Social classes Books

Book SynopsisA cruise along the streets of Chennai - or Silicon Valley - filled with professional young Indian men and women, reveals the new face of India. In this book, the author examine one particularly striking group who have taken part in this development.Trade Review"Tamil Brahmans is a solid, original work that makes a major contribution to our understanding of a vitally important part of the world and of a unique group of people whose numbers in the United States are growing year by year and who are becoming increasingly influential at the highest professional levels in medicine, law, academia, business, and government." (Sylvia J. Vatuk, University of Illinois at Chicago)"

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Book SynopsisWhen we think about young people dealing drugs, we tend to picture it happening on urban streets, in disadvantaged, crime - ridden neighborhoods. The authors offer an ethnography of the culture of suburban drug dealers. It will be of interest to scholars and policy makers alike.Trade Review"Code of the Suburb takes us into the world of young white suburban drug dealing and in doing so, provides a fascinating and powerful counterpoint to the devastation of the drug war in poor, minority communities. To readers familiar with that context, the absence of police and prisons-indeed, of virtually any negative consequences for selling and using drugs-is quite striking." (Alice Goffman, author of On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City)

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Book SynopsisOffers an ethnography of the culture of suburban drug dealers. This book shows that suburban drug dealers accord status to deliberate avoidance of conflict, which helps keep their drug markets more peaceful - and, consequently, less likely to be noticed by law enforcement.Trade Review"Code of the Suburb takes us into the world of young white suburban drug dealing and in doing so, provides a fascinating and powerful counterpoint to the devastation of the drug war in poor, minority communities. To readers familiar with that context, the absence of police and prisons-indeed, of virtually any negative consequences for selling and using drugs-is quite striking." (Alice Goffman, author of On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City)

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Book SynopsisThese seven essays on the structure of Chinese society are based on articles contributed by Fei to Chinese newspapers in 1947 and 1948. Six case histories from a study of the gentry by Yung-teh Chow are appended. The chief interest and charm of this book lie in the fact that it is not directed to the Western reader; these were studies written in Chinese, by an erudite Chinese, for a Chinese public. . . . Mrs. Redfield is to be complimented for her own careful research in preparing this translation for a non-Chinese public.Robert F. Spencer, American Anthropologist

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Book SynopsisThe German Democratic Republic has become the subject of novels, memoirs and films, and the backdrop for general debates over the power of intellectuals in contemporary media and society. This collection considers the demise of the GDR and its impact on the place of intellectuals.

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Book SynopsisRoger V. Gould argues that human conflict is more likely to occur in symmetrical relationships - among friends or social equals - than in hierarchical ones, wherein the difference of social rank between two individuals is already established.

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Book SynopsisRoger V. Gould argues that human conflict is more likely to occur in symmetrical relationships - among friends or social equals - than in hierarchical ones, wherein the difference of social rank between two individuals is already established.

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Book SynopsisOver a period of six years, at factory and warehouse, at the tavern across the road, in their homes and union meetings, on fishing trips and social outings, David Halle talked and listened to workers of an automated chemical plant in New Jersey's industrial heartland. He has emerged with an unusually comprehensive and convincingly realistic picture of blue-collar life in America. Throughout the book, Halle illustrates his analysis with excerpts of workers' views on everything from strikes, class consciousness, politics, job security, and toxic chemicals to marriage, betting on horses, God, home-ownership, drinking, adultery, the Super Bowl, and life after death. Halle challenges the stereotypes of the blue-collar mentality and argues that to understand American class consciousness we must shift our focus from the working class to be the working man.

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Book SynopsisDrawing on remarkably frank, in-depth interviews with 160 successful men in the United States and France, Michèle Lamont provides a rare and revealing collective portrait of the upper-middle classthe managers, professionals, entrepreneurs, and experts at the center of power in society. Her book is a subtle, textured description of how these men define the values and attitudes they consider essential in separating themselvesand their classfrom everyone else. Money, Morals, and Manners is an ambitious and sophisticated attempt to illuminate the nature of social class in modern society. For all those who downplay the importance of unequal social groups, it will be a revelation. A powerful, cogent study that will provide an elevated basis for debates in the sociology of culture for years to come.David Gartman, American Journal of SociologyA major accomplishment! Combining cultural analysis and comparative approach with a splendid literary style, this book significantly broadens the under

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Book SynopsisPresents an analysis of special education enrollment that has created fresh kinds of inequality. This book argues that this inequity in treatment is directly linked to the disparity in resources possessed by the students' parents.Trade Review"This is a timely book on the important issue of the role of social class differences in how parents cope with a special education diagnosis." - Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania"

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Book SynopsisUses the historic rise, alarming fall, and equally dramatic renewal of Chicago's North Kenwood - Oakland neighborhood to explore the politics of race and class in contemporary urban America. This title explores the battles between haves and have-nots, home owners and apartment dwellers, and newcomers and old-timers.Trade Review"A century from now, when today's sociologists and journalists are dust and their books are too, those who want to understand what the hell happened to Chicago will be finding the answer in this one." - Chicago Reader "To see how diversity creates strange and sometimes awkward bedfellows... turn to Mary Pattillo's Black on the Block." - Boston Globe"

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Book SynopsisThis historical study of intellectuals asks, for every period, who they were, how important they were, and how they saw themselves in relation to other Americans. Lewis Perry considers intellectuals in their varied historical roles as learned gentlemen, as clergymen and public figures, as professionals, as freelance critics, and as a professoriate. Looking at the changing reputation of the intellect itself, Perry examines many forms of anti-intellectualism, showing that some of these were encouraged by intellectuals as surely as by their antagonists. This work is interpretative, critical, and highly provocative, and it provides what is all too often missing in the study of intellectualsa sense of historical orientation.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A] fascinating and timely new book. . . .Strolovitch treats the term 'crisis' as a 'keyword': a type of word that has its meaning shaped by social and political processes as well as a word that’s political meaning imbues power. That power includes when it’s used as well as when it’s not." -- Heath Brown * 3Streams *"Strolovitch builds a strong case for how privileged communities use and usurp true crises in marginalized communities to gain resourced and power. This is a must read for students of economics, public policy, race relations, political science, and sociology." * Choice *“When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People provides an enlightening analysis of how the idea of crisis has been constructed, evolved, and deployed by actors from the elites at the center of our governing apparatus to activists pushing from the margins. In this important book, we recognize that the frame of crisis is another tool that must be accounted for when trying to understand the political and economic landscape that we face and some seek to change.” -- Cathy Cohen | author of "Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics""When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People is a powerful examination of crisis construction and of the ramifications of crisis politics for both advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Strolovitch brilliantly develops her distinctive vision for a more meaningful and just American democracy, while covering exciting new terrain that has been almost entirely ignored by political scientists." -- Paul Frymer | author of "Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion""Strolovitch’s study is a meticulous and timely reminder that crises are neither natural occurrences nor neutral in how they direct action in a context marked by longstanding inequalities. Crises, instead, are political constructions. From housing and unemployment to policing and public health, this groundbreaking book will transform our thinking about the crises that have dominated public attention over the last few decades.” -- Chloe Thurston | author of "At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination and the American State""This is a sharp and much needed intervention in how political science conceptualises and applies the idea of 'crisis' to moments of upheaval, uncertainty and transformation. As Strolovitch persuasively argues, a crisis is not quite what it seems. Those marganlized groups, for whom misfortune is a policy goal, do not necessarily experience crises. Instead, crisis, like much else in American political life, is reserved for those powerful groups who must be protected from life's vagaries." -- Akwugo Emejulu | author of "Fugitive Feminism"“Strolovitch conducts an exhaustive rhetorical analysis of crisis in well-selected print sources that incorporate both media and government, carving out distinctive territory in its direct focus on the rhetoric of crisis in politics.” -- Julie Novkov | University at Albany, SUNY“The evidence that Strolovitch marshalls is wide-ranging, spanning sources from newspapers to organizational players to congress and the presidency. The time span and grasp of history is extremely impressive with writing that is accessible and fluid.” -- Leslie McCall | The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkTable of ContentsList of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations and Acronyms Acknowledgments Introduction. Crisis Politics Part I Crisis and Non-Crisis in American Politics Chapter 1 Crisis as a Political Keyword Chapter 2 What We Talk about When We Talk about Crisis Chapter 3 Regressions, Reversals, and Red Herrings Part II Foreclosure Crises and Non-Crises Chapter 4 When Does a Crisis Begin? Chapter 5 How to Semantically Mask a Crisis Conclusion and Epilogue. Will These Crises Go to Waste? Appendices. Overview of Sources and Methods A Working with Textual Data: Caveats and Considerations B Sources, Methods, and Coding Protocols C List of Main Sources of Data and Evidence D Supplementary Figures and Tables Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"No one knows rural China better than Scott Rozelle. In this brilliant, original, thought-provoking, and important study, Rozelle and Natalie Hell not only make China's potential human capital crisis visible, but provide actionable solutions based on rigorous research."--Hongbin Li, James Liang Director of the China Program, Stanford University "Professor Rozelle is a renowned economist specializing in early childhood education and rural development, and his book on rural China is a culmination of over twenty years of research on rural China, which has generated intense interest among policymakers and philanthropists. He convincingly argues that intervention into early childhood education is the most effective way of reducing the inequality that is a problem not only in rural China but in many parts of the world." --James Liang, chairman and cofounder of Ctrip "This is the most readable and compelling economics book of the year, and probably the most important. From the opening pages, a clear and compelling argument unfolds: China faces a labor quality crisis, as hundreds of millions of young rural workers lack the education and robust health they need to participate in China's emerging high tech economy. Nobody who cares about China can afford to ignore Invisible China."--From Subject Received Size Categories Barry Naughton Blurb for Rozelle & Hell/Invisible China Wed 5:51 PM 92 KBTable of ContentsAuthor’s Note Introduction 1. The Middle-Income Trap 2. China’s Looming Transition 3. The Worst-Case Scenario 4. How China Got Here 5. A Shaky Foundation 6. Invisible Barriers 7. Behind Before They Start Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix: The REAP Team Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe United States boasts scores of organizations that offer crucial representation for groups that are marginalized in national politics. This work explores the challenges and opportunities they face, as waning legal discrimination coincides with increasing political and economic inequalities within the populations they represent.Trade Review"Using impressive original data, Dara Strolovitch probes an important topic: the failure of interest groups that seek to represent the disadvantaged to advocate for the even more disadvantaged within their constituencies. This is a well-written and compelling work that will deepen our understanding of American democracy." - Kay Schlozman, Boston College"

