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This chapter examines the establishment of modern English education in India. Today, India is second only to the United States as the largest English-speaking and English-reading country in the world. Much of the story of how English achieved a status as the only current continent-wide and all-India-wide language lies in its acquisition by mahajan elites who wished to preserve their dominance. In this effort, the work of the Scottish missionaries — Duff, Wilson, and Anderson — contributed to this elite drive for education in English. Thereafter, upper-class missionaries, especially those who ran the elite colleges, did much to bring about the establishment of Indian-English as the paramount language of the entire continent.

It is difficult to generalize about the middle classes in Britain. The term covers a wide range of very different interests, from professional people and great industrialists, through shopkeepers and clerks, to the skilled craftsmen and women who were strictly just out of the middle class's range, but were associated with it through ties of ‘respectability’. Individualism was supposed to be their forte. The upper classes had their public schools to encourage esprit de corps; the working classes their common sense of exploitation. The middles felt less solidarity. They had certain vague aspirations in common, like respectability, and some shared ideals, like ‘freedom’, but nothing that indicated a clear-cut, class-based position on the issues that are the subject of this book.

This chapter examines the aftermath of the Persian conquest of Babylonia in the sixth century BCE. It explores the relationship of the Iranian rulers and the indigenous Babylonian urban upper class and analyses the effects of administrative change introduced by the Achaemenid rulers and their officials, especially in the realm of taxation. It suggests that Cyrus the Great and his administration had achieved continuity by securing the cooperation of the traditional Babylonian elite, specifically by honouring the long-standing claims of these families on important offices both in temple and state administration.

The cultural transformations of the 1960s and 1970s created problems and opportunities for elites. In these decades the upper- and middle classes went from being seen as the wellspring of social virtue in Victorian culture to being perceived as repressed, stuffy, and out of touch; after all, they were the prime beneficiaries of a status quo that was now found wanting. From lording it over commoners in the eighteenth century, to loathing the dangerous classes in the nineteenth century, many elite New Yorkers came around to romanticizing African-Americans and other lower-class groups as exemplars of human spirit and social justice. These actions were in many cases genuine, yet in espousing civil rights causes and tackling discrimination and poverty, in exposing the falseness and superficiality of genteel society, upper-class New Yorkers also established their own heightened sensitivity as anti-elitists and their own legitimacy. Corporate elites thus championed achievement and diversity as the foundation of a more democratic, anti-elitist elite.

Here we take up three interrelated theoretical and empirical points, as follows: 1) Class formation in 21^st century U.S., with specific focus on the power and complexities of race/ethnicity/national origin as linked to class, in what will arguably become a “new upper middle class” of the 21^st century, one that is specifically linked to intensified struggle over particular kinds of postsecondary destinations; 2) The extent to which women's surge into highly valued postsecondary destinations within this class fraction portends altered roles and responsibilities for men and women of the new upper-middle class; and 3) The ways and extent to which this ties to the workings of the postsecondary sector of the future, particularly as linked to segmented pathways in a sector that itself is riddled by deepening stratification, linked inequalities, and division. We examine these points with specific focus on the extent to which student location at each stage in the structure of educational opportunities limits their possible locations at the next stage (Kerckhoff, 1995; 2001). We pay particular attention to the possible implications of this statement for both class structure, the fracturing of the middle class, and the workings of the postsecondary sector more broadly.

This chapter discusses the growing body of research on the oversized political influence of the upper class in American politics and the somewhat checkered recent history of conventional political equality reforms like campaign finance laws, lobbying regulations, and programs to increase voter turnout. Whereas these kinds of programs have encountered numerous practical and political roadblocks, pilot efforts to recruit and support working-class candidates have been remarkably successful. Activists who want to give the less fortunate more of a say in American politics have always had a curious blind spot when it comes to helping the less fortunate hold office. It may be time for that to change. If reformers want to continue moving the needle on the problem of political inequality, one of their best bets may be to start paying attention to America's cash ceiling.

