Inequality Series
Part I, Episode 28
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Guests: Poornima Paidipaty (King’s
College, London), Pedro Ramos Pinto (University
of Cambridge), Dan Hirschman (Cornell
University), Christian O. Christiansen (Åarhus
University) and Keith Tribe (Tartu
University)
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Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre
Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne)
Listen here:
https://ceterisneverparibus.net/inequality-part-i-episode-28/
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 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 article.
He references the book A
Vast Machine by Paul Edwards.
To find out more about Christian O. Christiansen’s project on historicising global inequality, check out their
website. To check out his latest book, Talking About Inequality,
click here.
Keith Tribe refers to Phelps Brown at the end, see his book here.
To watch the BBC Select video on the Occupy Movement featured at the beginning, go here.
And the chant “We are the 99%” was taken from this
video.
Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Dave
JF, Atmosphere 12, Alyonka, Kjartan
Abel, Japan Sky and BaDoink,
Acoustic E Minor Jam.
Part II, Episode 29
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Guests: Erik Bengtsson (Lund
University), Pat Hudson (Cardiff
University) and Keith Tribe (Tartu
University)
§
Host and Producer: Maria Bach (Centre
Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne)
Listen here:
https://ceterisneverparibus.net/inequality-part-ii-episode-29/
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 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.
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 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.
To watch the TED talk video on inequality featured at the beginning, go here.
Featured music (apart from the usual intro and outro music): Sounds by Dave
JF, Atmosphere 12, and Jordan Powell, Erokia.
Finally, thanks to 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 / LinkedIn / @mvsbach
Co-host of Ceteris Never Paribus:
The History of Economic Thought Podcast