No-Nonsense Guide to Class, Caste, and Hierarchies

No-Nonsense Guide to Class, Caste, and Hierarchies

By Jeremy Seabrook

Upper, middle, or lower? Which class are you? Hierarchies and rankings have been with us since the earliest times and, as Seabrook argues, they show no sign of disappearing yet. Those at the top would have too much to lose.

This No-Nonsense Guide gives the full picture of how class analysis emerged from earlier categorizations, and how it affected and still affects people’s lives even today in our globalized world.

Praise

The No-Nonsense Guide to Class, Caste and Hierarchies is especially valuable in the way it identifies the new class of the rich, the celebrities and others who play “a significant role in reconciling the poor to their status”. This book is timely, authoritative… excellent.

– John Pilger, writer and broadcaster

For as long as I have been writing about North-South issues–and that’s longer than I care to remember–the New Internationalist has been there with pungent, pithy, probing, political analysis. Now they’ve had the bright idea to encapsulate some of their accumulated wisdom in the No-Nonsense Guides. You can’t go wrong–I personally intend to order the whole series.

– Susan George, associate director of the Transnational Institute, and author of The Debt Trap and The Lugano Report

… a splendid new series of pocketable guides to issue politics… rigorously clear…

– The Guardian

The No-Nonsense Guides are the most accessible and enjoyable means for people with hurried lives to find out how the world really works.

– George Monbiot, environmental campaigner, and author of Captive State

Contents

Foreword by John Pilger
Introduction
Chapter 1 What are 'Class' and 'Inequality'?
Chapter 2 The Importance of a Working Class
Chapter 3 Class: Alive and Kicking
Chapter 4 The Consistency of Change
Chapter 5 Class and Globalization
Chapter 6 Goodbye to the Working Class?
Chapter 7 The Enduring Injuries of Class
Chapter 8 Caste and Class
Chapter 9 Conclusion
Contacts
Bibliography
Index