Unequal World Research Articles

Apping lunch and earning keep: Eco-Schooling in an unequal world

Eco-Schools is the world’s largest sustainable school program. Drawing on biopolitical theory and fieldwork conducted in Rwanda, South Africa, Sweden and Uganda, this article explores and compares how Eco-Schools is enacted in contexts marked by widely differing socio-economic living conditions. Attention is drawn to the biopolitical rationalities and techniques through which Eco-Schools is rendered operable and to how the program’s peculiar combination of global standardization and flexible adaptation to context enables differentiation. The analysis demonstrates how poor students become educated for micro-entrepreneurial subsistence and community self-reliance, whereas wealthy students are targeted as mass consumers and rendered aware of problems that exist elsewhere for ‘others’. Ultimately the article suggests that the biopolitical rationalities and techniques though which Eco-Schools operate undermine the program’s efficacy to challenge inequality. These findings support previous studies arguing that current modes of local adaptation of sustainability education risk reproducing a global biopolitical divide between rich and poor.

Labor migration and commodity production in Africa: global entanglements

This introductory article presents the objectives, scope and contents of the Special Issue titled Labor Migration and Commodity Production in Africa: Global Entanglements. By congregating a diverse team of scholars from Brazil, Turkey, Germany, France, the United States, and Cameroon, all at different stages of their careers, this Special Issue seeks to build upon current trends in the fields of Global and African History to expand our current understanding of the centrality of African subjects in the making of the contemporary, densely globalized yet deeply unequal world. This introduction sets the theoretical framework that guided our call for papers, summarizes the key findings of each article, and situate their individual contributions within the topics related to the agency of African subjects in the creation of increasingly interconnected societies. We argue that the articles in this Special Issue offer a path to further strengthen and expand both fields of African and Global History by incorporating the analysis of understudied sources from diverse linguistic backgrounds, such as Arabic, Turkish, Portuguese and German, as well as legal documents produced by contemporary African states.

Offshore Citizenship: “Diversified Citizenship Portfolios” and the Regulatory Arbitrage of Global Wealth Elites

AbstractThis paper reads the sale of citizenship via citizenship‐by‐investment (CBI) programmes through an offshore lens. Scholarship on offshore industries has long positioned citizenship sales as part of offshore capitalism—without exploring the phenomenon in any depth. Research on CBI, in turn, has with some notable exceptions neglected the phenomenon's offshore nature. This paper argues that CBI is an outgrowth and increasingly integral part of offshore capitalism, offering a new form of what Susan Roberts calls “regulatory arbitrage”, aiding elite wealth accumulation and power. The paper establishes this relationship by examining the countries and firms selling citizenship, their marketing strategies and customers and, crucially, the nature of the product which rests on the three “offshore pillars”, as described by Ronen Palan—virtual residency, easy incorporation, and secrecy. Conceptualising CBI as an offshore provision can transform how the phenomenon is understood and opens new avenues of thinking about its socio‐structural role and impact in an unequal world.

Unequal Worlds: Management Education and Inequalities

Unequal Worlds: Management Education and Inequalities

Success and Survival: Black Advantaged Parents’ Views of Race, White Space, and HBCU Attendance

The sociocultural norms of White spaces place Black individuals at greater risk of anti-Black racism, racial discrimination, exclusion, and violence. This reality requires that Black people develop sociocultural toolkits with strategies, behaviors, and knowledge to navigate and advance within society. Black parents play a critical role in readying their children for such survival and achievement in an unequal world. Existing scholarship on socialization focuses on Black parents raising preadolescent children, limiting our understanding of how Black parenting continues throughout emerging adulthood. Through the lens of college decision-making and the case of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), the author uses interviews with Black advantaged parents of college-bound children to explore understandings of the worlds children will enter as adults. Findings show that parents are aware of the burdens of Whiteness in its many forms in the environments where their children will enter and recognize that their children require sociocultural tools to succeed and thrive. These perspectives are made clear by parents’ discussions of the benefits and limitations of HBCU attendance. This article raises implications for understanding Black parenting, socialization, higher education, and transitions to adulthood and work.

