - April 1, 2004
This work offers a convincing and dispassionate assessment of an emotionally charged
subject: court-ordered school desegregation in Boston and, most particularly, the white
backlash associated with it. Calling the conflict a "war that nobody won,"
Formisano ( The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1780s-1840s )
examines the social and economic roots of what he terms "reactionary populism,"
concluding that more than simple racism underlay it. Class was an important issue, as
evidenced by the frustration of city residents dictated to by legislators and members of
the media whose own children attended schools in the "lily white suburbs,"
beyond the reach of the controversial desegregation plan. He describes the variety of
white responses to the court order, for example, South Boston's collective hard-core
resistance in marches and clashes with police and West Roxbury's more individualist (white
flight) and legalist approach. Here, too, are the public characters, such as Boston School
Councillor Louise Hicks, and the street theater of protest, such as a mothers' prayer
march led by Hicks counting her rosary beads.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Sailing in the wake of Common Ground , J. Anthony Lukas's prize-winning study of Boston's
busing crisis ( LJ 8/85), Formisano focuses upon the white antibusers who, he believes,
were more diverse in motivation and tactics than the rock-throwing mobs on television.
Using interviews, press accounts, and the enormous secondary literature, he argues, as
have Lukas and others, that race and class were knotted together in this "war nobody
won." Formisano writes with empathy for the antibusers yet doesn't dismiss their
racism; he finds little to praise between both sides' principals and concludes that school
desegregation must confront "suburban residential apartheid." Lukas's
journalistic tour de force is still the book to read on busing in Boston, but this, the
most accessible scholarly work, may be the book to study. It is recommended for most
academic and many public libraries.
- Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.
What's
Class Got to Do With It?: American Society in the Twenty-First Century
Book by Michael Zweig (Editor) - March 31, 2004
"Whether in regard to the economy or issues of war and peace, class is central to our
everyday lives. Yet class has not been as visible as race or gender, not nearly as much a
part of our conversations and sense of ourselves as these and other
‘identities.’ We are of course all individuals, but our individuality and
personal life chances are shaped—limited or enhanced—by the economic and social
class in which we have grown up and in which we exist as adults."—from the
Introduction
The contributors to this volume argue that class identity in the United States has been
hidden for too long. Their essays, published here for the first time, cover the relation
of class to race and gender, to globalization and public policy, and to the lives of young
adults. They describe how class, defined in terms of economic and political power rather
than income, is in fact central to Americans’ everyday lives. What’s Class Got
to Do with It? is an important resource for the new field of working class studies.
About the Author
Michael Zweig is Professor of Economics and founder of the Center for Study of Working
Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Among his books is The
Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret, also from Cornell.
Structure
of Social Stratification in the United States, The (4th Edition)
Book by Leonard Beeghley - March 10, 2004
This text examines the structure of stratification in the United States, focusing on the
way one's class location influences his or her life opportunities. Beeghley takes a
structural point of view that distinguishes between individual and structural-level
explanations of stratification, and shows how three dimensions of stratification (class,
gender, and race/ethnicity) are interconnected. Anyone interested in reading about social
stratification or the sociology aspects of poverty and wealth.
From the Back Cover
The Structure of Social Stratification in the United States examines the structure of
stratification in the United States, focusing on the way one's class location influences
his or her life opportunities. Beeghley takes a structural point of view that
distinguishes between individual and structural-level explanations of stratification, and
shows how three dimensions of stratification (class, gender, and race/ethnicity) are
interconnected. The fourth edition includes important new data on the extent of wealth
inequality in the U.S.
Psychological
Meanings of Social Class in the Context of Education
Book by Joan Ostrove, Elizabeth R. Cole, Joan M. Ostrove (Editor) - December 1, 2003
This issue of the Journal of Social Issues explores psychological meanings of social class
in the context of education. In this article we propose an outline for a critical
psychology of social class and discuss why education is a useful context for examining
relations between class and individual psychology. We consider how research and theory in
the study of race and gender can and cannot inform a psychology of social class. We
introduce three themes that organize the issue and the articles that illustrate them. The
articles in this issue address all levels of education, include data from within and
outside of the United States, and investigate perspectives of individuals from a range of
social class groups.
