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Copyright of Community, Work & Family is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper draws on Bourdieu's theory of economic, social and cultural capital to understand the relative effect of the volume and the composition of these capitals on healthcare service use in later life. Based on data from the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (n = 64,840), we first look at the contribution of each capital in the use of three healthcare services (general practitioner, dentist and hospital). Using cluster analysis, we then mobilise Bourdieu's concept of habitus to explain how the unequal distribution of material and non‐material capitals acquired in childhood lead to different levels of health and hospital care utilisation in later life. After controlling for demographic and health insurance variables, our results show that economic capital has the strongest individual association among the three capitals. However, the results of a cluster analysis used to distinguish between capital structures show that those with high non‐material capital and low material capital have higher levels of primary healthcare utilisation, and in turn lower levels of hospital use. Bourdieu's approach sheds light on the importance of capitals in all forms and structures to understand the class‐related mechanisms that contribute to different levels of healthcare use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social class is a major determining factor of people's life chances. Much sociology-based research shows that socio-economic position is still one of the best predictors of who will achieve success, prosperity and social status and, in particular, who will enjoy the highest levels of educational outcomes. Survey data and qualitative studies alike confirm that many people continue to see class as a feature of everyday life, in ways that are connected with their understanding of learning and its possibilities. However, despite its continued significance in people's lives, class has virtually disappeared from modern adult learning research. This paper concludes that in an era when governments across Europe are setting about the dismantling of social support and collective protection produced by social democracy and trade unionism, class analysis presents an important means of understanding change and changing understanding. The existence of persistent social class inequalities in access is a repeated theme of research into higher education (HE) participation. Moreover, socioeconomic inequalities persist in spite of the considerable enlargement of higher education systems that has taken place in many countries since the 1950s (Field, 2003; Alon, 2009; Boliver, 2011; Reay 2012). Moreover, survey data and qualitative accounts confirm that many people continue to see class as an everyday aspect of their lives, in ways that are connected with their understanding of learning and its possibilities. This paper looks at the ways in which experiences and constraints of social class were experienced and 'storied' by a group of non-traditional students in higher education. It starts out with reflections on the current status -- or rather absence -- of class as a key category of critical analysis in adult learning. We then examine briefly the question of class in the context of mass higher education. While much has changed in the social composition of the undergraduate population as a consequence of expansion, taken as a whole there seems to have been relatively little change in undergraduates' socio-economic status. While the overall number of students from broadly working class backgrounds has grown, their relative share of the undergraduate population has not greatly altered (Boliver, 2011). In England, it seems that the proportion of students from poorer families declined during the expansion period of the mid- to late-1990s and recovered to its original position during the early years of the current century (Chowdry et al., 2013). In Scotland, Ianelli concludes that similar fluctuations mean that 'overall the relation between social class of origin and educational attainment has not significantly changed over time' (Ianelli, 2011: 257). What does this mean for the experiences of students from working class backgrounds? We explore this question through a discussion of RANLHE interviews in Scottish higher education. We interviewed a sample of 83 students from three HEIs -- one a highly selective institution, one a former central institution (roughly akin to a polytechnic) and one with a mixed mission emphasising both teaching and research. We recruited students through direct email contacts (both targeted and general), appeals in newsletters, intermediaries such as course leaders, and -- once we had started -- by snowballing; some also approached us, having heard about the project by word of mouth. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, with hesitations and repetitions included. We read and re-read the transcripts, which included responses to a standard question on class. Posed late on in the first or early in the second interview, the interviewer asked 'How you would describe your background in terms of class?' and the student's reply was then followed up. The interviewer did not provide a definition of class, though the follow-up discussion could explore definitional issues if the interviewee raised them (hardly anyone did, at least not explicitly). Responses during this initial discussion of class gave us a baseline for a preliminary thematic analysis which, in turn, provided a springboard for undertaking an iterative thematic and contextual examination of the ways in which different people spoke about class or -- in some cases -- deflected a discussion of class. We distinguished between how people spoke about membership of a particular class and how they talked about class as a phenomenon. The students in our sample spoke about class in relation to their own educational disadvantage and/or experiences/perceptions of HE. Often they discussed class obliquely, or in ways that can be understood through socio-cultural perspectives. One arts student, for example, talked of relating the circumstances of Tracey Emin's childhood (material disadvantage, abuse) to the context in which she grew up and being completely alienated during a class discussion by what she perceived as classist and misogynistic contempt shown towards Emin by fellow students. In addition, class affected