The book on societey : "Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology"

Description
RACE, CLASS, AND, GENDER, includes many interdisciplinary readings. The author's selection of very accessible articles show how race, class, and gender shape people's experiences, and help students to see the issues in an analytic, as well as descriptive way. The book also provides conceptual grounding in understanding race, class, and gender; has a strong historical and sociological perspective; and is further strengthened by conceptual introductions by the authors. Students will find the readings engaging and accessible, but may gain the most from the introduction sections that highlight key points and relate the essential concepts. Included in the collection of readings are narratives aimed at building empathy, and articles on important social issues such as prison, affirmative action, poverty, immigration, and racism, among other topics.

About the Author
Margaret L. Andersen (B.A., Georgia State University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst) is the Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Delaware. She is the co-editor of the best-selling anthology, RACE, CLASS AND GENDER, Sixth Edition (Wadsworth, 2007; with Patricia Hill Collins), author of THINKING ABOUT WOMEN: SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SEX AND GENDER, Seventh Edition (Allyn and Bacon, 2006); SOCIOLOGY: THE ESSENTIALS, Fourth Edition (Wadsworth, 2007; also co-authored with Howard F. Taylor), and UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY: AN INTRODUCTORY READER, Second Edition (Wadsworth, 2004; co-edited with Kim Logio and Howard F. Taylor). She is a recipient of the University of Delaware’s Excellence-in-Teaching Award and the College of Arts and Science Distinguished Teaching Award, former president of the Eastern Sociological Society, and chair of the National Advisory Board for the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University, where she has been a visiting professor. She has received the American Sociological Association Jessie Bernard Award (2006) for broadening the horizons of sociology to include the study of women and has also received the 2004-2005 SWS Feminist Lecturer, an award given annually to a social scientist who has made significant contributions to the study of women in society.

Patricia Hill Collins is Wilson Elkins Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Charles Phelps Taft Emeritus Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of numerous articles and books including BLACK SEXUAL POLITICS: AFRICAN AMERICANS, GENDER AND THE NEW RACISM (Routhledge, 2004) and BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT: KNOWLEDGE, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND THE POLITICS OF EMPOWERMENT (Urwin Hyman 1990; Rothledge, 2000) which won the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association and the C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her forthcoming book is FROM BLACK POWER TO HIP HOP: RACISM, NATIONALISM, AND FEMINISM (Temple University Press, 2005).

Social Class and Stratification: Classic Statements and Theoretical Debates

Social Class and Stratification: Classic Statements and Theoretical Debates

Description
Bringing together the classic statements on social stratification, this collection offers the most significant contributions to ongoing debates on the nature of race, class, and gender inequality.

American Social Classes in the 1950s: Selections from Vance Packard's The Status Seekers (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

Review: By Christopher W. Chase "Christopher W. Chase"

Vance Packard's "The Status Seekers" is a well known compendium and analysis of the nature and development of social classification during the 1950's-a period marked by explosive growth of the U.S. economy, especially among young white families. The thesis of the book, as explained by Packard, is that rather than the creation of a largely classless society in which "all" were gaining the benefits of democratic capitalism, the creation of an "affluent" society simply highlighted and created new stratifications, both horizontal, and vertical, of social class based on race, religion, behavioral and consumptive practices.

Packard sought to demonstrate his thesis by compiling and synthesizing then current sociological studies, as well as conducting informal interviews among members of various economic classes, policy experts, and professionals in different cities, towns, and states. There is little in the book that represents original thought, but the form, promotion and style of the book made it a best-selling nonfiction work among the general public.

It was precisely these qualities that drew so much ire from many critics, especially those drawn from the circles of New York intelligentsia-it was often attacked for its own pretense to provinciality and romanticism of an agrarian, frontier past. The Status Seekers nonetheless stands as a significant work in American Studies, precisely because of its ability to bring scholarly information, especially regarding the vertical stratifications of race and religion, to bear on the nature of class in America, and stands out as a dissenting voice in the consensus ideology and politics of containment that ruled public discourse at the time. Other criticisms of the book, such as the charge that it portrayed status seeking voyeuristically and hypocritically--- insofar as buyers used it to advance their own status---- are charges more appropriate to the willingness of the buying public to commodify and use as a tool any weapon in the fight to gain greater status. While books are meant to be read, conveying information about such timely topics is bound to get caught up in the politics of the very phenomenon studied. That is not Packard's fault.

There are other criticisms, more from a contemporary standpoint, that could be made of Packard's work. It is true that he took from conservative liberalism a predisposition to see affluence as the problem, rather than the lack of it for so many people within the society he studied. It is also true that he played more to the prejudices of the day, especially regarding race and gender, and failed to aggressively question some of the roots of the problems he sought in terms of these prejudices. But the point of his text was not to make a critique of American institutions as such, but rather the interpretations of those institutions as held and manipulated by consumers for their own benefit.

On the one hand, we should chalk this up to Packard's Cold War liberalism. Moreover, as pointed out in the excellent introductory essay by Daniel Horowitz, Packard was once a socialist radical, but experienced the realpolitik of Stalin's Soviet Union negotiations with Hitler, and correctly understood the USSR as a form of state capitalism (much like C. L. R. James). It would be worst sort of ex post facto presentism to hold these sorts of criticisms too hard against Packard.

Christopher W. Chase - PhD Fellow - Michigan State University

Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective

Review: By Midwest Book Review

Social Stratification In Sociological Perspective is a college-level treatise on social issues affecting class, race and gender appears in its second edition to discuss the evolving field of stratification. College students will find a survey of stratification research, with articles in different sections examining the field and its broader issues and controversies. This comprehensive reader may well serve as a classroom text on the topic for sociology courses.

Editorial Reviews
Review of Radical Political Economics
"Grusky's book is unique.... It is an active text forcing the essays out of an intellectual vacuum and into an environment where they are up against other essays with differing view points.... A service to the complex field of stratification research, whether for the beginning student, where it serves as an excellent introduction to the field, or for the more experienced individual, where it can serve as a top-notch reference.... Highly recommendable."