Dynamics of inequalities in a global perspective: An introduction

Abstract

The contribution in this introduction, and in this monograph issue of Current Sociology itself, is to explain how patterns of inequality associated with global capital have been reconfigured in different contexts and have historically produced varied results. The definition of global inequality used here transcends Euro- and US-centric models of linear development and comparisons of national income and its distribution to explain how complex socioeconomic hierarchies, including – but not limited to – class, reinforce inequalities among social groups around the globe. The editors trace contemporary patterns of inequality back to the history of imperial and colonial power so as to reintroduce into the scholarly dialogue on inequality a broader understanding of ascriptive hierarchies of race, gender, caste, and national citizenship and their relationship to colonial conquest, enslavement, and labor migrations as interrelated contexts of the global production and reproduction of inequality patterns.

A Global Critical Race and Racism Framework: Racial Entanglements and Deep and Malleable Whiteness

“…For world-systems scholarship (Wallerstein 1991) and variants in the pan-Africanist, neo-Marxist tradition (Du Bois 1920; Reddock 2014), the role of racism in the production of global capitalism and modern nation states is privileged. The unit of analysis is the “world as a whole” that contemporarily exhibits a “relatively stable global racial hierarchy” (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă 2016:163; Jalata 2008) but is also full of what Grosfoguel (2011, 2013) labeled “heterarchies.” Heterarchies are the complex, entangled, overlapping processes of domination across multiscale structures with a “single historical reality” (Grosfoguel 2011). But for Grosfoguel (2011), who built upon Quijano’s (2000) “coloniality of power” perspective, “the idea of race and racism becomes the organizing principle that structures all of the multiple hierarchies of the world-system” (Grosfoguel 2011:10).…”

“…In Figure 1, I outline the components of a GCRR framework. Collectively, I draw inspiration from Jung’s (2015) “retooling” of Bonilla-Silva’s structural view of race, world-system, and transforming racism tenets (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă 2016; Grosfoguel 2016) and the ontological view that we must, according to Bhambra (2013), make the “colonial global,” a notion that recenters racialized hierarchies in the “making of the modern world” (Banerjee-Dube 2014:513) and the critical race knowledge of scholars from the global South (Bhambra 2013; Mama 1995; Patel 2014; Said 1978). Through a view of “colonialism which survives the demise of Empires,” Nandy (1983) wrote, “The West is now everywhere, within the West and outside; in structures and in minds” (p. xi).…”

“…This also takes seriously the assumption that we cannot look at racial dynamics and inequities in any given society as emanating solely from the logics, beliefs, and structures of that society. This is particularly clear when we look at differences between dominant (core/center) and subordinate (semiperiphery/periphery) countries within the world-system as they position themselves along a global racial hierarchy of nations on the basis of inequalities between power, wealth, technology, and knowledge production (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă 2016; Joseph 2000).…”

“…Much global race scholarship in the United States situates an ethnicity/nation paradigm (Brubaker 2009) or critical race and racism scholarship bound to distinct geographies (Fredrickson 2000; Twine 1998). In particular, there is much that Western-centric racial theorists can learn from global South scholars (Bhambra 2013; Mama 1995; Nandy 1983; Patil and Purkayastha forthcoming; Quijano 2000) and scholars who embrace race and racism within the world-systems perspective (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă 2016; Grosfoguel 2013, 2016). My efforts here aim to support a framework of global racism and white supremacy by applying Bonilla-Silva’s racialized social systems perspective to world-systems arguments surrounding an unequal global political economic field.…”

Isn't it high time we talked openly about racism?

“…Mapedzahama, Rudge, West, and Perron () observed that this topic was still an omission in the policies that reflect the values of the profession's national and international governing bodies, including the International Council of Nurses. So as racial inequities continue to widen globally (Treitler & Boatcă, ), why does nursing remain with its head in the sand, pretending this is not a fundamental health issue affecting our patients and our systems of care?…”