Discussions on inequality have traditionally focused on an economic perspective, centering around how the unequal distribution of wealth or resources impacts the life chances of different groups of people, and how it leads to social segregation, polarization or fragmentation. The explanatory power and influences as such remain to this day. Recently, however, some scholars have tried to investigate inequality from an angle of institutional culture. The author examined the presidential addresses of the American Sociological Association over the past 20 years, and found that at least five of them dealt with inequality through culturalist lens, which indicated the relevance of cultural forces to inequality. This paper synthesized their arguments into 'categorization and classification systems of otherness' and 'effects of childrearing/parenting'. The preliminary finding shows that 'categorization and classification systems of otherness' are the main mechanism of social inequality, while 'effects of childrearing/parenting' act as latent factors behind most educational inequality. In this study, the former are explicated from two dimensions, namely, cultural foundation and institutional operation, and the latter from cultural knowledge and cultural guides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]