Inequality Series
Part I, Episode 28

§  Guests: Poornima Paidipaty (King’s College, London<https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/poornima.paidipaty.html>), Pedro Ramos Pinto (University of Cambridge<https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/people/dr-pedro-ramos-pinto>), Dan Hirschman (Cornell University<http://danhirschman.com/>), Christian O. Christiansen (Åarhus University<https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/christian-o-christiansen(130d41b8-592a-41c4-ac22-940e6ff2a648).html>) and Keith Tribe (Tartu University<http://keithtribe.co.uk/about/>)
§  Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne<https://applicationspub.unil.ch/interpub/noauth/php/Un/UnPers.php?PerNum=1233790&LanCode=37&menu=pub>)

Listen here: https://ceterisneverparibus.net/inequality-part-i-episode-28/

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In this two-part series on inequality, we will be talking about moments during the history of researching inequality. In this first part, we explore different ways people have thought about inequality and how it is measured, and the possible impacts that this thinking and measurement has on our economies and policies. In part two, to be released soon, we look at why and how inequality goes up and down depending on where we look.

Poornima Paidipaty and Pedro Ramos Pinto talk primarily about their special issue on The Measure of Inequality: Social Knowledge in Historical Perspective<https://read.dukeupress.edu/hope/issue/52/3> published in 2020 in the Historical of Political Economy Journal.



To check out Dan Hirschman’s approach to analysing how things are counted called knowledge infrastructures, see this<https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/718451> article. He references the book A Vast Machine<https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262518635/a-vast-machine/> by Paul Edwards.



To find out more about Christian O. Christiansen’s project on historicising global inequality, check out their website<http://global-inequality.com/>. To check out his latest book, Talking About Inequality, click here<https://link.springer.com/book/9783031080432>.



Keith Tribe refers to Phelps Brown at the end, see his book here<https://books.google.ch/books/about/The_Growth_of_British_Industrial_Relatio.html?id=KukzAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y>.



To watch the BBC Select video on the Occupy Movement featured at the beginning, go here<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuIDUwDwd-Y>. And the chant “We are the 99%” was taken from this video<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlktNi-m-RU>.



Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Dave JF<https://freesound.org/people/DaveJf/>, Atmosphere 12, Alyonka<https://freesound.org/people/Alyonka/>, Kjartan Abel<https://freesound.org/people/kjartan_abel/>, Japan Sky and BaDoink<https://freesound.org/people/BaDoink/>, Acoustic E Minor Jam.

Part II, Episode 29


§  Guests: Erik Bengtsson (Lund University<https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/erik-bengtsson>), Pat Hudson (Cardiff University<https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/462469-hudson-patricia>) and Keith Tribe (Tartu University<http://keithtribe.co.uk/about/>)
§  Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne<https://applicationspub.unil.ch/interpub/noauth/php/Un/UnPers.php?PerNum=1233790&LanCode=37&menu=pub>)

Listen here: https://ceterisneverparibus.net/inequality-part-ii-episode-29/

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Erik Bengtsson, an economic historian of Sweden, refers to this cartoon which depicts the parliament in session when an invisible hand writes “General Strike” on the board published in a national newspaper, Söndags Nisse in 1906. Taken from Fredrik Ström’s Arbetets söner: text och bilder ur den svenska arbetarrörelsens saga. Third Edition. Steinsviks bokförlag AB, 1959.



As we heard in part one<https://ceterisneverparibus.net/inequality-part-i-episode-28/> of our series on inequality, researchers looking at inequality urge people to look more on the micro level because the trends and causes are not universal across time and space. So in this second part, we look at why and how inequality goes up and down depending on where you look.



All the examples you will hear, in some way, critique and build upon Thomas Piketty’s comparative approach. We will hear from Erik Bengtsson, who studies the trends of inequality in Sweden. To check out Erik’s work, click here<https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/erik-bengtsson/publications/>. We will also hear Keith Tribe and his co-editor Pat Hudson, an economic historian, talk about their collected work called The Contradictions of Capital in the 21st century<http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-contradictions-of-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century/9781911116110> in which they build upon the renewed interest in the long run global development of wealth inequality stimulated by the publication of Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century<https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674979857>.



To watch the TED talk video on inequality featured at the beginning, go here<https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_ed_is_inequality_inevitable?language=en>.



Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Dave JF<https://freesound.org/people/DaveJf/>, Atmosphere 12, and Jordan Powell, Erokia<https://freesound.org/people/Erokia/>.<https://freesound.org/people/Erokia/>



Finally, thanks to David Philippy<https://rehpere.org/en/david-philippy> for helping with production.

Maria Bach
Economist and Historian
Centre Walras-Pareto
Université de Lausanne, Unil
Tel.: 0041 (0)76 483 64 70
Academia<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkcl.academia.edu%2FMariaDahl&data=01%7C01%7C%7C8528a6c05588453fb3fa08d601ce3f07%7C8370cf1416f34c16b83c724071654356%7C0&sdata=vNirn3E8AxAZEGn%2Bx8psVl%2F3urlND%2BN%2FHKPI%2BUeToxQ%3D&reserved=0> / LinkedIn<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fmariaviktoria&data=01%7C01%7C%7C8528a6c05588453fb3fa08d601ce3f07%7C8370cf1416f34c16b83c724071654356%7C0&sdata=ZuvLmcJniiSoXVukwb7%2FQ150vRwnZAOcNn2DjQ6zwA0%3D&reserved=0> / @mvsbach<https://twitter.com/mvsbach>

Co-host of Ceteris Never Paribus: The History of Economic Thought Podcast<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fceterisneverparibus.net%2F&data=01%7C01%7C%7C8528a6c05588453fb3fa08d601ce3f07%7C8370cf1416f34c16b83c724071654356%7C0&sdata=mL14w%2FfKvz87UamxiocYw7nEc9FW0qwCW7XwMg%2F%2BmkQ%3D&reserved=0>