inequalities

In a new edited volume, a group of economists map variations in the determinants of voting to better understand the political processes behind the rise in income inequality.

Poverty and great social inequality are being created at this very moment in the routines of small children. Talking, eating, socializing, taking care of oneself, keeping oneself clean, dressing, obeying, and learning: children’s sociological future is determined by the adoption of even the most trivial of habits.

Financialization pervades all spheres of the economy today, but it is not a uniform and monolithic phenomenon. We need to carefully distinguish the different mechanisms by which it is deployed, in order to understand how it produces social inequalities.

The two most urgent problems facing humanity are economic inequality and environmental destruction. Lucas Chancel argues these two are deeply intertwined. Solutions to one must necessarily involve the other.

How did the French Revolution, after abolishing privilege, also become the foundation of modern inequality? Thomas Piketty’s latest book focuses on the evolving ideological constructions of property across the ages and offers ways to solve the problem of inequality without challenging to the individual right to private property.

Paradoxically, feminism was named by its adversaries. Thus, the history of feminism is closely connected to antifeminism. An interdisciplinary work examines their parallel journeys.

How much are promises of democratic equality worth when the material situation of the middle and working classes is stagnating or regressing? Through an implacable analysis of global inequalities, Branko Milanovic brings to light the challenges faced by the struggle for social justice in the early twenty-first century.

Can we think of social transformation from the perspective of vulnerability? Yes, explains Marie Garrau, but for this we need to define the meaning of this notion differently, and to describe all the forms of inequality that weaken us and subject us to multiple forms of violence in our societies.

In her exploration of the world of wealth management, Brooke Harrington dives into the heart of capital globalization. As pillars in the structure of international finance, wealth managers help increase the capital of the wealthy by circumventing government regulations.

Few histories of the African American fight for equality manage to shed their ideological bias. Caroline Rolland-Diamond offers an impressive overview that goes beyond oppositions to highlight the structuring lines of a two-century-old struggle that continues today.

Over the past two centuries, the world has grown much richer and has seen the health of its population improve dramatically. However, as the Economics Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton reminds us, this historical break must not conceal the great inequalities in access to development between countries.

Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre invite us to rethink the social mechanisms that produce value and underline the important role collections play in the dynamics of inequalities characterising contemporary societies. By questioning the forms and stakes of commodification and price making in today’s society, they show that inserting goods in a collection increases their value.

In his latest book, Carles Boix proposes to account for human history with a simple theoretical approach, where the interplay between warfare and production technologies determines the choice between production and violence. This, in turn, leads to different governance structures and inequality levels – and, eventually, to different performances in terms of innovation and growth.

Far from lessening inequality between social groups in France, the organisation of the healthcare system and the practices of healthcare professionals actually serve to increase disparity. The sociology of social relations shows that the health system is not used or organised in the same way depending on the social class to which patients belong.

Analyzing the reasons for the loss of momentum of the American economy, this in-depth study reveals how the evolution of mixed economy in the United States has led to a crisis of the political power.

Most analysts have portrayed Trump as the candidate of economically insecure white Americans. Sociologist Isaac Martin discards this “economic anxiety thesis” as inaccurate: most poor white people won’t vote on Tuesday. This explanation has much less to do with the data than with a long American tradition of blaming racism on the white poor.

In Christophe Guilluy’s view, there are two Frances: the urban France of towns and cities, where opportunities are considerable, and the peripheral France of villages, where populations feel ignored and abandoned by public policy. This contrast has caused a lot of ink to flow but is highly debatable and no doubt more ideological than scientific.

Revisiting the history of the New Deal, Ira Katznelson argues that it was a key moment in the reinvention of American democracy. Placing the South and the Congress at the heart of his narrative, the American historian reconsiders a period about which everything seemed to have been said.

Focusing on the massive increase in socio-economic inequality of the last few decades, Mettler’s book shows that much activity financed by the American federal government have obscured its role, making the real actors appear to be private organizations. Instead of lessening inequality, she shows how the policies of the “submerged state” have promoted the upward distribution of riches.

The first biography of Mayawati, the contemporary dalit leader, breaks the silence of the Indian elites on a political phenomenon of unusual magnitude. Unfortunately this book’s account of the developments that this politician represents has many biases.

Social demotion is a concept which pervades public debate: it evokes the feeling of anxiety expressed by individuals, but it also represents a social and statistical reality which is experienced by members of the different age cohorts born since the beginning of the 1960s.

Using data from the Observatoire des Inégalités, Louis Maurin contrasts numbers with words to paint a portrait of the many kinds of inequality—economic, cultural, and sexual—which continue to divide the French.

A special issue of the journal Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science edited by the American sociologists David J. Harding, Michèle Lamont, and Mario L. Small examines the relations between culture and poverty. The authors return to “the culture of poverty,” a concept that became taboo in the 1970s because of its conservative and racist recuperation. Their pluralist and supple view of culture allows them to untie the knot between culture and race that feeds conservative rhetoric.

Douglas Massey’s book, Categorically Unequal, draws up an instructive inventory of inequality in the United States. A classic study of social stratification, it is complemented by a discussion of the production of the categories by means of which individuals and groups are hierarchically organized.

Forty years of Republican dominance of American presidential politics have led to an unprecedented rise in economic inequality. In his latest book, Larry Bartels argues that this politics of inequality results from voter amnesia and Washington politicians’ disregard for public opinion.