Interest in social inequality has become a pertinent and even dominant theme in sociological research. A large part of all research activities deals in one way or another with the issue of inequality, its description and its explanation. When Piketty as an economist became the star of inequality research, there was more than one envious side glance among the community of sociologists. After he published his seminal work Capital in the Twenty-First Century in 2014 it became a world bestseller, read or praised by people as far removed as the Pope and US President Barack Obama, and appealing to participants in the World Economic Forum in Davos as well as to Oxfam.

Though Piketty’s work is largely admired for its historical depth, data richness and statistical sophistication, many—in particular sociologists—have also criticized its reductionist view on inequality, primarily understood as wealth and income distribution. Though these inequalities are seen as important, from a sociological viewpoint they are only one layer, if not a specific aspect, of the whole inequality story. Sociology has never been interested merely in distributional aspects, but in the social reproduction of inequality and its various modes, power relations, collective mobilizations, the formations of social groups, the intermingling between economy, culture and the social, and how different inequalities intersect.

This is where Mike Savage’s book steps in. He does take the inexorable rise of interest in inequality as a starting point, but extends the focus considerably. Not only are class and money or asset-related inequalities scrutinized, but also gender, race and ethnicities, as well as their intersections. He posits the problem that much of inequality research tends to separate “inequality into discrete boxes” (x) rather than seeing and analysing its components as inherently entangled. As an acclaimed sociologist with a strong empirical research agenda, Savage underlines the recent advances in sociological research, in particular the rapid and widespread use of advanced statistical tools and models and the deployment of new data sources, but laments the apparent price to be paid: a “fractal divide” [12]. By missing the big picture and becoming a “specialized specialist”, larger questions remain mostly unanswered and parts of sociological research seem to be driven into irrelevance, or at least cut off from public resonance. Savage even emphasizes that many of the promises of the big data revolution and computational social sciences have remained unfulfilled: “big data failed to deliver on the knowledge revolution that they promised” [11]. Given the lack of grand narratives, the second major ambition of the book is its interest in long-term change and the historical driving forces, including the long shadows of empire and slavery.

The key questions in Savage’s opus magnum are surely: Is inequality a problem? Why? And in what respect? Savage offers a plethora of answers; some, one might easily agree with, others are more contestable. However, despite the strong emphasis on the multidimensionality and the intersection of inequalities, he starts from the economics of income distribution that is very much at the core of current debates. Here, he recapitulates trends at the national and global level. In addition, he looks at the enduring plagues of racism and sexism, but also considers technological innovations, all with the aim of drawing a comprehensive picture of the inequality landscape. Much of this is known, but it is rarely integrated into a comprehensive account.

The book is also ambitious in making use of (and criticizing) key concepts in and authors of sociology, from field analysis to Marx, and thereby overcoming the limits of economic inequality research. Values, identities and forms of recognition should undoubtedly be part and parcel of sociological inequality research. Moreover, a theoretical understanding of the nexus between differentiation and inequality is needed. Savage’s reflections on the back and forth of “categorical inequalities” and “probabilistic inequalities” are particularly enlightening, because he clearly shows that there is not a linear replacement of one by the other, with new, so-called “visceral inequalities” and new markers on the rise.

As it is broad and seeks to integrate the multiple facets of inequality, it is not an easy task to provide a lucid account of the overall content of this book. What seems somewhat special to me is the strong emphasis on the top of the stratification system rather than on the bottom. Certainly, a large part of sociological research has focused on poverty, deprivation and social mobility, whereas the societal elite have attracted less attention. Not so in Savage’s book, however, where issues of wealth distribution and richness are given centre stage. Thus, wealth accumulation and inheritance feature prominently, and Savage even approaches the whole inequality question from the top. The argument is—alongside PikettyFootnote ¹—that “wealth is not simply another variable to throw into a multidimensional mix” [85], but has more profound implications.

In addition, Savage follows Richard Wilkenson’s and Kate Pickett’s (hotly disputed) argument in The Spirit Level–-Why Equality is Better for Everyone that not only poverty, but also inequality levels as such are associated with social illsFootnote ². Savage, however, only partly succeeds to giving this argument a firm empirical grounding. Why should the lifestyles of the super-rich matter more than the deprivation at the bottom or the fortunes of the larger middle classes? Some liberals, at least, would say that the length of the antenna of the income and wealth distribution is less decisive than the overall distribution.

What is striking is the author’s destruction of the modernist and progressive narrative. In reflecting on the concepts and understandings of modernity, he poses the question of whether the temporal ontology of modernist thinking—which clearly distinguishes the past from the present and the present from the future, and has an implicit understanding of progress—is sustainable. He notes the long shadow of wealth accumulation that “history holds over the present” [98], with previous rounds of distribution and accumulation impacting on later rounds. The wealth accumulation of the past leaves a strong imprint on our infrastructures, the organization of the state, urban structures, the economy and the institutions of learning. With regard to the top elites, it has been shown that families and their descendants have a high likelihood of remaining at the top, regardless of the political and economic system [Clark 2014Footnote ³]. Likewise, Savage sees the current cleavages and inequality structures as the “return of past historical forms” and “an active reassertion of the old” [99]. He is sceptical that modernization can heal the wounds of inequality.

While this argument surely holds some empirical validity, it may be partly overstretched. There is no doubt that the past matters, but can contemporary inequalities really be well understood through historical pathways? Yes and no, one could say. In particular, technology-driven social change may be somewhat disruptive. One may also ask how strong the link is between past and present for different classes and status groups. Elite positions may indeed be relatively sticky, but does this also apply to members of the middle class? Their social mobility and access to wealth accumulation may be more volatile and may depend on personal fortune and achievements.

Interestingly, and quite unusually for a sociology book, Savage finishes with reflections on potential policy reforms, even calling this a manifesto. This includes the revival of radicalism, the end of growth models, from the politics of scarcity to holding capital to account, to new conceptions of well-being and sustainable nationalism. This collection of reform options may only partly convince the reader. Given that Savage invests quite some energy into demonstrating that the weight of the past cannot easily be left behind, one wonders about the discrepancy between the reform proposals and the analysis. We learn too little about potential actors driving reforms and the social conditions beneficial to them. Some reform proposals resemble those that have already been on the table for decades, with barely any effect on the political momentum.

Nevertheless, Savage’s book is impressive in terms of its comprehensiveness, its breadth, its analytical rigor and its empirical lushness. It will surely become a major reference for all questions surrounding the intermingling of social change and social inequality. Some of its merits, however, are at the same time its weaknesses. Though the author tries hard to bring together many loose ends and to overcome specializations, it is at times more a handbook than a work putting forward a specific argument. The insistence on comprehensiveness, however, also comes at a cost, namely the absence of a simple take-home message. Here, one would have wished that the author had been a little more ruthless in making a crystal-clear argument, not only for why inequality matters and how it can be understood, but also by providing more thrust for an inequality debate that is often trapped between moralizing inequality or “data massage”. There is no doubt, however, that the book lays a firm and inspiring foundation for a productive debate.