"What I remember most about school was that if you were poor you got no respect and
no encouragement. I mean if you didn't have cute ringlets, an ironed new uniform, starched
shirts, and a mother and father who gave money to the church, you weren't a teacher's pet
and that meant you weren't encouraged." -- a working-class woman respondent
interviewed in Luttrell, 1993
Class differences were boundaries no one wanted to face or talk about. It was easier to
downplay them, to act as though we were all from privileged backgrounds, to work around
them, to confront them privately in the solitude of one's room, or to pretend that just
being chosen to study at such an institution meant that those of us who did not come from
such privilege were already in transition toward privilege . It was a kind of treason not
to believe that it was better to be identified with the world of material privilege than
with the world of the working class, the poor.--hooks, 1989
Revolution
And Counterrevolution: Class Struggle In A Moscow Metal Factory (International Studies
in Social History) Book by Kevin Murphy- April 1, 2005
Social
Mobility In Europe
Book by Richard Breen (Editor) - January 30, 2005
Social Mobility in Europe is the most comprehensive study to date of trends in
intergenerational social mobility. It uses data from 11 European countries covering the
last 30 years of the twentieth century to analyze differences between countries and
changes through time. The findings call into question several long-standing views about
social mobility. We find a growing similarity between countries in their class structures
and rates of absolute mobility: in other words, the countries of Europe are now more alike
in their flows between class origins and destinations than they were thirty years ago.
However, differences between countries in social fluidity (that is, the relative chances,
between people of different class origins, of being found in given class destinations)
show no reduction and so there is no evidence supporting theories of modernization which
predict such convergence. Our results also contradict the long-standing Featherman Jones
Hauser hypothesis of a basic similarity in social fluidity in all industrial societies
'with a market economy and a nuclear family system'. There are considerable differences
between countries like Israel and Sweden, where societal openness is very marked, and
Italy, France, and Germany, where social fluidity rates are low. Similarly, there is a
substantial difference between, for example, the Netherlands in the 1970s (which was quite
closed) and in the 1990s, when it ranks among the most open societies. Mobility tables
reflect many underlying processes and this makes it difficult to explain mobility and
fluidity or to provide policy prescriptions. Nevertheless, those countries in which
fluidity increased over the last decades of the twentieth century had not only succeeded
in reducing class inequalities in educational attainment but had also restricted the
degree to which, among people with the same level of education, class background affected
their chances of gaining access to better class destinations.
Experiencing
Race, Class, and Gender in the United States
Book by Roberta Fiske-Rusciano, Virginia Cyrus - August 3, 2004
Adolescent
Lives in Transition: How Social Class Influences the Adjustment to Middle School Book
by Donna Marie San Antonio - June 21, 2004
Research on the impact of social class variables on experiences of adolescents as they
transition to middle school.
From the Back Cover
Addressing the issues of educational equity and social class diversity, Donna Marie San
Antonio documents the challenges adolescents face when making the transition from
elementary school to middle school. The book explores the values, resources, and ways of
interacting that students from diverse economic backgrounds bring from their families and
communities, and how they are enabled or discouraged from integrating these assets in
their new school environment.
Youth
Deviance in Japan: Class Reproduction of Non-Conformity
Book by Robert Stuart Yoder - June 1, 2004
Based on fieldwork spanning two decades, this book presents a longitudinal study of
deviance and crime among youths in Kanagawa-ken, with a focus upon two groups of young
people ? a working class group and a middle-class group. The author, a long-term resident
in Japan, has managed to keep in touch with his subjects for twenty years and offers vivid
descriptions of nonconformity among Japanese youngsters and an in-depth analysis of the
way in which youth deviance is reproduced along class lines.
The
Parlour and the Suburb : Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and Modernity
Book by Judy Giles - April 24, 2004
Classic accounts of modernity have generally ignored or marginalized women, relegating
them to the private sphere of home, sexuality, and personal relationships. The Parlour and
the Suburb argues, however, that home and private life have been significant in the
formation of modern feminine identities. Twentieth-century women's studies tend to focus
on middle-class women, but Giles includes working-class women throughout the book. Topics
covered include domestic service, suburbia, consumption practices, and the wartime figure
of the housewife. The author makes excellent use of oral history, women's magazines,
radio, film, and newspapers to construct a readable narrative. The Parlour and the Suburb
subverts the conventional equation of domesticity with tradition, showing how domestically
minded women could also be modern. The result is a re-evaluation of women's roles in the
private sphere.
