Robert J. Holton - Global Inequalities

Global Inequalities

Robert J. Holton

Robert J. Holton 2014

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Acknowledgements

The topic of global inequality evokes anger, passion, perplexity and dismay, despair as well as hope. These arise in many different ways, both in relation to the scale of the problems and challenges involved and because of the seeming lack of current success in resolving grave inequalities and injustices. This book navigates a course between hope and despair drawing on theory, evidence, and policy evaluation, while avoiding ideological partisanship.

I have drawn on wide reading and on conversations about globalization with a range of scholars. I am indebted to Roland Robertson, Supriya Singh, Chris Rumford, Sandra Holton, Steve Edwards, Kevin ORourke, Anthony Elliott, and John Braithwaite for their stimulating ideas over the last decade, well before the idea of this book emerged in 2012. Anna Marie Reeve first suggested that I write a book on global inequality, and I am very grateful for her perspicacity in putting the project to me.

The electronic journal library of Trinity College, Dublin, has been a wonderful resource in giving me access to journal literature across many disciplines. Mid-way through the writing I became Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of South Australia, and I thank the University and the Hawke Research Institute for their support for my work. I also turned increasingly to reading novels as I wrote this book, feeling that academic writing could be far more imaginative and aesthetically pleasing than it is. I dont think I have in any way transformed my writing style as a result. But I am very glad to have had contact with the work of Ivan Turgenev, Penelope Fitzgerald, and David Mitchell, all of whom have crafted powerful narratives out of complex and uncertain social circumstances. In my own case, this book also attempts to locate the threads of plausible narratives out of complex and uncertain features of global inequality, and to reach out, however fleetingly, into the experience of particular persons.

Sandra, George, Flora, and Anthony have provided love, encouragement, and many kindnesses during the writing of this book. I am, as ever, in their debt in so many ways.

Abbreviations

Introduction

The world is a very unequal place. The gap between rich and poor is getting wider rather than narrowing. Wealthy individuals and households from business, politics, and celebrity culture live in a comfortable elite world of pleasure, prestige, and power. Meanwhile millions of children starve, tens of thousands of women experience domestic violence, and poorly paid workers struggle to survive. Behind these stark interpersonal contrasts lie powerful institutions, customs, and ideologies, each strongly implicated in structures of inequality. This state of affairs generates anguish and misery, social criticism and conflict, and for many, a strong sense of moral outrage.

A vital point to make at the outset is that inequality is global as well as national in scope. We often think of inequality as a feature of individual countries. Yet there are profound contrasts in income, wealth, health, and social participation between countries as well as within them. Many also believe that global inequalities are very much the product of globalization. The suggestion is that unless globalization is radically reformed or countered by some alternative set of social institutions, levels of global inequality will get worse.

Alongside these issues, there is a growing sense that the scale of global inequality is undermining the legitimacy of the global economy and the way it is organized through global markets, corporations, and forms of governance. This was reflected at the January 2014 World Economic Forum at Davos. Here a number of elite participants expressed concern that global inequality had reached a level that could intensify social conflict and increase pressure on governments to regulate global business (Kennedy and Martinuzzi 2014). The status quo, it seems, is unsustainable.