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Opportunities for migrants in Britain have become increasingly differentiated by hardened legal barriers, restricted access to asylum and filtering by selected skills. This article explores the effects of this differentiation on diaspora formation, social mobility and class identities. It takes the case of one of the UK's largest new African migrant groups – black Zimbabweans – who mostly come from middle class/elite backgrounds, but who have ended up in unskilled and informal work, as well as securing professional posts in Britain. The article asks whether, and in what sense it might be useful to talk of the polarised opportunities created by legal status in terms of emerging class differences and challenges to class identities. It dwells on the subjective experience of those in irregular legal circumstances, whose loss of status in Britain has been particularly acute, drawing on theoretical debates on abjection and dehumanised ‘bare life’ that speak directly to the popular discourses and language in which those doing menial work and lacking papers spoke about their experiences and place in Britain. As some have, however, maintained their class position both at home and in intergenerational terms, the article highlights the transnational calculations that continue to render even illegal unskilled work in the UK attractive, and underlines the importance of discussing abjection in terms of the relations of power and processes that create legal spaces of exclusion rather than as a putative underclass. Notwithstanding such calculations, the article highlights the importance of legal status and inequality within migrant groups in shaping the dynamics of new diaspora communities in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how changes resulting from economic restructuring affect views of racial inequality across different race, class, and gender groups. First reviewing some of the consequences of restructuring for different race, class, and gender groups, the paper also reviews research documenting the different views of racial inequality held by dominant and subordinate groups. The paper concludes by examining how race-blind ideologies affect discussions of race and multiculturalism and suggests that race-blind thinking has thwarted teaching about structural racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the spatiality of caste and power in contemporary rural north India. I aim to introduce the social institution of caste to a non-specialist audience and illustrate how caste is changing. The paper draws upon Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of social capital and habitus and the India-based research ofSrinivas (1955) andMendelsohn (1993). I argue that while caste as a religiously sanctioned system of resource transfer is in decline, caste organization and identity are important forms of social or symbolic capital for rural elites. Drawing on detailed empirical research in western Uttar Pradesh, I demonstrate the continuing importance of caste dominance in the reproduction of social inequality and relate caste to other axes of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are privilege and/or particular gender norms for women spatially (re)produced over time and how are they challenged and changed? In interviews and mental mapping exercises with 32 students and graduates of an elite US women's college from graduating classes spanning 1937 to 2006, women's class and gender norms and expectations are found to have been produced, reproduced and reworked in their everyday experiences during college. Participants portray these norms through the scales of the body, institution and extra-institution in regards to the particular social and physical space of the campus. Participants’ experiences, as depicted in these scales, indicate that class norms remained stable over generational cohorts, but gender norms shifted drastically because the privilege found within and granted by the elite women's college campus allowed for and prompted such changes. Transformations of women's gender norms also correspond with changes in the larger social sphere with a particular split in how participants could enact their privilege to alter their gender norms before and after the late 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use racial data from Census 2000, available for the first time in 50 years, to examine the links among race, socioeconomic status, and residential location on the island of Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans overwhelmingly chose white as their race, and they chose only one race, not a combination of races that would seem more in keeping with the ideology of mestizaje. Overall, segregation by race is modest compared with residential segregation in the United States. In keeping with the Puerto Rican claim that class is more important than race, we find that segregation by race is generally lower than segregation between the lowest and highest income categories in all metro areas, but that the results for education and occupational status differ by metropolitan area. In San Juan-Bayamón, the most diverse metropolitan area on the island, we find that as percent black increases, neighborhood socioeconomic status decreases, though the changes are not that stark, except in Loiza, a community of black Puerto Ricans and in some Dominican neighborhoods, though there are relatively few of these neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade in Britain the combination of women’s continued entry into the labour market and the restructuring of welfare provision has exacerbated the growing demands on individuals and households in their allocation of time between productive and reproductive labour and the contradictions between the two spheres, as well as time and income inequalities between the rich and the poor. Since the election of the new Labour government in 1997, the concept of work/life balance, as well as a range of other policies to address these divisions