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INEQUALITY AS SOCIAL PROCESS
Reflections from a South Asian Experience
DSA ConferenceNovember 2013
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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’
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
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
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
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
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’
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
UK and South Asia
UK: rights to restore
South Asia: they remain to be created