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Cultural Processes of Inequality: A Sociological Perspective shows how inequality is produced and reproduced through mundane, routine actions based on taken-for-granted assumptions about who should be treated well and who 'deserves' to be treated poorly. Members of socially valued groups (such as white people and men) tend to receive the benefit of the doubt both personally and institutionally, while members of socially devalued groups tend to be denied the benefit of the doubt in both kinds of contexts. This straightforward way of thinking about value and devaluation, privilege and discrimination, works across multiple forms of inequality and at social levels ranging from interpersonal interactions to large-scale institutions, while showcasing the importance of different levels and types of social power (decision-making, cultural and individual). Moral exclusion and inclusion, moral alchemy, false equivalencies, self-fulfilling prophecies, positive and negative visibility and invisibility and the linking of social groups to definitions of social problems are among the processes discussed. Contemporary U.S. examples show how these often-underutilized sociological concepts make sense of specific kinds of inequality. The book includes concrete suggestions for social change, an appendix introducing sociology and discussion questions for students.

The importance of public participation in the successful implementation of climate change-related policies has been highlighted in previous research. However, existing environmental behavioral studies have not sufficiently addressed the relationship among perceptions of climate change, living conditions, social demographic factors and environmentally friendly behavior. Therefore, this paper investigates whether environmental perception and other social determinants such as living conditions and the subjective evaluation of social inequality affect environmentally friendly behavior. We use survey data (N = 1500) collected in Mumbai, India, and analyze our hypotheses using a structural equation model (SEM). The empirical results confirm the direct and indirect influences of environmentally related perceptions, the subjective evaluation of living environments, social factors and other demographic characteristics on pro-environmental behavior. In particular, we find a robust positive effect of education level on pro-environmental behavior, where we observe both a direct impact and an indirect impact through positive effects on environmental knowledge. Thus, we confirm the importance of living environment, social equality and education in sustainable urban planning and efforts to mitigate climate change.

Governing the Displaced answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement? To answer this question, Ali Bhagat takes a dual case study approach to explore three dimensions of refugee survival in Paris and Nairobi: shelter, work, and political belonging. Bhagat's book makes sense of a global refugee regime along the contradictory fault lines of passive humanitarianism, violent exclusion, and organized abandonment in the European Union and East Africa. Governing the Displaced highlights the interrelated and overlapping features of refugee governance and survival in these seemingly disparate places. In its intersectional engagement with theories of racial capitalism with respect to right-wing populism, labor politics, and the everyday forms of exclusion, the book is a timely and necessary contribution to the field of migration studies and to political economy.

Cultural Processes of Inequality: A Sociological Perspective show how systemic inequality is produced and reproduced through mundane, routine actions based on taken-for-granted assumptions. The book ties such cultural assumptions to personal and institutional behavior, drawing connections between individuals, culture (as meaning systems) and larger social structures.

Paid parental leave policies in both Australia and Japan fit within Dobrotić and Blum’s (2020) classification of a selective employment-based entitlement model, thus offering an extension of that category beyond Europe and illustrating the wide variation possible within it. In this article we develop indices for comparing employment-based parental leave policies on three dimensions of social equality: inclusion, gender equality and redistribution. This combination offers an extension of classificatory schemes for parental leave policies and a broader basis for comparative analysis. We compare Australia and Japan on these indices and present a qualitative exploration of the origins and implications of their similarities and differences. The analysis draws attention to tensions between the three indices, illustrating intersecting and conflicting influences on the potential for paid parental leave entitlements to contribute to the amelioration of social inequalities. Overall, the comparison highlights drivers of difference within employment-based entitlement systems and underlines the need for complementary measures to advance egalitarian outcomes.

