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The class structure of Britain has changed considerably since the 1970s. The gap between the rich and poor has grown, and many individuals can no longer be classified into traditional middle- and working-class categories. Despite polarisation and fragmentation, however, social class has continued to shapes individuals’ daily lives and life-chances. There are distinct class inequalities in education and leisure that appear to be resistant to intervention. Governments and other public organisations have invested considerable funds and deployed various policies, but individuals from affluent backgrounds continue to do better in the education system and be more active in their leisure time than individuals from deprived backgrounds. Academics have also turned their attention to class inequalities in education and leisure, especially of late. Research indicates that such inequalities emerge during early childhood and remain through youth and into adulthood. This, along with evidence of the limited effectiveness of interventions delivered through schools, has made one thing clear: to explain the production and reproduction of class inequalities in education and leisure and do something about them through policy, researchers and governments must look to the family. The ways in which parents from different social classes are involved and invest in their children’s education and leisure have been researched quite extensively. However, the findings in many of the studies are un-integrated and de-contextualised. In addition, much of the research is deductive – academics have tended to test theories and the significance particular family variables and processes. This thesis, therefore, set out to produce a grounded theory of class-specific patterns of parenting in relation to children’s education and leisure. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a case study of parents and children from a small city in the north-west of England. Two main social classes emerged out of the case study, a group tentatively described as an ‘under-class’ and a middle-class divided into fractions. It was found that social class impacted upon several areas of family life, and differences in these areas of family life clustered together to form class-specific patterns of parenting. The under-class pattern of parenting was conceptualised as ‘essential assistance’. It conveys the present-centred and basic involvement of the parents – they did not think a great deal about the future but did what was necessary to keep their children up with their peers on a day-to-day basis. The middle-class pattern of parenting was conceptualised as ‘concerted cultivation’. It conveys the forward-thinking and deliberate nature of the parents’ involvement. Also, the meticulous lengths to which the parents went – every aspect of their children’s development was open to pruning. The middle-class parents were involved in their children’s education and leisure in similar ways, but to different degrees. Thus, concerted cultivation can be regarded as gradational. Class-specific patterns of parenting can be linked to the production of class-related patterns of inequality. Through essential assistance and concerted cultivation, under-class and middle-class parents condition their children to think and act in particular ways. More specifically, they furnish their children with different skills, preferences and mentalities. A detailed discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of these patterns of parenting is provided in the conclusion to the thesis.

This thesis uses a number of sources to piece together evidence of working-class reading habits during the period 1850 to 1914: autobiographies, library borrowing records, middle-class contemporary observations, and answers to correspondents pages in popular periodicals. Middle-class dominance of literary production through the publishing industry, librarians, editors, and book reviews helped to shape working class autobiographical representations of reading. Literary conventions of autobiographies limit them as a source. By portraying the authors' life as a success story the genre puts greater emphasis on the reading of accepted classics and canonical works. Studies of two early libraries show how notions of class and gender affected the provision of texts in libraries. Later records prove that reading for leisure purposes had increased dramatically over the period from 1850 to 1914 and that juvenile literature was popular even with adult readers. Changes in the publishing industry and the popularity of genres are reflected in the library stock. An alternative source confirms these trends. The answers to correspondence pages of the London Journal, Reynolds' Newspaper and the Family Herald reveal that a number of common readers wanted to read in order to better themselves socially and intellectually. A popularised version of autodidact culture was both promoted and sought in the pages of popular periodicals. The thesis concludes that two distinct trends in reading are evident through the period: reading for self-improvement subtly shaped by autodidact culture, and an increase in leisure reading