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A] fascinating and timely new book. . . .Strolovitch treats the term 'crisis' as a 'keyword': a type of word that has its meaning shaped by social and political processes as well as a word that’s political meaning imbues power. That power includes when it’s used as well as when it’s not." -- Heath Brown * 3Streams *"Strolovitch builds a strong case for how privileged communities use and usurp true crises in marginalized communities to gain resourced and power. This is a must read for students of economics, public policy, race relations, political science, and sociology." * Choice *“When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People provides an enlightening analysis of how the idea of crisis has been constructed, evolved, and deployed by actors from the elites at the center of our governing apparatus to activists pushing from the margins. In this important book, we recognize that the frame of crisis is another tool that must be accounted for when trying to understand the political and economic landscape that we face and some seek to change.” -- Cathy Cohen | author of "Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics""When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People is a powerful examination of crisis construction and of the ramifications of crisis politics for both advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Strolovitch brilliantly develops her distinctive vision for a more meaningful and just American democracy, while covering exciting new terrain that has been almost entirely ignored by political scientists." -- Paul Frymer | author of "Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion""Strolovitch’s study is a meticulous and timely reminder that crises are neither natural occurrences nor neutral in how they direct action in a context marked by longstanding inequalities. Crises, instead, are political constructions. From housing and unemployment to policing and public health, this groundbreaking book will transform our thinking about the crises that have dominated public attention over the last few decades.” -- Chloe Thurston | author of "At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination and the American State""This is a sharp and much needed intervention in how political science conceptualises and applies the idea of 'crisis' to moments of upheaval, uncertainty and transformation. As Strolovitch persuasively argues, a crisis is not quite what it seems. Those marganlized groups, for whom misfortune is a policy goal, do not necessarily experience crises. Instead, crisis, like much else in American political life, is reserved for those powerful groups who must be protected from life's vagaries." -- Akwugo Emejulu | author of "Fugitive Feminism"“Strolovitch conducts an exhaustive rhetorical analysis of crisis in well-selected print sources that incorporate both media and government, carving out distinctive territory in its direct focus on the rhetoric of crisis in politics.” -- Julie Novkov | University at Albany, SUNY“The evidence that Strolovitch marshalls is wide-ranging, spanning sources from newspapers to organizational players to congress and the presidency. The time span and grasp of history is extremely impressive with writing that is accessible and fluid.” -- Leslie McCall | The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkTable of ContentsList of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations and Acronyms Acknowledgments Introduction. Crisis Politics Part I Crisis and Non-Crisis in American Politics Chapter 1 Crisis as a Political Keyword Chapter 2 What We Talk about When We Talk about Crisis Chapter 3 Regressions, Reversals, and Red Herrings Part II Foreclosure Crises and Non-Crises Chapter 4 When Does a Crisis Begin? Chapter 5 How to Semantically Mask a Crisis Conclusion and Epilogue. Will These Crises Go to Waste? Appendices. Overview of Sources and Methods A Working with Textual Data: Caveats and Considerations B Sources, Methods, and Coding Protocols C List of Main Sources of Data and Evidence D Supplementary Figures and Tables Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA thought-provoking challenge to our ideas about philanthropy, marking it as a deeply political activity that allows the wealthy to dictate more than we think.Trade Review"Private Virtues, Public Vices is essential reading for navigating our present-day collision course between widespread economic inequality and democratic governance." * The Review of Politics *"Ms. Saunders-Hastings, a political scientist at Ohio State University, believes that philanthropy is in tension with democracy—may even be harmful to it. Her critique is worth taking seriously. . ." * The Wall Street Journal *"In Private Virtues, Public Vices: Philanthropy and Democratic Equality, Emma Saunders-Hastings reminds us that contributing private wealth for the public good—by definition—has always been a political act. . . . the book is timely—and timeless, for it goes beyond calling for reforms to suggest a framework for thinking not only about philanthropy but also about democracy, equality, and justice." * Philanthropy News Digest *"Saunders-Hastings’ book is of great relevance, as it uncovers the fundamental interests behind most philanthropic giving, other than addressing widening inequality, escalating poverty, and other global concerns. . . . a must-read for all who have a keen interest in philanthropic work on a national and international level." * Voluntas *“The best philosophical illumination of the tension-ridden relationship between philanthropy and democracy. Better still, in exploring the institutional design of contemporary philanthropy, Saunders-Hastings makes original contributions to democratic theory itself, especially as concerns the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory and the basis of objections to paternalism.” -- Rob Reich, Stanford University“Philanthropy is a hot topic these days. This crisply and clearly written book reframes the ethical discussion focused on rich people/countries’ debt to those less well-off and recasts practical concerns about effective giving to focus on the politics and power of giving. Private Virtues, Public Vices poses challenging questions in this age of global inequality. Saunders-Hastings couples precise arguments with thoughtfully chosen real-world examples to convey a strong sense of urgency.” -- Lisa Jane Disch, University of MichiganTable of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Donations and Deference Chapter 2. Equality and Philanthropic Relationships Chapter 3. Plutocratic Philanthropy Chapter 4. Philanthropic Paternalism Chapter 5. Ordinary Donors and Democratic Philanthropy Chapter 6. International Philanthropy Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAs the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern. China's growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the workers who have fueled the country's rise come from rural villages and have never been to high school. While this national growth strategy has been effective for three decades, the unskilled wage rate is finally rising, inducing companies inside China to automate at an unprecedented rate and triggering an exodus of companies seeking cheaper labor in other countries. Ten years ago, almost every product for sale in an American Walmart was made in China. Today, that is no longer the case. With the changing demand for labor, China seems to have no good back-up plan. For all of its investment in physTrade Review"If rural Chinese do not learn essential cognitive skills, the authors predict mass unemployment, social unrest, and perhaps a crash that would 'lead to huge economic shocks around the world.' China’s rulers should order crates of de-worming pills—and copies of this book." * Economist *"While the world focuses on China’s rich, the country is facing economic and political disaster if it doesn’t invest heavily in educating its rural population, the economists Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell argue in this recent book. Both authors are part of the successful US-China Rural Education Action Program. As they note, Taiwan and South Korea escaped the middle-income trap by ensuring that large numbers of students finished high school, enabling the move to a higher-end economy. In China, by contrast, the high school attainment rate is just 30 percent." * Foreign Policy *"For a startling depiction of Chinese inequality today, Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell’s Invisible China is not to be missed." -- Niall Ferguson * Times Literary Supplement *"The biggest obstacle to China’s development is that rural children—two-thirds of the total—do terribly in school, argues this stunningly researched book. Many are malnourished, lack reading glasses or suffer from energy-sapping intestinal worms. If these basic problems are not fixed, say the authors, China will struggle to reach its goal of broad prosperity." * Economist, Best Books of 2021 *“Rozelle… has spent the last 30 years researching China’s labor force and its rural-urban divide.” * The Guardian *"Invisible China provides a stunning overview of economic, health and education policies in rural China." * East West Notes *"An important and informative new book . . . suggests that China lacks the educated workforce to capitalize on its success and reach the next rung in the ladder of development. . . . Making invisible China more visible is a necessary first step to bring meaningful changes in rural China. This new book by Rozelle and Hell is an important contribution to this endeavor." * Peterson Institute for International Economics *"This book by development economist Scott Rozelle and researcher Natalie Hell highlights problems that often remain invisible in the face of China’s rapid economic rise. It’s the drama of the rural low-educated workers who were the motor driving China’s growth since the 1980s, but are now more and more left jobless and hopeless in their home villages as low-skilled work is increasingly outsourced to other countries or is taken over by robotics. In many ways, China and the Chinese people are going forward – yet the rural population is left behind, and it’s China’s Achilles’ heel. This book focuses on this invisible side to China’s rise and on how such a big story, with such major implications, could be so little known." * What's on Weibo *“The authors are in no way hostile to China or its government system. But having spent years researching in rural China they not only feel strongly for this unseen China but want the situation to change so that China continues to prosper and thus enable the wider world to prosper.” * Asia Sentinel *“Rozelle and Hell would like to see China succeed, and remind us how important this is for the whole world. But they are concerned with the slow progress in reforming education. China has recently become more authoritarian, limiting cooperation with the education systems of other countries and even restricting the foreign books that children can read. Invisible China sounds a wake-up call.” * The Strategist *“Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell’s remarkable book represents the culmination of four decades of research carried out by Rural Education Action Plan’s (REAP) teams in China’s poor rural hinterlands… The book’s contributions are… insightful.” * China Quarterly *"Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell published Invisible China in 2020 as the pandemic began. The book arrived just before a wave of new policy trends that emerged throughout 2021, and it offers important context for those trends. It serves as a useful window to readers who want to move beyond the cities of China and begin to explore the vast and complex rural interior of the country." * China Source *"[Invisible China] provides an extensive coverage of problems for China in the sphere of human capital development... the book is rich in content and is not constrained only to China, but provides important parallels with past and present developments in other countries." * Journal of Chinese Political Science *“This book… [examines] a [wide] range of problems regarding China’s performance not just in education but also in health outcomes.” * Asian-Pacific Economic Literature *"Invisible China is an important, clearly argued, and original work. It presents a side of China that is all too evident to hundreds of millions of people living there, but that often escapes notice internationally. Anyone interested in China's economic and political future, and its impact on the world, will want to read this book." -- James Fallows, author of Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China“No one knows rural China better than Scott Rozelle. In this brilliant, original, thought-provoking, and important study, Rozelle and Natalie Hell not only make China’s potential human capital crisis visible, but provide actionable solutions based on rigorous research.” -- Hongbin Li, James Liang Director of the China Program, Stanford University“Professor Rozelle is a renowned economist specializing in early childhood education and rural development, and his book on rural China is a culmination of over twenty years of research on rural China, which has generated intense interest among policymakers and philanthropists. He convincingly argues that intervention into early childhood education is the most effective way of reducing the inequality that is a problem not only in rural China but in many parts of the world.” -- James Liang, chairman and cofounder of Ctrip“This is the most readable and compelling economics book of the year, and probably the most important. From the opening pages, a clear and compelling argument unfolds: China faces a labor quality crisis, as hundreds of millions of young rural workers lack the education and robust health they need to participate in China's emerging high tech economy. Nobody who cares about China can afford to ignore Invisible China.” -- Barry Naughton, School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego“This book is an important contribution to the study of China. China’s size and linkages with other economies mean that the arguments and data presented here have wide-ranging importance. There is still time to avoid the ‘doomsday’ outcome if policy shifts in China, and Rozelle and Hell’s work is poised to have a real impact if its message is heeded.”—Pietra Rivoli, Georgetown University -- Pietra Rivoli, Georgetown University"[Invisible China] examines the impending challenge of China’s rural poverty and the mechanisms that have allowed it to develop, promoting concrete actions that China can take to reduce the humanitarian risks of its urban–rural divide." * Journal of Economic Literature *"The book... delivers a solid analysis, and provides clear and feasible policy recommendations... a must-read both for scholars interested in Chinese studies and for policymakers." * Europe-Asia Studies *"Rozelle and Hell have written an eloquent description and analysis of China’s growing social challenge." * The Developing Economies *"Invisible China works extremely well as a source of inspiration for students, researchers, and practitioners wanting to work with rural China." * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAuthor’s Note Introduction 1. The Middle-Income Trap 2. China’s Looming Transition 3. The Worst-Case Scenario 4. How China Got Here 5. A Shaky Foundation 6. Invisible Barriers 7. Behind Before They Start Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix: The REAP Team Notes Index

