Social Class In The 21st Century

A fresh take on social class from the experts behind the BBC's 'Great British Class Survey'. Why does social class matter more than ever in Britain today? How has the meaning of class changed? What does this mean for social mobility and inequality? In this book Mike Savage and the team of sociologists responsible for the Great British Class Survey look beyond the labels to explore how and why our society is changing and what this means for the people who find themselves in the margins as well as in the centre. Their new conceptualization of class is based on the distribution of three kinds of capital - economic (inequalities in income and wealth), social (the different kinds of people we know) and cultural (the ways in which our leisure and cultural preferences are exclusive) - and provides incontrovertible evidence that class is as powerful and relevant today as it's ever been.

A fresh take on social class from the experts behind the BBC's 'Great British Class Survey'. Why does social class matter more than ever in Britain today? How has the meaning of class changed? What does this mean for social mobility and inequality? In this book Mike Savage and the team of sociologists responsible for the Great British Class Survey look beyond the labels to explore how and why our society is changing and what this means for the people who find themselves in the margins as well as in the centre. Their new conceptualization of class is based on the distribution of three kinds of capital - economic (inequalities in income and wealth), social (the different kinds of people we know) and cultural (the ways in which our leisure and cultural preferences are exclusive) - and provides incontrovertible evidence that class is as powerful and relevant today as it's ever been.

Social class remains a fundamental presence in British life in the twenty-first century. It is woven into the very fabric of social and political discourse, undiminished by the end of mass industry; unaugmented despite the ascendancy of 'ordinary working people' and other substitute phrases. Absent from this landscape, however, is any compelling Marxist expression or analysis of class.In Class Matters, Charles Umney brings Marxist analysis out of the 19th century textiles mill, and into the call centres, office blocks and fast food chains of modern Britain. He shows how core Marxist concepts are vital to understanding increasing pay inequality, decreasing job security, increasing routinisation and managerial control of the labour process.Providing a critical analysis of competing perspectives, Umney argues that class must be understood as a dynamic and exploitative process integral to capitalism - rather than a descriptive categorisation - in order for us to better understand the gains capital has made at the expense of labour over the last four decades.

Andreas Schleicher - initiator of PISA and an international authority on education policy - offers a unique perspective on education reform.

Considering Class offers international, interdisciplinary perspectives on class analysis today. It explores the gap between the class forces shaping the world and the paucity of class-consciousness at a popular level. The book shows the importance of the cultural struggle.

Mapping the class divisions that run throughout Europe Over the last ten years - especially with the 'no' votes in the French and Dutch referendums in 2010, and the victory for Brexit in 2016 - the issue of Europe has been placed at the centre of major political conflicts. Each of these crises has revealed profound splits in society, which are represented in terms of an opposition between those countries on the losing and those on the winning sides of globalisation. Inequalities beyond those between nations are critically absent from the debate. Based on major European statistical surveys, the new research in this work presents a map of social classes inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. It reveals the common features of the working class, the intermediate class and the privileged class in Europe. National features combine with social inequalities, through an account of the social distance between specific groups in nations in the North and in the countries of the South and East of Europe. The book ends with a reflection on the conditions that would be required for the emergence of a Europe-wide social movement.

Social Mobility for the 21st Century addresses experiences of social mobility, and the detailed processes through which entrenched, intergenerationally transmitted privilege is reproduced. Contributions include (but are not limited to) family relationships, students’ encounters with higher education, narratives of work careers, and ‘mobility identities’. The book intends to challenge both the framework of the more traditional approach, and the politicisation of mobility which casts ‘mobility’ as a possession, a commodity or a character trait, and threatens to castigate the ‘non-mobile’ as carrying a personal responsibility for their situation. This book presents critical analyses of routes into social mobility, the experience of social mobility, and the political and social implications of social mobility’s ‘panacea’ status. Drawing on the work of established scholars and more recent entrants, the chapters offer a fresh look at social mobility, opening up the topic to a wider readership among the profession and beyond, and stimulating further debate. This book will appeal to higher level students and scholars of sociology alike, as well as having a broad cross-disciplinary appeal.

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.