At the origin of middle-class rationality

At the origin of middle-class rationality PDF Author: Ruggero D’Alessandro
Publisher: Mimesis
ISBN: 8869772020
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 91

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Book Description
The Odyssey is rightly celebrated as a story that goes far beyond the scope of epic poetry. It is an open window to an entire era and its social systems as well as its theological, cultural, economic and political structures, while running simultaneously in the register of the earthly and of the divine. Within The Odyssey, the episode of the Sirens stands out as an exceptionally evocative example of this kind of achievement. This volume is dedicated to exploring the myriad levels of analysis that are allowed by this famous episode, following in the footsteps of celebrated readers of The Odyssey such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Lukàcs, Auerbach, Kerény, Bloch, Auden, Pound, Tolstoj, Elster and Steiner. By looking at the brief encounter between Ulysses and the Sirens, the reader of this volume will discover the roots of our modern concept of middle class rationality and its profound ramifications stretching between economy, politics, and the divine.

At the origin of middle-class rationality

At the origin of middle-class rationality PDF Author: Ruggero D’Alessandro
Publisher: Mimesis
ISBN: 8869772020
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 91

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Odyssey is rightly celebrated as a story that goes far beyond the scope of epic poetry. It is an open window to an entire era and its social systems as well as its theological, cultural, economic and political structures, while running simultaneously in the register of the earthly and of the divine. Within The Odyssey, the episode of the Sirens stands out as an exceptionally evocative example of this kind of achievement. This volume is dedicated to exploring the myriad levels of analysis that are allowed by this famous episode, following in the footsteps of celebrated readers of The Odyssey such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Lukàcs, Auerbach, Kerény, Bloch, Auden, Pound, Tolstoj, Elster and Steiner. By looking at the brief encounter between Ulysses and the Sirens, the reader of this volume will discover the roots of our modern concept of middle class rationality and its profound ramifications stretching between economy, politics, and the divine.

The Middle Class and Democracy in Socio-Historical Perspective

The Middle Class and Democracy in Socio-Historical Perspective PDF Author: Ronald M. Glassman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004103597
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
This volume presents an in-depth study of the commercial middle class and its link with legal-democratic processes. The material presented is critical for understanding both the future of democracy, and its past.

American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability

American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability PDF Author: Robert Wuthnow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691210713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
How American respectability has been built by maligning those who don't make the grade How did Americans come to think of themselves as respectable members of the middle class? Was it just by earning a decent living? Or did it require something more? And if it did, what can we learn that may still apply? The quest for middle-class respectability in nineteenth-century America is usually described as a process of inculcating positive values such as honesty, hard work, independence, and cultural refinement. But clergy, educators, and community leaders also defined respectability negatively, by maligning individuals and groups—“misfits”—who deviated from accepted norms. Robert Wuthnow argues that respectability is constructed by “othering” people who do not fit into easily recognizable, socially approved categories. He demonstrates this through an in-depth examination of a wide variety of individuals and groups that became objects of derision. We meet a disabled Civil War veteran who worked as a huckster on the edges of the frontier, the wife of a lunatic who raised her family while her husband was institutionalized, an immigrant religious community accused of sedition, and a wealthy scion charged with profiteering. Unlike respected Americans who marched confidently toward worldly and heavenly success, such misfits were usually ignored in paeans about the nation. But they played an important part in the cultural work that made America, and their story is essential for understanding the “othering” that remains so much a part of American culture and politics today.

Culture Builders

Culture Builders PDF Author: Jonas Frykman
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813512396
Category : Middle class
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
"Explains brilliantly the structures and processes of middle-class culture in historical perspective."--Robert Nye, Rutgers University " This] illuminating study of the Swedish middle class around the turn of the century . . . is one welcome sign that bourgeois, too, are once again recognized as parts of society worth studying . . . to be understood rather than to be savaged. Culture Builders is a welcome sign of yet another development: the ease with which historical studies may be integrated with neighboring disciplines."--Journal of Modern History "The authors take an impressively broad intellectual perspective. . . . The everyday routines of bourgeoisie, peasantry, and working class are dramatically portrayed through a skillful weaving together of excerpts from ethnological archives, schoolbooks, memoirs, novels, and etiquette manuals . . . provides insight into the sociocultural complexities, conflicts, and contradictions that are ignored in widely held national stereotypes."--American Anthropologist "Unites historical and ethnological approaches so as to present a way of life that will be of interest not only to scholars of Scandinavia but to historians, sociologists, and everyone trying to describe and interpret the bourgeois Western culture during the nineteenth century."--Ethnos Jonas Frykman and Orvar Lofgren teach in the Department of European Ethnology at the University of Lund, Sweden.