01 02 This book explores the possibilities and limitations re-theorizing disability using historical materialism in the interdisciplinary contexts of social theory, cultural studies, social and education policy, feminist ethics, and theories of citizenship. 19 02 Proposes a relational analysis to understand disability within a global context; theorizes disability in critical relationship to race, gender, and sexuality within the context of transnational capitalism This is an interdisciplinary text that spans the humanities and the social sciences in the areas of social theory, cultural studies, social and educational policy, feminist ethics and theories of citizenship From education to sociology and even poetry theory, disability studies is a growing discipline that offers a unique critique of our standards of normalcy and acceptance in our society; interest in this topic, among all fields of research will continue to increase and it is important that we include books with this focus on our lists 08 02 'The time for Disability and Difference in Global Contexts is now. At the forefront of both the global and materialist turns in disability studies, Nirmala Erevelles provides readers with an indispensable analysis of the ways in which disability in the current world order is constructed in relation to systems of gender, race, class, caste, and sexual orientation. Erevelles calls for a transformative body politic that resists the compulsory subject positions and relations of domination generated by neoliberal, capitalist modes of production. In and through that call, she remaps, in emancipatory ways, the terrain of disability studies, feminist studies, Marxist theory, postcolonial theory, and education.' –Robert McRuer, Professor of English, George Washington University 'In this wide-ranging exploration through the often violent historical imbrications of disability and race, Erevelles brings us to questions we will never soon forget. This book demonstrates the historical production of disability and other social differences as they press upon us today making our bodies, minds, senses matter as the conflicting social scenes that they are. No one in disability studies, or any of its affiliated fields, should go without reading this book; and no one will rest easy with their current disability knowledge once having read Disability and Difference in Global Context.' - Tanya Titchkosky, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto 'Disability and Difference in Global Contexts offers an important corrective to established scholarship in disability studies by demanding a focus on intersectionality. In language by turns provocative and heartbreaking, Nirmala Erevelles explains and enacts a 'carnal historical materialism': the theoretical yet everyday dance between identity, injury, privilege and hope.' - Margaret Price, Associate Professor of English, Spelman College 'At once deeply personal and sharply theoretical, personal and probing, this book gives us the big picture: 'disability' in its historical, material, and global settings. Erevelles' brilliant work of social theory marks a new and crucial advance in its rigorous explorations of confluences of disability, race, class, gender, and citizenship.' - Susan Schweik, Professor of English, University of California at Berkeley 02 02 This book explores the possibilities and limitations re-theorizing disability using historical materialism in the interdisciplinary contexts of social theory, cultural studies, social and education policy, feminist ethics, and theories of citizenship. 13 02 Nirmala Erevelles is an associate professor of Social Foundations of Education at the University of Alabama. 31 02 This book explores the possibilities and limitations re-theorizing disability using historical materialism in interdisciplinary contexts 04 02 Making Bodies that Matter: The Political Economy of 'Becoming' (Disabled) Of Ghosts and Ghetto Politics: Embodying Education Policy as if Disability Mattered 'Unspeakable' Offenses: Disability Studies at the Intersection of Multiple Differences (with Andrea Minear) Embodied Antimonies: Feminist Disability Studies Meets Third World Feminism (Im)Material Citizens: Cognitive Disability, Race, and the Politics of Citizenship The 'Other' Side of the Dialectic: Towards a Materialist Ethic of Care

This paper is an exploration of the respective approaches of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Rancière to education, specifically the question as to whether education has a significant ‘effect’ or influence on social inequality. Bourdieu’s work is presented in terms of his well-known and related concepts of cultural capital and habitus, where the latter is understood as a largely unconscious cultural predisposition or attitude that is the result of cultivation as a function of cultural capital, that is, the symbolic-cultural manifestation of distinctive class taste. It is argued that, although Bourdieu is critical of inequality in French society, his research has shown that it is endemic to that society, and that education, which begins at home and continues through school to university – including ‘ordinary’ universities as well as the prestigious ‘grands écoles’ of France – is the main mediating institution in the establishment, reinforcement and legitimation of social inequality in the highly stratified French society. In contrast to Bourdieu’s work, which seems to be unable to move beyond the description and theorisation of a society that is (apparently irredeemably) characterised by inequality, for Rancière equality may be approached as an ‘hypothesis’ in need of confirmation, and there are several strategies to pursue this, one of which is to adopt the principle of ‘ignorance’ on the part of the teacher, in order to demonstrate the ability of students to ‘teach themselves’ once they have the requisite material – a reference to Joseph Jacotot, who adopted this approach in 19th-century France, with unexpectedly affirmative results. Furthermore, Rancière criticises Bourdieu for supplying the means to ‘distribute the sensible’ in a hierarchical manner, effectively excluding workers from the ‘polis’, on the grounds that they do not share the capacity of ‘logos’ with other citizens (such as the elites). Rancière therefore claims that Bourdieu simply accepts the immutability of hierarchical class divisions in society. The usefulness of these two thinkers’ work for education in South Africa is explored in this paper.

The concern for democracy is rooted in a concern not to have anyone else above--or, for that matter, below--one. In this article, I try to explicate what relations of social equality are, in a way that shows them to be something that we, with reason, care about. Then I try to explain why and in what sense democracy is a particularly important constituent of a society marked by such relations. I do not expect readers to find this account especially inventive or surprising. The aim is instead to come to terms with something that lies more or less in plain view, something that we are prone to look past, in the search for a more involved, hidden explanation.

Introduction / Wanning Sun and Yingjie Guo -- Political power and social inequality. the impact of the state / Yingjie Guo -- Inequality and culture. a new pathway to understanding social inequality / Wanning Sun -- Between social justice and social order. the framing of inequality / David Kelly -- Temporality as trope in delineating inequality. progress for the prosperous, time warp for the poor / Dorothy Solinger -- Uneven development and the time/space economy / Carolyn Cartier -- The great divide. institutionalized inequality in market socialism / Beibei Tang and Luigi Tomba -- Education and inequality. education and equality / Andrew Kipnis -- (in)equality under the law in China today / Colin Hawes -- Between entitlement and stigmatization. the lessons of HIV/AIDS for China's medical reform / Johanna Hood -- Grassroots activism. non-normative sexual politics in post-socialist China / Lisa Rofel -- Gender as a categorical source of property inequality in urbanizing China / Sally Sargeson -- Law of the land or land law? notions of inequality and inequity in rural Anhui / Graeme Smith -- What's wrong with inequality. power, culture and opportunity / David S. G. Goodman.

For every group that is oppressed, one or more other groups are privileged in relation to it. This book argues that privilege, as the other side of oppression, has been given insufficient attention in both critical theories and in the practices of social change and as a result, dominant groups have been allowed to reinforce their dominance.