have been introduced. This paper addresses the nature of the changes in the last decade, through the perspective of gender and class divisions and critically assesses key debates about the changing nature of working life as well as current policy provisions to support the increasing individualization of employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current period of welfare reform in British politics is taking place within a discourse of modernization described in terms of a ‘third way’. The ideas which constitute this discourse resonate with recent developments within human geography, namely a movement to theorizing ‘in-between’ spaces, a turn to culture and to issues of globalization. This paper suggests that welfare reform is a restructuring project which allows the nature of thinking and acting ‘in thirds’ to be questioned. It problematizes the ‘third way’ approach to cultural modernization and economic globalization as a de-politicized discourse, and argues for the cultural politics and political economics which underpin welfare reform to be foregrounded. As a form of political discourse analysis, it points to the developing need for a welfare geography that is attuned to the languages and practices through which dominant systems of social and economic distribution are constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regression test selection is a process to select a subset of existing test cases, which are then used with some new test cases for regression testing. Regression testing ensures that the changes made to the system have not affected the existing functionality. To date, there is no adequate technique which can do regression test selection by considering changes in semantics of operations (along with the other syntax and semantics changes) using UML diagrams. Change in semantics of an operation refers to the change in conditional statements, change in independent paths/unique paths, change in control flow and addition or deletion of any content from the existing functionality. In this study, a novel approach is presented which can do this using class, sequence and activity diagrams. The tool compared old and new versions of UML diagrams to categorise test cases into reusable, retestable, obsolete and newly generated category. Activity diagrams are specifically used to test the semantics of operations. The changed operations corresponding to these activity diagrams are also searched in class and sequence diagrams for regression test selection. This study has been validated by comparison with previous study. It is found that the authors' work provides significant increase in accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to the paper "Learning From New Orleans: The Social Warrant of Hostile Privatism and Competitive Consumer Citizenship," by George Lipsitz in this issue. The author uses Lipsitz's methodology of critique to strengthen the consciousness of countermemories and alternative social warrants. It is pointed out that learning to listen brings in all the harmonics, virtuosities and counterpoints.

The article responds to the paper "Learning From New Orleans: The Social Warrant of Hostile Privatism and Competitive Consumer Citizenship," by George Lipsitz in this issue. The author considers Lipsitz's work in relation to ethnographic efforts to analyze the characteristics of the complex changes in everyday life. The concept of social warrant is considered to be linked to cultural activism and critique.

The article presents an introduction to the papers discussed during the 2005 Culture at Large Forum, which focused on who to reinvigorate debates regarding the studies of the struggles over the social warrants of American culture in the 21st century.

The relationship between class and status may be viewed in two distinct, if not contrasting, ways. In the first view, class and status are opposed as two different and mutually irreducible dimensions of inequality: here the stress is on distinctions of status expressing honour, dignity, worth, and so on. In the second view, class and status are opposed as one might oppose inequality and equality: here the stress is on the role of citizenship as a major force in redefining the relationship between class and status in modern industrial societies. The paper examines the different implications of defining status in terms of rights on the one hand and esteem on the other. It argues that it is not possible to guarantee equality of esteem simply by legislating equal rights for all citizens, no matter how extensively those rights are defined. For while status may be a matter of rights, it is also a matter of esteem, and the two do not necessarily move in step with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes as its point of departure Lockwood's classic account of the class situation of The Blackcoated Worker. It addresses the issue of whether the rapid spread of new technologies since the 1980s has been accompanied by a change in employer policies that has undercut the distinctiveness of the work and labour market situations of lower non-manual employees. Drawing on data from a national survey carried out in 1992, it argues that, in technically advanced work settings, there is some evidence of a convergence between lower non-manual and manual workers in the nature of relationships with management and in job security. While management styles have become more consultative for manual workers, control over work time has become more formalized for lower non- manual workers. Further, the classes had become more similar due to a marked decline in the security of white-collar employees. None the less, lower non- manual and manual work remained quite distinct in two fundamental respects: the requirements for general conceptual skills and the extent to which there were perspectives for longer-term career advancement. Hence differences in class position are likely to continue to have important implications both for people's life styles and for their wider life