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Social Inequality & The Politics of Representation
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Social Inequality & The Politics of Representation
A Global Landscape

Edited by:


September 2012 | 368 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
In a global landscape, the representational practices through which inequalities gain meaning are central- both within and across national boundaries. Social Inequality & The Politics of Representation takes a fresh look at how inequalities of class, race, sexuality, gender, and nation are constructed in twenty countries on five continents. It offers both rich insight and cultural critique- yet it does not offer a universal paradigm, nor is it concerned with debates about scholarship from "the center" or "the periphery". The collection de-centers North American/European paradigms by placing scholarship from countries around the globe on equal footing.

Readers will find a variety of analytical styles including frame analysis, semiotics, poststructural discourse analysis, critical discourse studies, and conversation analysis. Each chapter provides an overview of relevant cultural and historical contexts for an international audience as well as a brief introduction to relevant methodological and theoretical frameworks. Consequently, it is both a richly diverse and easily accessible collection.

Celine-Marie Pascale
Introduction
 
SECTION ONE: CLASS
Martin Power, Amanda Haynes and Eoin Devereaux
1. Class Invisibility and Stigmatization: Irish Media Coverage of a Public Housing Project in Limerick
Viviane de Melo Resende and Viviane Tamalho
2. Inequality and Representation: Critical Discourse Analysis of News Coverage about Homelessness
Roland Terborg and Laura Garcia Landa
3. Poverty and the Survival of Discourses of Discrimination: Otomi Speakers in Mexico
Kevin Whitehead
4. Race-Class Intersections as Interactional Resources in Post-Apartheid South Africa
 
SECTION TWO: RACE
Natasa Simeunovic Bajic
5. The Representation of Ehtnic-cultural Otherness: The Roma Minority in Serbian Press
Shiao-yun Chiang
6. You Are Trying to Make Race an Issue! Race-baiting and Social Categorizatino in US Immigrant Debates
Hemant Shah
7. Global Media and Cultural Identities: The Case of Indians in Post-Amin Uganda
Jackie Jia Lou
8. Representing and Reconstructing Chinatown: A Social Semiotic Analysis of Place Names in Urban Planning Policies of Washington, DC
 
SECTION THREE: SEXUALITY
Hae Yeon Choo and Myra Marx Ferree
9. Sexual Citizenship and Suffering Subjects: Media Discourse about Teenage Homosexuality in South Korea
Sanya Osha
10. Hidden Sex: Behind the Veil and in the Forest
Valentina Pagliai
11. The Bad and the Good (Queer) Immigrant in Italian Mass Media
Antke Engel
12. The Surplus of Paradoxes: Queering/Images of Sexuality and Economy
 
SECTION FOUR: GENDER
Ricarda Drüeke, Susanne Kirchhoff and Elisabeth Klaus
13. Positioning the Veiled Woman: An Analysis of Austrian Press Photographs in the Context of the European Headscarf Debates
Kjerstin Andersson
14. Constructing the Other: Young Men's Talk on Ethnic and Racist Violence
Ebru Sungun
15. Language as a Means of 'Civilizing' Kurdish Women in Turkey
Caesar DeAlvais, Maya Khemlani David and Francisco Perlas Dumanig
16. Contested Identity: Transgendered People in Malaysia
 
SECTION FIVE: NATION
Nadezhda Georgieva-Stankova
17. Language and Identity: Minority Language Policy, Turkish Soap Operas and Language in the Bulgarian Mediascape
Weizhun Mao
18. Tiny Neitzen Mocking Great Firewall: Research on the Discourse of Power and Politics of Representation in China, 2005-2010
Roberta Villalon
19. Framing Extreme Violence: Collective Memory-Making in Argentina
Margarita Astoyants
20. The Changing Dynamics of Political Discourse About Orphans in Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods

"If anyone ever doubted the power of language to make the most egregious inequalities acceptable, natural, and even ordinary, then they should read Pascale's magisterial book, whose fascinating case studies cover the globe. She projects the politics of representation as a critical field that cuts across disciplines and defines new, exciting directions for Sociology."

Michael Burawoy
University of California, Berkeley and President of the International Sociological Association

"This splendid collection will give English-language readers vivid pictures of the way inequalities work across different continents, cultures, and situations. This is the kind of scholarship we urgently need to transform our knowledge, and help transform our world."

Raewyn Connell
Sydney University and author of Southern Theory

"Bringing together critical analysis of representations of inequality by scholars in twenty countries on five continents, this book makes an important contribution to international comparison of production and treatment of inequalities, as well as to placing scholarship from different parts of the world on a more equal footing than we are accustomed to."

Norman Fairclough
Lancaster University

"This unique collections presents wide-ranging forms of textual analysis on the articulations of social inequality in a global perspective. It not only addresses in novel ways different forms and locations of inequalities, ranging from class to nation and from China to Mexico, but also provides deep insights on the relationship between language and the social and between representation and the production of truth. The book makes substantial contributions to the fields of Sociology and Cultural Studies and broadly in the domain of theoretically informed empirical research."

Anriban Das
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

One of the most impressive aspects of this collection is its scope and range. It covers inequalities in twenty countries across five continents, and so effectively displaces the usual sociological focus on Europe or North America while also avoiding a centre/periphery approach. [...] The book occupies a fertile place midway between sociology and cultural studies, and places scholarship from around the world on an equal footing. It is in the end this round-the-world scope of the book that remains its most appealing feature, and turns its abundance of topic and treatment into a worthwhile sociological project.

Michael Pickering
Loughborough University

A great text and insight into the representations of inequalities and how these impact on culture and situations.

Miss Ella Rachael Malton
Department of Health & Social Studies, Grimsby Institute of HE & FE
September 18, 2015

Excellent for a range of social science and humanities courses especially those on issues of globalsiation and wider contextualising of the local situations facing us today. Students of sociology, politics and social policy can only benifit form this resource.

Mr Michael Mahadeo
Dept of Sociology & Appl'd Soc Studies, Ulster University
June 27, 2013

Although my teaching plans have changed so that I will not be teaching this course this year, I will definitely consider this text in the future! I like its even-handed representation of cases from all over the world.

Hannah Emery
Sociology Dept, University of California - Berkeley
April 1, 2013

A useful text recommended reading for BSc in Adult / Mental Heath / Children's and Learning Disability Nursing

Sarah Traylor
School of Nursing and Midwifery, Keele University
January 22, 2013

This is an excellent book that draws on cross-national empirical observations to give a rich perspective on social inequality and the politics of representation.

Dr Hayes Mabweazara
Media and Performance, University College Falmouth
January 17, 2013

Sample Materials & Chapters

TOC

INTRO


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