The Middle Class and Democracy in Socio-Historical Perspective

The Middle Class and Democracy in Socio-Historical Perspective PDF Author: Glassman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004618066
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
This volume presents an in-depth study of the commercial middle class and its link with legal-democratic processes. The material presented is critical for understanding both the future of democracy, and its past.

The Radical Middle Class

The Radical Middle Class PDF Author: Robert D. Johnston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691126003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
America has a long tradition of middle-class radicalism, albeit one that intellectual orthodoxy has tended to obscure. The Radical Middle Class seeks to uncover the democratic, populist, and even anticapitalist legacy of the middle class. By examining in particular the independent small business sector or petite bourgeoisie, using Progressive Era Portland, Oregon, as a case study, Robert Johnston shows that class still matters in America. But it matters only if the politics and culture of the leading player in affairs of class, the middle class, is dramatically reconceived. This book is a powerful combination of intellectual, business, labor, medical, and, above all, political history. Its author also humanizes the middle class by describing the lives of four small business owners: Harry Lane, Will Daly, William U'Ren, and Lora Little. Lane was Portland's reform mayor before becoming one of only six senators to vote against U.S. entry into World War I. Daly was Oregon's most prominent labor leader and a onetime Socialist. U'Ren was the national architect of the direct democracy movement. Little was a leading antivaccinationist. The Radical Middle Class further explores the Portland Ku Klux Klan and concludes with a national overview of the American middle class from the Progressive Era to the present. With its engaging narrative, conceptual richness, and daring argumentation, it will be welcomed by all who understand that reexamining the middle class can yield not only better scholarship but firmer grounds for democratic hope.

The Indian Middle Class

The Indian Middle Class PDF Author: Surinder S. Jodhka
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199089663
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Who exactly are the middle classes in India? What role do they play in contemporary Indian politics and society, and what are their historical and cultural moorings? The authors of this volume argue that the middle class has largely been understood as an ‘income/ economic category’, but the term has a broader social and conceptual history, globally as well as in India. To begin with, the middle class is not a homogeneous category but is shaped by specific colonial and post-colonial experiences and is differentiated by caste, ethnicity, region, religion, and gender locations. These socio-economic differentiations shape its politics and culture and become the basis of internal conflicts, contestations, and divergent political worldviews. The authors demonstrate how the middle class has acquired a certain legitimacy to speak on behalf of the society as a whole, despite its politics being inherently exclusionary, as it tries to protect its own interests. Further, perceived as an aspirational category, the middle class has a seductive charm for the lower classes, who struggle to shift to this ever elusive social location.

The Vanishing Middle Class, new epilogue

The Vanishing Middle Class, new epilogue PDF Author: Peter Temin
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262535297
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor. Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, Latino, not like "us." Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.

Debunking the Middle-class Myth

Debunking the Middle-class Myth PDF Author: Eileen Gale Kugler
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810845121
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This book offers a unique perspective on what every educator, parent, and community leader should know about reaping the rich harvest of our diverse schools. Included are anecdotes from Kugler's personal experience as well as information from 80 interviews with key educators, parents, and students.

Rational Choice Theory

Rational Choice Theory PDF Author: Margaret S. Archer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134546521
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Rational Choice Theory is flourishing in sociology and is increasingly influential in other disciplines. Contributors to this volume are convinced that it provides an inadequate conceptualization of all aspects of decision making: of the individuals who make the decisions, of the process by which decisions get made and of the context within which decisions get made. The ciritique focuses on the four assumptions which are the bedrock of rational choice: rationality: the theory's definition of rationality is incomplete, and cannot satisfactorily incorporate norms and emotions individualism: rational choice is based upon atomistic, individual decision makers and cannot account for decisions made by ;couples', 'groups' or other forms of collective action process: the assumption of fixed, well-ordered preferences and 'perfect information' makes the theory inadequate for situations of change and uncertainty aggregation: as methodological individualists, rational choice theorists can only view structure and culture as aggregates and cannot incorporate structural or cultural influences as emergent properties which have an effect upon decision making. The critique is grounded in discussion of a wide range of social issues, including race, marriage, health and education.