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Book SynopsisGreat American City demonstrates the powerfully enduring impact of place. Based on one of the most ambitious studies in the history of social science, Robert J. Sampson's Great American City presents the fruits of over a decade's research to support an argument that we all feel and experience every day: life is decisively shaped by your neighborhood. Engaging with the streets and neighborhoods of Chicago, Sampson, in this new edition, reflects on local and national changes that have transpired since his book's initial publication, including a surge in gun violence and novel forms of segregation despite an increase in diversity. New research, much of it a continuation of the influential discoveries in Great American City, has followed, and here, Sampson reflects on its meaning and future directions. Sampson invites readers to see the status of the research initiative that serves as the foundation of the first editionthe Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN)a

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Book SynopsisIn 1980, the author's world was turned upside down when the steel mill in Southeast Chicago where her father worked abruptly closed. In the ensuing years, ninety thousand other area residents would also lose their jobs in the mills. In this book, she examines the fate of her family and that of blue-collar America at large.

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Book SynopsisIn 1980, the author's world was turned upside down when the steel mill in Southeast Chicago where her father worked abruptly closed. In the ensuing years, ninety thousand other area residents would also lose their jobs in the mills. In this book, she examines the fate of her family and that of blue-collar America at large.

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Book SynopsisIn Inequality in Canada Eric Sager considers one of the defining – but hardest to define – ideas of our era and traces its different meanings and contexts across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Trade Review"This is intellectual history at its best and Eric Sager is at the top of his game: confident, but never arrogant, comfortable with his sources, and critical, in the best sense of that word. Inequality in Canada is a masterful piece of scholarship." Donald Wright, University of New Brunswick"As we think about where we have been and where we want to be, one useful starting place is Eric Sager's Inequality in Canada, which offers a detailed account of how politicians, preachers, economists, and editorialists have articulated and debated the issue since colonial days. Sager's concluding chapter, "To Explore and to Know Again," is so passionate, wise, sad, and engaging that readers should try to stay with him to the end." Literary Review of Canada

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Book SynopsisThis book examines experiences and implications of 'against-the-grain' school choices, where white middle class families choose ordinary and 'low performing' secondary schools for their children. It offers a unique view of identity formation, taking in matters like family history, locality and whiteness.Trade ReviewSociety for Education Studies Book Prize 2012 Winner - Runner-up 'The production of this beautifully crafted and important book adds to what we know of education policy in practice and brings complex and fresh evidence to the setting of school choice, class and lived social identity. This work will be a major reference point for sociological theory and policy in practice for some time to come.' - Meg Maguire, Journal of Education Policy 'This book focuses on the persepctives of white middle-class parents who make 'against'-the-grain school choices for their children in urban England. It provides key insights into the dynamics of class practising that are played out in these choices and the multiple narratives and contexts that influence them.' - Dympna Devine, British Journal of Sociology of Education 'This magnificent book...will command widespread interest.' - Mike Savage, British Journal of Sociology of Education 'This book will be of interest to education and social policy researchers, sociologists, education professionals and indeed left-leaning white middle class parents.' - Nicola Ingram, British Journal of Sociology of Education 'A thoughtful and very interesting analysis by a talented group of researchers.' - Professor Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania, USA 'White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling is a very important book. Looking at class practices and habitus as linked to family and schooling, the authors unpack the ways in which choice of secondary school is increasingly linked to the forging of social structure. In so doing, they bring the ability of the middle class to erect boundaries both symbolically and geographically into a new era of social class construction, while instantiating increasingly widespread choice of secondary school for one's children as a key and pivotal site for class formation and contestation. This is a 'must read' for anyone interested in contemporary class formation.' Professor Lois Weis, Graduate School of Education, University at Buffalo, USATable of ContentsAcknowledgements 1. Introduction: The White Middle Classes in the Twenty-First Century – Identities Under Siege? 2. White Middle Class Identity Formation: Theory and Practice 3. Family History, Class Practices and Habitus 4. Habitus as a Sense of Place 5. Against-the-Grain School Choice in Neoliberal Times 6. A Darker Shade of Pale: Whiteness as Integral to Middle Class Identity 7. The Psychosocial: Ambivalences and Anxieties of Privilege 8. Young People and the Urban Comprehensive: Remaking Cosmopolitan Citizens or Reproducing Hegemonic White Middle Class 9. 9. Values? Reinvigorating Democracy: Middle Class Moralities in Neoliberal Times Conclusion: Appendix 1: Methods and Methodology Appendix 2: Parental Occupations and Sector Appendix 3: The Sample Families in Terms of ACORN Categories References