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This thesis is concerned with developing our understandings and knowledge of children within Early Years Learning (EYL) and the importance of movement and play in processes of social class and cultural (re)production. The ways in which parents from different social classes are involved and invest in their children s education and physical activity have been researched quite extensively. This research therefore looks at the nature of transactions and interactions within EYL settings and the influence social class and parental investment has on children s embodiment, knowledge construction and learner identities. The study pays particular attention to how social inequalities are produced and reproduced within EYL through differences in its organisation, curriculum structures, pedagogical interactions and transactions. Data were collected over a ten month period of sustained critical ethnography in three socially and culturally diverse EYL settings in central England through observations and informal conversations. The collected data were first analysed ethnographically to determine the organising categories and concepts of the setting, while second order analyses brought into to play the researcher s sociological interests in questions of equity, social reproduction and control, imposing another layer of questions on the study. A Bernsteinian theoretical lens was adopted to interrogate the transactions within EYL settings in relation to power and control, while those of others (namely habitus , physical capital and the corporeal device - pace Bourdieu, Shilling, Evans and Davies respectively) were used to embellish such understandings and bring processes of embodiment to the fore. The findings illustrate the complexity of the discourses and practices that children negotiate when re-contextualising knowledge and constructing their learner identities within EYL settings. They also reveal how children learn about their own and others bodies through the various forms of play that feature in EYL settings and that these processes are profoundly class related. At the heart of the thesis lies the claim that extant social class hierarchies and ability differences are sustained rather than eroded or lessened through the structure, organisation and transactions of EYL settings. Finally, recommendations are made as to how UK Government policy relating to EYL might begin to promote pedagogies that enhance the potential for greater social mobility in the UK.

Over the twentieth century advanced economies have seen an economic and social development process which was build upon the consolidation of a strong middle class. Yet, recent decades have seen an increase in wealth and income inequality, reaching levels not seen since before the Second World War. This thesis explore some of the these issues in two parts. The focus of the first part of the thesis is on the role of education and technology in the rise of the middle class. By means of an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth, I study the conditions that enable a society to transit from underdevelopment to development. The model in place reproduces a Kuznets curve, which is deemed an important empirical feature of the history of advanced economies. The second part focuses on the fall of the middle class, by studying the effect of technology and skills in job polarisation - i.e. the fall in employment in middle-skill occupations. The approach is both theoretical and empirical. A sorting model based on tasks is developed and adapted to study polarisation. Central to this model are the distributions of skills that workers have. Thus, a complete chapter is dedicated to characterise these ability distributions, using longitudinal data from the UK for 1991-2008 in an econometric model based on the so-called Mincer equation. The estimated distributions - positive skewed - are used to calibrate the sorting model. Then, this model is used to identify the nature of the technological process affecting the UK economy over the selected period of study. Simple counterfactual exercises shed light on the strong effect of technical progress on both polarisation and inequality. In contrast, the role of change in skills is negligible. The overall conclusion is that the nature of technological change is essential in defining distributional outcomes: whilst technology can enable the rise to a strong middle class, it can also undermine it.

Cheung Kai-chee. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Bibliography: leaves [32]-[36] (2d group)

