Читать книгу Intersectionality - Patricia Hill Collins - Страница 11

When it comes to highlighting global economic inequality as an important social problem, 2014 was a pivotal year. Drawing more than 6,000 participants from all over the world, the Eighteenth International Sociological Association (ISA) World Congress of Sociology convened in Yokohama, Japan. In his presidential address, Michael Burawoy (2005), a distinguished Marxist scholar, argued that inequality was the most pressing issue of our time. Burawoy suggested that growing global inequality had spurred new thinking not only in sociology, but also in economics and related social sciences. Burawoy had long been a proponent of public sociology, the perspective holding that sociological tools should be brought to bear on important social issues. Interestingly, he stressed the significance of the 2013 election of Pope Francis. As the first pope from the Global South, Pope Francis expressed a strong commitment to tackling the questions of social inequality, poverty, and environmental justice, even qualifying economic inequality as “the root of social evil.” It is not every day that a Marxist scholar quotes the Pope before an international gathering of social scientists.

That same year, more than 220 business leaders and investors from 27 countries assembled in London at the May 2014 Conference on Inclusive Capitalism. As Nafeez Ahmed reported in a May 28, 2014 Guardian article, the attendees gathered to discuss “the need for a more socially responsible form of capitalism that benefits everyone, not just a wealthy minority.” Representing the most powerful financial and business elites, who controlled approximately US$30 trillion worth of liquid assets, or one-third of the global total, this group was concerned about, as the CEO of Unilever put it, “the capitalist threat to capitalism.” The stellar guest list for the conference included Prince Charles, Bill Clinton, the governor of the Bank of England, and several heads of global corporations. Interestingly, in her keynote speech, Christine Lagarde, then head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), invoked the same reference to Pope Francis’s depiction of increasing inequality as “the root of social evil.” Referencing Marx’s insight that capitalism “carried the seeds of its own destruction,” Lagarde argued, something needs to be done. Here again, it is not every day that the head of the IMF quotes both the Pope and Marx before the global financial elite.

Since the 1990s, economic inequality in income and wealth has grown exponentially, both within individual nation-states and across an overwhelming majority of countries, affecting 70 percent of the world’s population. And this economic inequality contributes to social inequality more broadly. Nearly half of the world’s wealth, some US$110 trillion, is owned by only 1 percent of the world’s population; between them, this tiny group owns more than the other 99 percent put together (Oxfam 2015).³ These trends suggest that by 2014 the state of global inequality was serious enough that people who were typically on opposite sides of many issues took notice. Lagarde and Burawoy were both concerned about the impact of a changing global economy. Under Lagarde’s leadership, the IMF offered a mainstream view of the causes and solutions to the social inequality brought on by a changing global economy. Like Burawoy, many sociologists have long offered a critical assessment of this mainstream view, pointing instead to structural power relations. By 2014, growing global social inequality was so significant that both mainstream and critical groups identified global social inequality generally, and economic social inequality in particular, as a global social problem.

Examining the specific histories of nation-states fosters different angles of vision on global economic inequalities. For instance, if we look at what happens between countries, we see that global income inequality has been in decline since the mid-1970s, which is related to the economic growth in fast-developing countries such as India and China. However, if we look at what happens within countries, we see that absolute income inequality has increased dramatically in the same period (UNU 2016). Moreover, even though income inequality has increased since the mid-1970s/early 1980s in nearly all countries, there are important regional variations. According to the World Inequality Report (WIR) 2018, income inequality has increased exponentially in North America, China, India, and Russia, and moderately in Europe, while it has remained relatively stable, at extremely high levels, in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil. From a broad historical perspective, the report notes, “this increase in inequality marks the end of a postwar egalitarian regime which took different forms in these regions” (WIR 2018).

Using intersectionality as an analytic tool points to several important dimensions of growing global inequality. First, social inequality does not fall equally on women, children, people of color, differently abled people, transgendered people, undocumented populations, and indigenous groups. Rather than seeing people as a homogeneous, undifferentiated mass of individuals, intersectionality provides a framework for explaining how categories of race, class, gender, age, and citizenship status, among others, position people differently in the world. Some groups are especially vulnerable to changes in the global economy, whereas others benefit disproportionately from them. Intersectionality brings a framework of intersecting social inequalities to economic inequality as the measure of global social inequality.