From Cents to Satisfaction: Understanding the Power of Financial Literacy in an Unequal World

From Cents to Satisfaction: Understanding the Power of Financial Literacy in an Unequal World

Adolescents views of an unequal world: understanding economic inequality and factors for its reduction

Adolescents views of an unequal world: understanding economic inequality and factors for its reduction

Peace in an unequal world? Experimental evidence on the relationship between inequality and conflict in a guns-vs-butter setting

This study addresses the emergence of (unarmed) peace and investments in arms within a guns-vs-butter conflict setting. We introduce a novel feature within the conflict game and separate the decision to start a conflict and the investment in arms, following the theoretical framework of Garfinkel and Syropoulos (2021). Based on this model we experimentally examine the emergence of peace while varying resource inequality among conflicting parties. We find that inequality leads to more conflicts and higher investments in arms. Despite these trends, achieving a state of unarmed peace is rarely observed in both treatments. Our results highlight the critical role of trust in attaining peaceful outcomes and show that armed peace, although not an optimal strategy in either treatment, is one of the most frequently chosen decisions.

Unequal Climate Policy in an Unequal World

Unequal Climate Policy in an Unequal World

Bridging the digital divide: Promoting equal access to online learning for health professions in an unequal world

AbstractOnline learning has the potential to enhance open and equitable access to medical education resources globally. Conversely, there are also concerns that it can perpetuate and exacerbate digital inequalities between developed (global North) and developing (global South) countries. In this article, we describe the historical lack of representation of the global South in the design of online medical education, as well as the resulting consequences and potential solutions. We compare the Northern and Southern views of online learning in medical education and identify the different types of barriers to its adoption. We describe how socioeconomic disparities and the historical dominance of the global North over the global South have led to systemic digital inequalities in the design and implementation of online learning in education generally, and in medical education particularly. The lack of representation of global South voices hinders the development of digital learning solutions relevant to local contexts, therefore limiting their effectiveness and sustainability. Thus, we propose approaches to build more equitable partnerships by soliciting local input and local expertise. Further, we discuss the need to maintain local relevance while setting global standards. Overall, we hope to inform and guide the development of more equitable and accessible online education training for a diverse global population.

The rise of learning technology in an unequal world: potentials and limitations in enhancing lifelong learning

The rise of learning technology in an unequal world: potentials and limitations in enhancing lifelong learning

The rise and fall of water policy entrepreneurs in an unequal world

Highlights Policy entrepreneurs from the ‘North’ had undue influence over water policy in the ‘South’ in previous decades. Policy entrepreneurship in water must be centered in, rather than targeted at, the societies concerned. ‘Southern’ countries have gained greater autonomy over their water policies in a multi‐polar world and continue to offer opportunities for the international water industry. Political leaders, administrators, and civil society in the South must now take responsibility and accountability for the outcomes. It is now widely recognized that new infrastructure is essential to help mitigate and adapt to climate change and that hydropower is an energy transition ally not a climate change enemy.

The Price of Wealth: Scarcity and Abundance in an Unequal World

ABSTRACT This article reviews and summarizes six economics papers written as part of a project bringing together economists and anthropologists on conceptions and analyses of wealth. The project paired economists and anthropologists in order to illuminate differences in method, analytic technique, and disciplinary framings between the two fields. Anthropologists comment on the economists’ papers from their discipline’s point of view. The overall project was intended to increase understanding and to encourage future collaborations and learning between the two fields.

Jernail Singh Anand's Mahabharat: The Battle of Words - A Modern Epic: Rewriting of Traditional Wisdom

Jernail Singh Anand's Mahabharat: The Conflict of Words - A Modern Epic is a modern epic that rewards the conventional understanding of the conflict and its aftermath. It is the follow-up to the ancient Indian epic, Mahabharata. The author retells the epic from the perspective of Draupadi, the heroine who was treated dishonorably at the Kuru king's court, to bring the Pandavas—the primary protagonists of the War—and their spiritual master, Lord Krishna, to the forefront. The book casts doubt on the legitimacy and relevance of the Bhagavad Gita. This sacred text forms the basis of the Mahabharata, given today's violent, conflict-ridden, and unequal world.
 Additionally, the novel draws parallels with other epics that focus on the ideas of honor, devotion, and love, including the Ramayana and Troy. The central theme of Anand's writing is dishonor, particularly in light of Draupadi's humiliation at the hands of King Dhritrashtra. The action of this sequel moves beyond Kurukshetra's real battlefield and into the reader's imagination. In a biased conversation with Lord Krishna, the author expresses worries about the state of modern society and makes an effort to justify its purported deviations from the predestined path of justice.