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Book SynopsisThis book puts to the test the prominent claim that social class has declined in importance in an era of affluence, choice and the waning of tradition. Arguing against this view, this study vividly uncovers the multiple ways in which class stubbornly persists.Table of ContentsIntroduction: From Affluence to Reflexivity PART I: THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES Reflexivity and its Discontents Conceptualizing Class and Reconceptualizing Reflexivity PART II: SEARCHING FOR THE REFLEXIVE WORKER Educational Reproduction Today Topographical Trajectories Distinction and Denigration 'Class' as Discursive and Political Construct Conclusion: Rigid Relations through Shifting Substance Appendix: The Search Process

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Book SynopsisBringing together leading scholars to investigate trends in contemporary social life, this book examines the current patterning of identities based on class and community, gender and generation, 'race', faith and ethnicity, and derived from popular culture, exploring debates about social change, individualization and the re-making of social class.Trade Review'This important collection of original essays, using state-of-the-art quantitative and qualitative methods, offers fascinating insights into the complex ways that power relations inscribe contemporary social identities.' - Professor Mike Savage, the University of Manchester, UK 'This is an important book on multicultural Britain. It grounds theoretical debates in richly textured empirical analyses, and parts of the book read like a good novel, with real lives and histories unfolding in front of our eyes. Students and professional academics interested in the changing dynamics of social identities in contemporary societies especially culturally diverse societies such as the U.S, Brazil, South Africa, or India - should read this book. Humanists in particular will find this work done by their colleagues in the social sciences very illuminating, and it will suggest ways that humanists and social scientists can work together to explore topics of common interest. Social identity, the focus of this volume, is clearly one such topic.' - Satya P. Mohanty Professor of English, Cornell University, and Director of the International Future of Minority Studies (FMS) Summer Institute (www.fmsproject.cornell.edu), USA '...this edited collection delivers the greatest beneficial impact when read in themed sections; however, it is certainly flexible if the reader only wishes to focus on a specific research project. An essential read for all those interested in contemporary formations of identity in the 21st century.' - Michelle Addison, Newcastle University UK, SociologyTable of ContentsIntroduction - Negotiating Liveable Lives: Intelligibility and Identity in Contemporary Britain; M.Wetherell Part I: CLASS AND COMMUNITY Individualisation and the Decline of Class Identity; A.Heath, J.Curtice & G.Elgenius 'I Don't Want to be Classed, But We Are All Classed': Making Liveable Lives Across Generations; B.Rogaly & B.Taylor Steel, Identity, Community: Regenerating Identities in a South Wales Town; V.Walkerdine White Middle-Class Identity Work Through 'Against the Grain' School Choices; D.James, D.Reay, G.Crozier, F.Jamieson, P.Beedell, S.Hollingworth & K.Williams Part II: ETHNICITIES AND ENCOUNTERS Ethnicities Without Guarantees: An Empirical Approach; R.Harris & B.Rampton 'Con-Viviality' and Beyond: Identity Dynamics in a Young Men's Prison; R.Earle & C.Phillips Imagining the 'Other'/Figuring Encounter: White English Middle-Class and Working-Class Identifications; S.Clarke, S.Garner & R.Gilmour The Subjectivities of Young Somali: The Impact of Processes of Disidentification and Disavowal; G.Valentine & D.Sporton Living London: Women Negotiating Identities in a Post-Colonial City; R.Cox, S.Jackson, M.Khatwa & D.Kiwan Part III: Popular Culture and Relationality The Making of Modern Motherhoods: Storying an Emergent Identity; R.Thomson, M.J.Kehily, L.Hadfield & S.Sharpe The Allure of Belonging: Young People's Drinking Practices and Collective Identification; C.Griffin, A.Bengry-Howell, C.Hackley, W.Mistral & I.Szmigin The Transformation of Intimacy: Classed Identities in the Moral Economy of Reality Television; B.Skeggs & H.Wood

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Book SynopsisHaving returned to Russia in 1990 after two decades, the writer known as Abram Tertz creates a vivid picture of today's Russian intelligentsia and its role as conscience and critic since the fall of communism, as well as a chilling portrait of economic and political stagnation under Yeltsin.Trade ReviewAn unflinching, passionate account of what has gone wrong in Russia since the collapse of the Bolshevik system-and of the complicity of the most privileged segment of the intelligentsia in the Yeltsin-era crimes and catastrophes--by a voice of incomparable moral authority, intelligence, and persuasiveness. Susan SontagTable of ContentsIntroduction Strolls with Pushkin A Journey to the River Black Remembering Cathy Nepomnyaschchy and Slava Yastremski Notes Notes on the Text

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Book SynopsisDalits constitute about one sixth of India's population. Spread over the entire country, and belonging to many religions, they have become a major political force. As a document of the long silenced and long denied sufferings of the Dalits, this work presents a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness.Trade ReviewAs an editor and writer, Valmiki has done much to stake out a space for Dalit literary expression, well exemplified by this narrative. Fascinating cultural and personal history. Booklist Mukherjee offers English-language readers an accessible translation of Valmiki's engaging memoir that will prove invaluable. -- Maggie Ronkin The Journal of Asian Studies A "must read" for courses in postcolonial, cultural, and South Asian studies. -- Mohd. Asaduddin H-AsiaTable of ContentsForeword, by Arun Prabha Mukherjee Preface to the Hindi Edition Introduction, by Arun Prabha Mukherjee Joothan Glossary

