ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of the general meaning of the concept of social inequality. It deals with the problem of empirical assessment and attempts to provide part of an answer for the question, how does one measure the extent of social inequality among social aggregates? The problem is the determination of what the relevant social goods are for any analysis of inequality among social aggregates. More particularly, it is the issue of how a theory of social inequality is affected by the way in which this determination is made. Social inequality has been widely used to refer to two analytically distinct phenomena with the result that there are two general meanings for the concept. The chapter focuses on three aspects of the definition in an attempt to develop some of these implications: social entities; the realization of social goods; and, the extent of differences.
