Reproduction Of Inequality Research Articles

Class performance: An empirical case of Chinese service workers in hair salons

AbstractChina's service sector has attracted millions of internal migrants from impoverished rural areas. This research investigates how service work contributes to the reproduction of class inequalities in China through the everyday interactions between service workers and customers. Based on 15 in‐depth interviews with Chinese service workers in hair salons, this research argues that the workers conducted class performance to distinguish their class from others. Specifically, they displayed aesthetic and interactive class performance at work through aesthetic labour and deferential work to legitimize the superiority of middle‐class aesthetics and the middle‐class customers' sense of entitlement. Moreover, under the circumstances of increasing job instability and the suzhi discourse, the workers' class performance could also be extended to their lives through entrepreneurial labour and relational work. While the service workers could exert agency through certain strategies in their class performance, their agency was still limited in the structural constraints and even reinforced class inequalities. This research deepens the understanding of class inequalities in the Chinese context and provides policy implications to diminish class inequalities.

Social Justice in the Green City

The Covid-19 pandemic and energy, climate, and demographic crises have shown how cities are vulnerable to these impacts and how the access to green and blue spaces has become highly relevant to people. One strategy that we can observe is the strong focus on the resilience discourse, meaning implementing more green and blue spaces in urban areas, such as at previous brownfield quarters. However, social justice implications of urban greening have been overlooked for a long time. The implementation of strategies to improve the quality and availability of the green and blue infrastructures may indeed have negative outcomes as far as housing accessibility is concerned by trigging gentrification processes. Issues related to environmental justice and socio-spatial justice are increasing in contemporary cities and call for a better understanding of the global and local mechanisms of production and reproduction of environmental and spatial inequalities. This thematic issue includes eleven articles with different methodologies, with examples from Europe and North America as well as different lenses of green gentrification. Some articles focus more on the question of costs, benefits, and distributional consequences of various infrastructural options for urban greening. Others, instead, discuss how the strategic urban planning tools and policy processes take into account distributional consequences, with specific attention on participatory processes.

Schooling for equitable excellence: principles of systemic design

PurposeEducation is a key institution of modern society, long recognized for its central role in the reproduction of inequities and with the potential to challenge them. Schools behave as their systems are designed. Achieving equity and excellence is not possible through attempts to fix “the school” or educators. Principles of systemic design that incorporate equity and excellence are needed to increase the likelihood of desirable outcomes.Design/methodology/approachUsing the social contract as a design principle, this paper systematically builds an empirical model of school provision aimed at equitable excellence.FindingsEquitable excellence in school provision is possible if choice is available across geolocation and socio-educational (dis)advantage, schools have autonomy over fiscal, personnel and curricular matters, public accountability is linked to academic outcomes and social impact, all moderated by the quality of teaching.Research limitations/implicationsData-driven empirical modelling is particularly attractive to policy makers, systemic authorities and researchers when theory (of all varieties) does not yield the necessary insights to support the functionality and effectiveness of systems to deliver equitable outcomes at scale. Empirical examples can be used to test the explanatory power of the novel model – and refine it when necessary.Practical implicationsThe empirical model and threshold question are the genesis of a common language for assessing relevant costs and benefits of initiatives for government and system designers. Significantly, establishing a threshold question and tests of legitimacy and strength to accompany the novel model provides a more principled way of prioritizing the competing demands on public investment in education.Originality/valueEstablishing a threshold question and tests for legitimacy and strength to accompany the novel model provides a more principled way of prioritizing the competing demands to accompany.

