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  3. Cambridge Studies in Stratification Economics: Economics and Social Identity

The Cambridge Studies in Stratification Economics: Economics and Social Identity series encourages book proposals that emphasize structural sources of group-based inequality, rather than cultural or genetic factors. Studies in this series will utilize the underlying economic principles of self-interested behavior and substantive rationality in conjunction with sociology's emphasis on group behavior and identity formation. The series is interdisciplinary, drawing authors from various fields including economics, sociology, social psychology, history, and anthropology, with all projects focused on topics dealing with group-based inequality, identity, and economic well-being.

  • General Editors: William A. Darity Jr, Duke University, North Carolina

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10 results in Cambridge Studies in Stratification Economics: Economics and Social Identity

Funding White Supremacy
  • Federal Wealth Policies and the Modern Racial Wealth Gap
  • Robert B. Williams
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • In Funding White Supremacy, Robert B. Williams shows how current federal policies have perpetuated and expanded the racial wealth gap in the United States. Through the lens of stratification economics, Williams explores how twelve tax expenditures buried in the federal tax code shower over $1 trillion annually to mostly wealthy, white households, while federal estate and gift taxes have been systematically dismantled. The book reveals how these policies originated in a period of overt racial oppression and have evolved in the modern, post-Civil Rights era, not only contributing to the expanding racial wealth gaps over the last fifty years but how they have also fostered the growth of white wealth at the expense of Black wealth. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how federal policies contribute to the vast and expanding racial wealth gap at the core of the American system of white supremacy.

Stratification Economics and Disability Justice
  • Adam Hollowell, Keisha Bentley-Edwards
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2025
    Print publication:
    30 April 2025
  • In Stratification Economics and Disability Justice, Adam Hollowell and Keisha Bentley-Edwards explore how the work of Black disabled activists can and should inform economic analysis of inequality in the United States. Presenting evidence of disability-based inequality from economics, sociology, disability studies, and beyond, they make a case for the inclusion of ableism alongside racism and misogyny in stratification economics' analysis of intergroup disparity. The book highlights the limitations of traditional economic analyses and elevates quantitative and qualitative intersectional research methods across four key areas in stratification economics: employment, health, wealth, and education. Chapters also recommend public policies to advance fair employment, healthcare access, and equal education for Black disabled people in the US Incisive and compelling, Stratification Economics and Disability Justice follows the lead of Black disabled activists pursuing intersectional advancement of economic justice.

Land, Promise, and Peril
  • Race and Stratification in the Rural South
  • Mary D. Coleman
  • Published online:
    15 April 2023
    Print publication:
    20 April 2023
  • In Langston Hughes' 'Mother to Son,' (1922), written at a time of dramatic disruption in the American economy and continued tyranny in the lives of Black people, urban and rural, the Mother pleads with the child not to give up. She tells the child that she has been 'a climbing on, reaching landings and turning corners.' Not only did the seven families chronicled in this unique study not give up, while both losing and gaining ground, they managed to sponsor a generation of children, several of whom reached the middle and upper-middle classes. Land, Promise, and Peril chronicles the actions, actors, and events that propelled legal racism and quelled it, showing how leadership and political institutions play a crucial role in shaping the pace and quality of exits from poverty. Despite great odds, some domestics, sharecroppers, tenants, and farmers and their children navigated pathways toward the middle class and beyond.

The Economics of Structural Racism
  • Stratification Economics and US Labor Markets
  • Patrick L. Mason
  • Published online:
    06 April 2023
    Print publication:
    13 April 2023
  • This extensive and comprehensive book tracks persistent racial disparities in the US across multiple regimes of structural racism. It begins with an examination of the economics of racial identity, mechanisms of stratification, and regimes of structural racism. It analyzes trends in racial inequality in education and changes in family structure since the demise of Jim Crow. The book also examines generational trends in income, wealth, and employment for families and individuals, by race, gender, and national region. It explores economic differences among African Americans, by region, ethnicity, nativity, gender, and racial identity. Finally, the book provides a theoretical analysis of structural racism, productivity, and wages, with a special focus on the role of managers and instrumental discrimination inside the firm. The book concludes with an investigation of instrumental discrimination, hate crimes, the criminal legal system, and the impact of mass incarceration on family structure and economic inequality.

The Love Jones Cohort
  • Single and Living Alone in the Black Middle Class
  • Kris Marsh
  • Published online:
    02 February 2023
    Print publication:
    09 February 2023
  • Drawing from stratification economics, intersectionality, and respectability politics, The Love Jones Cohort centers on the voices and lifestyles of members of the Black middle class who are single and living alone (SALA). While much has been written about both the Black middle class and the rise of singlehood, this book represents a first foray into bridging these two concepts. In studying these intersections, The Love Jones Cohort provides a more nuanced understanding of how race, gender, and class, coupled with social structures, shape five central lifestyle factors of Black middle-class adults who are SALA. The book explores how these Black adults define family and friends and decide on whether and how to pursue romantic relationships, articulate the ebbs and flows of being Black and middle class, select where to live and why, accumulate and disseminate wealth, and maintain overall health, well-being, and coping mechanisms.

Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa
  • Franklin Obeng-Odoom
  • Published online:
    27 March 2020
    Print publication:
    26 March 2020
  • In this book, Franklin Obeng-Odoom seeks to carefully explain, engage, and systematically question the existing explanations of inequalities within Africa, and between Africa and the rest of the world using insights from the emerging field of stratification economics. Drawing on multiple sources - including archival and historical material and a wide range of survey data - he develops a distinctive approach that combines key concepts in original institutional economics, such as reasonable value, property, and the distribution of wealth, with other insights into Africa's development and underdevelopment. While looking at the Africa-wide situation, Obeng-Odoom also analyzes the experiences of inequalities within specific countries. Comprehensive and engaging, Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa is a useful resource for teaching and research on Africa and the Global South.

Uneven Urbanscape
  • Spatial Structures and Ethnoracial Inequality
  • Paul M. Ong, Silvia R. Gonzalez
  • Published online:
    14 May 2019
    Print publication:
    16 May 2019
  • Uneven Urbanscape takes a new theoretically grounded view of how society produces and reproduces ethnoracial economic inequality. Drawing on empirically rich documentation and quantitative analysis utilizing multiple data sources, including the US Bureau of the Census, Ong and Gonzalez assess the patterns, causes, and consequences of urban spatial disparities, specifically in home ownership, employment, and education. They focus on the global city of Los Angeles in order to examine outcomes across small geographic units that approximate neighborhoods and places, and to analyze the location-specific effects of geographic access and isolation within the region. Using a mix of micro-level data and aggregated statistics, Uneven Urbanscape provides one of the most comprehensive understandings of urban ethnoracial disparities and inequalities from 1960 to the present day.

The Kings of Mississippi
  • Race, Religious Education, and the Making of a Middle-Class Black Family in the Segregated South
  • Sandra L. Barnes, Benita Blanford-Jones
  • Published online:
    13 March 2019
    Print publication:
    21 March 2019
  • Kings of Mississippi examines how a twentieth-century black middle-class family navigated life in rural Mississippi. The book introduces seven generations of a farming family and provides an organic examination of how the family experienced life and economic challenges as one of few middle-class black families living and working alongside the many struggling black and white sharecroppers and farmers in Gallman, Mississippi. Family narratives and census data across time and a socio-ecological lens help assess how race, religion, education, and key employment options influenced economic and non-economic outcomes. Family voices explain how intangible beliefs fueled socioeconomic outcomes despite racial, gender, and economic stratification. The book also examines the effects of stratification changes across time, including: post-migration; inter- and intra-racial conflicts and compromises; and, strategic decisions and outcomes. The book provides an unexpected glimpse at how a family's ethos can foster upward mobility into the middle-class.

The Politics of Blackness
  • Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil
  • Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour
  • Published online:
    24 November 2017
    Print publication:
    07 December 2017
  • This book uses an intersectional approach to analyze the impact of the experience of race on Afro-Brazilian political behavior in the cities of Salvador, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Using a theoretical framework that takes into account racial group attachment and the experience of racial discrimination, it seeks to explain Afro-Brazilian political behavior with a focus on affirmative action policy and Law 10.639 (requiring that African and Afro-Brazilian history be taught in schools). It fills an important gap in studies of Afro-Brazilian underrepresentation by using an intersectional framework to examine the perspectives of everyday citizens. The book will be an important reference for scholars and students interested in the issue of racial politics in Latin America and beyond.

The Hidden Rules of Race
  • Barriers to an Inclusive Economy
  • Andrea Flynn, Dorian T. Warren, Felicia J. Wong, Susan R. Holmberg
  • Published online:
    15 September 2017
    Print publication:
    08 September 2017
  • Why do black families own less than white families? Why does school segregation persist decades after Brown v. Board of Education? Why is it harder for black adults to vote than for white adults? Will addressing economic inequality solve racial and gender inequality as well? This book answers all of these questions and more by revealing the hidden rules of race that create barriers to inclusion today. While many Americans are familiar with the histories of slavery and Jim Crow, we often don't understand how the rules of those eras undergird today's economy, reproducing the same racial inequities 150 years after the end of slavery and 50 years after the banning of Jim Crow segregation laws. This book shows how the fight for racial equity has been one of progress and retrenchment, a constant push and pull for inclusion over exclusion. By understanding how our economic and racial rules work together, we can write better rules to finally address inequality in America.