Forms of Inequality and the Legitimacy of Governance, Volume One

This edited volume uses ethnographic cases to examine social, political, and economic inequality in diverse urban settings. This book is couched in the idea that ethnographically based analysis helps to bring out the nature and interconnections between different forms of inequality and sheds light on the major forces that combine to create inequalities. Ethnography also helps to identify the dynamics that undergird the principle of freedom of thought and of action—a key principle, that is, of associated life in a democracy—and recognize empirically that these dynamics not only protect difference but increase it, for they underpin the freedom of the individual to use their talents to manage their lives and achieve their goals. This first volume in a two-part series focuses on legitimacy, governance, labour and urban change, and stereotypes and individual choice. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in sociocultural anthropology, sociology, politics, socio-legal studies, urban change, and education.

Italo Pardo is Honorary Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, UK. He established and co-edits the journal Urbanities and co-founded and presides over the not-for-profit association, International Urban Symposium-IUS.

Giuliana B. Prato is Honorary Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, UK. Having chaired the Commission on Urban Anthropology (IUAES) for many years, she co-founded the International Urban Symposium-IUS, of which she is Secretary-Treasurer, and co-founded and serves on the Board of Urbanities.