Socioenvironmental conflicts under COVID-19 pandemic and the need of historical-sociological perspectives in conservation science

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global epidemiological, economic and social crisis of unprecedented scope and scale, with significant corollaries for biodiversity conservation. In response to this challenge for humanity, the scientific interest in COVID-19 in a short period occupied the attention of several researchers in different disciplines. However, understand the causes and impact of the pandemic is a complex task. In part, because even though it is a global crisis, the impact of the pandemic is not the same for everyone. The historical asymmetric power relations in the World-System are crucial for understanding environmental impacts and thinking about solutions in the post-pandemic world. In this article, we review some synergistic effects of the pandemic on socioeconomic and environmental conflicts. For this, we conducted a critical review of several primary studies, from July 2020 to March 2021. We observed that socioeconomic inequalities and our strong footprint in terrestrial and marine environments are putting humanity in a position of increasing fragility. We also note that systematic exploitation processes, power conflicts and the complex situation of abandoned local populations interact and reinforce each other, playing a dominant role in driving the dynamics of the pandemic. Likewise, we emphasize the need for a historical-sociological perspective in conservation sciences, and the development of an interdisciplinary scientific perspective, aiming to attack the bases of production and reproduction of inequalities that compromise the success of the objectives of biodiversity conservation and human well-being.

Collaborative economy and the cognitive legacy

This article discuss how collaborative economy can contribute to the production and knowledge dissemination for the society, in which refers to practice rescue, values and aspects linked to the solidarity and collectivity, such as confrontation of problems connected to cyclical questions of marketplace economy and environmental crisis. For that, it will be addressed the concepts of sharing economy, social capital and the economy platforming as a business model. In this bulge, it will be described the project of a donation app that will be implemented in a locality, aiming to integrate people, strengthen ties and, then, agglutinate social capital. The work goal is to address the sharing economy as a way to conduct a transition dynamic of the present traditional economy, for a model that is not an inequality reproduction and less hostile to the natural resources. Our question is: does the sharing economy show attributes capable of promoting the formation of the social capital and environmental sustainability, and so help cognitively in the social transformation? Our theoretical basis, between the various references to this research, it will be in Pierre Bourdieu, for someone who the social capital can be treated as a sum of the values generated by the connections between the internal and external members in a social media. The work is a social search, with a qualitative approach, descriptive-interpretative of bibliographic procedure.

Architectural Space and the Oppression of Women in Mexican Houses

Among the borders separating men and women, architecture occupies a primary role on the reproduction of inequalities and tensions, by assigning roles and users to different spaces. Often, the studies focus on inequalities between men and women in the field of architecture; others have chosen an historical approach to reveal the participation of women in the history of art and architecture. However, it is also important to explore the gender differences inhabiting architectural spaces. Architecture reproduces and reconfigures subjectivities through asymmetries in symbolic space. This paper introduces the discussion on women and the structures of domination expressed in contemporary architectural work and its material realm. Two examples of housing design in Mexico are reviewed and analyzed, pointing at different ways in which men and women think, use and represent their daily spaces. The analysis is structured on a double component: the lived space and the typology of the dwelling. Then, a series of questions are established about the relationships between dwelling, the way of thinking and living of women, as well as the hierarchical and patriarchal horizon with the one that designs and builds the domestic spaces of contemporary Mexico.

Impacts of Social Origin on the Academic Career of University Students. The Case of the Faculty of Sciences of Ben M'Sick

Inequality of educational opportunities according to parental background is one of the most studied and debated topics in social sciences. Educational success remains strongly correlated with social background. The principle of equality among students, who are supposed to receive the same education regardless of their individual and family characteristics, is undermined by the exclusion mechanisms at work in Moroccan schools. Loosening the link between the inequalities of students' social origins and their academic and social future was one of the major missions entrusted to the university. In the Moroccan education system, the growth and reproduction of inequalities are one of the factors contributing to the education crisis. In a purely sociological approach, our study analyzes, through a questionnaire survey, the socio-economic and cultural status (financial income and parents' educational levels) of students at the Faculty of Sciences Ben M'Sick (FSBM) in Casablanca, which is geographically located in an environment surrounded by working-class neighborhoods. The results obtained in our study attest that the social and cultural heritage of the parents transmitted to their children (students of the faculty) had effects on social reproduction, as well as the strong implication of the social origin in the learning process.