This chapter shows that aristocrats were politically essential, but they were also harnessed within the polis. The Greek upper classes might dress and otherwise live more elegantly than common folk, but they had neither inherited titles nor positions guaranteed to them by rank. As Aristotle observed repeatedly in his great work, the Politics, the objective of the polis was to secure justice for its citizens, and consequently equality was a basic necessity. Aristotle's advice that in democracies the rich should not be exploited ruthlessly whereas in oligarchies the well-to-do should not abuse their power was not always observed in practice, but the basic thrust of the theory of the polis always had its influence as a check and force for balance. On the surface, however, Greek history was the product, save to some degree at Athens, of the upper classes.

This chapter examines the familial objections to the marriages of Leonard and that of his uncle William, who also married an Irish immigrant maid more than forty years earlier. These familial responses provide an understanding of the ways in which ideas about gender, race, and marriage played a critical role in the forging of a white upper class in New York. Consequently, analyzing the way New York's upper class dealt with a misalliance, a seemingly minor challenge to their power, may help us better understand how the white upper class wielded their influence and worked to defend their citadels from attack.

As several middle-class alcoholics or addicts have expressed that they do not believe that they need assistance, individualism as a belief is evident as people from all social and economic classes—whether they really do need to be treated for substance abuse or not—also deny the notion that they too need help. Persons who are grounded to the belief of self rules would have difficulty in being open to developing a spiritual life. Brad Warner, a counselor and administrator for a private treatment program, asserts that people of the middle class are more familiar with the venal, and that they would have difficulty accepting the idea of moving towards a higher power as they may not have been exposed to a spiritual background while they were growing up. Other than that, the middle class and upper class believe that they have already achieved self-sufficiency. This chapter introduces the first of the Twelve Steps—humility.

This chapter begins with the investigation of the 1930s–40s new effendiya phenomenon, often portrayed as a newly urbanized and educated middle class, with more traditional approaches to religion and cultural identity. Shedding empirical light on this rising group, this chapter demonstrates that while not an economic middle class, the new effendiya comprised an emerging public of educated young men from modest backgrounds, who viewed modernity through a Muslim and Arab lens. Just as important, however, they saw themselves as distinct from both the traditionalists and the westernized upper classes. In defining themselves in this way, they promoted new understandings of Egypt as a national community. Highlighting a specifically Egyptian modernity “from below,” this chapter puts into sharp relief the social foundations of post-revolutionary Egypt. It thus engages in a fruitful critical dialogue with other emergent literature of the past decade.

This chapter explores the link between food and class relations in Pollyanna to reveal the subtlety with which Eleanor Porter blurs the hierarchal divisions between rich and poor. It begins with the scene in which Nancy collects Pollyanna from the train. Intrigued by the impression that her aunt may be wealthy, Pollyanna asks, “Does Aunt Polly have ice-cream Sundays?” Pollyanna equates wealth with luxurious foods such as ice cream sundaes, and at this moment, food transcends its role as basic human sustenance and takes on a deeper social meaning. Pollyanna narrates the experiences of two classes—the upper middle class and the immigrant lower class—yet Pollyanna's ability to cross their boundaries by developing close relationships with both upper- and lower-class characters in the novel blurs the strict hierarchal divisions between rich and poor.

This chapter discusses changes in the British social structure from the 1950s to the 1970s, covering the monarchy, upper classes, middle classes, and working class. It also describes a new and cross-cutting alignment: ethnic loyalty. The chapter considers the complexity and subtlety of class alignments and attitudes in these decades, and to these the sociologists were increasingly alerting a wider public, for between the 1940s and the 1970s the UK recovered the sociological awareness that Edwardian Britain had gained from Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree.

From the middle of the 19th century onwards, the school master and grammarian Knud Knudsen (1812-95) promoted a language planning programme whereby the written Danish standard used in Norway at the time would change gradually through language planning reforms in the direction of the upper-class creoloid, and thus, by degree, become a (Dano-)Norwegian written standard. This programme of language planning has, through several language reforms, resulted in the standard Bokmål of today. In the 1830s and 1840s, the linguist, language planner and poet Ivar Aasen (1813-96) dismissed completely the upper-class creoloid as a basis on which to establish a national standard. In his view, this idiom was too closely connected to Danish to be able to serve as a convincing linguistic symbol of the Norwegian nation. He launched a new written standard (Landsmaal) based on local peasant dialects. Aasen’s suggested standard has, through several language reforms, resulted in modern standard Nynorsk.