Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there were three neatly defined status groups in classical ...Athens--citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book--the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens--clearly lays out the evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one that has important implications for understanding Greek social and cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise masked by Athenian ideology, Deborah Kamen illuminates the complexity of Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship between citizenship and democracy.
Each chapter is devoted to one of ten distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0-323 BCE): chattel slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves, resident foreigners (metics), privileged metics, bastards, disenfranchised citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens. Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as well as factors not generally considered together, such as property ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.
As Karyn R. Lacy's innovative work in the suburbs of Washington, DC, reveals, there is a continuum of middle-classness among blacks, ranging from lower-middle class to middle-middle class to ...upper-middle class. Focusing on the latter two, Lacy explores an increasingly important social and demographic group: middle-class blacks who live in middle-class suburbs where poor blacks are not present. These "blue-chip black" suburbanites earn well over fifty thousand dollars annually and work in predominantly white professional environments. Lacy examines the complicated sense of identity that individuals in these groups craft to manage their interactions with lower-class blacks, middle-class whites, and other middle-class blacks as they seek to reap the benefits of their middle-class status.
This research argues that one reason for the surge of populist sentiment is growing income inequality and limited intergenerational mobility, particularly associated with persistent inequality in ...social status.The presented model generates inequality persistence which, in turn, generates divergence in preferred policies between poor masses and rich elites.This induces the poor majority to mistrust the informed policy making by the elites and to make own, less well informed policy choices.Our framework enables exploring mechanisms that can potentially empower the poor thereby alleviating resentment against the elites.
Elites’ resentment and populist sentiments have been growing in recent years. This research argues that one reason for this is growing income inequality and limited intergenerational mobility, particularly associated with persistent inequality in social status. The presented model uses mechanisms of accordance of social status to generate inequality persistence which, in turn, generates divergence in preferred policies between poor masses and rich elites. This induces the poor majority to mistrust the informed policy making by the elites and to make own, less well informed policy choices. The model generates insights that are consistent with documented empirical regularities. Additionally, our framework enables exploring mechanisms that can potentially empower the poor thereby alleviating resentment against the elites.
Commentary: ART: Let it rest in peace Lazar, Harold L.
The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery,
March 2022, 2022-03-00, 20220301, Volume:
163, Issue:
3
Journal Article
This book is a history of the rise and fall of the English accent as a badge of cultural, social, and class identity. The book traces the origins of the phenomenon in late 18th-century London, ...follows its history through the 19th and 20th centuries, and charts its downfall during the era of New Labour. The book provides a readable account of a fascinating subject, liberally spiced with quotations from English speech and writing over the past 250 years.
Unequal chances Bowles, Samuel; Bowles, Samuel; Gintis, Herbert ...
2005, 2005., 20091015, 2009, 2005-01-01, 20050101
eBook, Book
Is the United States "the land of equal opportunity" or is the playing field tilted in favor of those whose parents are wealthy, well educated, and white? If family background is important in getting ...ahead, why? And if the processes that transmit economic status from parent to child are unfair, could public policy address the problem? Unequal Chances provides new answers to these questions by leading economists, sociologists, biologists, behavioral geneticists, and philosophers.
In the pursuit of happiness, how does an individual's standing in each of their groups affect their well-being? In ten pre-registered studies of 3554 participants, I found that attaining a greater ...number of high-status positions increased well-being but only in select groups. In surveys of workers (Studies 1, S1 and S2) and student athletes (Study S3), well-being was significantly positively related to the number and proportion of high-status positions a person held in their important groups, i.e., those groups central to their identity, but was not related to the status they held in their unimportant groups, regardless of how status was measured. Holding high-status in important groups increased well-being because such positions bolstered individuals' self-esteem and increased their sense of acceptance in those groups but not because such positions enhanced their sense of power. Four experiments (Studies 2, S5, S6, and S7) utilizing random assignment and a year-long longitudinal study (Study 3) established the causal relationship between well-being and high-status across groups as well as the moderating role of the groups' importance. A field study of graduate students (Study S4) utilizing a round-robin design confirmed that well-being was positively related to graduate students' self-reported status as well as the status ratings they received from their peers in an important group but not in an unimportant group. Therefore, in the pursuit of happiness, individuals would be wise to focus their energy on attaining and maintaining high-status only in those important groups that are central to their identity.
In 19th-century Leipzig, Toronto, New York, and Boston, a newly emergent
group of industrialists and entrepreneurs entered into competition with older
established elite groups for social recognition ...as well as cultural and political
leadership. The competition was played out on the field of philanthropy, with the
North American community gathering ideas from Europe about the establishment of
cultural and public institutions. For example, to secure financing for their new
museum, the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized its membership and
fundraising on the model of German art museums. The process of cultural borrowing
and intercultural transfer shaped urban landscapes with the building of new
libraries, museums, and social housing projects. An important contribution to the
relatively new field of transnational history, this book establishes philanthropy as
a prime example of the conversion of economic resources into social and cultural
capital.
Why can't a Quechua speaker wear pants?Anna M. Babel uses this question to open an analysis of language and social structure at the border of eastern and western, highland and lowland Bolivia. ...Through an exploration of categories such as political affiliation, ethnic identity, style of dress, and history of migration, she describes the ways that people understand themselves and others as Quechua speakers, Spanish speakers, or something in between.Between the Andes and the Amazonis ethnography in storytelling form, a rigorous yet sensitive exploration of how people understand themselves and others as members of social groups through the words and languages they use.Drawing on fifteen years of ethnographic research, Babel offers a close examination of how people produce oppositions, even as they might position themselves "in between" those categories. These oppositions form the raw material of the social system that people accept as "normal" or "the way things are." Meaning-making happens through language use and language play, Babel explains, and the practice of using Spanish versus Quechua is a claim to an identity or a social position. Babel gives personal perspectives on what it is like to live in this community, focusing on her own experiences and those of her key consultants.Between the Andes and the Amazonopens new ways of thinking about what it means to be a speaker of an indigenous or colonial language-or a mix of both.
