Abstract
The structures that we use to think and talk about inequality influence how we make sense of disparities, and also contribute to political choices and calls for change. While local and national inequalities and perceptions thereof have been widely studied, studies at wider geographic scales are comparatively rare. Here I investigate how teachers in Kenya, Mexico and the UK critique inequality. From group discussions, three main arguments against inequality emerged in each of the three countries: (1) the framing of inequality as an inclusive and relational concept; (2) moral distaste for the coexistence of extreme wealth with poverty; and (3) attributing the causes of inequality to larger political and economic systems. The analysis reveals that when people describe themselves as being connected to, enmeshed within, responsible for, or morally outraged by inequality, their critiques of it tend to be stronger. In contrast, those who offer weaker critiques of inequality position themselves as separate from it, or as having no leverage to challenge it. The strong discourses already in the public sphere offer support for policy interventions aimed at reducing inequality. This identification of stronger and weaker discursive challenges to inequality may be mirrored in public discussions of other global challenges.
Highlights
Recognising the damage arising from inequality,[2] social scientists have called for ‘a research agenda that is interdisciplinary, multiscale and globally inclusive ... to inform pathways toward greater equality’.3 Acknowledging how negative effects fall disproportionately upon those who are oppressed, disempowered or stigmatised,[4] this work focusses on how rising socio-economic inequalities are being rethought and critiqued
Economic inequality is a major contemporary world problem, and it relates to many other issues such as poor health care, youth underemployment, war and premature mortality
Connection and international responsibility entails a stronger engagement with a social issue, whereas weaker critiques are perhaps explained by broken senses of trust, shared endeavour and social connectivity.[104]. Is it precisely connection and engagement, which are typically eroded by inequality, that form the basis of the strongest discursive challenges to inequality
Summary
Recognising the damage arising from inequality,[2] social scientists have called for ‘a research agenda that is interdisciplinary, multiscale and globally inclusive ... to inform pathways toward greater equality’.3 Acknowledging how negative effects fall disproportionately upon those who are oppressed, disempowered or stigmatised,[4] this work focusses on how rising socio-economic inequalities are being rethought and critiqued. There is a common inclination to distance oneself from inequality and its ills.[80] For example, socio-economic groups, or even countries, may be described as discrete, disconnected units.[81] This isolation can be reinforced by accompanying logics of meritocracy suggesting that wealth is deserved,[82] and stigmatisation of the poor as being individually culpable for their poverty.[83] This discursive isolation of the problem is challenged firstly by working with the concept of inequality at the population level; and secondly when research participants. Within a critical ethics of care, moral responsiveness is located in specific relations among real people,[90] and many of the quotations presented in my findings share personal accounts of events, observations and interactions, accompanied by a moral objection to the inequality observed This connection to the issue, that inequality is an affront to one’s sense of justice, forms the basis for a powerful critique by bridging the usual separation between care and justice.[91]. ‘Fleshing out’ objections to inequality in our discourses with accounts of real situations renders apparently abstract moral principles grounded and embodied in people’s daily lives, connecting care with justice (and challenging Gilligan’s vision of these as fundamentally separate[102])
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