Rising social, political and economic inequality in many countries, and rising protest against it, has seen the restoration of the concept of 'class' to a prominent place in contemporary anthropological debates. A timely intervention in these discussions, this book explores the concept of class and its importance for understanding the key sources of that inequality and of people's attempts to deal with it. Highly topical, it situates class within the context of the current economic crisis, integrating elements from today into the discussion of an earlier agenda. Using cases from North and South America, Western Europe and South Asia, it shows the - sometimes surprising - forms that class can take, as well as the various effects it has on people's lives and societies.

'This volume re-establishes class as a fundamental concept in anthropology and shows how inadequate identity-based analyses are. In excellent case studies and theoretical essays, it brilliantly demonstrates that understanding global and local property relations is central to the study of culture, politics and society.' Don Robotham, City University of New York Graduate Center
'Class remains a vital concept for critical social science. This volume shows that anthropologists, traditionally sceptical, have in fact much to contribute both theoretically and ethnographically.' Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
'Anthropologies of Class is a vitally important publication, not only for what it says about class but for what it says about anthropology … Class talk, which for many anthropologists is dated and tiresome, is illustrated in the ethnographic chapters to be relevant and lively, and I hope that the discipline takes note of the argument and evidence here, even if it requires a bit of disciplinary soul-searching in response.' Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

James G. Carrier is an Associate at the Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and the Departments of Anthropology at Indiana University and Oxford Brookes University. Don Kalb is Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University, Budapest, and Senior Researcher in the Anthropology Department at Utrecht University, The Netherlands.