Dorling Daniel - Injustice: why social inequality persists

Rakaia Bridge, New Zealand, as first mentioned on page 54

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by

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The Policy Press 2011

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ISBN 978 1 44730 029 8 [e-pub]
ISBN 978 1 4473 0031 1 [Kindle]

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INJUSTICE

Why social inequality persisits

For decades researchers have shown the damage inequality does to all society and Dorlings wonderful book extends this. With brilliance and passion Dorling analyses the mind-set of entitlement among those who hold ever tighter to money, power and lifes best rewards, generation to generation.

Polly Toynbee, The Guardian

His attack on elitism and despair is impressive, his factual evidence undeniable.

Rt. Hon. David Blunkett MP

A geographer maps the injustices of Selfish Capitalism with scholarly detachment.

Oliver James, author of Affluenza

Beliefs which serve privilege, elitism and inequality infect our minds like computer viruses. But now Dorling provides the brain-cleaning software we need to begin creating a happier society.

Richard Wilkinson, Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology and author of The Spirit Level

A powerful and passionate book. Useful contribution to the policy debate.

Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist blog

An impassioned and informed plea for greater social justice.

Peder Clark, Public Health Today

This is a high content, high value book, to be recommended to anyone interested or involved in anything to do with poverty, inequality and injustice and attempts to redress them.

Edward Harkins, Scotregen

It occupies a place on my bookshelf where I can reach it easily, looking for the many neat arguments which carry the egalitarian cause forward.

Don Flynn in Chartist

An indictment of our political classes and their neglect of the disadvantaged in contemporary Britain.

Diane Reay, Professor of Education (Blackwells online review)

Witty, well-researched, well-intentioned and brimful of facts.

Jonathan Wright, Geographical

Like the recent work of writers such as Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett and Oliver James, [Dorling] provides valuable ammunition for attacking the ideas of our rulers and his book deserves a wide readership.

Iain Ferguson, Socialist Review

Engaged and angry.

New Left Review

Essential reading for everyone concerned with social justice.

Morning Star

One of the foremost thinkers on the issue of social inequality today.

Labour briefing

An excellent, sharp and at times poignant analysis of the political, social and economic situation that capitalism as a social system is in today.

Counterfire

Figures

Tables

Alison Shaw at The Policy Press rewrote the structure of this book and very tactfully persuaded me to at least try to be less self-indulgent and wordy; I am very grateful to her, to three anonymous reviewers for their critical comments on an early draft, to Jo Morton, who oversaw the production of this volume, to Dave Worth, for typesetting it and to Margaret Vaudrey for compiling the index. Dawn Rushen copy-edited the book and convinced me to stop repeating myself so much. Paul Coles at the University of Sheffield redrew all the figures, more than once. Thank you all.

Dimitris Ballas, John Bibby, Stacy Hewitt, Bob Hughes, Steve Kidd, Bill Lodge, Charles Pattie, Kate Pickett, Molly Scott Cato, Ludi Simpson, Judith Watson and Richard Wilkinson also commented constructively on all or parts of earlier versions. The British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust funded most of the time out needed to begin and end the work, and I am very grateful to them. My colleagues in the Departments of Geography at both the University of Sheffield (UK) and the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) have also been extremely understanding. In particular this book draws on the experiences of working with the Social and Spatial Inequalities Group at Sheffield, with colleagues from the Department of Social Medicine at the University of Bristol, with many other colleagues who have been producing reports on poverty and wealth for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the British government, and with those with whom I am working internationally on inequality, often as a result of the Worldmapper project (www.worldmapper.org).

Dave Gordon of the University of Bristol kindly provided the contemporary statistics on poverty used in and Kjartan Sveinsson, of the Runnymede Trust, kindly pointed me to information on Iceland I would not otherwise have found, as also did Ben Hennig. I am also grateful to Dimitris Ballas, Anna Barford, Ben Hennig, John Pritchard, Mark Ramsden, Jan Rigby, Bethan Thomas, Dan Vickers and Ben Wheeler for their collaboration over recent years in Sheffield. Half a dozen former PhD students feature in these lists; I have almost certainly learnt more from them (and others I have taught) than they have learnt from me: thank you.

Observers of social change in Britain know that when times get desperate the people you fall back on are your mother and your lover. Bronwen Dorling and Alison Dorling both helped turn my initial dyslexic encodings into slightly more readable text, and have had to put up with my attempts to write for far too long. I am very grateful and will probably be buying them flowers, because that is what we do. All the mistakes remain mine, although they are also partly a collection of other men and womens posies.