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Socioeconomic inequality and conflicts regarding distributional issues have resurfaced in many OECD countries over the past three decades. Whereas most research has focused on the objective determinants of perceived social conflicts, we contribute a new facet to this discussion by assessing the relevance of collective stratification beliefs as an independent driver of vertical conflict perceptions. After formulating theoretical positions that give precedence to two factors in explaining the perceptions of social conflicts – objective inequality and the collective stratification belief – we use individual-level data from the 2009 International Social Survey Programme, along with suitable country-level indicators to evaluate both hypotheses. Amid the diverse collective stratification beliefs, we focus on the role of an egalitarian (middle-) class imagery. We are particularly interested in the extent to which such a class imagery can mediate the relationship between socioeconomic inequality and individual conflict perceptions. The results of our multilevel analyses of 27 OECD countries indicate that an egalitarian (middle-) class imagery held by a certain share of a country’s population constitutes a distinct dimension of reality and clearly dominates country-level objective inequality in the explanation of individually perceived social conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of this paper is a brief survey of the approaches to economic inequality based on ideas from statistical physics and kinetic theory. These include the Boltzmann kinetic equation, the time-reversal symmetry, the ergodicity hypothesis, entropy maximization and the Fokker–Planck equation. The origins of the exponential Boltzmann–Gibbs distribution and the Pareto power law are discussed in relation to additive and multiplicative stochastic processes. The second part of the paper analyses income distribution data in the USA for the time period 1983–2018 using a two-class decomposition. We present overwhelming evidence that the lower class (more than 90% of the population) is described by the exponential distribution, whereas the upper class (about 4% of the population in 2018) by the power law. We show that the significant growth of inequality during this time period is due to the sharp increase in the upper-class income share, whereas relative inequality within the lower class remains constant. We speculate that the expansion of the upper-class population and income shares may be due to increasing digitization and non-locality of the economy in the last 40 years. This article is part of the theme issue 'Kinetic exchange models of societies and economies'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What place does the caste system have in modern India with its globally integrating market economy? The most influential anthropological approaches to caste have tended to emphasize caste as India's traditional religious and ritual order, or (treating such order as a product of the colonial encounter) as shaped politically, especially today by the dynamics of caste-based electoral politics. Less attention has been paid to caste effects in the economy. This article argues that the scholarly framing of caste mirrors a public-policy 'enclosure' of caste in the non-modern realm of religion and 'caste politics', while aligning modernity to the caste-erasing market economy. Village-level fieldwork in South India finds a parallel public narrative of caste either as ritual rank eroded by market relations or as identity politics deflected from everyday economic life. But, locally and nationally, the effects of caste are found to be pervasive in labour markets and the business economy. In the age of the market, caste is a resource, sometimes in the form of a network, its opportunity-hoarding advantages discriminating against others. Dalits are not discriminated by caste as a set of relations separate from economy, but by the very economic and market processes through which they often seek liberation. The caste processes, enclosures, and evasions in post-liberalization India suggest the need to rethink the modernity of caste beyond orientalist and post-colonial frameworks, and consider the presuppositions that shape understanding of an institution, the nature and experience of which are determined by the inequalities and subject positions it produces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the less examined facts in the history of Virginia colony is that Edward Maria Wingfield detested John Smith. It mentions Wingfield's haughtiness and Smith's insubordination indicate that the colonists had transported a class society based on interlocking degrees of wealth, status, and power to the Chesapeake. It also mentions that Wingfield was borrowing in order to finance his brother's military career is one indication of the financial stresses he was under.

Internment in camps for enemy aliens during the First World War might have led to a commonality of experience given that all civilian prisoners of war (POWs) were theoretically enduring the same material conditions. However, the privileges associated with social rank and with wealth led to profoundly different bodily regimes within these camps. The British class system was in fact perpetuated within the civilian internment camps established in the United Kingdom and among British subjects interned by the enemy, particularly in relation to the consumption of additional and superior food and drink that arrived in parcels from home and was provided at camp facilities for the privileged. These class distinctions had tangible material consequences for the interned, as not all bodies were equally subjected to the privations of the camp regime. That some POWs had access to more and better food throughout much of the First World War underscores the British state's lack of commitment to the ideal of equality of bodily sacrifice. Instead the British government was complicit in perpetuating class inequalities both among its own subjects and those it had interned, even during a moment of international crisis when the social order was clearly being upended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benito Pérez Galdós is considered the best author of all Spanish literature after Cervantes, and he has been recognized as the best writer of the 19th century. Galdós's novels are analyses of social trends and problems that lay at the heart of nineteenth-century civilization. In Torquemada en la hoguera, Galdós reveals the usurer's inability to comprehend reality, to rise over lust and greed. Torquemada embodies the materialist core and the monetary soul of a vital philosophy from the Spanish merchant class of that century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses tension between a governmental commitment to eliminating forms of inequality in Indian political system. It explains how the upper caste subject remained the ideal citizen defined by individual merit for the judiciary. It examines the interplay between upper and lower caste claims, and between caste marking and unmarking, through a historical anthropology of Indian engineering education.

The article argues for a broad concept of culture. The educational expansion in recent decades has created new class antagonisms by putting participating in society on a level with cultural participation. Given this 'culturalisation' of politics, it is important that cultural policies reinforce their sociopolitical dimension to build new alliances, particularly with regard to education and training policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Steinheil Affair, a sex scandal in Paris, France in early 20th century, to examine the dangers and limitations of friendship. It explores the benefit of studying friendship to historians, the critical role of friendship in revealing the affair and true identity of society hostess Mme Steinheil, the involvement of Steinheil's powerful friends in the scandal, and the class status as a basis for friendship as highlighted by the scandal.

This article explores affective formations of class consciousness. Through autoethnography and conversations and discussion sessions with working class women, the article contributes to a sociology of social class that recognises how people come to know their class positioning in spaces outside of waged relations. The article argues that affective relations and affective inequalities inform women's experiences and consciousness of inequality generated by the class system. Their consciousness of the class system is narrated through their care relational identities, discontent with affective inequalities generated by the class system and their attitudes and actions for social change. This implies an affective formation of class consciousness referred to as care consciousness. Care consciousness takes seriously what is refused legitimacy at a sociological and political level yet articulated privately by the women as they discuss experiences of the class system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, an attempt was made to study the socio-economic status of the workers engaged in organic farming. The various healthy practices under organic farming like compost production, use of bio-pesticides, crop rotations, etc. increases soil health and quality of the food. The organic practices including Homa bhasm, Agnihotra and Biodynamic farming besides promoting healthy agriculture are expected to have seeming effects on behavioral aspects of the farm workers. However, apparently systemic information on social attributes of organic farm is still limited. The socio- economic aspects of an organic farm CSKHPKV, Palampur were documented through structured questionnaires. The data was analyzed by the use of indices, ratios and percentages. The various aspects as family structure and size, age distribution, caste structure, literacy level, occupational pattern, economic status behavioral aspects were evaluated. The skilled workers had nuclear family while unskilled workers had joint families, larger portion of workers in the organic farm belonged to younger age group (31 years), literacy index was high (4.32) in case of skilled workers while low (3.23) for unskilled workers. It was observed that in case of skilled workers majority of individuals were positively affected through increased farming knowledge, better wage rate, improved ethical and spiritual thinking while in case of unskilled workers no obvious positive reaction was observed for farming knowledge and wage rate though there was perceptible change in punctuality and spiritual thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human rights-based approach to development cooperation has found recent support from both development cooperation actors and non-governmental organisations active in developing countries. We set out to define this approach, how it is applied, and to identify its central agents and principal components. Through examples we show how the approach works in practice, and we identify and discuss three human rights principles that play particularly important roles in its implementation: (i) participation and inclusion, (ii) non-discrimination and equality, and (iii) accountability. We show that in terms of implementation, the approach is related to the processes of empowerment, forms of advocacy, and the use of legal instruments in defence of groups of people who are poor, discriminated against or marginalised. We conclude that a human rights-based approach provides new avenues for providing help to vulnerable groups, but at the same time a poverty-oriented approach must continue to play an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capitalism as a mode of production and a form of social organization differs from all hitherto existing society in that it does not rely on the preservation of traditional hierarchies or on direct coercion to secure its reproduction. Capitalist society coheres on the basis of exchange which establishes a network of interdependent relations between individuals. Drawing on the work of Alfred Sohn-Rethel, this article engages with the apparent paradox of how the reproduction of class society takes the form of spontaneous exchange transactions between autonomous individuals. The article explores the argument that the conceptual basis of cognition is historically and socially conditioned, and highlights the unique identity between the structure of exchange and the conceptual mode of thinking. Finally, the article demonstrates how the hidden character of social domination and ‘the secret identity’ of commodity form and thought form serve to systematically obscure the true origins and nature of fundamental social problems. The case in point is the popular topic of rising inequality in the United States, a direct outcome of the reproduction of class relations, the underlying cause of which – the deepening division of intellectual and manual labor – is either conveniently ignored or, worse still, glorified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the most distinctive features of Indian caste system is the close link between castes and occupations, especially in rural India, with Dalits or Scheduled Castes (SCs) clustered in the least well-paid and most socially degrading occupations. We use several rounds of quinquennial surveys from the National Sample Survey Organisation to assess whether the historic relationship between caste status and occupational segregation has been weakened. We find that the occupational structure of the SC households is converging to that of the non-scheduled households. However, we do not find a similar occupational convergence for the Scheduled Tribes households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article brings the concept of human diversity situated in the entanglement of the relations of class society. The multiplicity of human differences is inscribed in a standardized world, mediated by relations of exploitation and inequality, under the aegis of Marx's "general accumulation law". In capitalism, there is restricted space for expression of singularities and for the construction of a creative and humanized aesthetic. The standardization of behavior, productivity and aesthetics are social processes that must be faced with collective strategies of resistance and organization so that human life is full of possibilities. In the dialectic of the groups there are some alternatives for coping with situations of social oppression triggering the collective dimension of the singular subjects. The concept of group is presented in its dual aspect as a social process and as an alternative instrumental device for professional work, which may lead to emancipatory practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been claimed that class analysis cannot explain contemporary social hierarchy and new forms of cultural alignments. The recent works of class theorists, on the other hand, rejects the arguments of the "death of class," instead propose a modification of class theory with an emphasis on culture and identity. Drawing on Beverly Skeggs and Mike Savage's studies among this group, the paper argues that including cultural formations into class theory these studies bring along a new perspective to the subject. In a recent study with Bennett et al. Culture, Class, Distinction (2008) Savage focuses on cultural dimension of class in contemporary Britain. However, the article questions the way the study explains people's experiences of class in their everyday life. Indeed, the paper argues that Savage and Bennett et.al's work gives a vague explanation of class identities and cannot explain questions about the everyday practices of class and identity. This is not to deny that the pattern of class and culture has been changed, rather the paper urges us to consider how relations of class are made and re-made within everyday life and how this effects class identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a distributional corpus analysis of the Northern Sotho noun and gender system. The aim is twofold: first, to assess whether the existing descriptions of the noun class system in Northern Sotho are corroborated by information provided by the analysis of a large electronic corpus for this language, with specific reference to singular-plural pairings, and second, to present a number of novel visualisation aids to characterise a noun class system (in a radar diagram) and a noun gender system (using a two-directional weighted representation) for Northern Sotho in particular, and for any Bantu language in general. The findings include the discovery of two new genders in Northern Sotho (i.e. class pairs 1/6 and 3/10), and also indicate that the Northern Sotho noun class system, and by extension any one for Bantu, should be seen as dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the midst of the many uncertainties facing twenty-first century Egypt, memories of Cairo's seemingly cosmopolitan past have become prominent signifiers of the liberal possibilities that might exist for the country's future. While the city certainly became home to a diverse, multinational society during the first half of the twentieth century, that population did not necessarily embrace the universalism associated with a cosmopolitan society. By looking at the development of Ma˓adi, a well-to-do garden city suburb of Cairo, this article examines the perimeters of cosmopolitanism in Egyptian society. As a fashionable residential community, Ma˓adi became home to Egypt's diverse bourgeoisie. Jewish railroad developers, English engineers, German doctors, and French archeologists all made homes for themselves in the suburb. While residents' seemingly happy domestic lives in this carefully planned space might appear to exemplify a multinational ideal, this article asks what historical details contributed to the establishment of this particular form of cosmopolitanism in Cairo. What attracted these people to Egypt in the first place? What made their affluence possible? And how and why did those circumstances change over time? Ma˓adi might appear cosmopolitan in retrospect, but it represented different social ideals to the people living there in the past. By better understanding the historical meaning of the place, and the other ways that its society has remembered it over time, Ma˓adi represents more than cosmopolitanism and can more accurately and usefully inform conceptions of Egypt's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this work is to perform a hull girder ultimate strength verification according to the Class Society rules based on experimental results and the dimensional theory. The results of the ultimate strength test of three box girders, that may represent the behaviour of a mid-ship section of a ship, deteriorated in a real corrosive seawater environment representing different levels of corrosion degradation of ageing ship structures, is used to evaluate the ultimate strength. The analysis is based on a structural model, used in the experimental test, which maintains the first-order similarity between the model and real structures. The present analysis may be used to validate the global ultimate strength of ship hull structures in the phase of the new structural design or during the service life and to calibrate the new developed codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The liberation model hypothesizes that school choice liberates students from underperforming schools by giving them the opportunity to seek academically superior schooling options outside of their neighborhoods. Subsequently, school choice is hypothesized to diminish stratification in schools. Data from one urban school district is analyzed to test these hypotheses. We specifically examine which factors influence the propensity for parents to participate in choice, and how school choice changes the racial/ethnic and economic composition of schools. We further examine how school choice influences similar changes within distinct sociogeographic areas within the district. We find that families who are zoned to more racially/ethnically and economically diverse schools in sociogeographically diverse areas are more likely to participate in school choice. We also find that intra-district choice is associated with a slight increase in social stratification throughout the district, with more substantial stratification occurring in the most demographically diverse areas and schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author explains subscription and circulating libraries, reflecting class divisions, during the xviii and xix centuries in Great Britain. He asserts that these two types of libraries clearly demonstrate socially stratified service for the upper, middle and lower classes. That is, these libraries were classist because they universalized a system of values belonging to the ruling class in the context of the market and economic power related to the cultural sphere of capitalism. It is also clear that the pursuit of knowledge and information in these libraries was not feasible for most members of the working class because they had to daily perform exhausting and stressful tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines a future where society re-energizes itself, in the sense both of recapturing creative dynamism and of applying creativity to meeting physical energy needs. Both require us to embrace self-organizing properties, whether in nature or society. The author critically appraises backcasting as a methodology for visioning, arguing that backcasting’s potential for radical, outside-the-box thinking is restricted unless it contemplates a break with class society, connects with existing grassroots struggles (notably over land) and dialogues with the utopian socialist tradition. The article develops a case study of food, starting from the physical parameters of combating the entropy expressed in the loss of soil structure, and applies this to urban food-growing. Drawing upon ‘real utopias’ of existing practice, the author proposes a threefold categorization – subsistence plots, an urban forest, and an ultra-high productivity sector – and emphasizes the emergent properties of such a complex system characterized by the ‘free energy’ of societal self-organization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Classroom teaching is a main frontier of the implementation of new curricular ideas in China. The study reported in this article is concerned with the effectiveness of system of classroom teaching (SCT) in chemistry lessons. According to the Systems Science theory, we took a macroscopic view on the SCT, arguing that SCT is a hierarchy of system, which includes class system, plate system, unit system, and primitive system. In this study, we focused on primitive system of classroom teaching (PrS)-the lowest level in a SCT. Using focus group interviews, this study investigated the variables related to the effectiveness of PrS. We found a total of 21 such variables. To identify the main factors underlying the effectiveness of PrS, we further used exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. We found five main factors: rational use of time, quality of teaching behavior chain, match degree, quality of using resource and technology, and rationality of primitive content. Based on these findings, we constructed an evaluation scale for assessing the effectiveness of primitive system of chemistry classroom teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Alternative Law was a movement of transformation in the Brazilian legal system, approaching to people's necessities. This movement created new forms of inclusion of popular rights in the judiciary agenda and others instances of Brazilian State. However, the problems faced by different Latin American communities derive from more serious issues: the capitalist system. The awareness of this factor will guide the thoughts on the conquests and limits of Alternative Law Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the failure of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) or the Crits and leftist law professors to defend progressive causes concerning class on American society and its relation to access to legal profession. It explores the cost of attending law school, featuring Columbia Law School to be the most expensive law school in 2012. It examines the advocacy of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) that was formed in 1972 on behalf of progressive causes. Moreover, it argues on whether the Crits and elite law professors can be criticized on their failure to protests on the rise of tuition in law education.

With this article we intend to fill a large gap that exists in the field of educational research – examining the history of teaching. We chose a critical historical moment that initiated the great labour transformation in the exercise of the teaching profession. In this context, we investigated the pedagogical benefits introduced by the Portuguese educational system by the class regime promulgated in the 19th century with the reform that introduced the class system, enacted in the nineteenth century. This change is a landmark in the history of teaching. We tried to study what had changed in the workplace to realise the division of teaching. How did teachers relate to each other and to their work in each working system? What social links are required by each of the working systems and what implications do they have for how teachers behave? What place (role) does the teacher play in the production chain? What skills (competences) are required in their working position? The system change that was enacted in the nineteenth century created a new division of labour that called for dynamic labour, diametrically opposed to the traditional and established practice. This curriculum revolution not only brought new demands in teaching but also had consequences in terms of professional identity. From that point forward, being a teacher no longer had the same reference, “if you know – you do it well”. This has radically changed. Being a professional in education is no longer a purely individual act involving inter-subject intervention. They now have to act inter-individually with the intention of being multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary. They have to break through subject boundaries and dualities. The professional skills required by the job in the new employment scheme launched a new challenge in learning (teacher training) and in the exercise of the profession. Reflection on the new type of qualifications is still necessary and remains to be explored. Are the educational workers aware of this? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors discuss the paper of Kraus and colleagues regarding social class and the impact of wealth on prestige and social rank dynamics. They explore how wealth affects the distribution of social rank and the rank-based social relationships, arguing that wealth and resource control is one of the critical conceptual of class. They state that the theory of Kraus and colleagues provides important contribution to literature due to its engagement to the psychology of wealth and social class.

The authors discuss the argument of Kraus and colleagues on their paper regarding social class differences. They explore the social ladder theory used by Kraus and colleagues which argues that people act on the subjective perception according to their social rank. They hope that the theory of Kraus and colleagues will provide an impetus with great focus on the impact of social class on cross-class dynamics. They state that social class is alive, however, it is not culture-free.

This essay explores the protean stances on the idea of caste among the Sikh reformers of the Lahore Singh Sabha in the late nineteenth century through reading the life and writing of Sant Ditta Ram, later Giani Ditt Singh. Though Ditt Singh was from a Ravidasi background, and his career reflected his desire to overcome the debilitations associated with it, he could not advocate an unequivocal stand on caste. Looking at his changing discourse on caste the essay discusses his different readings of the institution and the reasons for such vacillations. In the context of the contemporary debate on caste among Sikhs, and as dalit assertion takes place in the Indian Punjab, the ideas of a dalit Sikh will illuminate the period of history when caste and community identities were being reformulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In large part, Max Weber’s essay ‘Church and sect in America’ was intended as a contrast between European and American societies at the turn of the 20th century. This could be pushed so far as to say that in fact the essay was not about religions at all but rather about the relationship between an old-order class system and a new-order class system in which sectarian religion provided a conduit to validate worldly success (i.e. the Protestant ethic), which directly contrasted with the institutional ‘style’ of the established churches of Europe, into whose membership one was born and through whose structures (e.g. church schools, including the universities) one’s social position was established. ‘Church,’ then, is in some respects a residual category for Weber, more of a background that would enable him to foreground what he saw as a new basis for ordering class/status within the new world. Over time, denominationalism in America hybridized churchly and sectarian elements to create a new socio-religious dynamic by which a central core of ‘nonsectarian’ religious affirmations created a variant mode of religious participation in which multiple religious options served functions historically associated with national churches in Europe. Postmodern globalization, however, has created new opportunities and challenges as institutionalized religions reach beyond historic geopolitical borders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A literary criticism of the book "The Golden Apples" by Eudora Welty is presented. It focuses on the character Virgie Rainey, and the high/low divide between art and mass culture during the early 20th century. Other topics of the article include the relationship between film and reality, defiance of traditional class conventions, and Virgie's ability to control the audience at the movie theater through her musical accompaniment to the films.

This paper explores the institution of caste and its operation in a micro-level village setting of West Bengal, an Indian state, where state politics at grass roots level is vibrant with functioning local self-government and entrenched political parties. This ethnographic study reveals that caste relations and caste identities have overarching dimensions in the day-to-day politics of the study villages. Though caste almost ceases to operate in relation to strict religious strictures, under economic compulsion the division of labour largely coincides with caste division. In the cultural–ideological field, the concept of caste-hierarchy seems to continue as an influencing factor, even in the operation of leftist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Agreement usually operates in a one-to-one fashion where an agreement target is matched to a source of agreement. However, when there is more than one source (for example, in preverbal coordination constructions) agreement mismatches occur. These may be resolved either through partial agreement with only a single source, or by various resolution strategies. Bantu languages with their rich noun-class system are an ideal domain to explore resolution strategies. This paper examines the phenomenon of subject-verb agreement with preverbal coordinated DPs in Sesotho (S33) and outlines an Optimality Theoretic analysis of the various strategies that speakers use to negotiate subject verb agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the case of lower-caste politics in the populous north Indian state of Bihar in order to show the ways in which the liberal democratic model fails to capture the realities of democracy in postcolonial India. In order to explain the rise of lower-caste politics, I examine the ways in which relationships between state institutions, caste networks and locally dominant groups shape contemporary political possibilities, necessitating a re-evaluation of the relationship between liberalism and democracy in India. With state institutions being unable to effectively enforce rights, a caste-based notion of popular sovereignty became dominant – as an idea (the lower-caste majority should rule) and as the everyday rough-and-tumble of an electoral politics that ultimately revolves around the force of numbers. It is inadequate, and actually unhelpful, to simply point out the obvious fact that the enforcement of rights is routinely and systematically undermined in practice and to call for more effective implementation. In fact, I argue that effective implementation in places such as Bihar could only be possible through a radical restructuring of local power that can only come from below, through democratic practice itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary: We analyze the relationship between wealth inequality and caste divisions in India using nationally representative surveys on household wealth conducted during 1991–92 and 2002–03. According to our findings, the groups in India that are generally considered disadvantaged (known as Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes) have, as one would expect, substantially lower wealth than the “forward” caste groups, while the Other Backward Classes and non-Hindus occupy positions in the middle. Using the ANOGI decomposition technique, we estimate that between-caste inequality accounted for about 13% of overall wealth inequality in 2002–03. The stratification parameters indicate that the forward caste Hindus overlap little with the other caste groups, while the latter have significantly higher degrees of overlap with one another and with the overall population. Using this method, we are also able to comment on the emergence and strengthening of a “creamy layer,” or relatively well-off group, among the disadvantaged groups, especially the Scheduled Tribes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article analyzes the political and educational dimensions of Antonio Gramsci's proposal of a unitary school, understanding it from the totality in which it occurs: the class struggle and the construction of the hegemony of the proletariat. It challenges the analyses that somehow depoliticize Gramsci's educational proposal by divesting it of its revolutionary purpose. The author believes that Gramsci saw in the construction of a unitary school linked to work an important tool for the task of breaking with the division of knowledge imposed by class society. Thus, based on a review and analysis of notebook # 12, "Notes and Loose Jottings for a Group of Essays on the History of Intellectuals", this article identifi es in the unitary school evidence that the adoption of the unitary principle is necessarily connected to the abolition of the dichotomy between manual and intellectual work and the division between leaders and led. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular genres of television are, amongst others, able to play a significant role in conveying social aspects of the public sphere into the private sphere. The social or class system appears to be a frequently occurring issue in British television situation comedies. This genre is about decorum, social norms and manners that are mostly class based. Thus television 'sitcoms' provide many examples of characters and their ideas that portray certain social types, social categories and a social order. Economic, political and cultural changes after 1989 in Slovakia have transformed the opportunities and freedoms for individuals and social groups within society. The former basic social class structure has been completely overturned and new perceptions have reflected rapid social and cultural processes. At this juncture, the extensive programming of British situation comedies on Slovak TV channels has undoubtedly played a part in reshaping social attitudes. What lessons in class understanding have Slovak audiences read into British situation comedies? How have they pictured British society? How have they reinterpreted it to suit their own needs? Such are some of the issues this paper tries to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification allows to control for confounding by creating two or more categories or subgroups in which the confounding variable either does not vary or does not vary very much. The Mantel-Haenszel formula is applied in cohort and in case-control studies to calculate an overall, unconfounded, effect estimate of a given exposure for a specific outcome by combining stratum-specific relative risks (RR) or odds ratios (OR). Stratum-specific RRs or ORs are calculated within each stratum of the confounding variable and compared with the corresponding effect estimates in the whole group (that is, with the unstratified RR or OR). The use of the Mantel-Haenszel formula presents some limitations: (1) if there is more than a single confounder, the application of this formula is laborious and demands a relatively large sample size, and (2) this method requires continuous confounders to be constrained into a limited number of categories thus potentially generating residual confounding (a phenomenon particularly relevant when the variable is categorized into few strata). In the stratified analysis, residual confounding can be minimized by increasing the number of strata, a possibility strictly dependent on sample size. Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period from the 1970s to the 1990s saw much discussion about the declining power of national states in the face of internationalization and, later, globalization. This topic has been explored within the Conference of Socialist Economists since its founding meeting in October 1970, as well as in many issues of its Bulletin and, later, in Capital & Class. The global economic crisis has reinvigorated this debate, and invites a return to some of the first principles of historical materialism. Starting with Marx and Engels' discussion of the world market and national states, I explore the impact of neoliberalism on both aspects of this relation and then draw some general conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pastoralist societies are often portrayed as economically egalitarian, reflecting the volatile nature of livestock herds and the existence of multiple institutions that allow for the redistribution of wealth as a form of insurance. Motivated by an interest in the role of intergenerational transmission in structuring persistent inequality, we examine the extent of intergenerational transmission of material wealth (four measures) and embodied wealth (one measure) for four pastoral populations from different parts of the world (East Africa, West Africa, and southwest Asia). We find substantial levels of intergenerational transmission and marked economic inequality. We argue that the high correspondence between the material wealth of parents and offspring reflects the importance of the family in the transmission of wealth through bequests, positive assortment by wealth in the domains of marriage and herd management, and positive returns to scale as might occur when raising or defending large herds. We conclude that the analysis of intergenerational transmission provides new insights into the much-debated extent of egalitarianism among pastoralists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the widespread of modern slavery in India, where there are more bonded laborers than any other country. It states that their continued attachment on the caste system assures that slavery will remain firmly in Indian society. Moreover, the international community is cooperating to find a solution to the situation and considers the universal jurisdiction as an inaccurate tool for a complex problem.

An essay on the engagement of the journal "Social Text" on the theme labor and class for three years is presented. It cites the common threads and describes variations that were contributed for the said theme. It states that the continuities include race and class, gender and class, and comodification of class consciousness. Meanwhile, the contributions of the journal to the study of labor and class enriched the cultural critique of global political economy and international division of labor.