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Book SynopsisNo Country argues for a rethinking of the genre of working-class literature. Sonali Perera expands our understanding of of working-class fiction by considering a range of international and non-canonical texts, identifying textual, political, and historical linkages often overlooked by Eurocentric and postcolonial scholarship.Trade ReviewSonali Perera's No Country offers a powerful new theorizing of working-class literature in a global dimension. Gender inflections are given in unprecedented detail, through deeply learned and meticulously documented close readings of an astonishingly diversified collection of texts. Perera's readings of Marx are relevant to contemporary realities. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, Columbia UniversityA timely, intellectually ambitious, and original piece of work. It hopes both to reinvigorate critical interest in a complex genre/period category and, in the same movement, to provoke new thinking about such major categories as class, history, and literature itself. -- Ellen Rooney, Brown UniversityCaught in the stampede toward globalism, literary scholars have overlooked the rich archives of working-class internationalism. Sonali Perera's study is a bracing corrective to this trend, putting South Asian voices in dialogue with transcontinental interlocutors. Inspired by Raymond Williams, No Country leads us to a world literature that includes its many proletarian offshoots. -- Srinivas Aravamudan, Duke University, author of Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan LanguageThis carefully argued book will interest scholars of contemporary transnational literature, Marxist approaches to literature, and African and South Asian literary studies; to my mind, however, its greatest impact will be on a younger generation of postcolonial critics, including graduate students, whose education has been so saturated with the theoretical truisms of postcolonial theory in its high phase that it is very difficult to imagine fresh readings of new and older texts outside of them. With such as the case I suspect that many younger scholars would rather give up on postcolonial studies altogether, dismissing it, as some have already done, as an outdated theoretical paradigm. This book challenges that claim. -- Ulka Anjaria * Contemporary Literature *Perera's critical and careful reading of literature is a challenge to all those who read literature politically, and seek to grapple with the larger questions of equality and justice in our uneven and unequal world. -- Ahilan Kadirgamar * Himal Southasian Magazine *A welcome addition and a worthwhile read. * South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies *Perera acknowledges a global workforce of peasants and coolies and garment workers stretching from India, Sri Lanka, and Botswana to the US, forged between the heyday of proletarian literature in the 1930s and contemporary collective forms of writing. . . . Global workingclass writing is at once deeply local (found in micro struggles over land or ethnicity that impel collectivity) and international (vectored through worker solidarity movements and transnational flows of capital, goods, and workers); moreover, according to Perera, its force comes within and through its aporia and interruptions, not in its discursive totality. Thus, working-class culture theorizes new subjects as it expresses them in varied literary forms—novels, poems, magazines, stories, reports. But read together with Marx and Williams, Perera finds that working-class culture describes the broken contours of a discontinuous field: “‘interruption’ [is] a structural, not aberrational, aspect of a specifically feminist aesthetic and ethic.” Discontinuous and in motion, the new working-class writing, like proletarian revolution, “come[s] back ...to begin it afresh.” It travels. -- Paula Rabinowitz * American Literary History *We can also see the future of Working-Class Studies in books like Sonali Perera’s No Country: Working-Class Writing in the Age of Globalization, which reads fiction from India, South Africa, and other colonialized regions of the English-speaking world alongside the work of Tillie Olsen. If nothing else, our increased awareness of the global working class should generate a more comparative, or at least a more contextualized, approach to the study of class. -- Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo * Journal of Working-Class Studies *Globalisation makes novels (especially traditional novels) hard to write. With national working-class publics constantly constituted only to be broken apart, jobs (or bodies) shipped around the globe, neither the room of one’s own nor the time presents itself for texts modelled on the great working-class novels of the last two centuries. This is one of the strongest implicit arguments in Perera’s book – and, I think, an essential point. -- Nicholas Hengen Fox * Race and Class *The book's primary enquiry is to examine how working-class writing can remain radical in a world of heightened globalisation where neoliberal capitalism pervades modes of reading and interpreting. In so doing, [Perera] aims to provide readings that challenge a sanitised view of world literature in which working-class positions remain marginalised and provincialised within a market-driven elite cosmopolitan literary culture. -- David Firth * Wasafiri *No Country could and should change the way that we conceptualize international working-class writing. -- Michelle M. Tokarczyk * Canadian Review of Comparative Literature *Through her analysis . . . Perera explores how to rethink working class literature, and No Country reevaluates the complex period genre category of working class writing. * Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: World Literature or Working-Class Literature in the Age of Globalization?1. Colonialism, Race, and Class: Mulk Raj Anand's Coolie as a Literary Representation of the Subaltern2. Postcolonial Sri Lanka and "Black Struggles for Socialism": Socialist Ethics in Ambalavaner Sivanandan's When Memory Dies3. Gender, Genre, and Globalization4. Socialized Labor and the Critique of Identity Politics: Bessie Head's A Question of PowerEpilogue: Working-Class Writing and the Social ImaginationNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA hard-edged guide to New York City swindles, street life, and culture, through direct interviews with con artists and hustlers.Trade ReviewPart sociology, part psychology, and always interesting history, The Con Men is a valuable tool in understanding how this small community, living in a gray market, manages to survive in a society that for the most part rejects and disdains them. -- Patrick O'Reilly, author of Undue Influence: Cons, Scams, and Mind Control The Con Men is a revealing portrait of a critical but little known element of city life: the urban hustler. Terry Williams and Trevor B. Milton go deep and emerge with the goods, powerfully illuminating this subterranean world and the social lives of its inhabitants. At once timely, incisive, and poignant, this is a fascinating work of lasting importance. -- Elijah Anderson, author of Code of the Street and The Cosmopolitan Canopy Bold and illuminating... A thoroughly researched academic study accessible to general readers. Kirkus Reviews This terrific ethnography explains that cons and hustles are no longer the preserve of roguish proletarians in loud suits and painted ties. Everybody wants a bargain, and creative capitalism makes mugs of us all. -- Dick Hobbs Times Higher Education [Williams & Milton] bring the reader with them into places from Brooklyn to the Bronx that are supposed to be invisible to those not in the know... An engaging read. -- Malcolm Harris The New Republic A fascinating look at the New York underworld. Integrating history, social psychology and sociology, the authors provide an educated lens to examine some of the oldest cons in Manhattan, perpetuated by the hands of career schemers, counterfeiters, drug dealers and even the men and women in blue. It is an eye-opening initiation to the uninformed or the curious. -- Jeffrey S. Podoshen Consumption Markets & CultureTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Alibi: Portrait of a Con Man 2. City Cons and Hustles 3. The Con Crew 4. The Con Game as Street Theater 5. Petty Street Hustles 6. Canal Street as Venus Flytrap 7. The Numbers Game 8. New York Tenant Hustles 9. A Drug Hustle: The Crack Game 10. NYPD and the Finest Cons 11. Wall Street Cons Epilogue Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn the years since Hurricane Katrina, modern-day bohemians have flocked to New Orleans but often find themselves skirting poverty. Down and Out in New Orleans follows the lives of those on the fringes as they carve out unique paths in a resilient city. Peter J. Marina provides an original glimpse into the subcultures of a city in rapid change.Trade ReviewPeter J. Marina provides an outstanding introduction to the sociology of transgression through his fascinating portrayal of life on the edge in post-Katrina New Orleans. His sociological insight, ethnographic ability, and love of the city uniquely position him to write about the sociology of living 'down and out' in the Crescent City. -- David Gladstone, University of New Orleans Following where Orwell went, Marina takes us on a fascinating odyssey into the pulsating heart of New Orleans. From among the city's weird and outlandish nomadic fringe, we are invited to witness how life in NOLA is lived and negotiated, its culture produced and consumed by its most creative denizens. This is immersive ethnography at its best: moving, engaging, and challenging. Read it. -- Simon Hallsworth, University of Suffolk Marina's Down and Out in New Orleans takes us on a sweet, sweaty shamble through what some might call the 'underbelly' of New Orleans. Reading Marina's beautifully attentive account, though, you realize that 'underbelly' is the wrong corporeal metaphor-because in reality the down-and-out quarters of New Orleans are its hard-beating heart, around which hangs the dangerous dead weight of gentrification, privilege, boredom, and security. -- Jeff Ferrell, author of Tearing Down the Streets and Empire of Scrounge Down and Out in New Orleans offers a vivid portrait of that city, especially its artistic characters, their neighborhoods, and the down-and-out jobs they take. The author, whose fierce love for his hometown glows on every page, brings New Orleans culture into focus and provides an illuminating perspective on its future. -- Elijah Anderson, Yale University Marina takes readers on a tour of the New Orleans you won't see on postcards or in tourism commercials. His New Orleans is a lived-in, off-the-beaten-path place ... occupied by a mix of dropouts, dreamers, and those who simply choose to march to the beat of their own drum. The result is a work that will equally serve sociologists, anthropologists and those who are simply interested in seeing another side of one of the country's most fascinating cities. -- Mike Scott The Times-PicayuneTable of ContentsForeword, by David Brotherton Acknowledgments 1. New Orleans: Romancing the City of Sin and Resistance 2. The Hard and Soft City: A Portrait of New Orleans Neighborhoods and Their Characters 3. Living Down and Out in New Orleans 4. Buskers, Hustlers, and Street Performers 5. The Informal Nocturnal Economy of Frenchmen Street 6. City Squatting and Urban Camping 7. Occultists and Satanists 8. Gentrification and Violent Cultural Resistance 9. Hipster Wonderland 10. Brass Bands and Second Lines Conclusion: The Fogs of New Orleans and the Future of the Crescent City Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn Down the Up Staircase, Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch trace the social history of Harlem through the lens of one family across three generations, connecting their journey to the historical and social forces that transformed Harlem. This story is told against the backdrop of a crumbling three-story brownstone in Sugar Hill.Trade ReviewBruce D. Haynes's story is a classic American tale-which combines the big themes of history with the gritty reality of a single family's extraordinary story. -- Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at The New Yorker and senior legal analyst at CNN Haynes channels W. E. B. Du Bois to provide a rich sociological portrait of his "talented tenth" family. The lively writing conveys both universal family dramas of social mobility (up and down) as well as the particular context of Harlem across the twentieth century. A great read! -- Dalton Conley, author of Honky, Princeton University An utterly captivating work that shows off Haynes's brilliant sociological imagination on every page. He and Solovitch are masterful at linking the small personal details of everyday family and community life to social structure and history. Like Dalton Conley's Honky, this book will be seen as a significant contribution to the emerging literary form of sociological memoir. -- Mitchell Duneier, author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, Princeton University Down the Up Staircase is a beautifully written, captivating, and absorbing book that connects seemingly private concerns with public policies and structures in clear and convincing fashion. It delineates vividly how poverty and downward mobility do not make people noble, resilient, and resourceful, but instead shatter social ties and self-esteem. This fast-paced book will likely be consumed by readers in one sitting, but its powerful and poignant stories will linger in the mind long afterwards. -- George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place Down the Up Staircase is a riveting narrative about three generations of a black family and their struggle to maintain inherited privilege. Written with elegance and penetrating insight, the book shines light on the precarity that all blacks confront, regardless of their social class and personal ambitions. -- Stephen Steinberg, author of Race Relations: A Critique, professor of urban sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York A candid and profoundly personal contribution to America's racial history. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) This masterful account begins as a portrait of a house that was a living, breathing extension of the family that lived in it both in hopeful times and in darker ones. But it soon reaches out into the larger social landscape of Harlem and then into the changing history and culture of an entire land. In doing so, it shifts seamlessly from a sensitive biography to a thoughtful ethnographic sketch of an important place in an important time, and then into a wise and compelling essay on the social history of our time. What we encounter on the printed page, of course, is written narrative, but it is conveyed to us in what might best be described as a rich and perceptive voice. In every way, a remarkable work. -- Kai Erikson, Yale University This thoughtful and sobering memoir weaves the beauty and tragedy of Haynes's family story into the complex history of Harlem... Like Harlem's story, the memoir is bittersweet, painting a full and complicated picture of black upper-class life over generations. Publishers Weekly Down the Up Staircase combines elements of memoir and sociology, culminating in an incredibly rich story. Bookish In this thoughtfully conceived and crafted memoir, the authors offer evocative, relentlessly honest portrayals without judgement. In doing so, they encourage the reader to ponder the variables in her own life, the tides and forces that help or hinder her pursuit of the sweet life. -- Elizabeth Dowling Taylor The New York Times Book Review [A] moving memoir. -- Georgia Rowe East Bay Times As Isabel Wilkerson did expertly in 'The Warmth of Other Suns' - the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic tale of the Great Migration - Haynes and Solovitch follow their relatives through decades, revealing the impact of public policy and social change on the family from generation to generation. -- Krissah Thompson Washington PostTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface 1. Mad Money 2. Not Alms but Opportunity 3. New Negroes 4. Soul Dollars 5. Stepping Out 6. Do for Yourself 7. Free Fall 8. Moving on Down 9. Keep on Keepin' on Notes