student experiences in more material ways, both for mature students who had worked themselves and for young students who came from working-class families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people who have spent all or part of their childhoods in public care are at particular risk of social exclusion as adults and yet the pathway out of exclusion identified by policy-makers at both European and national levels, namely, education, is very difficult to access. Using data from a five-country study of the post-compulsory educational pathways of young people in public care, this paper examines the rates of participation of young people in further and higher education and considers what might account for the gap, looking at two factors: the impact of background social class on educational support and the educational intentions and practices of the care system. The paper concludes by considering the policy context and some possible tensions between policy aims and young people’s contexts and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers a socio-literary investigation of the East African Asian diasporic experience. To this end, it closely examines selected texts that offer insights into the complicated socio-cultural relationships at the interstices of the colonial histories of the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Europe. It also looks at how gendered participation is articulated from within the larger body of a collective history. Finally, the paper reviews steps taken by contemporary Asian-Africans to take stock of their shared past, as a part of larger political project for the recognition of a hitherto minoritised group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the notable, but forgotten, history of the Royal Isle of Wight Golf Club (RIWGC), founded in 1882, is used to examine the cultural and social shifts that enabled the development of the sport's popularity across late Victorian and Edwardian society in Britain. The club can justifiably be described as notable because for a brief period this small island club was at the centre of developments which helped shape golf during this era and framed its development in the twentieth century. Two archetypally entrepreneurial Victorian gentlemen, Captain Jack Eaton and Charles John Jacobs, were central to the club's success and their endeavours underpinned the club's illustrious status. This paper examines newspaper records, periodicals and local archives to explain how the RIWGC originated and then prospered in tandem with the development of the Isle of Wight as an upmarket holiday destination. Moreover the article shows how the club provided access for both sexes of the English upper middle class to a sport and an environment that delivered the cultural benefits and the social kudos which could be derived from association with a golf club, and particularly one that was one of a select group of ‘Royal’ golf clubs. However, research also demonstrates that the club provided an environment where enterprising and talented men from less privileged backgrounds could seize the opportunity to become famous on the national and even the international stage. Finally it will demonstrate that the RIWGC had a significant role in codifying the rules of golf in the 1880s when the R&A appeared hesitant to take the lead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to understand the way in which social capital resources are incorporated, appropriated and distributed by different social classes in Europe. Its main goal is to produce a conceptual framework by linking the concepts of social capital with the different theoretical assessments made by the sociology of social classes. We use multivariate analysis to work a set of quantitative indicators from the European Social Survey 2008 in order to assess the relationship between these concepts. Our methodological approach combines transnational levels, i.e., it is not an international comparison between European countries but an analysis of individual people and their belonging to social classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of high-speed rail in the United States generally involve relatively straightforward matters of urban policy, civil engineering, economics and raw politics. High-speed rail is touted as an economic driver, a paragon of sustainability and an arena of competition with economic rivals in Europe and Asia. But a critical look at the discourse surrounding high-speed rail reveals the deep contradictions that have managed to stymie numerous initiatives to build high-speed rail lines while simultaneously keeping the dream alive in the imaginings of generations of advocates. This paper looks at plans for high-speed rail in the United States as a complex of ideas, connecting the nascent efforts to the larger American story. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Tourism has long had significant educational potential from the enlightenment of the Grand Tour to contemporary high-school and university tours to Europe and beyond. The development of mass, conducted tourism as a form of education for middle-class women and the working classes is less well understood. Based on primary research at the Thomas Cook archives, this paper examines how Cook attempted to harness the educational potential of travel by transforming it into a commercial product that the average consumer could afford. Tourism not only needed to be affordable, but also comfortable and safe given the relative inexperience these groups had travelling. Cook's critics lambasted the educational qualities of his tours and the ability of his tourists to truly appreciate what they were witnessing and experiencing. However, this criticism was often based on elitist attitudes about who could travel and the ability of the 'lower sorts' to comprehend it all. Cook's mission was to transform travel into tourism making it accessible to the middle and working classes but at the same time retaining its promise of enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerning race and its intertwinements with gender, sexual orientation, class, accents, or ability there is a scarcity of social psychological research in Europe. With an intersectional approach studying racism in Europe it is possible to detect specific experiences of discrimination. The prevalent understanding of European racism is connected to migration from the former colonies to the European metropoles and the post-Second-World-War immigration of 