Showing titles in Social Classes & Economic Disparity

In Labor's Love Lost, noted sociologist Andrew Cherlin offers a new historical assessment of the rise and fall of working-class families in America, demonstrating how momentous social and economic transformations have contributed to the collapse of this once-stable social class and what this seismic cultural shift means for the nation's future.

For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable - and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America's republic.

How do we set aside race, colour, creed, class, age, religion, sexual orientation, physicality and all of our perceived differences? Is it truly possible to live without prejudice? And why should we want to? Offering six stories and six simple steps, Diversify explores the value we place on social packaging - how it shapes the way we see ourselves, determines who we become and limits the opportunities available to us.

For most of us, the idea of life inside the golden triad of Park Avenue, Sagaponack, and St. Barths is just as exotic as the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. Luckily, Richard Kirshenbaum has a VIP pass to the Upper East Side and is willing to share the wealth - of gossip. His New York Observer column on uptown social life provides a fascinating glimpse behind the gilded curtain into the swanky restaurants and eye-popping vacation destinations where the one percent gathers.

Just as the industrial capitalism of the 19th century gave way to corporate capitalism in the 20th, recent decades have witnessed corporate capitalism evolving into a new phase, which Ehrenreich calls "Third Wave Capitalism." Third Wave Capitalism is marked by apparent contradictions: Rapid growth in productivity and lagging wages; fabulous wealth for the one percent and the persistence of high levels of poverty; increases in the standard of living and increases in mental illness, and much more.

Unequal Gains offers a radically new understanding of the economic evolution of the United States, providing a complete picture of the uneven progress of America from colonial times to today. While other economic historians base their accounts on American wealth, Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson focus instead on income - and the result is a bold reassessment of the American economic experience.

"This is the story of Mary Prince", who was sold into slavery at the age of 12 for £38 sterling. It is the first account of the life of a black woman ever to be published in the United Kingdom, and it was published at a time when slavery was still legal in the British Colonies. "The history of Mary Prince" is firsthand testimony of the brutalities of enslavement. Its tone is direct and authentic, which makes this vivid story go straight to the heart.

Il nous avait tous réunis, sur le golf somptueux de sa demeure privée. Et nous le suivions radieux, portant fièrement à tour de rôle le sac garni de ses clubs.

Voici 3 textes de Jean Jaurès : "Idéalisme et matérialisme", "Discours à la jeunesse" et "République et Socialisme". Ces 3 textes forts permettent de comprendre la pensée et les idées d'un des plus grands hommes politiques français, dont les convictions et les valeurs socialistes sont fondatrices de notre vie démocratique actuelle.

Le chômage, la précarité, les dettes à rembourser, les retraites à payer, les soins à assurer, c'est l'héritage que les baby-boomers transmettent à leurs enfants. Après avoir reçu en partage une France prospère et championne de la croissance, notre génération laisse une France défaite. Comment en est-on arrivé là ?

From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? The Age of Acquiescence seeks to solve that mystery.

In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour.

The best educated and most prosperous have the most stable families, while working class families have seen the greatest increase in relationship instability. Why? The book provides the answer: greater economic inequality has profoundly changed marriage markets, the way men and women match up when they search for a life partner. It has produced a larger group of high-income men than women; written off the men at the bottom; and left a larger group of women with a smaller group of comparable men...

Tattoos. Unwed pregnancy. Giving up on shaving…showering…and employment. These used to be signatures of a trashy individual. Now they’re the new norm. What happened to etiquette, hygiene, and self-restraint? Charlotte Hays, Southern gentlewoman extraordinaire, takes a humorous look at the spread of white trash culture to all levels of American society.

One progressive social worker's observation and opinion as to the decline and collapse of the American social and economic system, in which the American dream is unfairly rigged from the moment we enter public education, where the rich continue to get richer and the rest of us are left to get it the best way we can.

Ruled by the evil White cockroaches, on an oppressive plantation, Anton Indigo, Antrea Violet, and a thousand other ants escape to seek freedom on Ant Farm. When they arrive, although their lives are not utopian, the tiny insects find themselves with much more freedom and prosperity than ever before. Can the ants maintain this positive new lifestyle? Or will some of the more power-hungry bugs prevail, and deteriorate the new society into the same nightmare from which they escaped in the first place?

President Obama's goal is to create a two-class society: the poor and the super-rich. Decades of liberals - and even a few supposed "Republicans" - have helped push America toward this goal, and President Obama hopes to finish their work. Why? Because this two-class society cements the crony capitalism that feeds big government and keeps corrupt big shots like Obama and his friends in power, permanently enshrined as the ruling class. Meanwhile, it keeps everyone else hooked on the government like a drug that's impossible to quit.

This classic text addresses one of the most important issues in modern social theory and policy: how social inequality is reproduced from one generation to the next. With the original 1987 publication of Ain’t No Makin’ It Jay MacLeod brought us to the Clarendon Heights housing project where we met the "Brothers" and the "Hallway Hangers". Their story of poverty, race, and defeatism moved listeners and challenged ethnic stereotypes.

Warrior Ways focuses on the lore produced by modern American warriors, illuminating the ways in which members of the armed services creatively express the complex experience of military life. In short, lively essays, contributors to the volume, all of whom have close personal or professional relationships to the military, examine battlefield talismans, personal narrative (storytelling), “Jody calls” (marching and running cadences), slang, homophobia and transgressive humor, music, and photography, among other cultural expressions.

In its history since Independence, India has seen widely different economic experiments: from Jawharlal Nehru's pragmatism to the rigid state socialism of Indira Gandhi to the brisk liberalization of the 1990s. So which strategy best addresses India's, and by extension the world's, greatest moral challenge: lifting a great number of extremely poor people out of poverty? Bhagwati and Panagariya argue forcefully that only one strategy will help the poor to any significant effect: economic growth, led by markets overseen and encouraged by liberal state policies.