Violence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. But these reports tend to focus on one segment of the LGBT community—white, middle class men—and largely ignore that part of the community that arguably suffers a larger share of the violence—racial minorities, the poor, and women. In Violence against Queer People, sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that focuses on the role played by race, class, and gender.   Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violence—and perceive that violence quite differently—based on their race, class, and gender.  His research highlights the extent to which other forms of discrimination—including racism and sexism—shape LGBT people’s experience of abuse. He reports, for instance, that lesbian and transgender women often described violent incidents in which a sexual or a misogynistic component was introduced, and that LGBT people of color sometimes weren’t sure if anti-queer violence was based solely on their sexuality or whether racism or sexism had also played a role. Meyer observes that given the many differences in how anti-queer violence is experienced, the present media focus on white, middle-class victims greatly oversimplifies and distorts the nature of anti-queer violence. In fact, attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore race, class, and gender run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects. Many feel that the struggle for gay rights has largely been accomplished and the tide of history has swung in favor of LGBT equality. Violence against Queer People, on the contrary, argues that the lives of many LGBT people—particularly the most vulnerable—have improved very little, if at all, over the past thirty years.  

B> Stratification structure refers to the hierarchy of social classes in society. This book describes the class structure in the United States, focusing on the way people's class location influences their opportunities. To do this, Beeghley emphasizes three themes. The first theme is that power influences the distribution of resources in the United States. The second theme is that the social structure influences rates of events, mainly because it determines people's range of choices. The third theme is that social psychological factors influence how individuals act on, and react to, the situations in which they find themselves. One purpose of this book is to help readers to understand social inequality from a new angle of vision. Such an orientation implies that social facts are not always what they seem to be, an insight that is fundamental to sociology. For readers interested in society's class structure in relation to individual action and reaction.

Product Description: Like its predecessors, the Ninth Edition of Dennis Gilbert’s The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality, focuses on the socioeconomic core of the American class system. Drawing on classic and contemporary studies, Gilbert describes our class structure and shows how class affects our everyday lives, from the way we raise our children to the way we vote...read more

Product Description: Like its predecessors, the Ninth Edition of Dennis Gilbert’s The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality, focuses on the socioeconomic core of the American class system. Drawing on classic and contemporary studies, Gilbert describes our class structure and shows how class affects our everyday lives, from the way we raise our children to the way we vote...read more

Product Description: This book offers both a philosophical and sociological model for understanding the constitution of identity in general, and black social identity in particular, without reverting to either a social or racial deterministic view of identity construction...read more

Product Description: Tattoos. Unwed pregnancy. Giving up on shaving…showering…and employment. These used to be signatures of a trashy individual. Now they’re the new norm. What happened to etiquette, hygiene, and self restraint? Charlotte Hays, Southern gentlewoman extraordinaire, takes a humorous look at the spread of white trash culture to all levels of American society...read more

Product Description: A collection of articles adapted from the National Geographic magazine focused on one theme. Articles in Cultural Identity in America include Changing America, Inside the Presidency, and Silicon Valley: Inside the Dream Incubator.

The New Class Society provides a fresh, lucid, and compelling exploration of U.S. class structure, social inequities, and the fading American Dream. This third edition extends the author's distributional model of class analysis and class-based power networks model developed in earlier editions. The narrative has been revised and new, recent examples of topics, issues, and events are included that illustrate how the authors' approach to class analysis directly relates to today's news, social issues, and global developments. The book demonstrates how and why, over the last thirty years, class inequalities in the U.S. have been widened, hardened, and have been legitimized.The text includes new "Class Issues in the Media" sidebar readings at the end of each chapter and, like earlier editions, is written for a wide audience featuring many insightful figures, tables, and cartoons. This book is an essential text for students and citizens interested in understanding the nature and significance of class structures and inequalities in the U.S. today.

The United States was founded on the principle of equal opportunity for all, and this ethos continues to inform the nation's collective identity. In reality, however, absolute equality is elusive. The gap between rich and poor has widened in recent decades, and the United States has the highest level of economic inequality of any developed country. Social class and other differences in status reverberate throughout American life, and prejudice based on another's perceived status persists among individuals and groups. In Envy Up, Scorn Down, noted social psychologist Susan Fiske examines the psychological underpinnings of interpersonal and intergroup comparisons, exploring why we compare ourselves to those both above and below us and analyzing the social consequences of such comparisons in day-to-day life.What motivates individuals, groups, and cultures to envy the status of some and scorn the status of others? Who experiences envy and scorn most? Envy Up, Scorn Down marshals a wealth of recent psychological studies as well as findings based on years of Fiske's own research to address such questions. She shows that both envy and scorn have distinctive biological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral characteristics. And though we are all wired for comparison, some individuals are more vulnerable to these motives than others. Dominant personalities, for example, express envy toward high-status groups such as the wealthy and well-educated, and insecurity can lead others to scorn those perceived to have lower status, such as women, minorities, or the disabled. Fiske shows that one's race or ethnicity, gender, and education all correlate with perceived status. Regardless of whether one is accorded higher or lower status, however, all groups rank their members, and all societies rank the various groups within them. We rate each group as either friend or foe, able or unable, and accordingly assign them the traits of warmth or competence. The majority of groups in the United States are ranked either warm or competent but not both, with extreme exceptions: the homeless or the very poor are considered neither warm nor competent. Societies across the globe view older people as warm but incompetent. Conversely, the very rich are generally considered cold but highly competent. Envy Up, Scorn Down explores the nuances of status hierarchies and their consequences and shows that such prejudice in its most virulent form dehumanizes and can lead to devastating outcomes from the scornful neglect of the homeless to the envious anger historically directed at Tutsis in Rwanda or Jews in Europe.Individuals, groups, and even cultures will always make comparisons between and among themselves. Envy Up, Scorn Down is an accessible and insightful examination of drives we all share and the prejudice that can accompany comparison. The book deftly shows that understanding envy and scorn and seeking to mitigate their effects can prove invaluable in our lives, our relationships, and our society.

Product Description: Discussions of class make many Americans uncomfortable. This accessible book makes class visible in everyday life. Solely identifying political and economic inequalities between classes offers an incomplete picture of class dynamics in America, and may not connect with people's lived experiences...read more