'guest workers.' Thus, the focus of this research is on work-related discrimination. Against the background of a short historical review, we present the results of the few existing studies on intersectional discrimination within the labor market in Europe and discuss their implications. The pattern of findings is more complex than the assumption that individuals belonging to two or more marginalized social categories are always the most discriminated ones. Gender, sexual orientation, and origin rather interact with the specific job context. These interactions determine whether minority individuals are discriminated against or even preferred over individuals belonging to the majority group. We argue that considering the stereotype content model and social-identity theory helps to structure the sometimes contradictory results of intersectionality research. Therefore, the review presents new perspectives on racism in Europe based on current research, develops hypotheses on the interplay of intersecting identities, and identifies four novel research questions based on racist attributions considering situational variables: These are the role of concrete job contexts in explaining (no) discrimination, the influence of different stereotypes regarding marginalized groups, the explanatory value of sexual orientation as well as class or socioeconomic-status and age in terms of some patterns of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anthropologica is the property of CASCA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article demonstrates how food contributed to the Europeanisation of British culture between 1960 and 1975, the period leading up to the 1975 Referendum on membership of the European Community. The analysis identifies the meanings and values associated with Europe in cooking columns in two British broadsheet newspapers, TheTimes and the Observer, and examines how people were encouraged to make identifications with Europe. However, the article demonstrates how the meanings associated with Europe were not monolithic and were inflected by class and gender. In particular, continental culinary practices were associated with the tastes and dispositions of emergent new middle-class formations. More generally, the analysis demonstrates how these representations of European food offered middle-class people ways to experiment with feeling European in their everyday lives. In a Brexit context in which much research has asked why British people rejected Europe, the article seeks to contribute to a parallel history of how so many other British people came to identify as European through engagements with popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To link the Braun-Blanquet units of the EuroVegChecklist (EVC) with the upper levels of the International Vegetation Classification (IVC), and to propose a division level classification for Europe. Study area: Europe. Methods: We established a tabular linkage between EVC classes and IVC formations and identified mismatches between these two levels. We then proposed IVC division level units to organize EVC classes. Results: We organized the EVC classes into 21 formations and 30 divisions. We flagged classes that did not fit comfortably within an existing formation, either because its content corresponded to more than one formation or because it did not fit any formation description. In a few cases, we split EVC classes because they seemed too heterogenous to be assigned to a single formation. Conclusions: The IVC approach adds a set of physiognomic and ecological criteria that effectively organizes the EVC classes, which are already being increasingly informed by physiognomy. Therefore, the formation concepts are relatively natural extensions of concepts already embedded in the classes. However, physiognomic placement of Braun-Blanquet classes can be difficult when the sampling of the vegetation is at finer grain than usual in the respective formation (tall-scrub, annual pioneer communities). Some EVC classes seem too heterogenous to fit into the IVC formation system. Delimitation of these classes has often been a matter of debate for many decades, and the IVC perspective might help to solve these intricate issues. In other cases, mismatches between phytosociological classes and IVC formations might better be solved by emending the current formation concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capitalist state is the indispensable power of a free labor economy. Its class character is not founded on a national basis. Rather it is founded on the world market relations of capitalist wealth and includes a history of suffering. This article scrutinizes ordoliberalism as a veritable statement about the character of capitalist society and its state. In the contemporary debate about the ordoliberalization of Europe, the ordoliberal argument about capitalist labor economy as a practice of government is put aside and instead it is identified with a certain 'German' preference for austerity and seemingly also technocratic governance, undermining the European democracies and leading to calls for the resurgence of the national democratic state that governs for the many. In this argument illusion dominates reality. In distinction, the argument attempted here scrutinizes the role of the member states in monetary union as executive states of the bond that unites them. Monetary union strengthens the member states as 'planners for competition' and is entirely dependent upon their capacity to govern accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically evaluates explanatory theories about how representatives, and more specifically members of parliament (MPs), connect with interest groups. Central to this are the crucial questions of whether these contacts are partybased or identity-based. Our analysis includes five kinds of groups: two traditional cleavage-based groups (blue-collar workers and employers) with well-established contacts between parties (respectively, social-democratic and conservative parties) and interest groups (trade unions and employers' organisations) on the one hand, and three newer groups in society (women, young people and the elderly), on the other hand. Our analysis is based on the data Partirep MP Survey, which contains information about characteristics, attitudes and behaviour of regional and federal MPs in 15 European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an alternative account of the European far-right from those prevailing in