Real Inequality Research Articles

CONTEXTUALIZING TECHNOLOGY USE

This paper presents a contextualized analysis of the ways that organizers did and did not use Internet-enabled communication technologies in an organizing context in which material inequality was a prominent focus: a local homeless movement. Few studies on ICTs and social movements have taken seriously the very real material inequalities that structure technology use. While all movements include participants that either do not have access to ICTs or choose not to use them based on organizing contexts, these participants have been systematically excluded from analysis in the rush to understand how a narrow technological elite think, feel, and act in relation to ICTs. This paper draws on a communication-oriented participant observation of three overlapping campaigns to examine the communication practices employed by both housed and unhoused organizers: a campaign to ‘Stop the Sweeps’ of urban homeless encampments, a direct action tent-city project aimed at providing emergency shelter for up to 1,000 people called ‘Nickelsville’, and a campaign to stop the construction of a new jail organized around the ‘No New Jail’ slogan. Four themes are presented that characterize the strategies organizers used in communicating within and between constituents: how organizers emphasized ‘relational’ face-to-face communication, used ICTs to connect with housed allies, encouraged participants to move from the computer screen to street, and relied upon existing organizationally sponsored communications infrastructure in facilitating communication tasks. This paper proposes that an analysis of communication practices broadly defined is important in understanding the role of technologies of communication more specifically.

Bare Pedagogy and the Scourge of Neoliberalism: Rethinking Higher Education as a Democratic Public Sphere

A new form of bare pedagogy is emerging in higher education focused on market-driven competitiveness and even militaristic goal-setting, while critical pedagogy, with its emphasis on the hard work of critical analysis, moral judgments, and social responsibility (critical pedagogy that goes to the very heart of what it means to address real inequalities of power among faculty and administrators) withers. This occurs while at the same time critical pedagogy poses a series of important and often-ignored questions such as: What is the role of teachers and academics as public intellectuals? Whose interest does public and higher education serve? How might it be possible to understand and engage the diverse contexts in which education takes place? What is the role of education as a public good? How do we make knowledge meaningful in order to make it critical and transformative? How do we democratize governance?

The Masculinity of Money: Automatic Stereotypes Predict Gender Differences In Estimated Salaries

We present the first empirical investigation of why men are assumed to earn higher salaries than women (the salary estimation effect). Although this phenomenon is typically attributed to conscious consideration of the national wage gap (i.e., real inequities in salary), we hypothesize instead that it reflects differential, automatic economic valuing of men and women. In the four studies described here, we demonstrate that the salary estimation effect is present in both student and community samples, is not explained by participants' awareness of real gender inequities in pay, and appears in descriptive tasks (i.e., estimating what men and women do earn; Studies 1 and 2) as well as in a prescriptive task (i.e., determining what men and women should earn; Study 3). Further, the salary estimation effect is best predicted by the degree to which participants hold an automatic stereotype that links men, more than women, with wealth (Study 4). These results suggest that differential estimates of men's and women's salaries, rather than deliberately reflecting reality, instead indicate a male-wealth stereotype that operates largely outside of awareness. We discuss the implications of these results for salary decision making and the unintentional perpetuation of the gender gap in wages.

The Parable of a Village in Decline: Duncan Campbell Scott’s In the Village of Viger and the Politics of Community

In against the of community, Miranda Joseph argues that the of [c]ommunity is almost always invoked as an unequivocal good, an indicator of high quality of life, life of understanding, caring, selflessness, belonging.... [It] has connoted cherished ideals of cooperation, equality, and communion (xxxiii). As Joseph also observes, however, the of identity politics of the 1980s and 1990s critiqued the underpinnings of national and other incarnations of community; it lay bare the real racism, sexism, and violence that were simultaneously perpetuated and obscured by affirmative attitudes about various communities and their peculiar manifestations. Yet, as she notes, in spite of the critical trajectory that denounced the enveloping notions of community, a celebratory discourse around it relentlessly returns (viii). In attempting to address the logic of its persistence, she suggests that capitalism is often complicit: Capitalism and, more generally, modernity depend on and generate the of to legitimate social hierarchies. [...] While identity is often named as the bond among members, it is false name in that participants are not identical and many of those to whom an identity is attributed do not participate in activities. I argue that is constituted not by identity but rather through practices of production and consumption. (viii) Such idealization about utopian state of relatedness averts the penetrating gaze that would expose real inequities. More than cursory glance would reveal that communal subjectivity is not necessarily founded in the human caring and understanding that others habitually ascribe to it but, rather, in those practices of consumption. Indebted to Raymond Williams's The Country and the City and his discussions of romantic anti-urbanism, Joseph shows how the romance of community is often determined, even driven, by these nostalgic impulses: that is, the idealization of country life, (dis)located temporally from present moment of discontent and geographically from heavily industrialized city-centre. is thus invoked as model of positive interaction, from which tenuous ethical values are generated and are held in opposition to the economic pursuits generated by modernity. So Joseph asserts: [T]he of positions as the defining other of modernity, of capitalism. This includes Romantic narrative of as prior in time to society, locating as long-lost past for which we yearn nostalgically from our current fallen state of alienation, bureaucratization, rationality. It distinguishes from society spatially, as local, involving face-to-face relations, where capital is global and faceless; is all about boundaries between us and them, boundaries that are naturalized through reference to place or race or culture or identity, while capital would seem to denature, crossing all borders and making everything, everyone, equivalent. (1) Community is thus endowed with sense of nostalgia and alleged to be resistant to, rather than complicit with, capitalism. Conversely, the latter is characterized as destructive entity that disables genuine interaction and undermines identity. The nostalgia for community, which Joseph sees as characteristic of critical thought, also marks some of the literary criticism of Duncan Campbell Scott's In the Village of Viger. Recent criticism determines the book to be an achievement for its sophisticated, complex, and realistic rendering of this small village located in Quebec (see, for example, New 47). The criticism more contemporary to the collection's initial date of publication, however, valued its pastoral elements and regarded the depicted therein as being eroded by the compounded influences of the city, modernity, and industrialization. …

