Peter Saunders

Updated for the third edition, this introductory text on British politics provides a systematic analysis of who really runs Britain, to what end, and to whose advantage. This new edition covers issues of the day including constitutional change, welfare reform and New Labour's Third Way.

The questions raised by a study of class and inequality are important, but often complex. This book succeeds in making them understandable without oversimplifying, and its breadth, originality, and easy style will appeal to a wide readership. Peter Saunders covers theories of social class as well as evidence on class inequalities in the contemporary period. He analyses why class inequalities exist, whether they are inevitable, whether they are unjust, and how they are changing. The analysis is comprehensive and up-to-date and includes information on how the distribution of wealth and income and social mobility chances have been changing during the Thatcher years. It also explores how the class structure is being affected by developments such as the spread of privatization and individual shareholdings, the rise of the 'yuppies', and the emergence of an underclass. On the theoretical side Professor Saunders gives equal weight to marxist, social-democratic, and neo-liberal perspectives on class and inequality, and writers as diverse a Karl Marx, John Rawls, and Friedrich Hayek all receive serious and balanced consideration.

First published in 1986. For this new edition of Social Theory and the Urban Question Peter Saunders has updated the text to take account of major theoretical developments in the 1980s and has also considerably developed his own approach. Three chapters have been completely rewritten and others have been appropriately revised. The revisions ensure that Social Theory and the Urban Question will retain its position as a major textbook in urban sociology and an important contribution to the development of urban social theory. The book begins with a review of the ways in which Weber, Durkheim, Marx and Engels approached the analysis of the city. It goes on to consider the four major theoretical approaches which have been developed in twentieth-century urban sociology - those of human ecology, cultural theories, neo-Weberianism and neo-Marxism. Recent innovations and new directions arising out of the work of contemporary writers such as Castells, Pahl, Harvey and Giddens are discussed and evaluated, and the book concludes by identifying a new 'sociology of consumption' which may now be emerging in the urban studies literature.