The New Middle Classes: Life-Styles, Status Claims and Political Orientations (Main Trends of the Modern World) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0333617592 ISBN 13: 9780333617595

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994

Synopsis

This volume is designed first to provide a theoretical orientation and historical perspective on the rise of the middle classes in modern civilization, and second, to portray the social and political roles these classes have played and continue to play in the United States over the past century, with particular reference to the American class structure and political economy. Our method is necessarily both historical and sociological and offers an orientation for understanding contemporary American society. The essays included here were written between 1926 and 1982: they reveal both the genealogical development of sociological thought about the middle classes and the substantive content of these classes' life styles, status claims and political orientations. The present work stresses empirical studies and puts forth neither a theoretical interpretation nor a conceptual taxonomy; rather it delineates the emergence and the social and political significance of the new middle classes in relation to the classes, above and below, that preceded them.

About this title

Synopsis

This volume is designed first to provide a theoretical orientation and historical perspective on the rise of the middle classes in modern civilization, and second, to portray the social and political roles these classes have played and continue to play in the United States over the past century, with particular reference to the American class structure and political economy. The essays in this book were written between 1926 and 1982: they reveal both the genealogical development of sociological thought about the middle classes and the substantive content of these classes' life styles, status claims and political orientations. The collection stresses empirical studies and puts forth neither a theoretical interpretation nor a conceptual taxonomy: rather it delineates the emergence and the social and political significance of the new middle classes in relation to the classes, above and below, that preceeded them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0333617592
• ISBN 13: 9780333617595
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Vidich Arthur J.