Respect and Rights: Class, Race, and Gender Today

ISBN: 0742517292

Author: Miller, Seymour M.

Condition: New

About the AuthorS. M. Miller is research professor of sociology at Boston College and director, Project on Income and Poverty at the Commonwealth Institute. He has been president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Eastern Sociological Society, the Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy of the International Sociological Association. Currently, he is on boards of CROP, the poverty research affiliate of the International Social Science Council, United for a Fair Economy, Poverty and Race Research Action Council and the Fourth World Movement. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 articles and is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of more than l0 books and monographs. He has been a Guggenheim, German Marshall Fund and Fullbright fellow.Anthony J. Savoie is a Ph.D. student in sociology at Boston College and a research associate at the Commonwealth Institute. His research interests are in social stratification and consumer culture, particularly the relevance of Thorstein Veblen's theories for understanding stratification today. He holds a Master's Degree in Social Work, and spent several years working in homeless programs with adults and adolescents in Boston. He now lives in Rome, Italy.Product DescriptionDespite great improvements in recent years, group respect is increasingly the key issue of class, race-ethnicity, and gender. It is a central promoter of today's inequalities.Disrespect appears in modes of speech, prejudice and discrimination, inattention, everyday treatment, violence, social distance, low regard for the honesty or intelligence of those treated as "others." An acute sense of respect deficit appears among women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, gays and lesbians, Muslims, people with disabilities-and those of low income or education.The causes-tradition, institutional practices, economic and psychological gain-and the economic, political, social, and psychological costs of group respect deficits are analyzed in public opinion and other data as well as from many other sources. In the first national analysis of the long-neglected issue of group self-respect, surprising changes in the self attitudes of African Americans are reported.Respect affects rights for low group respect impedes the enforcement and pursuit of rights. Authentic inclusion requires transformation of institutions, a more daunting task than overcoming prejudice. Action policies are proposed that would bring class, race and gender groups into more effective alliances.ReviewThis book blessedly ends the psychologists' monopoly over the subject of respect. In clear prose, the authors show that if you want to understand respect, or just seek to get it, you need a lively sociological imagination. Their sociological take on the subject deserves respect (if I can use the word) and shines new light on American society and politics. -- Charles Derber, Boston College; author of Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and Democracy in Perilous TimesAuthors focus on issues of respect, looking at the problem as a group issue. They analyze the costs of disrespect for the groups. Their concern is particularly on 'identity groups,' that is cleavages other than those caused by differences in basic economic position. On the other hand, they recognize that disrespect has important economic consequences for these identity groups. As the authors note, this emphasis is different from focusing on the status and prestige of individuals. In turn, the authors consider the level of respect given to other groups as also a weapon used by dominant groups to advance their position at the cost of the groups that they disrespect. Going beyond this and taking off on Goffman's famous phrase, 'the presentation of self in everyday life,' the authors analyze the 'presentation of the group to the group.' A very interesting and provocativ