chances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We outline the modifications in the numerical Boltzmann code Cosmic Linear Anisotropy Solving System (CLASS) in order to include extra inflationary fields. The functioning of the code is first described, how and where modifications are meant to be done are later explained. In the present study, we focus on the modifications needed for the implementation of a two‐field inflationary model, with canonical kinetic terms and a polynomial potential with no cross terms, presenting preliminary results for the effect of the second field on the spectra. The adaptability of the code is exploited, making use of the classes and structures of C and the generic Runge–Kutta integration tool provided by the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay discusses the impact of Bourdieu on modern U.S. sociology. Specifically, I offer five observations about the reception and adoption of Bourdieu by U.S. sociologists from the perspective of someone who was involved in the process I describe as an active but not fully invested participant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young Americans increasingly express apprehension about their ability to successfully manage intimate relationships. Partially in response, cohabitation has become normative over the past few decades. Little research, however, examines social class distinctions in how emerging adults perceive challenges to sustaining intimate unions. We examine cohabitors' views of divorce and how these color their sentiments regarding marriage. Data are from in-depth interviews with 122 working- and middle-class cohabitors. More than two thirds of respondents mentioned concerns with divorce. Working-class women, in particular, view marriage less favorably than do their male and middle-class counterparts, in part because they see marriage as hard to exit and are reluctant to assume restrictive gender roles. Middle-class cohabitors are more likely to have concrete wedding plans and believe that marriage signifies a greater commitment than does cohabitation. These differences in views of marriage and divorce may help explain the bifurcation of cohabitation outcomes among working- and middle-class cohabitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political transnational practices-that is, both the physical and symbolic border-crossing political practices-of two Zapatista groups. This study seeks to contribute to the existing body of literature on transnationalism and citizenship by focusing on immigrants' political transnational activities in the global South, as well as transnational activists' practices in the global North influenced by the global South. I argue that transnational ideological and political influences are bidirectional, that is, influences also flow from the global South to the global North. In addition, I argue that different transnational practices are strongly shaped by structural opportunities and constraints on activists, in this case, by citizenship status and economic class. My arguments are drawn from fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area with two Zapatista groups, which I name the Localizers and the Globalizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a focus on marriage and the nuclear family characterizes much sociological research and social commentary, this article suggests that this focus ignores the familial experiences of many Americans, particularly those on the lower end of the economic spectrum for whom extended kin are central. African Americans and Latinos/as are more involved with kin than whites, but class trumps race in this regard: African Americans, Latinos/as, and whites with fewer economic resources rely more on extended kin than do those more affluent. The emphasis on marriage and the nuclear family may actually promulgate a vision of family life that dismisses the very social resources and community ties that are critical to the survival strategies of those in need. In contrast to those who have argued that marriage is the foundation of the community or even, in that overused phrase, the 'basic unit of society,' this article suggests that marriage actually detracts from social ties to broader communities just as an emphasis on marriage and the nuclear family, to the exclusion of the extended family, distorts and reduces the power and reach of social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I discuss the consequences of establishing boundaries and categories and the consequences for peoples, the need to consider insider and outsider categories in the sociological endeavor, and some of the current problems in our society that have been revealed by research and the communication of boundary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are a significant number of racially integrated neighborhoods in the United States, many of which have been stable over time. However, very little is known about the characteristics of these neighborhoods and of the residents who live in them. With data taken from a larger study of an integrated neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, this article discusses homeowners’ perceptions of their community and racial integration. Fifty semi-structured interviews were completed with 67 homeowners to investigate their perceptions and experiences of race, class, and change in their community. This study shows that statistical racial integration and perceptions of racial integration are two different factors. Residents define true racial integration as both residential and social. As a result, homeowners reported that their neighborhood is both segregated and integrated—a type of “qualified” integration. Perceptions of racial integration are also affected by inconsistently defined neighborhood boundaries and racial clustering, block by block. