Social inequalities are traditionally addressed within the framework of the nation state, often with a focus on Western welfare states. Yet, over the past two decades global inequalities have become a focus of a growing scholarship in the social sciences and social theorising, particularly in the context of uneven development, income and wealth disparities, and sometimes regarding power asymmetries and post-colonial legacies. This literature investigates global social inequalitiesas they characterize inter‐state relations, exist within and across countries, as unequal relations between individuals along different categorisations (class, gender, racialised and ethnic identities, to name but the most prominent), in and between families and households, and on a world scale. Crucial questions running across this scholarship are inequalities of what, among whom, and how they come into existence and persist; and not least we need to ask at which scale should we locate global inequalities.
Part 1 (session 1 to 7) of the seminar provides an in-depth introduction into and discussion of key social theories on global social inequalities, including global and international inequality; world systems perspectives; transnational theory; global entanglements, and others. Part 2 (Session 8 to 12) is dedicated to small researchers. Participants will work in smaller research groups on a chosen area of inequality (poverty, hunger, health, education, water, gender, energy, work, settlement and housing, climate, sea, land, peace, infrastructures), do research on the empirical situation with the use of data from international organizations, and analyse this data from one of the discussed theoretical perspectives. Towards the end of the seminar all research groups will present their results.
- Kursleiter/in: Margit Fauser
- Kursleiter/in: Leif Merlin Tietz