Class, Ethnicity and Social Inequality

Raj S. Gandhi is a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary.

The often hotly disputed concepts of class and ethnicity are valuable
conceptual tools for the analysis and understanding of societies. In
this fundamental rereading of the experience and interpretation of class
and ethnicity, McAll proposes that ethnicity is neither a mask that
conceals class nor an alternative to class as a basic explanatory
concept, but one of the ways in which social inequality expresses itself
and ensures its own survival.

Working from fresh interpretations of classic theoretical approaches to
class and ethnicity, McAll discusses the role of class formation and
ethnogenesis at different historical periods and in different social
contexts, and looks at both the idea of the nation-state and the role of
ethnicity in the context of colonialism.

The survival of social inequality depends on discrimination and
therefore on mechanisms that ensure identification and exclusion—the
opposed, collective identities that characterize all socially unequal
relationships. McAll argues that the concept of ethnicity helps us
understand these mechanisms and that the ethnicity of class plays an
important role in maintaining social inequality.

The discussion of ethnicity has been peculiarly neglected and its
importance underestimated by left-wing analysts and theorists. Class,
Ethnicity, and Social Inequality corrects this oversight. Its 18
chapters provide fascinating reading for those interested in social
stratification.