ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a comprehensive new theoretical analysis of the nature of social inequality in human societies. It explains how the results of collaborative efforts can be distributed among the participants. The book explains the social resources involved in distributive decisions. It then examines how these resources were divided in three exemplary inequality structures: European feudalism, the Indian caste system and an African slave-holding society. The book explores early sociological theories of inequality into the context of pre-industrial religious ideas, of seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophical and economic debates and of the political and social turbulence surrounding the industrial revolution. It offers a critical examination of some classical explanations of social inequality which still inform sociological and public debates. Harmful consequences of social inequality were seen as the natural purging from society of the weak or unfit, or were altogether ignored.