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Book SynopsisIn Down the Up Staircase, Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch trace the social history of Harlem through the lens of one family across three generations, connecting their journey to the historical and social forces that transformed Harlem. This story is told against the backdrop of a crumbling three-story brownstone in Sugar Hill.Trade ReviewBruce D. Haynes's story is a classic American tale—which combines the big themes of history with the gritty reality of a single family's extraordinary story. -- Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at The New Yorker and senior legal analyst at CNNHaynes channels W. E. B. Du Bois to provide a rich sociological portrait of his "talented tenth" family. The lively writing conveys both universal family dramas of social mobility (up and down) as well as the particular context of Harlem across the twentieth century. A great read! -- Dalton Conley, author of Honky, Princeton UniversityAn utterly captivating work that shows off Haynes's brilliant sociological imagination on every page. He and Solovitch are masterful at linking the small personal details of everyday family and community life to social structure and history. Like Dalton Conley's Honky, this book will be seen as a significant contribution to the emerging literary form of sociological memoir. -- Mitchell Duneier, author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, Princeton UniversityDown the Up Staircase is a beautifully written, captivating, and absorbing book that connects seemingly private concerns with public policies and structures in clear and convincing fashion. It delineates vividly how poverty and downward mobility do not make people noble, resilient, and resourceful, but instead shatter social ties and self-esteem. This fast-paced book will likely be consumed by readers in one sitting, but its powerful and poignant stories will linger in the mind long afterwards. -- George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes PlaceDown the Up Staircase is a riveting narrative about three generations of a black family and their struggle to maintain inherited privilege. Written with elegance and penetrating insight, the book shines light on the precarity that all blacks confront, regardless of their social class and personal ambitions. -- Stephen Steinberg, author of Race Relations: A Critique, professor of urban sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New YorkA candid and profoundly personal contribution to America's racial history. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *This masterful account begins as a portrait of a house that was a living, breathing extension of the family that lived in it both in hopeful times and in darker ones. But it soon reaches out into the larger social landscape of Harlem and then into the changing history and culture of an entire land. In doing so, it shifts seamlessly from a sensitive biography to a thoughtful ethnographic sketch of an important place in an important time, and then into a wise and compelling essay on the social history of our time. What we encounter on the printed page, of course, is written narrative, but it is conveyed to us in what might best be described as a rich and perceptive voice. In every way, a remarkable work. -- Kai Erikson, Yale UniversityThis thoughtful and sobering memoir weaves the beauty and tragedy of Haynes's family story into the complex history of Harlem.... Like Harlem's story, the memoir is bittersweet, painting a full and complicated picture of black upper-class life over generations. * Publishers Weekly *Down the Up Staircase combines elements of memoir and sociology, culminating in an incredibly rich story. * Bookish *In this thoughtfully conceived and crafted memoir, the authors offer evocative, relentlessly honest portrayals without judgment. In doing so, they encourage the reader to ponder the variables in her own life, the tides and forces that help or hinder her pursuit of the sweet life. -- Elizabeth Dowling Taylor * The New York Times Book Review *[A] moving memoir. -- Georgia Rowe * East Bay Times *As Isabel Wilkerson did expertly in 'The Warmth of Other Suns' — the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic tale of the Great Migration — Haynes and Solovitch follow their relatives through decades, revealing the impact of public policy and social change on the family from generation to generation. -- Krissah Thompson * Washington Post *Haynes and Solovitch weave memoir and sociology to document the shifting fortunes of the black middle-class family, and of Harlem itself, and illuminate the tenuous nature of status and success among the black middle class. * The Davis Enterprise *Interweaving a variety of sociological concepts and historical examinations with intimate portraits of this singular family, Down the Up Staircase takes readers on an entertaining and provocative tour of twentieth-century urban America. -- Richard E. Ocejo * New Books in Sociology *Down The Up Staircase is more than a story of a family, far more than the chronology of a home. And yet the entire tale — the story of the black experience in the 20th century—feels like it’s being very intimately told to you from the parlor. * The Bowery Boys *Like Harlem’s story, the memoir is bittersweet, painting a full and complicated picture of black upper-class life over generations. * Harlem World Magazine *In Down the Up Staircase: Three generations of a Harlem Family, Bruce D. Haynes (with his co-author, Syma Solovitch) gives us a poignant memoir of his own Uptown youth in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and also reaches further back to when his grandparents bought a townhouse in the Sugar Hill district in 1931. -- Benjamin George Friedman * Times Literary Supplement *Every sociologist—indeed everyone—interested in race, mobility, and the African American experience should read this book. It will motivate rethinking of the stakes and consequences for African Americans striving to get or stay ahead. For sociologists and other scholars of race and the urban experience, as well as lay readers who desire to understand more fully much of what black family life in urban America was all about during the past 100 years, it should be a required text. -- Alford A. Young, Jr. * Sociological Forum *Haynes and Syma Solovitch show a surprisingly complex account of black middle class life in a biographically and analytically novel way. . . . Down the Up Staircase adds an important lens to the numerous complexities of generational social mobility for African Americans in the United States. -- Edwin Grimsley * City & Community *Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family is at once a history of Black Harlem, Black social science in and beyond the academy, and the Black elite class. . . . In Haynes and Solovitch’s narrative hands, the book’s key characters – the three generations of the Haynes family, the Convent Avenue brownstone, and Harlem – do sweeping and personal historical work about race, class, and cities in twentieth century America. -- Zandria F. Robinson * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family, guides readers through the double glass doors of the Haynes family home as the tell the tale of Harlem's historical and social transformation using the family's crumbling three-story brownstone as the backdrop. Haynes and Solovitch pull back the proverbial curtains to document the tenuous nature of achievement, success, and status among the black middle class. * Contemporary Sociology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPreface1. Mad Money2. Not Alms but Opportunity3. New Negroes4. Soul Dollars5. Stepping Out6. Do for Yourself7. Free Fall8. Moving on Down9. Keep on Keepin' onNotes

