An analysis of social mobility in contemporary French literature that offers a new perspective on figures who move between social classes. Social climbers have often been the core characters of novels. Their position between traditional tiers in society makes them touchstones for any political and literary moment, including our own. Morgane Cadieu's study looks at a certain kind of social climber in contemporary French literature whom she calls the parvenant. Taken from the French term parvenu, which refers to one who is newly arrived, a parvenant is a character who shuttles between social groups. A parvenant may become part of a new social class but devises literary ways to come back, constantly undoing any fixed idea of social affiliation. Focusing on recent French novels and autobiographies, On Both Sides of the Tracks speaks powerfully to issues of emancipation and class. Cadieu offers a fresh critical look at tales of social mobility in the work of Annie Ernaux, Kaoutar Harchi, Michel Houellebecq, Édouard Louis, and Marie NDiaye, among others, shedding fascinating light on upward mobility today as a formal, literary problem.

This “stirring…emotionally raw” (Publishers Weekly) young adult debut novel about three teens entangled by secret love, open hatred, and the invisible societal constraints wrapped around people both Black and white is perfect for readers of All American Boys and The Hate U Give. There is an unspoken agreement between the racially divided towns of Bayside and Hamilton: no one steps over the train tracks that divide them. Or else. Not until Zach Whitman anyway, a white boy who moves in from Philly and who dreams of music. When he follows his dream across the tracks to meet his idol, the famous jazz musician who owns The Sunlight Record Shop in Hamilton, he’s flung into Capri Collins’s path. Capri has big plans: she wants to follow her late mother’s famous footsteps, dancing her way onto Broadway, and leaving this town for good, just like her older brother, Justin, is planning to do when he goes off to college next year. As sparks fly, Zach and Capri realize that they can help each other turn hope into a reality, even if it means crossing the tracks to do it. But one tragic night changes everything. When Justin’s friend, the star of Hamilton’s football team, is murdered by a white Bayside police officer, the long-standing feud between Bayside and Hamilton becomes an all-out war. And Capri, Justin, and Zach are right in the middle of it.

This is based on the lives of real people and actual events. This remarkable story imagines the life of one young couple in the heady days of the 1880s railway boom, their struggles in the depression of the 1890s, and their rescue from poverty by the Kalgoorlie gold rush. Rob and Mary were both born and raised by the tracks in railway navvy camps, but Rob wants something better for his children and his beloved Mary. In the cold mountain air of Ben Lomond, he promises her she will have a home by the sea. Mary cares more for the people in her family than for houses but follows Rob from colony to colony as he chases opportunities until the day the work runs out, and the lives of their children are in danger. Rob and Marys quest for the great Australian dream parallels the coming together of the colonies to form the nation of Australia. At the start of the new century, it seems they have finally made it, but dreams can be easily shattered. Told with empathy for the characters and an eye for detail for social history, By the Side of the Tracks is a tribute to the thousands of navvies and their families who built the railways, which made it possible for Australia to become one nation.

Anthropological enquiry is best done by attending equally to both social and cultural material. This is the view propounded here by Marvin Davis, who uses such an holistic approach to develop an original perspective on hierarchy and politics in rural Bengal. In the first part of the book, Professor Davis describes the indigenous theory of rank held by Hindus in rural West Bengal and shows that the premise of inequality is a central organising principle of their entire society and cosmos. In the second part, he shows that the Bengali preoccupation with rank generates frequent political rivalries at each level of rural social organisation. His book will interest all anthropologists and other social scientists concerned with the social and political organization of rural India. In addition, his explication of the links between ideology and social structure, often viewed in isolation from each other, makes the book an important contribution to anthropological theory and method.