Cultural Processes of Inequality

Cultural Processes of Inequality: A Sociological Perspective shows how systematic inequality is produced and reproduced through mundane, often taken-for-granted practices of offering someone the benefit of the doubt and treating them in good faith or, alternatively, of withholding the benefit of the doubt and treating them in bad faith. This straightforward way of thinking about value and devaluation, privilege and discrimination, works across multiple forms of inequality and at social levels ranging from interpersonal interactions to large-scale institutions, while showcasing the importance of different levels and types of social power (decision-making power, cultural power and individual power). Good-faith and bad-faith assumptions and practices intersect with moral inclusion and exclusion, processes by which certain people or groups of people are defined as deserving or undeserving of moral treatment, often with tragic consequences. Cultural Processes of Inequality covers ways in w