Social Differentiation and Forms of Life

Abstract

Urban social stratification has become much more polarized than it was in previous waves of capitalist development. Cities in the twenty-first century are also marked by complex patterns of social differentiation deriving in part from rapidly changing occupational structures and in part from the ways in which these structures are intertwined with the variables of race, ethnicity, gender, and so on. A matter of particular concern is the great growth of the marginalized slum population of the cities of the Global South.