The
Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream
Book by Sheryll Cashin - April 1, 2004
From Publishers Weekly
In another of a spate of Brown v. Board of Education 50th anniversary books this season,
this compelling book, beyond a lament about Brown's unfulfilled promise, argues that
integrated, multi-class communities are the only fair solution. Cashin, a law professor at
Georgetown, reminds us that our enduring segregation is the product of private and public
choices, such as exclusionary zoning, federal mortgage insurance and urban redevelopment
(which created hyper-segregation in public housing). Cashin sees inevitable costs to
middle-class black separatism: African-Americans in suburbia are usually steered to
enclaves in the opposite direction of economic growth; when they hit critical mass, whites
flee, poorer blacks move in, schools decline and commercial and retail investors steer
clear. For whites, the search for suburban privilege also has its costs: higher prices for
housing, suburban sprawl and the more intangible incapacity to relate to the
"other." High-poverty schools lack both models for success and activist parents,
and also breed an oppositional culture—all a prelude to the extraordinary rate of
black men in the criminal justice system. Cashin argues that civil rights groups should
focus more on attacking housing discrimination and segregation. She also advocates other
policies: break up the ghettos (such as via programs that give suburban housing vouchers
to those in public housing), offer incentives for ownership in high-poverty neighborhoods,
require new developments to have low-income housing and expand school choice and
cross-jurisdictional choice. Cashin argues powerfully that such integration is crucial to
build democracy and diminish racial barriers: "[T]he rest of society should stop
fearing us and ordering themselves in a way that is designed to avoid us where we exist in
numbers."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.
From Booklist
The landmark Brown v. Board of Education has not led to integrated education for black
children, because our nation's housing patterns are stubbornly segregated along class and
race lines. Because this state of affairs is not written into law, it appears to be
"normal." But Cashin, a law professor, challenges this assumption, asserting
that racially segregated housing, and the resultant segregated schools, is an outgrowth of
government and social policies that can and should be reversed. Severely demarcated
communities of winners and losers exact a high price for society overall, with the rising
cost of ameliorating the results of hypersegregation. Cashin acknowledges the difficulty
of getting higher income Americans to recognize the enlightened self-interest in more
integrated housing, but she offers several strategies for breaking down barriers in
housing patterns. This work supports the objectives of an American ideal that has been
long lost in our current world. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
A
Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World (Themes
in Global Social Change)
Book by William I. Robinson - March 15, 2004
"Yet another book on globalization? If you think you have read too many already,
think again! Here is a fresh look at the subject which shatters the illusion that
globalization has to do with either free international trade or the disappearance of the
state. Robinson expertly gathers the diverse threads that run through our world order and
unerringly hones in on class and transnational power at the heart of it."--Ankie
Hoogvelt, University of Sheffield
Social
Inequalities in Comparative Perspective
Book by Fiona Devine (Editor), Mary C. Waters (Editor) - January 1, 2004
Racial and ethnic divisions in the United States originated in three distinct historical
processes: (1) slavery and the forced migration of Africans in the sixteenth through the
nineteenth centuries; (2) the expansion of the US through conquest of the indigenous
American Indians and the annexation of Spanish-speaking people in the Southwest; and (3)
centuries of voluntary immigration from around the globe.
Harvard
Works Because We Do
Book by Studs Terkel (Foreword), Greg Halpern (Introduction) - November 11, 2003
From Publishers Weekly
In April 2001, Harvard undergraduates drew national media attention when they staged a
sit-in for the Living Wage Campaign, an effort to induce the university to pay its workers
the same living wage guaranteed by the city of Cambridge. (Harvard had been cutting wages
even while its endowment tripled.) Halpern was among the 50 students who stormed the hall
housing the president's office, and this revealing volume of blue-collar narratives in the
tradition of Studs Terkel's classic Working, accompanied by large, b&w photographs of
the subjects, grew out of his passionate activism on their behalf. "You want to know
about regular working stiffs? You want to know what I do? I unloaded from a truck probably
every book you ever read at Harvard," answered loading dock shipper Gary Newmark,
Halpern's first interview subject. With stories in their own words alongside proud but
weary and unsmiling portraits of the chefs, line servers, custodians, guards and
dishwashers who feed and clean up after an elite faculty and student body, Halpern puts a
face on the daunting statistics facing America's minimum-wage workers, who must labor 80
hours a week to cover basic living expenses, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Here, we meet Rachel Herman, a transgendered chef at the Signet Society of Arts and
Letters who describes her cooking as an art form. An anonymous Haitian custodian tells of
the small humiliations of the job-his supervisor leaves pennies on the ground to make sure
he cleans carefully. Bill Brooks, a custodian at the president's office for 30 years,
describes work as escape from homesickness for the small Tennessee hometown he left
decades ago. Though the book's format is not original, the rarefied Harvard setting makes
America's class differences especially stark.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. |