Social movements in the context of crisis: waste picker organizations as collaborative public partners in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social movements are purposeful, organized groups of people addressing the creation and reproduction of inequality, rights and access issues, seeking to transform sectoral policies. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, social movements have been acting in articulation with government and private companies and through other actions formulated within their networks, as service deliverers to the poor and vulnerable populations most heavily affected, often filling a gap created by unfulfilled policies. Our research with waste picker organizations in Brazil illustrates how their struggle for recognition has taken action in this context. Academic and government documents, social media and online material (blogs, posts, websites, etc.) and virtual meetings inform this research. We found that multiple actors have contributed to mitigate the urgent needs of waste pickers during the pandemic, but that at the same time, pre-existing challenges in waste management and the lack of wide-ranging social and economic inclusion have been further intensified.

Infrastructures of Sociality: How Disadvantaged Students Navigate Inequity at the University1

Through an ethnography of college life in India, I examine the role of social ties in navigating the inequities of university life. I analyze the socialities of sharing knowledge and resources among disadvantaged students, which I call “infrastructures of sociality.” “Infrastructure” designates here two things: first, the role of the university's infrastructure—its physical spaces and organizational routines—in enabling social ties; and second, the fact that these social ties literally function as infrastructure, in that they make university life possible for disadvantaged students, especially in the context of institutional neglect. I therefore advance Bourdieusian scholarship that views social ties among disadvantaged students as merely lacking in social capital, arguing instead that these ties constitute a form of non‐dominant social capital that is analytically distinct and powerful in its own right. Yet, I suggest that these social ties are a double‐edged sword: while the intensive mutual aid of disadvantaged students makes university participation possible, it nonetheless rests on exclusion from more privileged social groups. Thus, despite mitigating exclusion from the university, infrastructures of sociality also inadvertently participate in the reproduction of inequality, by reinforcing exclusion from the elite cultural and social resources circulating among privileged students.

His house, her house? Gender inequality and homeownership among married couples in urban China

Nearly four decades of housing reforms have transformed China into a homeowner society with homeownership rates exceeding 90 % in 2019. However, exactly which household member owns the property has seldom been studied. Using the 2017 China Household Financial Survey, this study examines the distribution of homeownership between the husband and wife, which is of great importance for understanding gender dynamics and intra-household inequality in urban China. Employing multi-level multinomial regressions, the results show that husbands generally have an absolute advantage of being the owners, which is stronger among the younger cohort. However, a wife's higher socioeconomic status, indicated by education, occupation, Chinese Communist Party membership, or hukou status, significantly increases her propensity to be stated as the deed owner. Furthermore, the gender disparity in homeownership between the husband and wife narrows in developed cities. We argue that the overall male dominance in household homeownership is structured and strengthened by the promotion of homeownership as a social norm, trapping both men and women in the reproduction of gender inequality.

Fiduciary Activism From Below: Green Gentrification, Pension Finance, and the Possibility of Just Urban Futures

This article investigates the evolving concept of fiduciary duty and its role in Canadian public sector pension funds’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing practices. It contributes to the literature in the distinct but related fields of environmental gentrification and urban climate finance by bringing fiduciary debates into sharper focus. Engagement with issues surrounding investors’ legal and ethical duties to invest responsibly can contribute to an enhanced understanding of the global and local mechanisms of production and reproduction of environmental and spatial inequalities, as well as strategies for creating more than just urban futures. ESG, a calculative and modelling technique used to manage investment risks, overwhelmingly focuses on physical and financial climate risks (e.g., infrastructure assets and risks associated with regulatory change). This privileges the instrumental, Cartesian view of the environment as severed from its social, historical, and relational character, a perspective that has been thoroughly critiqued in the environmental/ecological gentrification literature. However, ESG investing has also introduced a potentially productive uncertainty in the realm of financial expertise; it forces questions about what it means to invest deferred compensation in the “best interests” of workers and retirees. This article has three interrelated aims. First, it reviews recent trends in environmental gentrification and urban climate finance literature to highlight an emerging but underdeveloped engagement with ESG and fiduciary duty. Second, it shows how the rise of ESG has revealed a vulnerability in the hegemonic profit maximization interpretation of fiduciary duty and invited further, open-ended, critical-theoretical engagements with the concept of the fiduciary and their responsibilities. Finally, it offers the concept of “fiduciary activism from below” to explore how grassroots agency increasingly stages a direct confrontation with corporations, institutional investors, and shareholders in the struggles over urban space and resistance to environmental and infrastructural violence.

