1st Edition

Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism

By Manuela Boatcă Copyright 2015
    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    Based on theoretical developments in research on world-systems analysis, transnational migration, postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, whilst considering continuities of inequality patterns in the context of colonial and postcolonial realities, Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism proposes an original framework for the study of the long-term reproduction of inequalities under global capitalism. With attention to the critical assessment of both Marxist and Weberian perspectives, this book examines the wider implications of transferring classical approaches to inequality to a twenty-first-century context, calling for a reconceptualisation of inequality that is both theoretically informed and methodologically consistent, and able to cater for the implications of shifts from national and Western structures to global structures. Engaging with approaches to the study of class, gender, racial and ethnic inequalities at the global level, this innovative work adopts a relational perspective in the study of social inequalities that is able to reveal how historical interdependencies between world regions have translated as processes of inequality production and reproduction. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology, political and social theory and anthropology concerned with questions of globalisation and inequality.

    Introduction What is New about Global Inequalities?; Part I Marx and Political-Economy Approaches; Chapter 1 Class vs. Other: Coloniality as Anomaly in Karl Marx; Chapter 2 World-Systems Analysis and the Feminist Subsistence Perspective; Chapter 3 Orientalism vs. Occidentalism: The Decolonial Perspective; Chapter 4 The World-Historical Model: Relational Inequalities and Global Processes; Part II Weber and Historical-Comparative Models; Chapter 5 The West vs. the Rest: Modernity as Uniqueness in Max Weber; Chapter 6 Citizenship as Social Closure: Weberian Perspectives and Beyond; Chapter 7 After Uniqueness: Entangled Modernities and Multiple Europes; Chapter 8 Conclusions: For a Sociology of Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism;

    Biography

    Manuela Boatcă is Professor of Sociology at Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany. She is co-editor of Decolonizing European Sociology; and Global, Multiple and Postcolonial Modernities; and author of From Neoevolutionism to World-Systems Analysis.

    '… an ideal contribution for graduate seminars in sociology, political theory, development theory, and courses focused on inequality, including those that critically engage race, gender, and economic relations. The strengths of this volume are many, as few studies so provocatively move between epistemic and empirical analyses.' – Shelley Feldman, International Journal of Comparative Sociology

    'A Romanian sociologist in Germany, taking up Karl Marx and Max Weber on the issue of global inequalities, should be a reason for joy for many sociologists outside of Europe and, why not, in Europe itself. Manuela Boatcă’s argument comes loud and clear in the first line: global inequality for the media is news, and for the social scientist in the global North is new. To counter the double-blind, Boatcă brings the feelings and the eyes of a sociologist from former Eastern Europe and she adds to it the former Third World perspective on coloniality and decoloniality. It is geopolitics of knowledge at its best. A must-read for generations to come and all those interested in overcoming the imperial and institutional limits of the social sciences.' - Walter D. Mignolo, Duke University, USA

    'An exciting contribution to the debate about the modern world - its past, present, and future. A truly comprehensive review and critique of the literature as a mode of demonstrating that it is both essential and possible to move beyond Occidentalism. Future discussions (in particular of both Marx and Weber) will have to deal with this summation and this call to go beyond where we have all been, both in historical reality and in our failures to analyse this reality usefully.' - Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University, USA

    '... reading Global Inequalities beyond Occidentalism is a great education and one I recommend to all sociologists.' - Salvatore Babones, Comparative Sociology

    "Boatcă adjusts the classics to a reading that truly connects economy and epistemic violence."

    -Anja Weiß, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany