Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification

Power and Privilege seeks to answer the central question of the field of social stratification: Who gets what and why? Using a dialectical view of the development of thought in the discipline, Gerhard Lenski describes the outlines of an emerging synthesis of theories. He shows that perspectives as diverse and contradictory as those of Marx, Spencer, Sumner, Veblen, Mosca, Pareto, Sorokin, Parsons, and Dahrendorf are parts of an evolving and systematic body of theory.