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Book SynopsisLeader Communities is a study of Stockholm's suburb Djursholm and other similar places: privileged communities where elites choose to live, socialize with other elites, and raise their children into future elites. Mikael Holmqvist provides unparalleled insight into today's power elite and the social and political consequences of their aspirations.Trade ReviewOne of the very few extensive and penetrating ethnographic studies of an upper-class community, its culture, lifestyle, mentality, ideals, and norms, but also its problems and shortcomings, which contributes new empirical knowledge to a topic which has received much attention in mass media as well as in elite literature. -- Trygve Gulbrandsen, research professor at the Institute for Social Research (Norway) Sweden is mainly known to Americans as an advanced welfare state with equality bordering on socialism. This book presents another side of Sweden through its focus on its most exclusive suburb, Djursholm, situated just outside of Stockholm. This is where Sweden's one-percenters live and also where they do their utmost to ensure that their children will stay in that percent. A first rate social science study. -- Richard Swedberg, Cornell UniversityTable of ContentsPreface1. A Shining City: The Emphasis on Aesthetics2. A Privileged World: Economic Power and Wealth3. Significant People and Winners4. Sporty Teenagers, Winsome Pensioners5. Fragrant, Sociable Personages6. Community and Social Partition7. Family Life8. A Lifestyle Under Threat9. Service Staff10. Becoming an Elite11. Judgment and Fear of Failure12. Tactics for Success13. The Rise of the “Consecracy” AcknowledgmentsLiteratureAppendix: The Ethnographic StudyNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisAgainst Happiness is a thorough and powerful critique of the “happiness agenda,” revealing the flaws of its concept of happiness and advocating a renewed focus on equality and justice.Trade ReviewHappiness studies started as an idealistic project but took shortcuts and so did not fulfill its ambitions. This important and trustworthy book takes us back to the drawing board to rebuild the foundations of this field. The new vision won’t make the science and policy of happiness easier, but it will make them more humane, more inclusive, and truer to life. -- Anna Alexandrova, author of A Philosophy of Science for Well-BeingReading this book made me happy, but more importantly, I learned a great deal from it. This book is a tour de force: written in a lively, accessible manner; well argued; and empirically well-informed. It is the best available critique of the ideology of the ‘happiness agenda,’ which confuses subjective positive mental states and reported life satisfaction with what really matters. -- Allen Buchanan, author of Our Moral Fate: Evolution and the Escape from TribalismHumankind has been preoccupied with happiness since we invented philosophy. We try to cultivate happiness with pithy little sayings, like 'Happiness is a journey, not a destination' and 'Happiness is a state of mind.' We regulate happiness with religion. We judge the quality of a life by the amount of happiness achieved, and the success of a country by the average happiness of its citizens. And yet, no one can agree on exactly what happiness is or what it's worth. Against Happiness masterfully reveals that happiness is not a single experience, physical condition, or unified state of meaning. It's a population of instances that vary across situations and cultures (as are all other categories of emotion). And each instance blooms from unexamined assumptions and preconceptions that likewise vary by situation and culture. This book is a must-read for anyone who has felt happy, hungered for more happiness, or pondered the emotional lives of humans and how happiness matters to the quality of a life. -- Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the BrainIf you are happy read this book. If you are not happy read this book. Either way you will learn about the complexity of the very idea and how it is widely sprinkled throughout our mental space while still remaining an elusive reality. -- Michael Gazzaniga, author of Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of MindThis book is an attempt at doing cross-cultural and thus real philosophy in that it is the love of the wisdom of all peoples, rather than that of the WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) people. It is also an attempt at interdisciplinary works and thus grounded philosophy. While showing the relativity of happiness, it also insists on the universality of certain human goods, such as human rights and sustainable development goals. -- Bai Tongdong, author China: The Middle Way of the Middle KingdomAgainst Happiness moves beyond the one-dimensional and reductionist approaches that have hitherto limited our understanding of happiness to narrow aspects or have obliterated non-western, non-white, and marginalized experiences of well-being. The authors persuasively outline shortcomings of definitions of happiness across different disciplines and different cultural philosophical traditions, a crucial step for investigating more accurate, inclusive, and expansive definitions of happiness in the future. -- Liya Yu, author of Vulnerable Minds: The Neuropolitics of Divided SocietiesTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionPart I: Happiness Philosophy and Happiness Science1. Introduction: The Happiness Agenda2. Varieties of Theories and Measures of Well-Being and Happiness3. How Should We Think About the Emotion of Happiness Scientifically? Lessons from the Science of Fear4. Why Averaging Happiness Scores and Comparing Them Is a Terrible IdeaPart II: Culture and Happiness5. Positive and Negative Emotions: Culture, Content, and Context6. Happiness and Well-Being as Cultural Projects: Immigration, Biculturalism, Cultural Belonging7. Happiness and Well-Being in Contemporary ChinaPart III: Race, Racism, Resignation8. Happiness, Race, and Hermeneutical Justice: The Case of African American Mental Health9. Interpreting Self-Reports of Well-BeingPart IV: Conclusions10. Recommendations for Policy Use of Happiness Metrics11. Universal Rights, Sustainable Development, and Happiness: Two out of Three Ain’t BadPart V: Responses by Four Critics12. On Ersatz Happiness, by Jennifer A. Frey13. Why the Analysis and Assessment of Happiness Matters, by Hazel Rose Markus14. Three out of Three Is Better, by Jeffrey D. Sachs15. What the Gallup World Poll Could Do to Deepen Our Understanding of Happiness in Different Cultures, by Jeanne L. TsaiNotesReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisTHE 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF 40TH MIKE LEIGH''S CLASSIC PLAY - WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM THE PLAYWRITE.Forty years on from its first performance at the Hampstead Theatre and original screening on BBC1 soon after, Mike Leigh''s Abigail''s Party - telling of two marriages spectacularly unravelling at an awkward neighbourhood drinks party - remains a pinnacle of British theatre.Here is the original script, complete with a new introduction by Mike Leigh describing the play''s unlikely genesis, how it came to be made and where he believes it fits within his oeuvre as one of the country''s leading writers and directors.''The play came from my intuitive sense of the spirit and the flavour of the times, and from a growing personal fear of, and frustration with the suburban existence'' Mike Leigh, from his new introduction''Leigh''s play isn''t simply about marriage and Essex, but also about the unhappy state of the realm'' GuardianTrade ReviewA deep, dark, moving and beautifully-observed period piece. * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisWhat are the effects of decreasing social mobility?How does education help - and hinder - us in improving our life chances?Why are so many of us stuck on the same social rung as our parents? Apart from the USA, Britain has the lowest social mobility in the Western world. The lack of movement in who gets where in society - particularly when people are stuck at the bottom and the top - costs the nation dear, both in terms of the unfulfilled talents of those left behind and an increasingly detached elite, disinterested in improvements that benefit the rest of society.This book analyses cutting-edge research into how social mobility has changed in Britain over the years, the shifting role of schools and universities in creating a fairer future, and the key to what makes some countries and regions so much richer in opportunities, bringing a clearer understanding of what works and how we can better shape our future.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe power of her historical insights and the sweetness of her dream cannot be denied * The New York Times *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Recommended." --Choice"Impressive and highly engaging. Hits all the right notes as it takes up transnational migration, a shifting sense of home, and what Cristina Alcalde persuasively calls exclusionary cosmopolitanism among middle class Peruvians."--Florence E. Babb, author of The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories"A compelling ethnographic case study of middle- and upper-class Peruvian migration to the United States, Canada, and Germany. Alcalde offers her readers a unique analysis of the gendered and sexuality-driven intricacies of return."--Ulla Berg, author of Mobile Selves: Migration, Race, and Belonging in Peru and the US