Both individual characteristics and organizational internal structure are significantly related to employees' participation in both kind of education and training, namely the firm-provided as well as self-chosen and paid education and training outside the firm. Those employees who are male and younger, those who are at higher end of job hierarchy, those who experienced more internal mobility, are more likely to participate in both kinds of education and training. They take the advantage of both kinds of education and training programs. / Cases of this study include 31736 employees from 410 enterprises, randomly sampled at China's county level from different regions in terms of economical development. Multilevel logistic regression was employed to model the impact of region, firm and individual characteristic on employees' participation in adult education and training. Dependent variables are classified in three groups in this study: (a) those employees who participated in the training provided by firm only, (b) those employees who participated in self-chosen and self-paid adult education and training outside firm only, and (c) those employees who participated in both two kinds of adult education and training. / In regard to employees' participation in firm provided training only, the labor market structural factors and the firms' internal organizational structure had the most explaining power, between these two firms' internal market characteristics had greater impact. A job position that an employee obtained is his/her niche in the labor market. The characteristics of an internal market is decisive for allocating training opportunities. Those employees at a position in advantage are likely to participate in firm supported training. That is, the higher an employee is at occupational hierarchy, the longer a person has worked in current firm, the greater the extent to which an employee has experienced changes in the workplace, the more likely that employee would take part in firm provided training. / In the context of global market and knowledge economy development, adult education and training are regarded as an important factor in keeping economic growth in China. They also become a means for individuals to acquire knowledge, skills and to enhance human capital, thus improving their ability in the job market. / In the fast-growing market-oriented economy in China, many employees have been involved in job-related education and training of various kinds. In the transition from the planned to a market economy, firms are more autonomous in the organization of production, and individuals are free to pursue their occupational aspirations. Firms and individual started to take responsibilities to invest in education and training in order to acquire competence. It is interesting to study who participate in adult education and training as an opportunity to update job skills. It is important to understand if that would have implications in improving the workforce quality. / The empirical analyses supported the hypothesis that employees' participation in adult education and training is determined by both individual characteristics and multi-level labor market structures. Both employees and their firms are embedded in certain social structure that could be facilitating or constraining in terms of making educational opportunities available to firms and individual employees. The findings clearly show that patterns of the three groups of independent variables having impact on the three types of participation choices vary. / These findings show that employees' participation in education and training is related to individual characteristics acquired before entering the labor market, and it is also related to the characteristics of labor market. Making education and training available for employees has become a practice to improve competence, which is vital to maintain sustainability. Therefore, it should give consideration to improving equality of participation for different groups of employees and reducing disparity between regions. A mechanism is necessary to coordinate education and training among sectors, such including education, economic sector and the government administration for the workforce. That would encourage the exchange of information between sectors and improve cooperation in developing programs for the workforce. In such a way, adult education and training can play an important role and meet skill training needs for different social groups. / This thesis takes employees' participation in education and training for a study. It is focused on the following research questions: Who had an opportunity to participate in adult education and training during the economic reform in mainland China? What are the factors affecting employees' participation? Based on human capital theory, labor market segmentation theory and organization theory, it is hypothesized that employees' individual characteristics, the firms' internal structural characteristics, and the firms' characteristics in relations to labor market all these multi-level factors have impact on employees' participation in adult education and training. Independent variables are accordingly deduced into three groups. Individual characteristics are those achieved status possessed by employees before entering into the labor market, include age, gender, marital status, initial education level. Characteristics of the firms' internal labor market is represented by the employees' job related characteristics in terms of job position, work experience in years, mobility, and the extent an employee experienced the firms' reform. An employee acquired these work-related attributes after having entered the firm, or being selected by a firm if one's individual characteristics were considered matching in the workplace. Finally, firms' characteristics, reflecting firms' attributes as compared to other firms in the market system, would affect resource allocation and labor requirements. These variables include firm size, the average education year of employee with in firm, the overall mobility of a firm's internal labor market, types of ownership, and the economic industrial sector that the firm belongs to. / Whether an employee has participated in self-paid adult education is an interaction of individual characteristics and labor market structure. Those employees who are male, younger, and who had senior secondary education are likely to participate in self-paid adult education. In regard to one's decision of participating in self-paid adult education or not, it mostly related to one's own individual characteristics. As an employee is embedded in the firm and then the firm embedded in the large labor market, his or her action is affected by the labor market structure, too, but those are the secondary factors. / 王蕊. / 呈交日期: 2006年2月. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2006. / 參考文獻(p. 213-232 ). / Cheng jiao ri qi: 2006 nian 2 yue. / Advisers: Jin Xiao; Nai-Kwai Lo. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4067. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2006. / Can kao wen xian (p. 213-232 ). / Wang Rui.

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Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork in suburban Hyderabad, India, this thesis contributes to emerging debates on the Indian new middle classes and postcolonial middle classes more generally. I challenge images of a homogenous middle class enjoying the benefits of liberalization by highlighting the diversity in wealth, lifestyle and access to opportunities within this class sector. Contrary to the pervasive image of a hedonistic and morally corrupt new middle class, I assert the centrality of moral discourses to the construction of middle-class identity in Hyderabad. Middle-class Hyderabadis engage in moral discourses of ‘respectability’ and ‘open-mindedness’ in relation to caste, consumption, education, and women’s public and domestic roles. These discourses of morality are central to the reproduction of class and gender inequality as successfully balancing the demands of respectability and open-mindedness is particularly difficult for those with fewer resources such as the lower middle class and for women who are expected to embody authentic Indianness in their demure comportment, ‘traditional’ attire and commitment to ‘Indian’ family values, but are also liable to being judged ‘backward’ if their clothing and lack of education and paid employment are seen to be in conflict with fashion and open-mindedness. The focus on balance and compromise in middle-class Hyderabadis’ narratives echoes other work on postcolonial middle classes that has emphasised people’s efforts to adhere to local notions of respectable behaviour that are central to national identities while also attempting to align themselves with a ‘modern’ global consumer culture. In contrast to much of this literature, however, I challenge the notion that modernity and tradition, the local and the global are objects of desire in and of themselves and instead argue that they function as important reference points in discourses that legitimate the dominant position of men and those of upper class-caste status.