The return of inequality : social change and the weight of the past / Mike Savage.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Savage, Michael, 1959- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Income distribution--History--21st century.

Income distribution.

Social change--21st century.

Social change.

Regression (Civilization)--21st century.

Regression (Civilization).

Equality--21st century.

Equality.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 p.)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, [2021]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A pioneering book that takes us beyond economic debate to show how inequality is returning us to a past dominated by empires, dynastic elites, and ethnic divisions. The economic facts of inequality are clear. The rich have been pulling away from the rest of us for years, and the super-rich have been pulling away from the rich. More and more assets are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Mainstream economists say we need not worry; what matters is growth, not distribution. In The Return of Inequality, acclaimed sociologist Mike Savage pushes back, explaining inequality’s profound deleterious effects on the shape of societies. Savage shows how economic inequality aggravates cultural, social, and political conflicts, challenging the coherence of liberal democratic nation-states. Put simply, severe inequality returns us to the past. By fracturing social bonds and harnessing the democratic process to the strategies of a resurgent aristocracy of the wealthy, inequality revives political conditions we thought we had moved beyond: empires and dynastic elites, explosive ethnic division, and metropolitan dominance that consigns all but a few cities to irrelevance. Inequality, in short, threatens to return us to the very history we have been trying to escape since the Age of Revolution. Westerners have been slow to appreciate that inequality undermines the very foundations of liberal democracy: faith in progress and trust in the political community’s concern for all its members. Savage guides us through the ideas of leading theorists of inequality, including Marx, Bourdieu, and Piketty, revealing how inequality reimposes the burdens of the past. At once analytically rigorous and passionately argued, The Return of Inequality is a vital addition to one of our most important public debates.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction What Is the Challenge of Inequality?

Part one: Inequality in Time and Space

1 Turning the Telescope the economic analysis of income distribution

2 Society as a Sports Field the challenge of Bourdieu

3 Renewing Marx capital accumulation and the weight of history

Part two Inequality, Empire, and the Decline of Nations

4 The Ranking of Nations

5 The Return of Empire inequality on a global scale

6 Insiders and Outsiders race, gender, and class in long-term perspective

7 Visceral Inequality in the Twenty-First Century

8 Cities, Elites, and Accumulation

9 The Force of Information and Technology

Part three The Politics of Inequality in the Twenty-First Century

10 Reinstating the Time of Politics

11 What Is to Be Done?

Glossary

Figures

Tables

Notes

References

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674259645

0674259645

9780674259652

0674259653

OCLC:

1251446815