Social classes Books

Book SynopsisCities and countries around the world are focused on enhancing their living conditions through ways that go beyond the brick and mortar of urban planning. Just like in other highly-urbanised cities, life and living in Singapore is highly dependent on many other dimensions such as health, access to various services, social interactions, inter-group relations and community bonds. Social and behavioural factors will need to be incorporated when designing and implementing policies and interventions to enhance liveability.This invaluable book, based on the proceedings at the Behavioural Sciences Institute Conference 2014, documents an exchange of ideas among practitioners, academics and public intellectuals on liveability in Singapore. The book is organized into four parts. Part I provides an overview of liveability issues. Part II examines liveability from the perspectives of health and urban planning. Part III analyses the relationships linking quality of life to social class and social services. Part IV addresses specific questions on liveability in terms of public transport, cost of living, government's public communications, role of free market values in town planning, civil society, citizen well-being and whether there is a psychological gulf between government and people.This book will provide the reader valuable perspectives, an increased understanding of issues related to the liveability in Singapore and many potential applications to reflect on.Table of ContentsLiveability Issues: Is Singapore Liveable? (Laurence Lien); Liveability Matters (David Chan); Panel Discussion 1 (Laurence Lien, David Chan and Jeremy Lim); Health, Urban Planning and Liveability: Health and Liveability (Jeremy Lim); Urban Planning and Liveability (Heng Chye Kiang); Panel Discussion 2 (Jeremy Lim, Heng Chye Kiang and Han Fook Kwang); Social Class, Social Services and Quality of Life: Social Class and Quality of Life (Tan Ern Ser); Social Services and Quality of Life (Ang Bee Lian); Panel Discussion 3 (Tan Ern Ser, Ang Bee Lian and Sudha Nair); Liveability in Singapore: Closing Panel Discussion (David Chan, Gerard Ee, Han Fook Kwang, Liu Thai Ker and Tommy Koh);

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Book SynopsisAccording to Matteo Battistini, The 'middle class' has become a fetish forged by the social sciences to legitimize American capitalism. In this invaluable monograph, Battistini traces the intellectual history of the middle class, and offers a social history of the political concept, whose specific scientific content has acquired an ideological centrality in the U.S. that has no equal in European history. Middle Class argues that the social sciences have freed the middle class from its historical relationship with work in an attempt to emancipate it from the tension into which it was continually dragged by class conflict. In the process, the social sciences overtun the image of opposing forces of labour and capital, replacing it with an image of a consensual order whereby capitalism and democracy can coexist without tensions.Originally published as Storia di un feticcio. La classe media americana dalle origini alla globalizzazione, by Mimesis, Milan, Italy, 2020.Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1 The Middle Class between History and Social Sciences 1 The (Lower) English Middle Class 2 Bourgeoise and Classe Moyenne 3 Mittelstand and Neuer Mittelstand 4 Crossing the Atlantic2 The American Middle Class A Taken-for-Granted History? 1 The Middle Class as a Historiographic Category 2 The Middle Class as a Sociological Problem 3 The Middle Class of Progressivism 4 Brain Workers of the World, Unite!3 The Middle Class as Historical Project 1 The Demiurge of the Middle Class 2 The New Deal for the Middle Class 3 The Crisis of the Middle Class 4 The Ideological Battle for the Middle Class 5 The Middle Class as Political Concept4 The Rise and Fall of a Fetish 1 The Middle Class of Liberalism 2 The Movement against the Middle Class 3 The New Class of Neoconservatism (and Neoliberalism) 4 The Middle Class as a Figure of the Crisis (in Globalisation)ReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisPrepared by an international team of authors representing leading universities from different parts of the world, this expansive volume elucidates various aspects of the theory of noonomy, developed by Professor S. Bodrunov. A positive assessment is given to the key provisions of this theory (the transition to knowledge-intensive production, the gradual socialisation of economy, the diffusion of property, the progress of solidarity relations, the removal of simulative needs and the progress of a culture). Significant attention is also paid to the global context of ongoing technological and socio-economic transformations, undergirding a political, economic and philosophical understanding of the theory of noonomy.The contributors to the volume are Sergey Glazyev, James Kenneth Galbraith, Oleg Smolin, Enfu Cheng, Siyang Gao, Alan Freeman, Andrey Kolganov, Jesús Pastor García Brigos, Anatoly Porokhovsky, Radhika Desai and Leo Gabriel.Table of Contents2 Noonomy, Globalization and the Pandemic  James Kenneth Galbraith3 Contradictions in Technological and Socio-economic Transformations The New Role of Knowledge on the Way towards Noonomy  Oleg N. Smolin4 Intelligence Economy as a Form of Noonomy and Its Economic and Social Impact  Enfu Cheng and Siyang Gaopart 2Development Strategy and Noonomy5 Mental Objects as a Force of Production A Contribution to the Critique of Noonomy  Alan Freeman6 Predictive Potential of Noonomy to Justify the Development Strategy  Andrey I. Kolganov7 Science and Technologies Property and Public Progress through the Prism of the Cuban Experience  Jesús Pastor García Brigospart 3Noonomy: Reflections of Political Economy8 Noonomy and Geopolitical Economy Natural Allies  Radhika Desai9 Evolution of Political Economy Subject and Method at the Dawn of Digitalization  Anatoly A. Porokhovsky10 Noonomy in the Transition to a Post-capitalist Society Perspectives from the Global South  Leo GabrielPostscript  Alexander BuzgalinIndex

