This edited volume uses ethnographic cases to examine social, political, and economic inequality in diverse urban settings. This book is couched in the idea that ethnographically based analysis helps to bring out the nature and interconnections between different forms of inequality and sheds light on the major forces that combine to create inequalities. Ethnography also helps to identify the dynamics that undergird the principle of freedom of thought and of action—a key principle, that is, of associated life in a democracy—and recognize empirically that these dynamics not only protect difference but increase it, for they underpin the freedom of the individual to use their talents to manage their lives and achieve their goals. This first volume in a two-part series focuses on legitimacy, governance, labour and urban change, and stereotypes and individual choice. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in sociocultural anthropology, sociology, politics, socio-legal studies, urban change, and education.