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropologists often read the localization or hybridization of cultural forms as a kind of default mode of resistance against the forces of global capitalism, a means through which marginalized ethnic groups maintain regional distinctiveness in the face of an emergent transnational order. But then what are we to make of musical acts like Mocca and The Upstairs, Indonesian “indie” groups who consciously delocalize their music, who go out of their way, in fact, to avoid any references to who they are or where they come from? In this essay, I argue that Indonesian “indie pop,” a self-consciously antimainstream genre drawing from a diverse range of international influences, constitutes a set of strategic practices of aesthetic deterritorialization for middle-class Indonesian youth. Such bands, I demonstrate, assemble sounds from a variety of international genres, creating linkages with international youth cultures in other places and times, while distancing themselves from those expressions associated with colonial and nationalist conceptions of ethnicity, working-class and rural sensibilities, and the hegemonic categorical schema of the international music industry. They are part of a new wave of Indonesian musicians stepping onto the global stage “on their own terms” and insisting on being taken seriously as international, not just Indonesian, artists, and in the process, they have made indie music into a powerful tool of reflexive place making, a means of redefining the very meaning of locality vis-à-vis the international youth cultural movements they witness from afar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of class subjectivities is an important but understudied topic for social memory studies, particularly in former socialist contexts. Soviet policies generated fertile conditions for the intertwining of class subjectivity and popular memory by deploying the categories of “intelligentsia” and “worker” as reified, enduring, and oppositional groups and privileging these groups in contradictory and often hypocritical ways. In this article, I explore the traces such policies left on contemporary, educated Russians’ sense of themselves as long-standing victims of class-based dispossession. Ethnographically, I examine debates I had with Russian friends about Mikhail Bulgakov's popular novel, Heart of a Dog, which depicts the Bolsheviks’ establishment of power in the 1920s through the eyes of an elite physician–scientist. Exploring Russians’ reactions to this story and their sense of its broader relevance reveals how aspiring middle-class subjects embraced a narrative of the Soviet past to justify the emerging inequalities of market reforms. Narrative landscapes of the socialist past illuminate a politics of victimization and moral restitution that underlies the contemporary embrace of inequality and stratified consumption. [ memory, class, stratified consumption, health care, postsocialism, Russia] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I seek to make an intervention in debates between psychological and postmodern anthropology by engaging with the theme of border crossing. I argue that the theme of the border is one that fundamentally instantiates a separation between interior and exterior with respect to subjectivity, itself a fundamental transformation and a painful and difficult border. This is related to a Cartesian distinction critiqued in this article. How the distinction between interior and exterior may be transcended is discussed in relation to examples of transformation from the crossing of class borders to the production and regulation of workers in a globalized and neoliberal economy. I begin with reference to postwar transformations of class with its anxious borders and go on to think about changes in the labor market and how these demand huge transformations that tear apart communities, destroy workplaces, and sunder the sense of safety and stability that those gave. Advanced liberalism or neoliberalism brings with it a speeding up of the transformations of liberalism in which subjects are constantly invoked as self-contained, with a transportable self that must be produced through the developmental processes of personality and rationality. This self must be carried like a snail carries a shell. It must be coherent yet mutable, fixed yet multiple and flexible. But this view of the subject covers over the many connections that make subjectivity possible. I conclude by asking what it would mean to rethink this issue of the production of safe spaces beyond an essentialist psychological conception of only one mother-child space, separated from the social world, as having the power to produce feelings of safely? I end the article with an argument for a relational approach to subjectivity and sociality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section seeks to provide a brief theoretical framework for the study of citizenship in Latin America by focusing on two characteristics which are of relevance to the essays collected here: belonging and political agency. It then goes on to discuss some key themes which emerge from a reading of the collected articles: methodology; civilisation and deviation; citizenship as the organisation of subordinate inclusion; popular ideas of citizenship as ‘fairness’; role of public performance in defining political relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings Afro-Caribbean women to the fore of a discussion of Costa Rican citizenship. It explores the relationship between ideologies of gender, imageries of black womanhood, and the dialectic of citizenship and exclusion. It examines how the efforts of the black elite to achieve citizenship through assimilation generated inter-class tension which centred on ideas of female morality. It explores the absence of political platforms for poor black women excluded by such strategies and argues that while Costa Rican feminists succeeded in challenging the ideological system of gender they failed to challenge issues of race and class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In European phytosociology, variable plot sizes are traditionally used for sampling different vegetation types. This practice may