By focusing on race, gender, age, and citizenship status, intersectionality shifts how we think about jobs, income, and wealth, all major indicators of economic inequality. For example, income differences that accompany labor market practices of hiring, job security, retirement benefits, health benefits, and pay scales do not fall equally across social groups. Black people, women, young people, rural residents, undocumented people, and differently abled people face barriers to finding well-paying, secure jobs with benefits. Many of these groups live in areas that have been hard hit by a changing global economy and environmental hazards. Factories have relocated, leaving few opportunities for those who cannot afford to move. Many people remain poor from one generation to the next because they cannot earn a decent wage that provides them with income security. Labor market discrimination that pushes some people into part-time jobs with low pay, irregular hours, and no benefits, or that renders them structurally unemployed, does not fall equally across social groups.

Similarly, intersectionality also fosters a rethinking of the concept of the wealth gap. Rather than seeing the wealth gap as unconnected to categories such as race, gender, age, and citizenship, an intersectional lens posits that differences in wealth reflect interlocking systems of power. The racialized structure of the wealth gap has been well documented in the US, where disparities between whites, blacks, and Latinos have reached record highs (Chang 2010; Pew Research Center 2011).⁴ Yet the wealth gap is not only racialized but also simultaneously gendered. The wealth gap is generally analyzed through an either/or lens, race or gender, but with noteworthy exceptions (see, e.g., Oliver and Shapiro 1995), less often through an intersectional both/and lens. Measuring economic inequality by means of data on households, rather than on individuals, helps document the wealth gap between racially differentiated households and sheds light on the situation of households headed by single women across races. Intersectional analyses demonstrate how the structure of the inequality gap is simultaneously racialized and gendered for women of color.⁵

Second, using intersectionality as an analytic tool complicates class-only explanations for global economic inequality. Both the neoclassical economics accepted in US venues and Marxist social thought more often found in European settings foreground class as the fundamental category for explaining economic inequality. Both of these class-only explanations treat race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and ethnicity as secondary add-ons, namely, as ways to describe the class system more accurately. Yet by suggesting that economic inequality can neither be assessed nor effectively addressed through class alone, intersectional analyses propose a more sophisticated map of social inequality that goes beyond class-only accounts. Feminist theorist Zillah Eisenstein (2014) argues that class and capitalism are inherently intersectional:

When civil rights activists speak about race they are told they need to think about class as well. When anti-racist feminists focus on the problems of gendered racism they are also told to include class. So … when formulating class inequality, one should have race and gender in view as well. Capital is intersectional. It always intersects with the bodies that produce the labor. Therefore, the accumulation of wealth is embedded in the racialized and engendered structures that enhance it. (Italics added)

Positing that contemporary configurations of global capital that fuel and sustain growing social inequalities are about class exploitation, racism, sexism, and other systems of power fosters a rethinking of the categories used to understand economic inequality. Intersectional frameworks that go beyond class reveal how race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, citizenship, and so on relate in complex and entangled ways to produce economic inequality.

Third, using intersectionality as an analytic tool reveals how differential public policies of nation-states contribute to reducing or aggravating growing global inequality. The post-World War II period was marked by the growth of social welfare states in some national contexts, and the absence of such states in others, and more recently the dismantling of social welfare states in yet others. There are many variations of states and policies – for example, public policies of countries in the former Soviet Union that pursued a different course toward social equality, or colonies that became countries – but here we focus on social democracy and neoliberalism as shorthand terms for much broader sets of ideas or philosophies that have had and seemingly will continue to have an important influence on the public policies of nation-states. These overarching intellectual frameworks of social democracy and neoliberalism inform the public policies of nation-states as well as understandings of each other. They also differ in important ways on their interpretations of social inequality.

Drawing on the tenets of social democracy, social welfare state policies strive to protect the interests of the public. As a philosophy, social democracy is grounded in the belief that democratic institutions flourish best when they see the protection of social welfare of all people as part of their mandate. In this sense, participatory democracy is a strong pillar of social democracy because it assumes that fostering both broad citizen participation and fair access to the decision-making processes of the social welfare state strengthens democratic institutions. Unemployment, poverty, racial and gender discrimination, homelessness, illiteracy, poor health, and similar social problems constitute threats to the public good when social problems such as these remain unaddressed. To confront these challenges, social welfare states aim to promote public well-being via various combinations of establishing regulatory agencies for electricity, water, and similar entities, investing in public infrastructure and basic services, and providing direct state services. For example, in the US, environmental safety and food security have long been the purview of the federal government in the belief that, in order to protect everyone, industrial polluters of water and air, as well as the meat-packing industry, require a fair yet vigilant regulatory climate. Social welfare policies provide for a range of projects, including highway funding, school funding, and public transportation, as well as programs that care for the elderly, children, poor people, the disabled, the unemployed, and other people who need assistance. Overall, the basic idea is that, protecting its citizens and acting on behalf of the public good constitute core values of social democracy and strong social welfare states require participatory democracy.