The Myth of Post-Reform Income Stagnation: Evidence from Brazil and Mexico

Economic policies are often judged by a handful of statistics, some of which may be biased during periods of change. We estimate the income growth implied by the evolution of food demand and durable good ownership in post-reform Brazil and Mexico, and find that changes in consumption patterns are inconsistent with official estimates of near stagnant incomes. That is attributed to biases in the price deflator. The estimated unmeasured income gains are higher for poorer households, implying marked reductions in real inequality. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that post-reform income growth was low and did not benefit the poor.

The Myth of Post-Reform Income Stagnation: Evidence From Brazil and Mexico

Economic policies are often judged by a handful of statistics, some of which may be biased during periods of change. We estimate the income growth implied by the evolution of food demand and durable good ownership in post-reform Brazil and Mexico, and find that changes in consumption patterns are inconsistent with official estimates of near stagnant incomes. That is attributed to biases in the price deflator. The estimated unmeasured income gains are higher for poorer households, implying marked reductions in real inequality. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that post-reform income growth was low and did not benefit the poor.

GENETIC-FUZZY-BASED POWER SCHEDULING TECHNIQUE FOR MULTIOBJECTIVE LOAD DISPATCH PROBLEM

The paper proposes the utility of a genetic algorithm (GA) to search for the active and reactive power scheduling for a multiobjective load dispatch problem. Fuzzy decision-making methodology has been applied to decide the fitness function corresponding to each string of active and reactive power generations. All the participating objectives are minimized simultaneously if they attain the maximum satisfaction of their respective membership function and act as fitness function for the generation schedule represented by the string of population. Fuzzy-based number of functional operating constraints, such as equality constraints to ensure real and reactive power balance and inequality constraints for real and reactive power flow through transmission lines, are included as penalties in the fitness function, which guarantee the optimal solution searched by genetic-fuzzy method. The real and reactive power transmission line flows are obtained with the help of generalized Z-bus distribution factors (GZBDF). The validity of the proposed method has been demonstrated on a 25-node sample system comprising five generators.

Pornography and Public Reason

To liberals, speech must never be sacrificed for other social goals. But liberalism has never understood that the free speech of men silences the free speech of women. It is the same social goal, just other people. This is what a real inequality, a real conflict, a real disparity in social power looks like. The law of the First Amendment compre hends that freedom of expression, in the abstract, is a system, but it fails to compre hend that sexism (and racism), in the concrete, are also systems. —Catharine A. MacKinnon1

Equality, Priority, and Positional Goods

The question of whether those who think of themselves as egalitarians really do, or should, value equality has received considerable attention in recent years. Alternative principles have been offered as better capturing those distributive intuitions formerly known as ‘egalitarian’. Some endorse sufficiency—comparisons do not matter; what is important is that all have enough. Others favor giving priority to the worse off. The

The Myth of Post-Reform Income Stagnation in Brazil

This paper uses Engel curves to estimate income growth in Brazil. The estimated per capita household income growth in metropolitan areas during 1987-2002 is about 4½ percent per year, well above the headline growth of 1½ percent obtained by deflating nominal incomes by the CPI. This suggests a substantial CPI bias during that period, likely owing to one-off effects of trade liberalization and inflation stabilization. The estimated unmeasured gains are higher for poorer households, implying a marked reduction in real inequality. This finding challenges the conventional wisdom that post-reform income growth in Brazil was low.

