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: an examination of the powers of the US federal government

[This is the MP3CD audiobook format in vinyl case.] [Read by Traber Burns] * Includes a bonus disc with graphs and charts. From the bestselling author of Losing Ground and The Bell Curve, this startling long-lens view shows how America is coming apart at the seams that have historically joined our classes. In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity. Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship -- a divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad. The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. This divergence puts the success of the American project at risk. The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.

Product Description: [This is the Audiobook CD Library Edition in vinyl case.] [Read by Traber Burns]*Includes a bonus disc with graphs and charts. From the bestselling author of Losing Ground and The Bell Curve, this startling long-lens view shows how America is coming apart at the seams that have historically joined our classes...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.

A Web columnist describes the permanent and largely invisible underclass that resides in many American small towns, examining a section of society that exists in a world of taverns, churches, and double-wide trailers.

Product Description: Challenging the common idea that education can save the individual and society from major problems of the modern world

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.

Why do most people think of themselves as middle class? Why do we view people in other social classes the way that we do? Why do many of us spend more than we can afford buying luxury items that we do not need? Framing Class provides answers to these questions. Through extensive content analysis of sources that include the archives of major newspapers and fifty years of television programming, Kendall illustrates how the media use framing to provide a short-hand code for the presumed values and lifestyles of the upper, middle, working, and poverty classes, thereby influencing our opinions of these classes. By doing so, she provides readers with the opportunity to assess for themselves what effect these frames may have on media audiences. Framing Class is the first book to use the sociological imagination in analyzing how popular culture frames social class in the United States and the effect that framing has on our opinions on this vital topic. Framing emphasizes some ideological perspectives over others and directs people's attention to some ideas while ignoring others. This book shows how the media frame class to favorably portray the lifestyles of the upper classes while negatively stereotyping the working class and poor, perhaps contributing to the ever-widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots in the United States.

Product Description: Great collectible book for research, study, or review!

Product Description: This textbook reflects a hybrid approach to studying stratification. It addresses the knowledge accumulated by stratification scholars and challenges students to apply this information to their social world. Features include: • The text is divided into basic concepts (theoretical and methodological) and applications (e...read more

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Stratification Class and Conflict , hardcover, Dust Jacket

Not that long ago, the head of the Mormon Church summarized what many American's believe or at least subconsciously accept when he said, "There is a reason why one man is born white rich and with many blessings and another is born black with very few, God has determined each man's proper reward." And while he was widely and deservedly criticized for his remarks, it wasn't because a majority does not believe his views, but rather that they deemed him politically incorrect for bringing race into the question and for saying aloud what many think quietly and keep to themselves. Class is America's forbidden thought. Class and culture rigidly control who we are, who we associate with, and how much money we can earn. American class culture determines who will prosper and who will fail. The Making of the Slave Class is a book about this culture and the debilitating consequences that make the American slave class. Written for a general audience, this book is the first historical and cultural analysis of the American class system and the poverty created by it. It could be easily categorized as a work of sociology, history, anthropology or economics. The book analyzes class through all these disciplines. The American class system is a topic that has not received a great deal of attention from American writers. There are no comprehensive books on the subject that analyze class and poverty from cultural, economic and historic perspectives. This book does the job. Among the few books on the subject are such works as Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks and Class by Paul Fussell, both of which make fun of, belittle and attempt to make literary class war upon the working class in their books. This book fires back.