Structure of Social Inequality

Social Stratification and Social Class, Books On Social Inequality

Social inequality is a fundamental aspect of virtually all social processes, and a person's position in the Social Stratification system is the most consistent predictor of his or her behavior, attitudes, and life chances.

Social stratification lies at the core of society and of the discipline of sociology. Social stratification links almost all aspects of society together, and therefore understanding social stratification helps understand a range of changes in society.

The position of a person in the stratification orders of sex, race, and social class determine the nature of their work, the language they speak, their values, physical and mental health, sexual activities, childrearing practices, happiness and self-esteem.

Class is extensively used in discussing social structure, sociologists also rely on the concept of status, which offers a more complex portrait in which individuals within a class can be seen as having quite differentiated social situations.

Will globalization change social inequality? Why do some people have more of the good things than others? Why are the poor people poor? When and how inequality in society began? How does one recognize social class? What are your chances of a change in the class order? Does the international economic order affect inequality?

9 Characteristics of the New Inequality in Europe - discusses the impact of the service economy on class distinctions. "Before the French Revolution, about 1 in 20 of the French labour force worked for the Court - making wigs, building palaces, gilding statues, or as servants.

Is the post-industrial economy a court economy, in which the work of many, exists for the status of a privileged few? The trend is certainly in that direction." - web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/new.ineq.html

Books On Social Inequality

The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities (Blackwell Companions to Sociology)
Book by Mary Romero, Eric Margolis (Editor)
Companion to Social Inequalities is a collection of social science scholarship on inequalities, emphasizing race, ethnicity, class and gender sexuality, age, and nationality. Highlights themes that represent the scope and range of theoretical orientations, contemporary emphases, and emerging topics in the field of social inequalities. Leading scholars gives special attention to debates in the field, developing trends and directions, and interdisciplinary influences in the study of social inequalities.

Inside Toyland : Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality Book by Christine L. Williams
From Publishers Weekly
Williams, a sociology professor at the University of Texas. She delves into the "McJobs" phenomenon, whereby those holding retail jobs have experienced loss of job security and benefits, their unions have lost power, and the value of the minimum wage has decreased. In both stores where she worked, the hierarchy of jobs was obviously affected by race and gender. In addition, white employees were treated with more respect by customers than minorities, and white customers were more often seen by management as potential spenders, minorities as potential shoplifters.

The Shape of Social Inequality : Stratification and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective (Research in Social Stratification and Mobility) Book by David Bills
This volume brings together former students, colleagues, and others influenced by the sociological scholarship of Archibald O. Haller to celebrate Haller's many contributions to theory and research on social stratification and mobility. Many of the chapters adopt an explicitly cross-societal comparative perspective on processes and consequences of social stratification. The volume offers both conceptually and empirically important new analyses of the shape of social stratification.

Social Problems : Community, Policy and Social Action Book by Anna Leon-Guerrero
By encouraging critical thinking and Internet research, students will come to recognize that social problems don't just exist "somewhere else," but that they exist on their own campuses and in their own neighborhoods and communities.
Social Problems: Community, Policy, and Social Action offers a sociological perspective on the social problems discussed. It also provides an awareness that our personal experiences with problems that may arise in families, the workplace, health and medicine, the media, cities and suburbs, or with drug abuse, poverty, crime, the environment, and war and terrorism are caused by structural or social forces.

Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men (Studies in Social Inequality)
Book by Maria Charles, David B. Grusky
The last half-century has witnessed dramatic declines in gender inequality, evidenced by the rise of egalitarian views on gender roles and the narrowing of long-standing gender gaps in university attendance and labor force participation. This development, while spectacular, has been coupled with similarly impressive forms of resistance to equalization, most notably the continuing tendency for women to crowd into female "occupational ghettos." This book answers the important questions: Why has such extreme segregation persisted even as other types of gender inequality have lessened? Why is segregation especially extreme in precisely those countries that appear most committed to egalitarian reform and family-friendly policies?

Social Inequality: Patterns and Processes Book by Martin Marger
This text provides an introduction to key concepts, current research findings, and theories in social inequality. While focusing on social class and theories, it also deals broadly with other forms of social inequality, including racial/ethnic, gender, and political. In dealing with the various dimensions of inequality, the book explains how they overlap and interrelate.

Social Inequality and Social Injustice : A Human Rights Perspective Book by Evelyn Kallen
This book uses a human rights framework to analyze how group-level social inequalities and injustices are socially constructed and maintained through violations of human rights on grounds of race, gender, sexuality, etc., and how human rights legislation can help such violations to effectively be redressed. Although it focuses primarily on democratic nations, it uses international case material to highlight key global issues.

Social Inequalities in Comparative Perspective Book by Fiona Devine, Mary C. Waters (Editor)
This unique collection of original essays brings a comparative perspective to issues of social inequality. First-rate sociologists from around the world have contributed to this exciting and rigorous volume, drawing upon their own research in the fields of race and ethnicity, class and inequality, and gender and sexuality.
Qualitative research on social inequalities is enjoying increasing prominence in the sub-discipline of social stratification because it addresses issues of culture, identity, experience, meaning and process. This collection is at the cutting edge of the study of social inequalities and identifies new directions of thinking about and doing research on race, class and gender in a stimulating and innovative way.

