Deep Inequality

Earl Wysong is professor of sociology at Indiana University Kokomo. He is a past president of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences and author of High Risk and High Stakes. Robert Perrucci is professor of sociology at Purdue University, a past president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and former editor of the American Sociologist, Social Problems, and Contemporary Sociology. Together they are the authors of the award-winning book The New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream?

• Chapter 1: When Worlds Collide: The New Normal Meets Structural RealitiesChapter 2: Income and Wealth Inequality: The New Class StructureChapter 3: The New Economy: National and Global DimensionsChapter 4: The New Workplace: Employers, Employment, WorkersChapter 5: New Normal Politics: Money, Class, and PowerChapter 6: New Normal Education: Public Schools and CollegesChapter 7: The Information and Culture Industries: Pacification and ResistanceChapter 8: The Future of Inequality: Polarization, Gridlock, and Global Warming

Writing for students new to the study of stratification and mobility, sociologists Wysong (Indiana Univ. Kokomo) and Perrucci (Purdue) take issue not only with conservative and neoliberal policies and ideas but also with those of mainstream liberals. Their primer features clear and succinct conceptualization, references to current events, and data on economic trends. The authors interpret current grassroots social movements striving for greater racial, social, economic, and political equality on the heels of the short-lived “Occupy Wall Street uprising” as indicative of “today’s inequality wars.” They fear that growing inequality, even in the face of populist Trumpism, is being normalized with a narrative that excuses the immense gap between a minority doing well and a disempowered majority experiencing stagnating wages, declining status and security, and historically low chances for their children’s success. As for globalization; the insecurities of a gig economy, declining unionization, robotics and a diminution of well-paying blue-collar jobs, contraction of public services, and political campaigns funded by an ultra-wealthy “superclass,” the new normal says “get used to it.” This descriptive, theoretically friendly examination of class structure in late capitalism offers a good introduction.... Summing Up: Recommended. General, public, and undergraduate libraries.