Watching the English

Watching the English
Author: Kate Fox
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1857889177

Updated, with new research and over 100 revisions Ten years later, they're still talking about the weather! Kate Fox, the social anthropologist who put the quirks and hidden conditions of the English under a microscope, is back with more biting insights about the nature of Englishness. This updated and revised edition of Watching the English - which over the last decade has become the unofficial guidebook to the English national character - features new and fresh insights on the unwritten rules and foibles of "squaddies," bikers, horse-riders, and more. Fox revisits a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and bizarre codes of behavior. She demystifies the peculiar cultural rules that baffle us: the rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid pantomime rule. Class anxiety tests. The roots of English self-mockery and many more. An international bestseller, Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful and often hilarious look at the English and their society.

Social Class in Modern Britain

Social Class in Modern Britain
Author: Gordon Marshall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2005-08-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134858930

The book incorporates three alternative conceptions of class. Erik Olin Wright's structural Marxist account is set alongside John Goldthorpe's occupational class schema, and the Registrar-General's prestige and skill-related categories. The authors use their unique data on inequality and conflict in contemporary Britain to provide, for the first time, a rigourous comparison of Marxist, sociological and official class frameworks. The book ranges widely across such topics as sectionalism in the workforce; privatism of families and individuals; fatalism; gender and class processes; sectoral production and consumption cleavages. The authors conclude that class is still crucial in structuring economic, political and social life.

The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain

The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain
Author: David Cannadine
Publisher:
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1999
Genre: Social classes
ISBN: 9780231096669

In this wholly original and brilliantly argued book, the author shows that Britons have indeed been preoccupied with class, but in ways that are invariably ignorant and confused.

Class in Britain

Class in Britain
Author: David Cannadine
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2000-03-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0140249540

David Cannadine's unique history examines the British preoccupation with class and the different ways the British have thought about their own society. From the eighteenth through the twentieth century, he traces the different ways British society has been viewed, unveiling the different purposes each model has served. This is a social, intellectual and political history and a powerful account of how and why class has shaped British identity.

Social Class on British and American Screens

Social Class on British and American Screens
Author: Nicole Cloarec
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2016-01-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476662347

At a time when debates about social inequality are in the spotlight, it is worth examining how the two most popular media of the 20th and 21st centuries--film and television--have shaped the representation of social classes. How do generic conventions determine the representation of social stereotypes? How do filmmakers challenge social class identification? How do factors such as national history, geography and gender affect the representation of social classes? This collection of new essays explores these and other questions through an analysis of a wide range of American and British productions--from sitcoms and reality TV to documentaries and auteur cinema--from the 1950s to the present.

The New Politics of Class

The New Politics of Class
Author: Geoffrey Evans
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2017
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0198755759

This book explores the new politics of class in 21st century Britain. It shows how the changing shape of the class structure since 1945 has led political parties to change, which has both reduced class voting and increased class non-voting. This argument is developed in three stages. The first is to show that there has been enormous social continuity in class divisions. The authors demonstrate this using extensive evidence on class and educational inequality, perceptions of inequality, identity and awareness, and political attitudes over more than fifty years. The second stage is to show that there has been enormous political change in response to changing class sizes. Party policies, politicians' rhetoric, and the social composition of political elites have radically altered. Parties offer similar policies, appeal less to specific classes, and are populated by people from more similar backgrounds. Simultaneously the mass media have stopped talking about the politics of class. The third stage is to show that these political changes have had three major consequences. First, as Labour and the Conservatives became more similar, class differences in party preferences disappeared. Second, new parties, most notably UKIP, have taken working class voters from the mainstream parties. Third, and most importantly, the lack of choice offered by the mainstream parties has led to a huge increase in class-based abstention from voting. Working class people have become much less likely to vote. In that sense, Britain appears to have followed the US down a path of working class political exclusion, ultimately undermining the representativeness of our democracy. They conclude with a discussion of the Brexit referendum and the role that working class alienation played in its historic outcome.

The Working Class Majority

The Working Class Majority
Author: Michael Zweig
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2011-11-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0801464781

In the second edition of his essential book—which incorporates vital new information and new material on immigration, race, gender, and the social crisis following 2008—Michael Zweig warns that by allowing the working class to disappear into categories of "middle class" or "consumers," we also allow those with the dominant power, capitalists, to vanish among the rich. Economic relations then appear as comparisons of income or lifestyle rather than as what they truly are—contests of power, at work and in the larger society.

American Cultural Patterns

American Cultural Patterns
Author: Edward C. Stewart
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2011-06-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0983955832

A fully revised edition of the seminal classic This classic study was originally written by Edward Stewart in 1972 and has become a seminal work in the field of intercultural relations. In this edition, Stewart and Milton J. Bennett have greatly expanded the analysis of American cultural patterns by introducing new cross-cultural comparisons and drawing on recent reseach on value systems, perception psychology, cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication. Beginning with a discussion of the issues relative to contact between people of different cultures, the authors examine the nature of cultural assumptions and values as a framework for cross-cultural analysis. They then analyze the human perceptual process, consider the influence of language on culture, and discuss nonverbal behavior. Central to the book is an analysis of American culture constructed along four dimentions: form of activity, form of social relations, perceptions of the world, and perception of the self. American cultural traits are isolated out, analyzed, and compared with parallel characteristics of other cultures. Finally, the cultural dimentions of communication and their implications for cross-cultural interaction are examined.