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Globalization and Inequalities
Complexity and Contested Modernities
- Sylvia Walby - Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
July 2009 | 520 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
How has globalization changed social inequality? Why do Americans die younger than Europeans, despite larger incomes? Is there an alternative to neoliberalism? Who are the champions of social democracy? Why are some countries more violent than others?
In this groundbreaking book, 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 centre 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 US and EU.
Walby analyses 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.
In this groundbreaking book, 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 centre 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 US and EU.
Walby analyses 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.
1. Introduction: Progress and modernities
What is Progress?
Multiple Complex Inequalities
Modernity? Postmodernity? Not yet Modern? Varieties of Modernity?
Globalization
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
Varieties of Political Economy
4. Polities
Reconceptualising Types of Polities
Polities Overlap and do not Politically Saturate a Territory
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
7. Regimes of complex inequality
Beyond Class Regimes
Gender Regimes
Ethnic Regimes
Further Regimes of Complex Inequalities
Intersecting Regimes of Complex Inequality
8. Varieties of modernity
Neoliberal and Social Democratic Varieties of Modernity
Path Dependency at the Economy/Polity Nexus?
Path Dependency at the Violence Nexus
Gender Regime
Democracy and Inequality
9. Measuring progress
Economic Development
Equality
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?
Achievement of Visions of Progress: Comparing Neoliberalism and Social Democracy
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
Dampeners and Catalysts of Economic Growth: War and Gender Regime
Transformations
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.
Sociology, University of Cape Town
March 29, 2011
The book is highly valuable for the course
Higher and Community Education, Edinburgh University
October 21, 2009