generate problems in current vegetation or habitat survey projects based on large data sets, which include relevés made by many authors at different times. In order to determine the extent of variation in plot sizes used in European phytosociology, we collected a data set of 41 174 relevés with an indication of plot size, published in six major European journals focusing on phytosociology from 1970 to 2000. As an additional data set, we took 27 365 relevés from the Czech National Phytosociological Database. From each data set, we calculated basic statistical figures for plot sizes used to sample vegetation of various phytosociological classes. The results show that in Europe the traditionally used size of vegetation plots is roughly proportional to vegetation height; however, there is a large variation in plot size, both within and among vegetation classes. The effect of variable plot sizes on vegetation analysis and classification is not sufficiently known, but use of standardized plot sizes would be desirable in future projects of vegetation or habitat survey. Based on our analysis, we suggest four plot sizes as possible standards. They are 4 m² for sampling aquatic vegetation and low-grown herbaceous vegetation, 16 m² for most grassland, heathland and other herbaceous or low-scrub vegetation types, 50 m² for scrub, and 200 m² for woodlands. It has been pointed out that in some situations, sampling in either small or large plots may result in assignment of relevés to different phytosociological classes or habitat types. Therefore defining vegetation and habitat types as scale-dependent concepts is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race, class, and gender are the major bases of social inequality in con temporary America. In this study I investigate the consequences of social inequality on "socialist" ideology. Through a descriptive group analysis I identify who is most supportive of economic democracy. National survey data are employed to measure public opinion toward nationalization and workplace democracy Such "politics of production "seek to redistribute control of the means of production, representing a fundamental challenge to class relations. Incorporating analysis of variance; I test for group differences in attitudes. Class position is operationalized by Wright's (Wright, Erik Olin, 1978. Class, Crisis and the State. London: Verso) contradictory class locations model Race is found to be the most important basis of attitudes toward economic democracy. Class location and gender are critical in shaping Latino attitudes, but are largely irrelevant for African Americans. Despite class and gender effects, the analysis highlights the relative conservativism of whites. The mobilization potential of social movements advocating economic democracy is discussed. Given my findings and recent historical developments, the implications for workplace democracy are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship of historical research to contemporary family studies. Family history was influenced greatly by fields such as sociology and anthropology, leading it to make several contributions to those fields in turn. The continuing collaboration of these disciplines can significantly enrich current family research, practice, and polio, making. History's specific contribution lies in its attention to context. Although historical research confirms sociologic and ethnographic findings on the diversity of family forms, for example, it also reveals that all families are not created equal. The advantage of any particular type of family at any, particular time is constructed out of contingent and historically variable social relationships. Historical research allows researchers to deepen their analysis of family diversity, and family change by challenging widespread assumptions about what is and what is not truly new in family life. Such research complicates generalizations about the impact of family change and raises several methodological cautions about what can be compared and controlled for in analyzing faintly variations and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of diversity, multiculturalism, and democracy often neglect the historical and structural economic and political inequalities embedded in these racial/ethnic/cultural differences among peoples in America. In this article we present a historical materialist analysis of African Americans and other oppressed peoples within the context of capitalist development. The current period of the electronic revolution and the labor displacing technology of the postindustrial era is creating the conditions for the erosion of the reform based social contract, and for heightened degrees of economic and political polarization, often expressed as racial polarization. At the same time, the abundance created by the high technology revolution contains the possibility of realizing equality and democracy for African Americans and for all of the American peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the intersections and tensions between two collective identities, those of class and gender, for working-class women involved in supporting the 1989–1990 strike against Pittston Coal Group in southwestern Virginia. In the case of this year-long (and ultimately successful) strike, women were organized by United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) staff in strike support activities, but they also sought to organize themselves as women. The tensions between their identity as members of the working class and their identity as women are revealed by examining their forms of activism, their relationship with the UMWA, the divisions between groups of activist women, and the articulation ofwomen's involvement in the strike. The experiences of these women are briefly compared with women's activism in the I 984–1985 British Coal strike. The article concludes by arguing that collective identity is best understood as it emerges in response to specific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]