Maladaptation in an unequal world: an evolutionary model with heterogeneous agents

Maladaptation is steadily increasing its presence in agenda and debates about climate change and its impacts. The term denotes actions undertaken, at the individual or collective level, to defend against the adverse effects of climate change or environmental degradation, but that ultimately exacerbate the underlying risk factors. In this paper, we investigate the effects of maladaptation in terms of well-being and inequality in a two-population (North–South) evolutionary model. While agents in the South often face higher vulnerability to environmental degradation and limited defense mechanisms compared to their Northern counterparts, the latter stand to endure greater economic losses, in absolute terms. Our model demonstrates that the diffusion of maladaptive choices could result in a Pareto-dominated steady state, influencing inequality levels positively or negatively based on the scale of maladaptation impacts relative to the existing environmental degradation. These findings stress the imperative of integrating environmental risk studies with maladaptive effects and dynamics. Additionally, they advocate for international discourse not only on climate change mitigation but also on adaptive measures among countries.

Researching Border Violence in an Indefensible Europe

ABSTRACT Significant documentation generated by activists, researchers, and human rights organisations has evidenced how violence is systematically deployed by European states to regulate the mobility and settlement of people on the move arriving from the Global South. While documenting violations at Europe’s borders is necessary to challenge states’ efforts to obscure violence and to enable accountability for border injustices, this article offers a critical reflection of the assumptions and performative effects of such research. Drawing on critical border studies literature and the critique of ‘damage-centred’ research (Tuck and Yang, 2014) offered by decolonial and feminist theorists, the article reflects on how efforts to render border harms visible in a Europe where violence against people on the move is normalised – and widely endorsed – risk reproducing the dehumanisation it seeks to challenge. I examine two strands of critique: firstly, of how research describing violence may unintendedly reify dominant representations that suggest an unbridgeable difference between those whose bodies can be injured, and those untouched by violence. Secondly, I suggest that provided the inherent violence of Europe’s borders and the affective attachments of European societies to the unequal world order they sustain, exposing violence may not necessarily contribute to ending it. I conclude with a discussion on how research may be deployed to challenge these affective attachments to violence. The article thus contributes with a critical reflection on the role of knowledge production in variably reproducing and challenging the borders of a Europe that, as Césaire (1950) has proposed, is indefensible.

Anti-Blackness and Moral Repair

For centuries, Europeans interpreted the biblical curse of Ham to justify the colonization and enslavement of Africans. Yet some Zambians today repeat this story as a demonstration of God’s intention for Africans to be servants to whites, thus explaining global inequalities. I approach these apparently anti-Black views not as evidence of false consciousness but as counterhegemonic theorizations of racism, coloniality, and capitalism. Many Zambians use the Ham narrative to challenge the liberal fetishization of equality amid the territorializing border logics of the nation-state. They demonstrate how, in a radically unequal world, these fetishes perpetuate social divisions that contravene God’s will. This constitutes a non-egalitarian decolonizing critique that instead demands relations of mutual connection, kinship, and care across continents. Working toward moral repair, I enlist the resources of liberation theology to imagine new ethical and political futures that are both anti-racist and anti-statist.

Book Review: Undoing privilege: Unearned advantage and systemic injustice in an unequal world by Pease, B.

Book Review: <i>Undoing privilege: Unearned advantage and systemic injustice in an unequal world</i> by Pease, B.

In Memory of David Fennario (1947-2023)

David Fennario was not only an author. He was a militant and an activist for social change, and as such he took no easy byways to make the audience remember the terrifyingly unequal and discriminatory world we live in. His dialogues are powerful, raw and gritty, spoken by unsubmissive subjects who want to deliberately shock the public into awareness.

Non-market distribution serves society in ways markets cannot: A tentative defense of food charity from small-town New England

It has become fashionable to call for ending food charity. Anti-hunger activists and scholars advocate instead for ensuring through government programs that everybody has enough money or vouchers to purchase all the food they need. Their criticisms rightly denounce charitable food for being incapable of eradicating hunger, but they neglect the advantages that charity confers as a non-market food practice—that is, an activity that produces or distributes food that is not for sale. Our interviews with non-market food practitioners in the Brattleboro, Vermont, area demonstrated that distributing food for free strengthens relationships, fosters resilience, puts edible-but-not-sellable food to use, and aligns with an alternative, non-market vision of a desirable food future. Interviewees suggested that market food systems, in which food is distributed via selling it, cannot replicate these benefits. Yet food pantries and soup kitchens tend to imitate supermarkets and restaurants—their market counterparts—since purchasing food is considered the dignified way to feed oneself in a market economy. We suggest that charities might do well to emphasize the benefits specific to non-market food rather than suppressing those benefits by mimicking markets. But charities face limits to making their food distribution dignified, since they are essentially hierarchies that funnel gifts from well-off people to poor people. Food sharing among equals is an elusive ambition in this highly unequal world, yet it is only by moving in this direction that non-market food distribution can serve society without stigmatizing recipients.