Martin Burke traces the surprisingly complicated history of the idea of class in America from the forming of a new nation to the heart of the Gilded Age. Surveying American political, social, and intellectual life from the late 17th to the end of the 19th century, Burke examines in detail the contested discourse about equality—the way Americans thought and wrote about class, class relations, and their meaning in society. Burke explores a remarkable range of thought to establish the boundaries of class and the language used to describe it in the works of leading political figures, social reformers, and moral philosophers. He traces a shift from class as a legal category of ranks and orders to socio-economic divisions based on occupations and income. Throughout the century, he finds no permanent consensus about the meaning of class in America and instead describes a culture of conflicting ideas and opinions.
When the Supreme Court struck down Colorado's Amendment 2—which would have nullified all state and local laws protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination—it was widely regarded as a victory for gay rights. Yet many gays and lesbians still risk losing their jobs, custody of their children, and even their liberty under the law. Using the Colorado initiative as his focus, Gerstmann untangles the complex standards and subtle rhetoric the Supreme Court uses to apply the equal protection clause. The Court divides people into legal classes that receive varying levels of protection; gays and lesbians and other groups, such as the elderly and the poor, receive the least. Gerstmann reveals how these standards are used to favor certain groups over others, and also how Amendment 2 advocates used the Court's doctrine to convince voters that gays and lesbians were seeking "special rights" in Colorado. Concluding with a call for wholesale reform of equal-protection jurisprudence, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in fair, coherent, and truly equal protection under the law.
Politicians continually tell us that anyone can get ahead. But is that really true? This important, best-selling book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Friedman and Laurison show that a powerful 'class pay gap’ exists in Britain’s elite occupations. Even when those from working-class backgrounds make it into prestigious jobs, they earn, on average, 16% less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds. But why is this the case? Drawing on 175 interviews across four case studies – television, accountancy, architecture, and acting – they explore the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile. This is a rich, ambitious book that demands we take seriously not just the glass but also the class ceiling.
This is a book about riddles and puns. The author has taken a historical view of her subject and also a literary one, using examples from Shakespeare, mythology and legend to illustrate her points. It opens with a collection of jokes based on puns or wordplay and in later chapters looks at the conundrum itself.
In the United States, social class ranks with gender, race, and ethnicity in determining the values, activities, political behavior, and life chances of individuals. Most scholars agree on the importance of class, although they often disagree on what it is and how it impacts Americans. This A-Z encyclopedia, the first to focus on class in the United States, surveys the breadth of class strata throughout our history, for high school students to the general public. Class is illuminated in 525 essay entries on significant people, terms, theories, programs, institutions, eras, ethnic groups, places, and much more. This useful set is an authoritative, fascinating source for in-demand information on key aspects of our culture and society and helps researchers to narrow down a broad topic. Class is revealed from angles that often intersect: through history, with entries such as Founding Fathers, the Industrial Revolution, Westward Expansion; through economics, with entries such as Dot.com Bubble, Robber Barons, Chicago School of Economics, Lottery, Wage Slaves, Economic Equal Opportunity Act, Stock Market, Inheritance Taxes, Wal-Mart, Welfare; through social indicators such as Conspicuous Consumption, the Hamptons, WASP, Homelessness, Social Climbing; through politics with entries such as Anarchism, Braceros, Heritage Foundation, Communist Party, Kennedy Family; and through culture through entries such as Country Music, The Great Gatsby, Television, and Studs Terkel. Class is also approached from ethnic, sexual, religious, educational, and regional angles. Special features include an introduction, timeline, suggested reading per entry, cross-references, reader's guide to topics, and thorough index. Sample entries: Immigration, Education, Labor Movement, Pink-Collar Workers, AFL-CIO, Strikes, Great Depression, Jacob Riis, Literature, the Rockefellers, Slavery, Music, Academia, Family, Suburbia, McMansions, Taxation, Segregation, Racism, Ivy League, Robber Barons, Philanthropists, Socialites, Religion, Welfare, the American Dream, Dot.com Millionaires, Equal Opportunity, Founding Fathers, Wage Slaves, Industrial Revolution, Capitalism, Economics, Appalachia, Horse Racing, Gender, Communist Party, Country Clubs, Religion, American Indians, Conspicuous Consumption, Studs Terkel, Film, Class-Consciousness, Work Ethic, Media, Television, Puritans, Homelessness, Status Symbols, Assimilation/Melting Pot, Art, Westward Expansion, Poverty, The Great Gatsby, Stock Market, Working Poor, Gated Communities, the Hamptons, Social Climbing, Crime, Lottery, Elitism, WASP, American Dream, Noam Chomsky, Fortune Magazine
