Mapping Inequality in an Era of Neoliberalism

Offering a unique, comprehensive, and critical introduction to increasingly visible social inequalities, this textbook examines the political and economic causes and cultural consequences of a stratifying system that allocates material resources and human dignity on the basis of private profit and labor exploitation.

Mapping Inequality in an Era of Neoliberalism foregrounds capitalism as the major source of the power relations in the United States, as a class system that serves the dominant vector of inequality and sets the parameters of social mobility. The book starts with racialized capitalist power and shows how this power is constituted in structures of opportunity and constraint. It also uses ethnographic accounts to “flip the script” to show how individuals in the class structure construct identities.

Providing students with tools for understanding, Valocchi engagingly introduces many of the crucial concepts in this area of sociology – power, opportunity structures, ideology, social and cultural capitals, and intersectional class identities – connecting them as part of a uniquely critical approach.

Stephen Valocchi is Professor of Sociology at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he has taught courses in social stratification for several decades. He is author of two books, Capitalisms and Gay Identities (2020) and Social Movements in the United States (2010). He is also author (with Robert Corber) of Queer Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader (2003).