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Globalization and Inequalities
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Globalization and Inequalities
Complexity and Contested Modernities

  • Sylvia Walby - Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, City University of London, UK, City, University of London, UK, Lancaster University, UK


August 2009 | 520 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

How has globalization changed social inequality? In this groundbreaking book, Globalization and Inequalities, Sylvia Walby examines the many changing forms of social inequality and their intersectionalities at both country and global levels. She shows how the contest between different modernities and conceptions of progress shape the present and future.

The book re-thinks the nature of economy, polity, civil society and violence. It places globalization and inequalities at the center of an innovative new understanding of modernity and progress and demonstrates the power of these theoretical reformulations in practice, drawing on global data and in-depth analysis of the U.S. and EU.

Walby analyzes the tensions between the different forces that are shaping global futures. She examines the regulation and deregulation of employment and welfare; domestic and public gender regimes; secular and religious polities; path dependent trajectories and global political waves; and global inequalities and human rights.

Globalization and Inequalities is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students and academics of sociology, social theory, gender studies and politics and international relations, geography, economics and law.


 
1. Introduction: Progress and modernities
 
What is Progress?
More money or longer life?

 
Progress as a contested project

 
Economic development

 
Equality

 
Human Rights

 
Human development, well-being and capabilities

 
Competing projects: neoliberalism and social democracy

 
Contesting conceptions of progress

 
 
Multiple Complex Inequalities
Multiple and intersecting inequalities

 
Complex inequalities: difference, inequality and progress

 
 
Modernity? Postmodernity? Not yet Modern? Varieties of Modernity?
Modernity or postmodernity?

 
Late, second or liquid modernity?

 
Multiple modernities?

 
Not yet modern?

 
Varieties of modernity

 
Defining modernity

 
 
Globalization
Globalization as the erosion of distinctive and separate societies

 
Resistant to globalization

 
Already global

 
Coevolution of global processes with trajectories of development

 
Implications of globalization for social theory

 
 
Complexity Theory
 
2. Theorising multiple social systems
 
Multiple Inequalities and Intersectionality
 
Regimes and Domains
 
System and Its Environment: Over-Lapping, Non-Saturating, Non-Nested Systems
 
Societalisation not Societies
 
Emergence and Projects
 
Bodies, Technologies and the Social
 
Path Dependency
 
Co-evolution of Complex Adaptive Systems in Changing Fitness Landscapes
 
3. Economies
 
Redefining the Economy
 
Domestic Labour as Labour
 
State Welfare as part of the Economy
 
What are Economic Inequalities? What is Progress in the Economy?
 
From Pre-Modern to Modern: The Second Great Transformation
 
Global Processes and Economic Inequalities
What global processes?

 
Country Processes

 
 
Varieties of Political Economy
Varieties of employment relations

 
Varieties of Welfare Provision

 
Critical turning points into varieties of political economy

 
 
4. Polities
 
Reconceptualising Types of Polities
States

 
Nations

 
Nation-States?

 
Organised religions

 
Empires

 
Hegemon

 
Global political institutions

 
 
Polities Overlap and do not Politically Saturate a Territory
 
Democracy
Democracy and modernity

 
Redefining democracy

 
The development of democracy

 
 
5. Violence
 
Developing the Ontology of Violence
 
Modernity and Violence
 
Path Dependency in Trajections of Violence
 
Global
 
6. Civil societies
 
Theorising Civil Society
 
Modernity and Civil Society
 
Civil Society Projects
 
Global Civil Societies and Waves
Examples of waves

 
 
7. Regimes of complex inequality
 
Beyond Class Regimes
 
Gender Regimes
 
Ethnic Regimes
 
Further Regimes of Complex Inequalities
Disability

 
Sexual orientation

 
 
Intersecting Regimes of Complex Inequality
 
8. Varieties of modernity
 
Neoliberal and Social Democratic Varieties of Modernity
 
Path Dependency at the Economy/Polity Nexus?
Welfare provision

 
Conclusions on welfare

 
Employment regulation

 
Inequality

 
Conclusions on political economy

 
 
Path Dependency at the Violence Nexus
Modernity and path dependency

 
Indicators

 
Development, inequality and violence

 
Gendered violence

 
Path dependency of the violence nexus in OECD countries

 
Violence, economic inequality and the polity/economy nexus

 
Conclusions on violence

 
 
Gender Regime
Public and domestic gender regimes

 
Development and the public gender regime

 
Domestic and public gender regimes and gender inequality

 
Varieties of public gender regimes

 
 
Democracy and Inequality
 
9. Measuring progress
 
Economic Development
 
Equality
Economic inequality

 
Global economic inequality

 
Beyond the household

 
Economic inequalities and flows

 
Economic inequalities in summary

 
Inequalities in non-economic domains

 
Democracy

 
 
Human Rights
 
Human Development, Well-Being and Capabilities
 
Key Indicator Sets: What Indicators; What Underlying Concepts of Progress?
 
Extending the Frameworks and Indicators of Progress: Where do Environmental
 
Sustainability and Violence Fit?
Environmental sustainability

 
Violence

 
 
Achievement of Visions of Progress: Comparing Neoliberalism and Social Democracy
Economic development: neoliberalism vs. social democracy

 
Equality: neoliberalism vs. social democracy

 
Human rights: neoliberalism vs. social democracy

 
Human development, well-being and capabilities: neoliberalism vs. social democracy

 
Trade offs or complementary?

 
 
10. Comparative paths through modernity: neoliberalism and social democracy
 
Political Economy
 
Violence
 
Gender Transformations: The Emergence of Employed Women as the New Champions of Social Democracy
Employed women as the new champions of social democracy

 
 
Dampeners and Catalysts of Economic Growth: War and Gender Regime
 
Transformations
Conclusions

 
 
11. Contested futures
 
Financial and Economic Crisis 2007-9
 
Contesting Hegemons and the Future of the World
 
12. Conclusions
 
The Challenge of Complex Inequalities and Globalization to Social Theory

Useful text. I have asked our library at the university of cape town to purchase copies.

Dr Jacques De Wet
Sociology, University of Cape Town
March 29, 2011

The book is highly valuable for the course

Professor Lyn Tett
Higher and Community Education, Edinburgh University
October 21, 2009
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