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