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This Book revolves around three broad kinds of questions:

• What kind of society is this?
• How does it really work? Why is it the way it is?
• In what ways does it need changing and how can those changes be brought about?

The first of these questions is largely descriptive. In order to know what kind of society this is we will have to compare it with other societies and describe its central institutions. This will involve both identifying some of the things which make the United States a very specific social world, but also things that it shares with other contemporary societies.

The second question is more analytical and theoretical. Our job will be to explain a range of attributes of American society, not simply describe them. We want to open the “black box” of different institutions and see how they work, what consequences they have. To do this we use both empirical findings and key elements of theory drawn from sociology, political science and economics.

The third question is heavily ethical and political. It involves coming to terms with values and visions of the moral standards that should be embodied in American society. Answering this question will inevitably be highly charged politically and morally, since there are sharply contending moral standards by which social institutions can be judged. What we hope to do is clarify as best we can the implications for such moral and political issues of the existing realities of American Society.

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