Social Stratification: The Interplay of Class, Race, and Gender

Contents: Part 1: SOCIOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION 1 - An Introduction to Stratification Analysis * The Argument that Inequality Comes from Human Nature * The Argument that Inequality is a Social Phenomenon * A Working Definition of Social Stratification * Age and Gender Inequality * Racial-Ethnic Inequality * Inequality and the Handicapped * Inequality and Sexual Orientation 2 - Stratification Through History * Social Inequality and Type of Society * Hunting and Gathering Society * Complex Horticultural Society * Complex Agrarian Society * Inequality in the Modern World: Capitalist Society 3 - Stratification Among Society * Intersocietal Stratification: Empire and World-Market Systems * Agrarian Expansionism: The Imperialism of Empire * The New Imperialism: The Capitalist World-Market System * Societies in the Contemporary World: Developed, Developing, Underdeveloped * Underdevelopment: El Salvador * Developing Society: The Republic of South Korea 4 - Theories of Social Stratification * Evolutionary Marxism * Evolutionary Liberalism 5 - Creative Advances in Stratification Analysis: Functional and Conflict Perspectives * Historical Background * The Liberal-Functional Focus on Occupations * Broadening the Liberal-Functional Focus: The Conflict Outlook on Class Variables PART 2: THE AMERICAN CLASS SYSTEM 6 - Economic Classes, i: The American Occupational Hierarchy * Defining and Classifying Occupations: Using Interpretive Science * The Apex of Corporate Capitalism: Owners, Executives, and Officials * Elite Power to Produce Scarce, Overpriced Labor at the Top and Abundant, Cheap Labor at the Bottom * Centralized Labor Control Under Corporate, World-Market Capitalism * The New Economy and Its Ideology * Our Overrated Professions * Stratification Within and Among Professions 7 - Economic Classes, II: The Interplay of Wealth, Income, Poverty, Education, and Occupational Power * The Distribution of Wealth * Sources of Wealth * The Distribution of Income * Income Distribution in the U.S. * The End of a Growing Standard of Living? * Power over Income * New Income Trends: A Bipolar America? * Is the Middle Class Disappearing? * Structural Poverty: The Other Side of the Coin of Affluence * The Politics of Poverty * Changing the Poverty Index to Aid Public Policy * Economic Classes and the Distribution of Formal Education * Declining Mobility, Bipolarization, and Stagnant Living Standards: The Advent of Structural Change? 8 - Class, Marriage, Family, Personality, and Physical and Mental Health * Class, Marriage, and Family * Class and Differentials in Health, Life Expectancy, and Mental Disability 9 - Class and Education * America's Faith in Education: The Liberal-Functional Consensus * The Conflict Position on

When I first read this book's predecessor, it changed my perspective on America forever. Citing hundreds of empirical studies, Dr Rossides lays out the contours of the class system in pain staking details. This book is not a casual read. It is a college style text book that requires attention to access. The effort, however, pays off handsomely. Solipsists should stay away from this book as the empirical justification and inferences will bore them. Realists, and all admirers of a priori and empirical knowledge, will find it both deeply revealing and disturbing. This book is an astonishing intellectual achievement. I have read thousands of books in my life. This book and it's predecessor influences my thinking everyday, even 12 years later.