The Myth of Post-Reform Income Stagnation in Brazil

This paper uses Engel curves to estimate income growth in Brazil. The estimated per capita household income growth in metropolitan areas during 1987-2002 is about 4½ percent per year, well above the headline growth of 1½ percent obtained by deflating nominal incomes by the CPI. This suggests a substantial CPI bias during that period, likely owing to one-off effects of trade liberalization and inflation stabilization. The estimated unmeasured gains are higher for poorer households, implying a marked reduction in real inequality. This finding challenges the conventional wisdom that post-reform income growth in Brazil was low.

Rationality and Ideology in Economics

Duncan K. Foley Rationality and Ideology in Economics ROBERT H EILBRO NER HAS HAD A LONG-STANDING IN TEREST IN THE issues of rationality and ideology in shaping economic theory (see, particularly, Heilbroner, 1988, chaps. 1 and 8, and Heilbroner, 1999, chap. 11). Heilbroner argues that the conception of rationality under­ lying economic theory is specific to the emergence of capitalism as a mode of production and that economics as a science cannot avoid confronting issues (especially the distribution of material wealth and power) that are inherently political and ideological. This essay explores these issues in the spirit of Heilbroner’s concerns. RATIONALITY AND ECONOMICS “Rationality” has played a central role in establishing the hegemony of contemporary mainstream economics. As the specific claims of robust neoclassicism fade into the history of economic thought, an orientation toward explaining economic phenomena as “rational” has become the touchstone by which mainstream economists recognize each other. This is not so much a question of adherence to any particular conception of ratio­ nality, but of taking the rationality of individual behavior as the unques­ tioned starting point of economic analysis. As we shall see, mainstream economics has room for various concepts of rationality (“full rationality,” “bounded rationality,” “substantive rationality,” “procedural rationality,” to list a few) and for vigorous debates over their relative merits. The concept of rationality connects economics firmly to the Hobbesian-Lockean tradition o f political philosophy, which purports social research Vol 71 : No 2 : Summer 200 4 329 to explain the political and economic organization o f modern soci­ ety as the necessary outcome o f the interaction o f naturally consti­ tuted rational individuals confronting each other as com petitors for scarce resources. To avoid the terrible consequences of anarchic struggle, these rational individual actors are supposed, according to this “ju st so” story, to agree to the institutions o f property and political authority that constitute the framework o f modern society. A hallm ark o f these institutions is that they are in principle demo­ cratic and egalitarian (everyone has an equal right to vote or to hold property) but lead inexorably to sharp inequalities in economic well­ being. An economic science whose philosophical starting point was not rational individual action would create an em barrassing discord with this political tradition. The whole point o f the Hobbes-Locke “discourse” (to use the jargon o f postm odernism ) is to rationalize real inequalities o f power and economic well-being as unavoidable consequences o f the interaction o f naturally constituted rational individuals confronting each other as equals. Economic science has a place in this grand project only insofar as it can relate itself to the same philosophical foundations. This ideological imperative imposes a series ofunresolvable contra­ dictions on rational-choice economics. Much of the energy of the most imaginative and energetic scholars who have been drawn to economics has been devoted to proposals for the (inevitably unsatisfactory) resolu­ tion ofthese contradictions. I would like to review this story and suggest where the fundamental source of these contradictions lies. The diffi­ culty is that in seeking to explain how naturally constituted rational individuals might invent the institutional structures of modem society (largely capitalist structures of what Marx called “bourgeois” society, though that characterization has lost some of its sting with the passage of time), mainstream economics tells at best half the story. The other half, without which the whole project tends to become lost in a mass of unresolvable methodological problems, is to explain how m odem society constitutes human beings as individuals who see themselves in conflict with others over scarce resources. 330 social research VARIETIES OF RATIONALITY One of the tricky aspects of the discussion of rationality is that the word “rational” is used in many different ways. Economists use “rationality” in a rather peculiar and technical sense. In ordinary language, to be “rational” means to act consistently and instrumentally to achieve some well-defined end. “Irrational” behavior is behavior that appears to be inherently self-defeating or pointless. Thus, it is rational to pile up stones to make a wall, if you want to build a wall, but irrational to pile stones up in one place...

Real World Globalization and Inequality Yesterday and Today a review of Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth Century Atlantic Economy

This book shows that the current “globalization” buzzword refers to a process that in fact already characterized the nineteenth century until the beginning of the First World War. From then and until the end of the Second World War, the process of globalization was severely reversed—in exempli?cation of one of the authors’ sub-theses that this process can and does have its own ups and downs and is not a one way ever-onward and— upward road, as latter day parlance would have it. During the half century past, the globalization process was reinitiated laboriously but haltingly until the last two and especially the last decade of the twentieth century, when globalism more than globalization recovered the reach it had already nearly a century earlier. Although this book focuses on the nineteenth century period, the authors nonetheless express important concerns for present and future praxis and policy.

