Changing Structures of Inequality: A Comparative Perspective Edited by Yannick Lemel and Heinz-Herbert Noll Montreal et al.: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002, 461 pages Cloth: USD 85.00 (£ 60.00),  ISBN 0-7735-2203-4  Now also available as a paperback version Paper: USD 29.95 (£ 22.95), ISBN 0-7735-2623-4  Order form

The international sociological community has engaged recently in a controversial discussion on social inequality. There is a vigourous debate on whether the traditional concepts of social class and social stratification are still useful. Some researchers argue that social classes still offer a key explanation to social inequalities while others challenge the long-standing tradition of class analysis. New approaches have been proposed to describe recent social changes in the stratification system: vanishing middle class, two-thirds societies, cosmographic inequality, and classless society, among others.

Changing Structures of Inequality examines these questions in a new comparative perspective, covering five national societies – Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. The authors offer a profound analysis of country-specific research traditions in the fields of class analysis and social stratification, as well as the results of substantial comparative studies on different aspects of inequality in developed societies – the inequality of income and wealth; educational inequalities; status crystallization; migration and inequality; gender inequality and the structuring effect of social class – highlighting similarities as well as substantial differences between the societies under examination.

Contributors include Howard M. Bahr, Mathias Bös, Gary Caldwell, Salustiano del Campo, Theodore Caplow, Louis Chauvel, Michel Forsé, Wolfgang Glatzer, Richard Hauser, Paul W. Kingston, Simon Langlois, Yannick Lemel, Denise Lemieux, Laura Maratou-Alipranti, Marion Möhle, Heinz-Herbert Noll.