A deliciously satirical attack on a money-mad society, Vanity Fair, which first appeared in 1847, is an immensely moral novel, and an immensely witty one. Called in its subtitle A Novel Without a Hero, Vanity Fair has instead two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young...

In this era where dollar value signals moral worth, Daniel Fridman paints a vivid portrait of Americans and Argentinians seeking to transform themselves into people worthy of millions. Following groups who practice the advice from financial success bestsellers, Fridman illustrates how the neoliberal emphasis on responsibility, individualism, and entrepreneurship binds people together with the ropes of aspiration. Freedom from Work delves into a world...

Domestic servitude blurs the divide between family and work, affection and duty, the home and the world. In Cultures of Servitude, Raka Ray and Seemin Qayum offer an ethnographic account of domestic life and servitude in contemporary Kolkata, India, with a concluding comparison with New York City. Focused on employers as well as servants, men as well as women, across multiple generations, they examine the practices and meaning of servitude around...

The Kanwar is India's largest annual religious pilgrimage. Millions of participants gather sacred water from the Ganga and carry it across hundreds of miles to dispense as offerings in Śiva shrines. These devotees-called bhola, gullible or fools, and seen as miscreants by many Indians-are mostly young, destitute men, who have been left behind in the globalizing economy. But for these young men, the ordeal of the pilgrimage is no foolish pursuit,...

Most people think of class as a ranking systemthe more you have, the higher your class status. In contrast to this view, in this new study author Gus Bagakis demonstrates that class is a tool that explains how the capitalist system works and why the class struggle is invisible. Capitalism was and is a developing system in which the working class is turned into a commodity, selling its labor power to the capitalist class that owns the factories, businesses,...

In this edited collection of narrative-based, critically situated essays, each contributor explores how class has affected his/her personal and academic lives. The collection is divided into three sections: i) narratives that critique the meritocracy, ii) narratives that trace the effects of middle class cultural capital on relatively new academics from the working class, and, iii) narratives that explore the effects of class on longtime academics...

Many activists worry about the same few problems in their groups: low turnout, inactive members, conflicting views on racism, overtalking, and offensive violations of group norms. But in searching for solutions to these predictable and intractable troubles, progressive social movement groups overlook class culture differences. Missing Class looks through a class lens and discovers that members with different class life experiences tend to approach...

Les perceptions publiques de la jeunesse semblent se cristalliser autour de deux figures bien distinctes: d'un cté, une jeunesse ordinaire, dont on dit souvent qu'« il faut bien qu'elle se passe ». Elle est certes parfois turbulente, ou même politisée, mais ses désordres semblent transitoires et, du moins aux yeux d'une partie de la société, légitimes. De l'autre cté, une jeunesse menaçante, issue des classes populaires, qui met en échec...

Tief greifende soziale Wandlungsprozesse und veränderte Selbstbeschreibungen moderner Gesellschaften – verbunden mit Forderungen nach und Versprechungen von mehr Bildung und lebenslangem Lernen – stellen ein umfangreiches Bündel an Herausforderungen für Kulturelle Bildung und für Soziale Arbeit dar. Der Band greift aktuelle gesellschaftliche und fachwissenschaftliche Entwicklungen und Fragen in diesem Zusammenhang auf, z.B. zur Bedeutung von...

Based on original historical tables, Northern Ontario in Historical Statistics, 1871–2021 offers an overview of major long-term population, social composition, employment, and urban concentration trends over 150 years in the region now called "Northern Ontario" (or "Nord de l'Ontario"). David Leadbeater and his collaborators compare Northern Ontario relative to Southern Ontario, as well as detail changes at the district and local levels. They also...