American Society: how it actually works

(forthcoming, 2010, W.W. Norton)

By Erik Olin Wright & Joel Rogers

Note: This book is a joint project with Joel Rogers based on an undergraduate  sociology course, "Contemporary American Sociology", which we have taught since the early 1990s. The draft posted below is the final draft, August 2009, before being copy-edited by the publisher.

 

Table of Contents

 

1

Prologue: Values and Perspectives

2

What kind of a country is this?

 

                 Part I. Efficiency & Freedom

3

The market: how it is supposed to work

4

The market: How it actually works

5

The environment

6

Transportation

7

Consumerism

8

Health Care

9

High Road Capitalism

 

Part II. Fairness

10

Thinking about Equality, Inequality and Fairness

11

Class

12

Persistent Poverty and Rising Inequality

13

Solutions to Poverty

14

Racial Inequality

15

Gender inequality

 

Part III. Democracy

16

Capitalist Democracy: how it works

17

Voting

18

Taxation and the Affirmative State

19

Democracy and Corporate Media

20

Militarism & Empire

21

Unions and Democracy

22

Democracy from below

 

                Conclusion

23

Alternative Futures