A COMPANION TO THE ERA OF ANDREW JACKSON More than perhaps any other president, Andrew Jackson’s story mirrored that of the United States; from his childhood during the American Revolution, through his military actions against both Native Americans and Great Britain, and continuing into his career in politics. As president, Jackson attacked the Bank of the United States, railed against disunion in South Carolina, defended the honor of Peggy Eaton, and founded the Democratic Party. In doing so, Andrew Jackson was not only an eyewitness to some of the seminal events of the Early American Republic; he produced an indelible mark on the nation’s political, economic, and cultural history. A Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson features a collection of more than 30 original essays by leading scholars and historians that consider various aspects of the life, times, and legacy of the seventh president of the United States. Topics explored include life in the Early American Republic; issues of race, religion, and culture; the rise of the Democratic Party; Native American removal events; the Panic of 1837; the birth of women’s suffrage, and more.
Social anxiety about poverty surfaces with startling frequency in American literature. Yet, as Gavin Jones argues, poverty has been denied its due as a critical and ideological framework in its own right, despite recent interest in representations of the lower classes and the marginalized. These insights lay the groundwork for American Hungers, in which Jones uncovers a complex and controversial discourse on the poor that stretches from the antebellum era through the Depression. Reading writers such as Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, James Agee, and Richard Wright in their historical contexts, Jones explores why they succeeded where literary critics have fallen short. These authors acknowledged a poverty that was as aesthetically and culturally significant as it was socially and materially real. They confronted the ideological dilemmas of approaching poverty while giving language to the marginalized poor--the beggars, tramps, sharecroppers, and factory workers who form a persistent segment of American society. Far from peripheral, poverty emerges at the center of national debates about social justice, citizenship, and minority identity. And literature becomes a crucial tool to understand an economic and cultural condition that is at once urgent and elusive because it cuts across the categories of race, gender, and class by which we conventionally understand social difference. Combining social theory with literary analysis, American Hungers masterfully brings poverty into the mainstream critical idiom.
A gripping, insightful and accessible book which examines the long history of relationships between China and the West, as well as the change in attitudes on both sides of the divide.
America at the last fin de siècle was in a period of profound societal transition. Industrialization was well under way and with it a burgeoning sense of professionalism and a growing middle class that was becoming increasingly anxious about issues of race, gender, and class. The American 1890s: A Cultural Reader is a wide-ranging anthology of essays, criticism, and fiction first printed in periodicals during those last remarkable years of the nineteenth century, a decade commonly referred to as the “golden age” of periodical culture. To depict the many changes taking place in the United States at this time, Susan Harris Smith and Melanie Dawson have drawn from an eclectic range of periodicals: elite monthlies such as Scribner’s, Harper’s, and the Atlantic Monthly; political magazines such as the North American Review and Forum; magazines for general readers such as Cosmopolitan and McClures; and specialized publications including the Chatauquan, Outing, and Colored American Magazine. Authors represented in the collection include Andrew Carnegie, Edith Wharton, Theodore Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, Booker T. Washington, Stephen Crane, W. E. B. DuBois, Jacob Riis, and Frederick Jackson Turner. A general introduction to the period, a brief contextualizing essay for each selection, and a comprehensive bibliography of secondary sources are provided as well. In examining and debating the decade’s momentous political and social developments, the essays, editorials, and stories in this anthology reflect a constantly shifting culture at a time of internal turmoil, unprecedented political expansion, and a renaissance of modern ideas and new technologies. Bringing together a carefully chosen selection of primary sources, The American 1890s presents a remarkable variety of views—nostalgic, protective, imperialist, progressive, egalitarian, and democratic—held by American citizens a century ago.
