John is at a crossroad. His life has been a series of choices leading to a dead-end job, a failed marriage, and a no-win attitude. When he gets a last chance assignment to write about a mysterious new-age preacher in the Bible belt, he figures he has nothing better to do. He tracks down his old friend, Red, who has never had faith in anything, let alone people. John must choose to live or die and his choice to live depends on how. Will he choose to follow his friend into a life of drinking...

Class is not only amongst the oldest and most controversial of all concepts in social science, but also a topic which has fascinated, amused, incensed and galvanized the general public. But what exactly is a ‘class’? How do sociologists study and measure it, and how does it correspond to everyday understandings of social difference in the twenty-first century?In a time when inequality has dramatically returned to the social scientific and political agenda, this accessible and livel...

This volume seeks to make the case for Pierre Bourdieu’s relational sociology as a powerful, comprehensive and integrated paradigm for studying everything political.Bringing together a collection of experts writing on a wide range of topics organised into thematic sections, it not only shows that the applicability of Bourdieu’s concepts is broader and more productive than previously thought, but it also demonstrates how Bourdieu’s relational sociology advances on other perspectives...

This fourth volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies finishes the series by exploring how class infuses people’s past and present efforts to juggle family, work and leisure.Previous volumes in the series have examined the shape, history and cultural expressions of class structures in capitalist societies as well as their typical intersections with gender, race/ ethnicity, family and more. Now, drawing on in depth interviews with men and women from the US, Swed...

This book continues the Class Structure of Capitalist Societies series by exploring the place of class among a confluence of factors in shaping people’s lives, loves and lifestyles across three nations.Previous volumes in the series examined the shape, history and cultural expressions of class structures. Now, grappling with themes usually put under the labels of ‘intersectionality’ and ‘work-life balance’ and bridging literatures seldom brought together, this volume uses ...

Pierre Bourdieu was the most influential sociologist of the late 20th century. The framework he developed continues to inspire countless researchers across the globe and provokes intense debates long after his death. Novel concepts, innovative applications and countless elaborations spring up every day, bulking out and shaping a distinct, if not always entirely consistent, body of work that might be characterised as a recognisable tradition. For those coming to Bourdieu for the fi...

The second volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies maps the distribution of social powers and associated properties and lifestyles in unparalleled detail by examining the results of a brand-new survey delivered in Sweden, Germany and the US.Continuing the cross-national investigation of the shape and effects of class systems across capitalist nations, the analyses in Volume 2 are embedded in a novel sociological theory of international relations, sustained re...

Class in the New Millennium paints a fresh and comprehensive picture of social class in Britain today. Anchored in a broad repertoire of methods and pursuing a distinctive theoretical agenda, it not only painstakingly maps the structure, transformation and effects of the UK’s key fault lines but goes behind closed doors to see how they play out in everyday family life.Throughout the book Atkinson throws new light on a diverse array of themes, including: the continued effects of dei...

This first volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies offers a bold and wide-ranging assessment of the shape and effects of class systems across a diverse range of capitalist nations. Plumbing a trove of data and deploying cutting-edge techniques, it carefully maps the distribution of the key sources of power and documents the major convergences and divergences between market societies old and new.Establishing that the multidimensional vision of class proposed d...

Pierre Bourdieu is arguably the most influential sociologist of the twentieth century, especially since the once common criticisms of his determinism and reproductionism have receded. Now, however, his intellectual enterprise faces a new set of challenges unearthed by decades of sympathetic research: how to conceive the relationship between society and place, particularly in an increasingly global world; how to recognize the individual as a product of multiple forces and pressures; how to ...

Illustrating the effect of class relationships upon the institutionalizing of elaborate codes in the school, the papers in this volume each develop from the previous one and demonstrate the evolution of the concepts discussed.

In this book the author lays the foundations for a new political economy of information. The information space, or I-Space is the conceptual framework in which organizations, institutions and cultures are being transformed by new information and communication technologies. In the penultimate chapter, the I-Space’s usefulness as an explanatory framework is illustrated with an application: a case study of China’s modernization. Information Space proposes a radical shift in the way that we ap...