Freewheeling sexuality and gender experimentation defined the social and moral landscape of 1890s San Francisco. Middle class whites crafting titillating narratives on topics such as high divorce rate
Freewheeling sexuality and gender experimentation defined the social and moral landscape of 1890s San Francisco. Middle class whites crafting titillating narratives on topics such as high divorce rate
From the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1888 abolition of slavery in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro was home to the largest urban population of enslaved workers anywhere in the Americas. It was al
A great many books have been written about Harlem, but for social history none has surpassed Gilbert Osofsky's account of how a pleasant, pastoral upper-middle-class suburb of Manhattan turned into an
The story of an ambitious family at the forefront of the great middle-class land grab that shaped early American capitalismAmerican Aristocrats is a multigenerational biography of the Andersons of Ken
It’s a breathtaking story of war and depression, astute leadership and arrogant power, inspiring mass movements, and the rise and decline of a middle-class democracy. It’s also the moving story of a p
Art Williams spent his boyhood in a comfortable middle-class existence in 1970s Chicago, but his idyll was shattered when, in short order, his father abandoned the family, his bipolar mother lost her
Art Williams spent his boyhood in a comfortable middle-class existence in 1970s Chicago, but his idyll was shattered when, in short order, his father abandoned the family, his bipolar mother lost her
Conventional wisdom holds that the defeat of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2009 election signaled that the middle class had been lured from the idea of India as a Hind
During the westward expansion of America, white middle-class ideals of home and domestic work were used to measure differences between white and Native American women. Yet the vision of America as "h
The nineteenth-century middle-class ideal of the married woman was of a chaste and diligent wife focused on being a loving mother, with few needs or rights of her own. The modern woman, by contrast, w
Campaigns for moral reform were a recurrent and distinctive feature of public life in later Georgian and Victorian England. Anti-slavery, temperance, charity organisation, cruelty prevention, 'social purity' advocates, and more, all promoted their causes through mobilisation of citizen volunteer support. This 2004 book sets out to explore the world of these volunteer networks, their foci of concern, their patterns of recruitment, their methods of operation and the responses they aroused. In its exploration of this culture of self-consciously altruistic associational effort, the book provides a systematic survey of moral reform movements as a distinct tradition of citizen action over this period, as well as casting light on the formation of a middle-class culture torn, in this stage of economic and political nation-building, between acceptance of a market-organised society and unease about the cultural consequences of doing so. This is a revelatory book that is both compelling and acces
Campaigns for moral reform were a recurrent and distinctive feature of public life in later Georgian and Victorian England. Anti-slavery, temperance, charity organisation, cruelty prevention, 'social purity' advocates, and more, all promoted their causes through mobilisation of citizen volunteer support. This 2004 book sets out to explore the world of these volunteer networks, their foci of concern, their patterns of recruitment, their methods of operation and the responses they aroused. In its exploration of this culture of self-consciously altruistic associational effort, the book provides a systematic survey of moral reform movements as a distinct tradition of citizen action over this period, as well as casting light on the formation of a middle-class culture torn, in this stage of economic and political nation-building, between acceptance of a market-organised society and unease about the cultural consequences of doing so. This is a revelatory book that is both compelling and acces
The US economy today is confronted with the prospect of extended stagnation. This book explores why. Thomas I. Palley argues that the Great Recession and destruction of shared prosperity is due to flawed economic policy over the past thirty years. One flaw was the growth model adopted after 1980 that relied on debt and asset price inflation to fuel growth instead of wages. A second flaw was the model of globalization that created an economic gash. Third, financial deregulation and the house price bubble kept the economy going by making ever more credit available. As the economy cannibalized itself by undercutting income distribution and accumulating debt, it needed larger speculative bubbles to grow. That process ended when the housing bubble burst. The earlier post-World War II economic model based on rising middle-class incomes has been dismantled, while the new neoliberal model has imploded. Absent a change of policy paradigm, the logical next step is stagnation. The political chall
The US economy today is confronted with the prospect of extended stagnation. This book explores why. Thomas I. Palley argues that the Great Recession and destruction of shared prosperity is due to flawed economic policy over the past thirty years. One flaw was the growth model adopted after 1980 that relied on debt and asset price inflation to fuel growth instead of wages. A second flaw was the model of globalization that created an economic gash. Third, financial deregulation and the house price bubble kept the economy going by making ever more credit available. As the economy cannibalized itself by undercutting income distribution and accumulating debt, it needed larger speculative bubbles to grow. That process ended when the housing bubble burst. The earlier post-World War II economic model based on rising middle-class incomes has been dismantled, while the new neoliberal model has imploded. Absent a change of policy paradigm, the logical next step is stagnation. The political chall
Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum. Here is the poignant journey of a “minority student” who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation — from his past, his parents, his culture — and so describes the high price of “making it” in middle-class America. Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language ... and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.From the Paperback edition.
This is the first full-length study of the protest-cum-resistance press and its role in the struggle for a democratic South Africa between the 1880s and 1960s. South Africa's alternative press played a crucial, but still largely undocumented, role in the making of modern South Africa. Projecting the point of view of intermediary social groups, who saw themselves as a modernising, upwardly mobile non-ethnic force in the struggle to create a black middle-class culture in South Africa, these presses mirrored political realities that differed substantially from those projected by South Africa's established commercial press, which was owned and controlled by whites, and concerned almost exclusively with the political, economic and social life of the white population. An important venue for an emerging black literary tradition, these alternative presses also constitute a unique political and social archive.
In Peruvian Lives across Borders , M. Cristina Alcalde examines the evolution of belonging and the making of home among middle- and upper-class Peruvians in Peru, the United States, Canada, and Germa
Born in middle-class Philadelphia in the 1940s, Howardena Pindell came of age during the Civil Rights movement. As an African-American woman artist, making her way in the world provided Pindell with s
Yokoi can’t seem to stop Seki’s increasingly creative contraptions from grabbing her attention and making her own imagination wander away in the middle of class. And at one point, Yokoi find herself i
