Against the Odds?: Social Class and Social Justice in Industrial Societies

by Gordon Marshall, Adam Swift, Stephen Roberts

What is the relation between social class and social justice? This is currently a matter of public as well as academic interest. In this compelling new study the authors bring together recent developments in normative thinking about social justice with new empirical findings about educational attainment and social mobility. The result is a path-breaking contribution to the study of class and justice, one that will be of interest to sociologists and political theorists for years to come.

278 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 1996

About the author

Gordon Marshall CBE FBA is a sociologist and former Director of the Leverhulme Trust in England.

He was the chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from 2000 to 2002 and vice-chancellor of the University of Reading from 2003 to 2011.

Marshall has made important contributions to interdisciplinary and cross-national comparative work in the social sciences. His main fields of research include social exclusion, equality of opportunity, distributive justice and the culture of economic enterprise, and he has written widely on these topics. His early research was focused on Max Weber and the origins of modern economies.