Archive Detail

Speaker:
Lucy Barnes (University College London)

This event is part of an event series „Cluster-Colloquium "The Politics of Inequality"“.

Lucy Barnes (Department of Political Science, University College London):

" Equality: Distributions and Relationships"

Abstract:
Unequal distributions of economic resources are widely seen by the public as unfair, and increasingly unequal material positions are the topic of much contemporary scholarly debate. In political philosophy, however, many dispute that it is resource distributions that are the morally relevant object of distributive justice, and in sociology, questions of stratification are as much about status as they are about material resources. As such, equal relationships – relating to one another with respect – may be the most compelling egalitarian concern. Of central importance for the implications of these debates is the degree to which inequality in the two things – distributions and relationships – are in fact related: to what extent do material inequalities undermine our ability to regard and relate to one another as equals? This paper addresses the empirical side of the question with two types of survey data from the UK: first we provide original empirical measurements of the relevant ‘relational inequality’ concepts, and compare responses from people in objectively different positions in terms of material distributions. Second, we manipulate perceptions of material inequality through the presentation of different informational treatments, to identify the causal impact that (perceptions of) distributive inequality has on these relational inequality outcomes.

Note the room change: we will be meeting in Y311