The New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream?

Extensively revised, the second edition of The New Class Society includes innovative new sections and concepts throughout the book that identify and explore how complex organizational structures and actions create and perpetuate class, gender, and racial inequalities. The authors describe how "inequality scripts" shape the hiring and promotion practices of organizations in ways that provide differential opportunities to people based on class, gender, and racial memberships. The authors also illustrate how privileged class members benefit from organizationally-based and perpetuated forms of inequality.The second edition retains its provocative argument for an emerging "double-diamond" social structure and its focus on class interests that are rapidly polarizing American society. New figures, tables, and references incorporate the latest information and research findings to document and illustrate key topics, such as the distribution of wealth and income, globalization, downsizing, contingent labor, the role of money in politics, media content and consolidation, the transformation of education, and the erosion of democracy.The second edition combines scholarship with an engaging style and flashes of comic relief—with several cartoons by some of the best satirists today. The book, accessibly written for undergraduate students, has been widely adopted in courses on stratification, economic sociology, and American society.