Against the Odds?

This is exactly what is needed to bring moral relevance to the calculus of class ... Anyone who has experience of this kind of comparative research can only admire the achievements here. The theoretical part is equally impressive and gives original insights into such difficult and intricate problems as fairness, social justice and meritocracy. * Times Literary Supplement *
The ambition of this book is to bring together the strongest possible empirical analysis of class inequality and the most solid possible theoretical analysis of social justice ... Anyone who has experience of this kind of comparative research can only admire the achievements here. The theoretical part is equally impressive and gives original insights into such difficult and intricate problems as fairness, social justice and meritocracy. * Times Literary Supplement *
The book is lucidly written, and the fact that all technical details and specialist knowledge have been put in appendices makes it very accessible. Both the political-philosophical and the empirical sociological analyses are thorough. The authors have provided us with important new information on the relation between social inequality and social mobility on the one hand and social justice on the other...Marshall et al are to be congratulated for their efforts. Their book is an important contribution to the academic debate in the field of social inequality and social justice. - European Sociological Review. July 1998.