HU51432a

SoSe 22: The Fall and Rise of Inequality. Socioeconomic Disparities in Western Europe and the World from the Post-War Era to the Present

Felix Römer

Information for students

For the most part, the course will take place in the form of synchronous class meetings.

Comments

Global economic inequality is one of the most salient political issues of our time, and the current pandemic crisis has only reinforced existing disparities in income and wealth around the world. In the wake of the global financial crash of 2008, rising levels of inequality have also sparked renewed academic interest in the subject across various disciplines. This course will give students a grounding in the interdisciplinary literature and will introduce them to recent historical research on the subject. In particular, it will take inspiration from Thomas Piketty’s latest work (‘Capital and Ideology’) on historical ‘inequality regimes’ by exploring historical trajectories, causes, discourses and policies relating to both within-country and cross-country inequalities in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will pay particular attention to the transformative period since the 1970s and 1980s when an increasing number of societies around the world began to transition to the current ‘hyper-capitalist inequality regime’ (Piketty) on the back of deindustrialisation, the neoliberal turn and other socio-political processes. Throughout the course, special emphasis will be placed on theoretical concepts and statistical measurements that have guided political debates and public perceptions of economic inequality to the present day. We will consider case studies from different world regions and take account of intersectional inequalities of race, class, and gender. In order to explore different historical angles to the themes of the course, we will approach the subject from various methodological perspectives, including social and economic history, intellectual history, cultural history, and the history of knowledge. close