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Book SynopsisContending Global Apartheid: Transversal Solidarities and Politics of Possibility spells out a plea for utopia in a crisis-ridden 21st century of unequal development, exclusionary citizenship, and forced migrations. The volume offers a collection of critical essays on human rights movements, sanctuary spaces, and the emplacement of antiracist conviviality in cities across North and South America, Europe, and Africa. Each intervention proceeds from the idea that cities may accommodate both a humanistic sensibility and a radical potential for social transformation. The figure of the 'migrant' is pivotal. It expounds the prospect of transversal solidarity to capture a plurality of commonalities and to abjure dichotomies between in-group and out-group, the national and the international, or society and institutions.Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgementsList of Figures and TablesNotes on Contributors1 Contending Global Apartheid Transversal Solidarities and Politics of Possibility  Martin Bak Jørgensen and Carl-Ulrik Schierup2 Urban Solidarity Perspectives of Migration and Refugee Accommodation and Inclusion  Harald Bauder3 On Transversal Solidarity An Approach to Migration and Multi-scalar Solidarities  Óscar García Agustín and Martin Bak Jørgensen4 Labor Unions and Undocumented Immigrants Local Perspectives on Transversal Solidarity During daca and dapa  Els de Graauw and Shannon Gleeson5 Rethinking Solidarity in a “Post-migrant Labor Regime” The Case of Hospitality Work in Johannesburg, South Africa  Janet Munakamwe6 Tactical Cosmopolitanism as Urban Negotiation Diversity Management “From Beside”  Loren B. Landau and Iriann Freemantle7 Yellow Vests in Metropolis A Chance for Transversal Solidarity  Christophe Foultier8 Forward through the Past? Reinventing the ‘People’s House’ in Subaltern Stockholm  Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Aleksandra Ålund and Ilhan Kellecioglu9 The Spatial Politics of Far-Right Populism vox, Antifascism and Neighborhood Solidarity in Madrid City  Ana Santamarina10 Sanctuary and Solidarity Cities in the Global South A Review of Latin America  Margaret Godoy and Harald Bauder11 Solidarity Cities in Santiago de Chile and Civil Society Participation during covid-19  Margaret Godoy and Harald Bauder12 Nascent Solidarity and Community Emergency Forced Migration and Accompaniment  Jorge Morales Cardiel13 Migrant Solidarities and Spaces of Encounter in European Cities  Ilker Ataç, Kim Rygiel and Maurice Stierl14 Civil Society Organizations Engaged with Illegalized Migrants in Bern and Vienna Co-production of Urban Citizenship  Ilker Ataç and Sarah SchilligerIndex

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Book SynopsisAn eye-opening reckoning with the care economy, from its roots in racial capitalism to its exponential growth as a new site of profit and extraction.Since the earliest days of the pandemic, care work has been thrust into the national spotlight. The notion of care seems simple enough. Care is about nurturing, feeding, nursing, assisting, and loving human beings. It is “the work that makes all other work possible.” But as historian Premilla Nadasen argues, we have only begun to understand the massive role it plays in our lives and our economy. Nadasen traces the rise of the care economy, from its roots in slavery, where there was no clear division between production and social reproduction, to the present care crisis, experienced acutely by more and more Americans. Today’s care economy, Nadasen shows, is an institutionalized, hierarchical system in which some people’s pain translates into other people’s profit.Yet this is also a story of resistance. Low-wage workers, immigrants, and women of color in movements from Wages for Housework and Welfare Rights to the Movement for Black Lives have continued to fight for and practice collective care. These groups help us envision how, given the challenges before us, we can create a caring world as part of a radical future.Table of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: “One of the Family”: Gender, Labor, and the Care Work DiscourseChapter 2: The Labors of Life: Care Work, Social Reproduction, and CapitalismChapter 3: Social Reproduction, Coercion, and CareChapter 4: “Tell ‘Dem Slavery Done’”: Social Reproduction and the Politics of ResistanceChapter 5. Who Cares? Caring (or Not Caring) for the PoorChapter 6: In Bed with Capitalism: The State, Capital, and Profiting Off Those in NeedChapter 7. Radical CareConclusion

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Book SynopsisEconomist Rob Larson combines wit, righteous anger, and clear-eyed analysis as he dissects the lifestyle, moral bankruptcy, and stupidly large sums of money hoarded by the disgustingly wealthy.The fact that we live in one of the most unequal societies in the history of the world is becoming common knowledge. And while lists of “richest people in x country” may be easy to come by, how much do we really know about the billionaires who sit atop our global economic system? Who are they, really? How did they accumulate their ill-gotten gains? And what kind of depravities do they use to maintain their positions?Turning their own weapons of class-war against them—from the fawning profiles found in the Mansion section of the Wall Street Journal to the national income data buried in white papers meant solely for investors and technocrats—Larson crunches the numbers so you don’t have to.But he doesn’t stop there, because appreciating the sheer scale of the global wealth gap doesn’t even touch on all the ways the ruling class are making us miserable, breaking our society to pieces, and destroying the planet in their pursuit of ever-increasing power and profit. As we behold whole continents on fire, pandemics thrashing public health systems to smithereens, and declining lifespans for the vast majority, Larson argues that the only way forward is to yank on the emergency break and give capitalism the boot.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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