{"product_id":"the-return-of-inequality-social-change-and-the-weight-of-the-past-9780674988071","title":"The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past","description":"\u003cp\u003eA pioneering book that takes us beyond economic debate to show how inequality is returning us to a past dominated by empires  dynastic elites  and ethnic divisions.  The economic facts of inequality are clear. The rich have been pulling away from the rest of us for years  and the super-rich have been pulling away from the rich. More and more assets are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Mainstream economists say we need not worry; what matters is growth  not distribution. In The Return of Inequality  acclaimed sociologist Mike Savage pushes back  explaining inequalitys profound deleterious effects on the shape of societies.  Savage shows how economic inequality aggravates cultural  social  and political conflicts  challenging the coherence of liberal democratic nation-states. Put simply  severe inequality returns us to the past. By fracturing social bonds and harnessing the democratic process to the strategies of a resurgent aristocracy of the wealthy  inequality revives political conditions we thought we had moved beyond: empires and dynastic elites  explosive ethnic division  and metropolitan dominance that consigns all but a few cities to irrelevance. Inequality  in short  threatens to return us to the very history we have been trying to escape since the Age of Revolution.  Westerners have been slow to appreciate that inequality undermines the very foundations of liberal democracy: faith in progress and trust in the political communitys concern for all its members. Savage guides us through the ideas of leading theorists of inequality  including Marx  Bourdieu  and Piketty  revealing how inequality reimposes the burdens of the past. At once analytically rigorous and passionately argued  The Return of Inequality is a vital addition to one of our most important public debates.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45651926024245,"sku":"ByrdShop_0674988078","price":36.69,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674988071.jpg?v=1781845655","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-return-of-inequality-social-change-and-the-weight-of-the-past-9780674988071","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}