Intersectionalizing Housing Discrimination Under Rentier Capitalism in an Asset-Based Society

ABSTRACT Rental discrimination is a key factor in the reproduction of socio-economic inequality under emergent rentier capitalism within the asset society. Our research into the effects of discrimination in the Australian private rental sector shows how factors including age, race, gender and socio-economic status intersect to shape experiences of discrimination. A compounding and exponential discriminatory burden – financial, psychological, and physical – confronts those experiencing discrimination based on more than one factor. Yet, to date, policy aimed at improving housing experiences has largely been ad hoc and carried out in policy siloes. We argue for an intersectionalized approach to housing research, planning and policy, highlighting the conceptual value of intersectionality for responding to structural disadvantage and lived experiences of discrimination amid rentier and asset logics.

Building common understandings of urban inequalities to generate relevant solutions in Lima, Peru

In this article, we analyse the structural causes of inequality in Lima – beginning with a review of the historical context – to propose a multidimensional approach to urban inequality. We discuss spatial, public-institutional and political-social fragmentation and how these factors contribute to the reproduction of urban inequality. We supplement this discussion by describing two initiatives that contributed to the creation of a collective understanding of inequality and strategies to deal with it. First, we worked with marginalized social groups promoting collective care practices to address food insecurity resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with this, we developed a National Housing and Urban Planning Policy with the Peruvian Ministry of Housing, Construction and Sanitation that included a definition of urban inequality and the creation of an index for urban inequality. In each case, we discuss the difficulties faced, whether by citizens or the state, in trying to reach relevant solutions to address inequalities.

Re-thinking Colonialism and Social Policy: With the Logic of Imperialism

This article explores the relationship between colonialism, imperialism, and social policy. Drawing on critical theories of colonialism and imperialism and the role of science and race in the bourgeois ‘imperialist project, we argue that social policy cannot be fully understood without considering the ways in which colonialism and imperialism's thought and practice shaped the historical development of social policy. The article examines key concepts such as hegemony, power, race and ‘science’ and demonstrates how they can be used to analyze the impact of colonialism and imperialism on social policy. By rethinking the relationship between colonialism, imperialism, and social policy, we propose a new framework for understanding the role of social policy in the reproduction of global inequalities. Social policies on welfare, informed by the imperialist logic of race and science, were all ingrained in the practice of colonial authorities and the colonial state as rationales for maintaining the empire. Ultimately, the article suggests that a critical approach to understanding colonial social policy, which considers race, is necessary to analyze the origin of social policy and the legacies of colonialism and imperialism in contemporary society.

A REPRODUÇÃO DAS DESIGUALDADES NO ACESSO ÀS ESTATÍSTICAS EDUCACIONAIS

Abstract This article analyzes the factors that restrict the availability of educational data. Focusing on secondary school, the article demonstrates that most of those municipalities and schools which, in 2022, did not have data available for the Sistema de Avaliação da Educação Básica [Basic Education Assessment System] (Saeb), either presented low average proficiency indicators in 2019, or did not have data available in 2019. By means of logistic regression, the article demonstrates that the likelihood of a municipality achieving the minimum participation rate for the Saeb, in 2022, was greater amongst those with a high average proficiency in 2019, a greater number of enrollments, and more effective responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. The results demonstrate a reproduction of educational inequalities in the availability of data.