Worlds Apart: Social Inequalities In A Global Economy Book by Scott Sernau
This book focuses primarily on social inequalities in the American context. How global inequalities are effecting, and are affected by social stratification and inequality in America. Provides a sociological framework for analyzing inequality within U.S. society as well as analyzing the relationship between global stratification systems and internal systems of inequality.
Places each issue and dimension of inequality in the context of a changing global economy.
This book is for students who are enrolled in Social Stratification and Inequality courses, primarily taught in Sociology departments. Three Visual Essays which provide powerful illustrations of inequality in Global (Honduras), Rural (Navaholand), and Urban (Deindustrialized) Contexts.
Edition’s theme has been how the current regime of market-driven solutions actually contribute to rather than reduce social inequality, and continues to highlight inequality in America, with the addition of how Social Inequalities in America are effected by global inequalities.

Injury : The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States
Book by Sarah S. Lochlann Jain
Injury offers the first sustained anthropological analysis and critique of American injury law. The book approaches injury law as a symptom of a larger American injury culture, rather than as a tool of social justice or as a form of regulation. Through lively historical analyses of consumer products and workplace objects ranging from cigarettes to cheeseburgers and computer keyboards to airbags, Jain lucidly illustrates the real limits of the product safety laws that seek to redress consumer and worker injury. The book draws from a wide range of materials to demonstrate that American law sets out injury as an exceptional state, one that can be redressed through imperfect systems of monetary compensation. Injury demonstrates how laws are unable to accommodate the ways in which physical differences among citizens are imposed by the physical objects of culture that distribute risk differently among populations.

A Sociology of Work in Japan (Contemporary Japanese Society) Cambridge University Press Language: English
Book by Ross Mouer, Hirosuke Kawanishi, Yoshio Sugimoto (Series Editor), Harumi Befu (Series Editor), Roger Goodman (Series Editor), Michio Muramatsu (Series Editor), Wolfgang Seifert (Series Editor), Chizuko Ueno (Series Editor)
What shapes the decisions of employees in Japan? The authors of this comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the relationship between work and society in Japan argue that individual decisions about work can only be understood through the broader social context. Many factors combine to affect such choices including the structuring of labour markets, social policy and, of course, global influences which have come increasingly to impinge on the organisation of work and life generally. By considering labour markets, social policy and relationships between labour and management, the book offers penetrating insights into contemporary Japanese society and glimpses of what might come in the future.

Home Ownership and Social Inequality: In Comparative Perspective (Studies in Social Inequality)
Book by Karin Kurz (Editor), Hans-Peter Blossfeld (Editor)
Although a strong indicator of social status, home ownership has rarely emerged as a topic in social inequality research. This book compares twelve countries—the United States, Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Israel—to determine the interdependence of social inequality and homeownership attainment over the life course.

Social Inequality
Book by Kathryn M. Neckerman (Editor)
Inequality in income, earnings, and wealth has risen dramatically in the United States over the past three decades. Most research into this issue has focused on the causes—global trade, new technology, and economic policy—rather than the consequences of inequality. In "Social Inequality," a group of the nation’s leading social scientists opens a wide-ranging inquiry into the social implications of rising economic inequality. Beginning with a critical evaluation of the existing research, they assess whether the recent run-up in economic inequality has been accompanied by rising inequality in social domains such as the quality of family and neighborhood life, equal access to education and health care, job satisfaction, and political participation.
Thomas Kane links the growing inequality in college attendance to rising tuition and cuts in financial aid. Neil Fligstein and Taek-Jin Shin show how both job security and job satisfaction have decreased for low-wage workers compared with their higher-paid counterparts. Those who fall behind economically may also suffer diminished access to essential social resources like health care. John Mullahy, Stephanie Robert, and Barbara Wolfe discuss why higher inequality may lead to poorer health: wider inequality might mean increased stress-related ailments for the poor, and it might also be associated with public health care policies that favor the privileged. "Social Inequality" concludes with a comprehensive section on the methodological problems involved in disentangling the effects of inequality from other economic factors, which will be of great benefit to future investigators.
While today’s widening inequality may be a temporary episode, the danger is that the current economic divisions may set in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of social disadvantage. The most comprehensive review of this quandary to date, "Social Inequality" maps out a new agenda for research on inequality in America with important implications for public policy.

Great Divides : Readings in Social Inequality in the United States Book by Thomas Shapiro
Drawing from classic and contemporary scholarship, the 47 readings in this anthology illustrate basic theories, concepts, and findings associated with social inequality in the United States. Many selections feature cutting-edge sociological research, providing students with new concepts and theories that inspire thought-provoking class discussion.

Respect in a World of Inequality Book by Richard Sennett
His analysis leads him to propose a new kind of society, one that accepts that people are unequal, that some of us are more talented, or more compassionate, or more dependent on others--a society that, through mutual respect, encourages everyone to become the best person he or she can be. Not a manifesto, not a diatribe, and--thankfully--not a mind-numbing self-help book, this is a carefully reasoned, insightful look at a subject that is too little understood. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association.

Understanding Social Inequality: Intersections of Class, Age, Gender, Ethnicity, and Race in Canada Book by Julie McMullin

Shape of Social Inequality

Companion to Social Inequalities

Worlds Apart

Sociology of Work in Japan

Social Problems Social Action

Home Ownership and Social Inequality

Occupational Ghettos

Social Inequality Kathryn

Social Inequality Patterns

Great Divides

Social Inequality and Social Injustice

Social Inequalities in Comparative Perspective

Understanding Social Inequality

Respect in a World of Inequality

Injury : The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States

E-Books