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Focusing on Vietnam’s labor export policy to Malaysia, Angie Trần shows us why gender and ethnic hierarchies matter in remaking the politics of control and dissent. Essential reading for all those interested in South-South labor brokerage and temporary migration." --Brenda S. A. Yeoh, coeditor of Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations"This book features workers describing their conditions as laborers in foreign countries. Often shining through is how workers turned adversities into triumphs, usually modest but still invigorating. Also significant is that the workers are from five ethnic groups within Vietnamese society." --Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, author of Speaking Out in Vietnam: Public Political Criticism in a Communist Party–Ruled NationTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroductionChapter 1. Contexts Matter: Historical, Economic, Cultural, Religious Practices of the Five Ethnic GroupsChapter 2. Transnational Labor Brokerage System and Its InfrastructureChapter 3. Labor Recruitment Process and IndebtednessChapter 4. Precarity and Coping MechanismsChapter 5. Physical Third Space EmpowermentChapter 6. Metaphorical Third Space EmpowermentChapter 7. Aspirations After MalaysiaConclusionAppendix 1. Descriptions of the SamplesAppendix 2. Land Issues for the Five Ethnic Groups in This StudyAppendix 3. Chronology of the Transnational Labor Brokerage State System, 1980s–2019Appendix 4. Legal Documentation of Labor Export PoliciesAppendix 5. List of OrganizationsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIn the mid-twentieth century, corporations consolidated control over agriculture on the backs of Mexican migrant laborers through a guestworker system called the Bracero Program. The National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU) attempted to organize these workers but met with utter indifference from the AFL-CIO. Andrew J. Hazelton examines the NAWU''s opposition to the Bracero Program against the backdrop of Mexican migration and the transformation of North American agriculture. His analysis details growers’ abuse of the program to undercut organizing efforts, the NAWU''s subsequent mobilization of reformers concerned by those abuses, and grower opposition to any restrictions on worker control. Though the union''s organizing efforts failed, it nonetheless created effective strategies for pressuring growers and defending workers’ rights. These strategies contributed to the abandonment of the Bracero Program in 1964 and set the stage for victories by the United Farm Workers andTrade Review"A much-needed examination of two intertwined institutional histories: the effort to unionize farmworkers from the New Deal era to the eve of the UFW set alongside the growth and evolution of the Bracero Program. Labor’s Outcasts exhibits a remarkable depth of archival research into the actions of officials in the labor movement and the government."--John Weber, author of From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century"Why are farmworkers so poor? It’s not because they pick crops or get dirty, Andy Hazelton reveals in this important book. It’s because farmworkers--“Labor’s Outcasts”--were left out of the protections of American labor law. When farmworkers tried to organize anyway, they were crushed by a government-run labor supply system known as the Bracero Program. Long before Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers appeared on the scene, a fierce little farm labor union led by a southern socialist and a Mexican farmworker turned academic took on the agribusiness industry to battle the Bracero Program and organize farmworkers on both sides of the US-Mexican border. This is a story you don’t know and you won’t forget."--Cindy Hahamovitch, author of No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor"Labor's Outcasts shows how labor migration was a transnational phenomenon that benefitted growers and governments while it exploited the labor power of migrants and ignored the protests of citizen workers." --Pacific Historical Review

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Book SynopsisIn Peruvian Lives across Borders, M. Cristina Alcalde examines the evolution of belonging and the making of home among middle- and upper-class Peruvians in Peru, the United States, Canada, and Germany. Alcalde draws on interviews, surveys, participant observation, and textual analysis to argue that to belong is to exclude. To that end, transnational Peruvians engage in both subtle and direct policing along the borders of belonging. These acts allow them to claim and maintain the social status they enjoyed in their homeland even as they profess their openness and tolerance. Alcalde details these processes and their origins in Peru's gender, racial, and class hierarchies. As she shows, the idea of returnwhether desired or rejected, imagined or physicalspurs constructions of Peruvianness, belonging, and home. Deeply researched and theoretically daring, Peruvian Lives across Borders answers fascinating questions about an understudied group of migrants.Trade Review"Recommended." --Choice"Impressive and highly engaging. Hits all the right notes as it takes up transnational migration, a shifting sense of home, and what Cristina Alcalde persuasively calls exclusionary cosmopolitanism among middle class Peruvians."--Florence E. Babb, author of The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories"A compelling ethnographic case study of middle- and upper-class Peruvian migration to the United States, Canada, and Germany. Alcalde offers her readers a unique analysis of the gendered and sexuality-driven intricacies of return."--Ulla Berg, author of Mobile Selves: Migration, Race, and Belonging in Peru and the US

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Book SynopsisVietnam annually sends a half million laborers to work at low-skill jobs abroad. Angie Ng?c Tr?n concentrates on ethnicity, class, and gender to examine how migrant workers belonging to the Kinh, Hoa, Hrê, Khmer, and Chãm ethnic groups challenge a transnational process that coerces and exploits them. Focusing on migrant laborers working in Malaysia, Tr?n looks at how they carve out a third space that allows them a socially accepted means of resistance to survive and even thrive at times. She also shows how the Vietnamese state uses Malaysia as a place to send poor workers, especially from ethnic minorities; how it manipulates its rural poor into accepting work in Malaysia; and the ways in which both countries benefit from the arrangement. A rare study of labor migration in the Global South, Ethnic Dissent and Empowerment answers essential questions about why nations export and import migrant workers and how the workers protect themselves not only within the system, but by circumventingTrade Review"Focusing on Vietnam’s labor export policy to Malaysia, Angie Trần shows us why gender and ethnic hierarchies matter in remaking the politics of control and dissent. Essential reading for all those interested in South-South labor brokerage and temporary migration." --Brenda S. A. Yeoh, coeditor of Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations "This book features workers describing their conditions as laborers in foreign countries. Often shining through is how workers turned adversities into triumphs, usually modest but still invigorating. Also significant is that the workers are from five ethnic groups within Vietnamese society." --Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, author of Speaking Out in Vietnam: Public Political Criticism in a Communist Party–Ruled NationTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1. Contexts Matter: Historical, Economic, Cultural, Religious Practices of the Five Ethnic Groups Chapter 2. Transnational Labor Brokerage System and Its Infrastructure Chapter 3. Labor Recruitment Process and Indebtedness Chapter 4. Precarity and Coping Mechanisms Chapter 5. Physical Third Space Empowerment Chapter 6. Metaphorical Third Space Empowerment Chapter 7. Aspirations After Malaysia Conclusion Appendix 1. Descriptions of the Samples Appendix 2. Land Issues for the Five Ethnic Groups in This Study Appendix 3. Chronology of the Transnational Labor Brokerage State System, 1980s–2019 Appendix 4. Legal Documentation of Labor Export Policies Appendix 5. List of Organizations Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Few scholars today explore racial (in)justice with as much depth and clarity, and with such fresh insight, as john powell. In these enlightening essays, powell challenges those of us who consider ourselves relatively evolved on issues of race and social justice to think far more critically about the basic assumptions and paradigms that frame our perspectives, animate our scholarship, and drive our advocacy. The central question he poses--"Can we stop focusing simply on transactional moves that we see as winnable and start working for the transformation of institutions that perpetuate suffering?"--is, perhaps, the most important and pressing question for racial justice advocates today." —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness"A book that will provoke readers to rethink prevailing notions of race, racial identity, and racism... [and] what prevailing law does and does not consider in tackling persistent forms of racial inequality." —Rachel D. Godsil, Seton Hall University School of Law"Juxtaposing race, spirituality, self, and social justice, john powell reveals the poverty in contemporary policy debates and crafts a road map for building true democratic community. Read this book and tell a friend." —Stephanie M. Wildman, Center for Social Justice and Public Service, Santa Clara University School of Law"Infused by moral urgency, intellectual precision, sweeping command of history and of critical race theory, and an unequalled ability to situate race in concrete places, these linked essays take us into the mind of one of our greatest legal and social thinkers. They navigate tensions between law and justice with consummate skill and great passion." —David Roediger, coauthor of The Production of Difference"john a. powell is among the most original and important thinkers writing about politics, race and social change in America. He is a genuine genius whose work has been indispensable to thousands of activists and scholars. Finally, his critical work is gathered together in one place. If we succeed in changing in America--and we must do so--it will be in no small part because we have engaged deeply with the ideas, analysis and heart in this book. Racing to Justice is essential reading for everyone implicated by race in America--and that means everyone." —Deepak Bhargava, Center for Community Change"powell sets forth a powerful argument that... until we expand our sense of self, we will be unable to create the racially egalitarian and democratic society to which many progressives aspire.... A brilliantly original and provocative challenge to the current social order." —Michael Omi, co-author of Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990sTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Moving Beyond the Isolated SelfI. Race and Racialization1. Post-Racialism or Targeted Universalism?2. The Colorblind Multiracial Dilemma: Racial Categories Reconsidered3. The Racing of American Society: Race Functioning as a Verb Before Signifying as a NounII. White Privilege4. Whites Will Be Whites: The Failure to Interrogate Racial Privilege5. White Innocence and the Courts: Jurisprudential Devices that Obscure PrivilegeIII. The Racialized Self 6. Dreaming of a Self Beyond Whiteness and Isolation7. The Multiple Self: Implications for Law and Social JusticeIV. Engagement 8. Lessons from Suffering: How Social Justice Informs SpiritualityAfterwordReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisMary Montgomery examines why Moroccans so often talk about their domestic workers as daughters, what this means for workers and employers, and how this is changing in contemporary Morocco.Trade ReviewHighly recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsPart I: The Social Relations of Domestic Service.1. A City Quarter and the 'Popular' Ideal2. Mothers and Daughters3. A Civilizing Mission: Charity, Reward, and Gratitude4. Serving Neighbors, Serving Strangers: Markets and MarketplacesPart II: Domestic Workers in the Wider World5. Domestic Workers in the City6. Domestic Workers at Home7. Domestic Workers and the LawConclusionBibliographyIndex

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