Inequality as Social Process

1. Inequality as Social Process Reflections from a South Asian Experience DSA Conference November 2013

2. Introduction • Reflections from South Asia • Thus reflecting upon post-industrial as well as post-agrarian societies, using UK as a proxy • Seeing inequality differently • Understanding pervasiveness and persistence

3. Inequality and the problem of Order • Need to explain relative order in contexts of extreme inequality. How does that happen? • Not just objective conditions of the state • Need to understand mechanisms beyond violence, ideology and legal codes • In the social domain, people actively reproduce inequality and thus support the Marxian account of the state

4. Inequality: A Universal Human Need? • Driver of economic progress? • Human need to enjoy the pleasure of status • Too much and too little: both a problem • So honestly: do we disapprove of inequality? • Depends what kind, and with what societal consequences

5. Inequality: Bad for All? • Too much associated with poverty, low rates of economic growth (pax economic liberals), exploitation, precarious rights, injustice, oppression and suppression • Wilkinson and Pickett • Deneulin and common good • Horizontal as well as vertical • Tilley and Durable Inequality • Geography of Inequality--Myrdal

6. Offsetting the labour theory of value • Absolute and relative • Imperial rents and labour regulation • Commodification of labour and political volatility • De-commodification and welfare—Polanyi and Esping-Andersen • A brief period of sanity in capitalist development? Limits of the special case? • The social policy challenge for today’s emerging economies/middle income societies

7. Political Implications of the new working class • The class discourse is back in the UK • 60% regard themselves as working class • What happened to embourgeoisification? • Now more lumpen than proletarian • Social basis of fascism? • Racist othering • Fearful, insecure and alienated workforce

8. Limits to the stratification discourse • Need for good sociology rather than bad political economy • Need more focus upon relationships rather than a debate between legacy and agency, with false hopes of social mobility • Need the ‘how’ questions answered

9. What and How Questions • Modifying determinism • But cannot dismiss objective conditions of property—the base of superstructure • But need to get beyond the ‘what’ questions about state and class and look at the ‘how’ issues • Althusser and the ‘ideological instance’ • State oppressive violence too expensive to sustain • Several examples: from first Henry Tudor to De Klerk, but de-humanisation and demonisation thrives in modern Britain

10. Labelling and Access • Rationing of scarce resources to protect elite hoarding • Need for legitimate queues and restricted access • Authoritativeness backed up by pseudo-scientific classification of need • The codification of entitlements • Less use of explicit violence • Foucault’s normalisation

11. Epistemology: the looseness of the structure of things • Becoming pomo • Structuration and actor-oriented • But not a complete rejection of determinism in favour of agency • Ondaatje’s ‘In the Skin of a Lion’

12. Malleability of Caste • The activity of caste a perfect example of the looseness of the structure of things, allowing room for agency • Hence malleability with permeable categories and boundaries • Thus ‘accommodation’, enough flexibility to maintain caste as a form of social order • A retained frame of meaning, an idiom

13. Limits to the opiate value of caste • Caste as the ideological instance • A way of understanding order despite deep inequality • But dharma and karma insufficient to offset glaring injustice • Thus ideology and belief not enough • Need a more material and social explanation of interactive mutual needs across social topography

14. Ambiguity of jajmani and clientelism • Mutuality and inequality • Clients of service providers may be superior patrons or inferior supplicants • It all depends • Variations of status reflected in forms of payment and other forms of control over key means of production • That is, relations have their transactional content as well as social expressions • Is mutuality vertical or horizontal? • It can be either—duality in the social division of labour

15. Caste as a global metaphor • Caste is everywhere • Combination of legacy and reproducing social action • Emblematic of wider rationales for inequality • A metaphor for how social inequality is reproduced • English literature, including about South Asia—like E.M.Forster. • Many forms of expression

16. The persistence of rank • Myth of separation of economic and social domains—key to the illusion of bourgeois liberalism • Supposed to reconcile economic inequality with social equality • But: Barrington Moore • But: Low ceilings to social mobility • Actually: Generalised commodity relations also a myth • Exit the proletariat, and return of pre-industrial patron-clientelism, i.e. hierarchical aspects of jajmani • The emergence of Standing’s ‘the precariat’

17. Personalised Commodity Relations: A global convergence? • Increasing inequality: reflective not just of differences in property, wealth and income • But between being secure and insecure • Erosion of de-commodification • Reversion to ‘hybrid’ personalised commodity relations in UK • Will South Asia ever pass through a proletarian phase—doubtful • So—a convergence?

18. Garment Workers in Bangladesh • Not a truly proletarian workforce, despite tag of being an organised sector • Predominantly female, so added layers of gender and patriarchy • Controlled by sardars, mastaan and male superiors in and outside workplace • Thus management of the commodity, labour, through personalised, non-rights, non-protected, extra-economic relations demanding loyalty, with low voice and exit options • Self-employment and other informal activities across sub-continent—same kinds of social mediation

19. The Peasant Analogue • Cities of Peasants • Nets: networks and entrapment • Not transitional phenomenon, but permanent hybrid • Merit no longer a sufficient condition of access to decent work • Conformity to subtle messages of class identity • A world of implicit clubs

20. Faustian Quest for Secure Livelihoods • Majority of people induced to opt for inequality which is also informal and not rights protected • Atomised and disorganised by elite classes • Strawbs—no longer applies • Mafia, mastaan and pirs: intermediation societies—a welfare regime category • Imperative to introduce security into insecure arrangements: presentation of self, ‘loyalty’ rather than ‘voice’ capabilities

21. Creating Moral Proximity • In the insecure world of actual hybrid capitalism • Quest for moral attachments • Instrumental relations in hypothetical, depersonalised commodity relations not reliable • De-instrumentalisation comes at a price • Iterative sacrifices of personal autonomy

22. Solving Organisational Problems • Not just prerogative of resource controllers • Tilley’s normalisation of categorical boundaries to solve organisational problem of sequestering scarce resources • Thus labelling and habitus, consistent with North’s limited access state • Exploited are also complicit in social reproduction of limited access through induced, Faustian, acceptance of personalised commodity relations • Because they are also solving organisational problems associated with insecure livelihoods

23. Re-thinking Capabilities in the real world: loyalty • A set of survival capabilities which endorse and reinforce rank and inequality • Dehumanising, shaming, loss of dignity • In other words: alienation

24. Don’t give up the fight: looking for voice • Agency and making history • Hector Pietersen museum in Soweto • Islamicist movements • Christian fundamentalism • Unruly politics • Lizzie Bennet • Bob Marley

25. UK and South Asia • UK: rights to restore • South Asia: they remain to be created