In contrast, neoliberal state policies take a different view of the role of the state in promoting public well-being. As a philosophy, neoliberalism is grounded in the belief that markets, in and of themselves, are better able than governments to produce economic outcomes that are fair, sensible, and good for all. The state practices associated with neoliberalism differ dramatically from those of social welfare states. First, neoliberalism fosters the increased privatization of government programs and institutions like public schools, prisons, healthcare, transportation, and the military. Under the logic of neoliberal ideology, private firms that are accountable to market forces rather than democratic oversight of citizens can potentially provide less costly and more efficient services than government workers. Second, the logic of neoliberalism argues for the scaling back, and in some cases elimination of, the social welfare state. The safety net of government assistance to the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly, and the young is recast as wasteful spending characteristic of irresponsible government. Third, neoliberal logic claims that fewer economic regulations and more trade that is free of government constraints protect jobs. This freedom from environmental regulation and entities such as unions should produce greater profitability for some companies, which should lead to more jobs. Finally, neoliberalism posits a form of individualism that rejects the notion of the public good. By neoliberal logic, people have only themselves to blame for their problems: solving social problems comes down to the self-reliance of individuals (Cohen 2010; Harvey 2005).

The relationship between neoliberalism and social democracy has been contentious. Neoliberal philosophies have been used to launch sustained attacks on the public programs of social democracies that were put in place to address social inequality. The effects have been shrinking funding for public institutions of all sorts, including public schools, healthcare, housing, and transportation. The philosophy of neoliberalism predicted that such cuts would not foster social inequality, but that they might reduce it. Yet, since the 1980s, as the exponential growth within nations of both income and the wealth gap shows, the results of neoliberal policies are quite the opposite. Democratic states that pursued neoliberal policies identify big government not as a solution to social inequality, but as one of its causes. Following the trickle-down economics principle that claims that tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy in society stimulate business investment in the short term and benefit society at large in the long term, such policies want less government intrusion in the marketplace, on the assumption that neoliberal policies will reduce social inequality by growing the market and providing more opportunities for everyone. Global social inequality has grown in tandem with the weakening of the social democratic state.

Increasingly, many social democratic nation-states that try to remedy social inequality by adopting neoliberal economic policies face serious challenges, among them, the rise of far-right populism. On the one hand, refusing to implement policies that are informed by neoliberalism can make a state less competitive in the global marketplace. Making industries more competitive in the global marketplace via computer automation and artificial intelligence, deskilling, and job export increases the profitability of companies. Industry 4.0 is a name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and cognitive computing. This will have an increasing impact on global economic competition between states and between cities. Yet, such policies can aggravate existing economic inequality, fanning the flames of right-wing populism by those who consider they are the ones left behind.

On the other hand, as we discuss in Chapter 5, implementing neoliberal public policies as the solution to inequality can foster social unrest. Economic development of the nation-state does not necessarily reduce economic inequality. Those same strategies eliminate jobs and suppress wages, leaving closed factories, unemployed workers, and the serious potential for social unrest in their wake. Brazil’s experiences in the wake of hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup capture the tensions that distinguish a nation-state that aimed for a balance between social welfare policies and neoliberal aspirations. The money spent in preparation may have raised Brazil’s profile in the global arena, yet it simultaneously sparked massive social protest about cost overruns and corruption. Ironically, it also led to the emergence of a national far-right populist leader in the 2018 elections.

Intersectional analysis illuminates the differential effects of public policies on producing economic inequality of people of color, women, young people, rural residents, undocumented people, and differently abled people. Yet intersectionality’s focus on people’s lives provides space for alternative analyses of these same phenomena that do not stem from the worldviews of academic elites or government officials. Black people, women, poor people, LGBTQ people, ethnic and religious minorities, indigenous peoples, and people assigned to inferior castes and groups have never enjoyed the benefits of full citizenship and, as a result, they have less to lose and more to gain. People who bear the brunt of shrinking benefits from social welfare states or neoliberal marketplace policies may be more hopeful than their public officials about the possibilities of social democracy. Drawing inspiration from Pope Francis, they may also view growing economic inequality, as well as the social forces that cause it, as “the root of social evil,” yet refuse to sit passively watching it destroy their lives. Without hope of change, neither social protest nor social movements are possible.