Organizations and geographies of migration: The case of health professionals

Geographies of international migration are classically observed and described as spatial patterns of movements between nation states. This applies in particular ways to the migration of health professionals, whose spatial patterns are the object of much debate due to their consequences on healthcare provision and the reproduction of global inequalities. Often, the spatialities of this migration are explained by macro-level socioeconomic and institutional structures. This is paralleled by a widespread focus on the (inter)national scale. This paper aims to extend the perspective by exploring and conceptualizing the role of the meso-level of organizations in shaping geographies of migration. Based on the discussion of three crucial types of organizations involved in structuring and channelling mobility – state authorities, migration and labour-market intermediaries, and employers – the paper develops a framework for a systematic analysis of the organizational co-production of geographies of migration in the health sector and beyond. This draws attention to important mechanisms producing geographies of migration and allows a grasp of the role of various spaces other than nation states in the production of migration.

Toward Epistemically-Just Research: A Methodologies Framework

This article interrogates the relationship between social science research and ways of doing, knowing and being that are dominant in Western universities. It traces a line from the colonial origins of dominant knowledge, through the creation of a rational scientist subject, in order to make visible the reproduction of epistemic inequality in modernity/coloniality. The link between epistemic injustice and neoliberal knowledge production practices in higher education is made clear through a particular focus on the role research methods play in this process, Finally, a reorientation is proposed along with a framework of methodologies for epistemically-just research.

Nordic paradox in action: The complicated relation between social mobility and health inequalities in an international comparative study.

Socio-economic inequalities originate from several channels, one of which is family origins, with clear effects on people's health. This paper aims to evaluate the role played by social mobility in determining health inequalities, relying on Blau and Duncan's status attainment model and focusing specifically on two moments of social reproduction of inequalities: one inter-generational, based on the transmission of resources from the family of origin, the other intra-generational, related to the capitalisation of economic resources to maximise well-being. Multi-group models of structural equations were used to examine the direct and indirect effects of parental cultural background, education and economic conditions of respondents on self-perceived health in 28 countries, relying on the European Social Survey (N=38,879). Overall, the results confirmed the presence of an inter-generational transmission of social and health status. Different models of transmission of health inequalities emerged among the countries considered. Countries characterised by a social democratic welfare regime showed higher social mobility and fewer health inequalities, although in correspondence with a prominent role of economic factors in determining health conditions. On the other hand, in countries where social mobility is lower, health inequalities are more pronounced, yet driven by factors others than economics, such as socio-cultural origins. The presence of a higher economic-health gradient in social democratic countries - notwithstanding their egalitarian and universal welfare policies - provides support for the existence of a Nordic paradox in relation to health inequalities.

Towards mathematics curriculum recontextualisation: developing a rhizocurrere with roma students

Students out of mainstream like Roma students often face problems following the mathematics curriculum which is designed without taking into consideration them and this fact contributes to the reproduction of inequalities. This paper suggests indicatively due to the limited layout an activity in the direction of reconceptualization of the Mathematics curriculum through rhizomatic thinking. The aim of the rhizomatic inquiry is to avoid representationalism often inherent in qualitative research and to challenge the dichotomies apparent in Mathematics education. Roma students’ ideas on parallel and intersecting straight line sections become a smooth space for both knowledge consolidation and application of mathematical knowledge in contexts that allow the restoration of social justice and honor movements against marginalization softening, thus, power relations.

The reproduction of inequality in Turkey: Power distribution in a primary class*

This paper aims to understand the nature of classrooms, “power containers” in Gidden’s words ( Giddens, 1986 , p.136), in terms of inequality and power share. Inequalities in education have been a by-passed subject in Turkey for a long time, and classroom practices remained “black boxes” ( Mehan, 1979 , p.4). Thus, after a brief summary of power issue in education, educational inequality discussions and their reflections in the Turkish context are discussed in the study. Then, the position teachers hold is discussed with references to history and society. Then, the 6-month observations and interviews conducted on the first grade are discussed both chronically and thematically. Beginning on the first day of school, the teacher held a higher position than the students and parents and distributed power share among students. Students were discriminated against according to their parents and cultural capital (language, strategies, communication style, and school materials). In accordance with the neoliberal policies, middle-class students and their parents were fronted in the classroom and they had more power than the others. However, lower-class students had little power and they were mostly criticized in the classroom. The strategies and advantages middle-class students had over lower-class ones are discussed in the study.