Global Social Inequalities

Global inequalities are often studied as between-country inequalities. The chapter references empirical work on between-country inequalities but argues for a more nuanced empirical and theoretical perspective. As country averages obscure massive inequalities within a country, innovating economists describe global inequalities by studying country percentiles and ranking them globally. Theorists of the capitalist world-system and postcolonial studies scholars give diverging causal explanations for inequalities both within and between countries. The chapter explains these theoretical approaches and the controversies between them. Controversies concern the location of and potential for political agency, causal relations between globalization and inequalities, concepts and measurement of inequality, and geographical scale. In the last section, the “flat globalism” of some macro-social approaches is criticized. Conceptual alternatives are fields, sociocultures, and systems. Capabilities depend on a person’s resources, but access to enabling contexts is pivotal, too. A comprehensive concept of socio-spatial autonomy considers physical access to well-endowed contexts, citizenship-based political inclusion and exclusion, and the pragmatic ability to connect socially. In conclusion, the chapter pleads for more nuance in the study of global inequalities.