comparative politics and the history of ideas literatures. The article focuses on: (i) the historical evolution of the European far-right from its late 19th-century origins to its contemporary form as a current of anti-globalization; and (ii) the way in which international capitalist development explains the generalized emergence and ‘success’ of the far-right. I argue that uneven capitalist development has been integral to the evolution of the far-right. It has been the geopolitical expressions of capitalist development that best account for enabling domestic political contexts that have facilitated far-right mobilizations. Consequently, whilst the far-right has re-emerged, because of the post-1945 decoupling of uneven capitalist development from geopolitical rivalry, the international and domestic social, political and ideological resources that the contemporary far-right can draw upon are considerably weaker than the historical far-right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the increase in the annual hours worked per employee in the U.S. over the last thirty years. During the same period, work hours decreased in many European nations. Women employees' annual paid hours are still much less than men's annual paid hours. Paid hours for all employees fell during the recession.

Research on social mobility typically acknowledges the relevance of gender. However, gender-based differences still lack extensive description and explanation. This article starts by reviewing a number of influential contributions on social mobility, educational systems and employment change, as well as important critiques raised in feminist scholarship with regard to these topics of enquiry. We argue that class analysis should not only document asymmetry between men and women in greater detail, but also incorporate it as a piece of explanatory value in the understanding of social mobility at large. This is attempted by examining the data of the European Social Survey covering 22 countries. Drawing on this large-scale data set, we will demonstrate that the transformation of employment structures favours particular forms of upward mobility, which coexist with the resilience of gender inequality in accessing affluent classes. The impact of gender on the nexus between social background, educational attainment and class position is far from uniform in Europe, with significant variation across classes, countries and fields of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the changing nature of Birmingham's Jewish com munity over a hundred-year period. By focusing on the ways in which Jews were portrayed by non-Jews and how Jews saw themselves, it attempts to illuminate the early history of the Jewish community at the end of the eighteenth century, including the synagogue as a focus of meaning; identity and organisation; how Jews and non-Jews related to one another; Jewish collective action to defend and promote their interests; the importance of funeral rituals and burial; rich and poor Jews; and Jewish women. Jewish experiences and representations not only throw light on the history of AngloJewry, but illuminate the attitudes, fears and prejudices of Birmingham's British society and ways in which others are portrayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A classic topic in the sociology of inequality lies in the subjective consequences of people's stratification position. Many studies have shown that education and occupational class have significant effects on attitudes, but little is known about how the magnitude of these effects depends on the societal context. There has been debate in the scholarly literature, with some authors arguing that effects of class and education are less important when societies are more developed, whereas other authors argue that effects are either stable (for class) or increasing (for education). We use a meta-analytical design to address this debate. More specifically we examine the effects of class and education for a broad range of attitudes (21 scales) in 22 European countries using data from the 1999 wave of the European Values Study. We pool summary-measures of association (Eta-values) into a new dataset and analyse these Eta-values (N = 453) applying multilevel models with characteristics of countries and characteristics of attitudes as the independent variables. Our results show that there is no evidence that the effects of class on attitudes are lower when countries are more modern, but we do find larger effects of education in more modern countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses some of the major omissions and simplifications created by established approaches to European communication, in particular the inclination to think of Europeanization primarily, and often exclusively, in relation to things national. It points to the simplistic narrative that sees transnational communication in Europe as a very recent phenomenon, and demonstrates how this narrative glosses over various historical forms of transnational communication in Europe. It then briefly addresses the intellectual roots of this narrative, and argues that they also lead to neglecting the existence of diverse, often competing contemporary forms of Europeanization and transnationalization in public communication. Finally, the article argues that more sustained attention should be paid to subnational patterns of stratification of European communication, particularly those arising along class divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social historians have generally regarded neighborhoods as crucial elements of the urban landscape in Europe, North America, and Australia. Introducing a collection of articles generated for a symposium on the history of urban neighborhoods, this discussion of concepts, key questions, and approaches suggests that a long-term and comparative view undermines a common narrative about growth and decline, or a straight- forward distinction between early modem and modern neighborhoods. Instead, a survey of histories suggests that neighboring is best understood, in all periods, as a dynamic process, which may be triggered and reinforced rather than diminished by the processes commonly associated with modernity and increased mobility. The survey also suggests that the urban social relationships that constitute neighboring—and the problems and opportunities of proximity that they negotiate—form a consistent rhythm in city life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]