REAL INEQUALITY IN EUROPE SINCE 1500

Introducing a concept of real, as opposed to nominal, inequality of income or wealth suggests some historical reinterpretations, buttressed by a closer look at consumption by the rich. The purchasing powers of different income classes depend on how relative prices move. Relative prices affected real inequality more strongly in earlier centuries than in the twentieth. Between 1500 and about 1800, staple food and fuels became dearer, while luxury goods, especially servants, became cheaper, greatly widening the inequality of lifestyles. Peace, industrialization, and globalization reversed this inegalitarian price effect in the nineteenth century, at least for England.

Discussion of periodic solutions for pth order delayed NDEs

In this paper, a thorough analysis of the existence and uniqueness of periodic solutions for a class of pth order neutral differential equations (NDE) with some delays is presented. Using Fourier series theory and techniques of real analysis inequality, a set of new and leading significance sufficient conditions are obtained ensuring the existence and uniqueness of periodic solutions. Thus some previous results [Appl. Math. J. Chinese Univ. 8A(3) (1993) 251 (in Chinese); Pure Appl. Math. 12(2) (1996) 69 (in Chinese); Pure Appl. Math. 11(suppl.) (1995) 102 (in Chinese); Appl. Math. Mech. 17(1) (1996) 29; Appl. Math. Mech. 20(6) (1999) 647] are extended and improved much more. Moreover, the repeated and ingenious application of inequality techniques makes the conditions of our results become weaker and weaker. Therefore, the conditions possess highly important significance in both theories and applications. In addition, the methods of this paper may be extended to study some other systems.

'Classification' and 'Judgement': Social class and the 'cognitive structures' of choice of Higher Education

The issue of social-class-related patterns of access to Higher Education (HE) has become a matter of public debate in the UK recently, but is on the whole portrayed one-sidedly in terms of issues of selection (elitism), and the social dimensions of choice are neglected. Here, drawing on an Economic and Social Research Council research study, choice of HE is examined using Bourdieu's concepts of 'classification' and 'judgement'. HE is viewed in terms of its internal status differentiations. Students' positive and negative choices are addressed using qualitative and quantitative data, and the 'accuracy' of status perceptions are also tested. It is argued that choices are infused with class and ethnic meanings and that choice-making plays a crucial role in the reproduction of divisions and hierarchies in HE, but also that the very idea of choice assumes a kind of formal equality that obscures 'the effects of real inequality'. HE choices are embedded in different kinds of biographies and institutional habituses, and different 'opportunity structures'.

Hunting and feasting

With the advent of surplus-based feasting among transegalitarian hunter/gatherers, major changes have taken place in other aspects of society. The most dramatic changes involve the private (or corporate group) ownership of resource procurement locations and resource products. Control over these resources was used to improve individual chances of survival, successful reproduction, and quality of life. Therefore, generalised sharing was curtailed wherever possible, creating real inequities in nutrition, health, and reproductive potentials. The nature of the advantages derived from surplus-based feasting and the character of ownership versus sharing are explored using data from the North American Northwest.

Changes in regional inequality in rural China: decomposing the Gini index by income sources

A new method is proposed to decompose inequality changes as measured by the Gini index into structural effects, real inequality effects and interactive effects. Application of the method to updated Chinese data reveals that structural effects represent the driving force underlying the increasing trend in regional income inequality in rural China. Policy implications are explored. In addition to these contributions, considerable efforts are made to construct the income data used in the article. Pitfalls in measuring income inequality in rural China are discussed.

Votes and Resources: Political Finance in Germany

“Votes count,” Stein Rokkan asserted many years ago, “but resourcesdecide.”1 Political finance is one of the many arenas in which Alexanderand Shiratori’s “conflict between real inequalities in economicresources and idealized equalities in political resources” is fought out.2Yet the battleground is more complex than either of these authoritiessuggests. Votes are also a resource. They legitimate, and they can alsopunish, if those who cast them think that economic resources arebeing used unreasonably. Above all, the determination of electoraloutcomes involves players others than voters and moneyedinterests. In almost all modern democracies there are referees ofvarying effectiveness. In general, the referee is “the state,” but muchdepends on the organs through which the state operates. Governmentsare not necessarily neutral agents; they and the parliamentsthat legislate on the regulation of political finance may merely reflectthe interests of dominant or established parties. Political finance can,however, also be regulated, as for instance in Germany or the UnitedStates, by judicial review. In addition the media almost everywhereplay an unpredictable role as spectator, watchdog or interested participant.

Decomposing changes in the Gini index by factor components

Changes in inequality as measured by the Gini index are decomposed into structural effects, real inequality effects and interactive effects. In light of such a decomposition, a refined version of the Kuznets hypothesis is proposed.