Political Inequality

Is up and running. If you already know how, please register post-haste. Group pages have been created, and I'll issue invitations to groups as soon as many or most of you have joined. If you don't know how, fear not; I have a blackboard handout for you tomorrow.

I'll also repost the Tilly questions to a discussion forum over there so we can try out the threading. If you want to respond now, go ahead and post in the below thread.

Away we go with empirical social theory, our second approach to understanding inequality in society this term.

EST asks why, rather than should. Tilly doesn't ask "Why Inequality?" (as in, why are some people richer, more powerful, have higher status, more respected, etc. than others). Why not? Probably because he doesn't think it's particularly puzzling. There's no particular reason to expect things to be different. What he *does* ask is "Why are some paired inequalities (ie, male/female, white/black, citizen/foreigner, aristocrat/plebian, etc. durable; that is, why do they tend to persist over space and (especially) time?" The alternative, from pg 7, would be for inequalities to be arranged by "individual differences in attributes, propensities, or performances." So the question is "Why A and not B?" He doesn't discuss it, of course, but B is in some sense to what many people mean when they refer to the as of yet unrealized dream of "equality of opportunity." In a sense, his "why" work could be seen as in the service of this normative goal--if we understand how this normative goal is consistently thwarted, perhaps we can better figure out how to dismantle it.

A few questions on the reading:

1) Why do you think he begins with a series of anecdotes about height?

2) When you first read over the 8 step road map to the arguments of the book (pg. 8-9) what was your impression? What questions did you have?

3) Describe the two primary causal mechanisms through which we establish and maintain categorical inequality (10). Can you give concrete examples of these practices?

4) Tilly says something rather controversial on pg. 15: "reduction or intensification of racist, sexist, or xenophobic attitudes will have relatively little impact on durable inequality..." Two pages later he'll name and criticize the idea that racism/sexism etc. have material consequences "mentalism" and offer a critique of it. Why does Tilly arrive at this conclusion, in your best estimation? Does his reasoning make sense?

5) What is "methodological individualism"? Why is Tilly critical of it?

6) What is "Phenomenological individualism"? Why is Tilly critical of it?

7) How does Tilly hope "relational analysis" will offer an improvement over individualism of various sorts?

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8) Chapter two begins with a discussion of the relational elements of money, nutrition, etc. What is Tilly talking about here? What point is he trying to make?

9) What, in your estimation, does the title of this chapter--from transactions to structures--mean?

10) How does Tilly "map" human interaction (54). What is the point of this map?

11) Consider the discussion of how racial barriers differ from ethnic, cultural or class barriers (63-64). How does Tilly describe the difference?

12) As you finish reading these two chapters, it's probably occured to you that Tilly spills a lot of ink inventing a new vocabulary for a series of everyday events and occurances. Why does he find it necessary to redefine how to talk about these events?

The first short paper should be 3-4 pages long (typed, double-spaced, normal fonts and margins). Remember, you must write two of the three short papers from each of the major sections of the course.

The first paper will be due January 30. When referring to specific ideas or passages from course readings, feel free to simply use a page number and author. If you cite outside sources, remember to give full bibliographic data. All papers should be carefully and logically organized, with a clear introduction (including thesis statement) and conclusion.

Here are potential paper topics:

1) As I said at the outset of this course, each approach to understanding human inequality we'll study this term has certain strengths and weaknesses. Use the readings from Phillips, Barry, and/or Anderson to assess the strengths and weaknesses of normative political philosophy. Keep in mind that you're using these texts not to analyse their specific arguments, but rather the methods they use to help us better understand the issue of inequality.

2) What does Anne Phillips conclude is the best way to think about the relationship between economic and political inequality? How does she arrive at this conclusion? Are her arguments sufficient to justify her conclusion? Why or why not? (keep in mind, I'm not asking you whether or not you agree with Phillips, but whether her arguments are sufficient to establish her conclusion. You might agree with her conclusion but think she doesn't quite justify it, or disagree with her conclusion but respect her well made argument, so whether you agree or not isn't directly relevant to your answer).

3) What, according to Brian Barry, is wrong with the idea of meritocracy as a distributive principle? Barry focuses his critique on a particular version of meritocracy. Consider other possibilities--is their another formulation of merit that would withstand the criticisms Barry makes? If yes, explain and defend this version of meritocracy. If no, consider the meaning of the loss of a functioning concept of merit--is this a problem? How can we replace it?

To access Wednesday's readings:

Start here

Click on "Electronic Reserves and Course Pages"

Search for "inequality" under "course name" and "contains"

Click on the course number

In the password slot, fill in winter2006

Now you'll be on the page with the links; both chapters should be read for Wednesday. They are listed in reverse order; do read "The Idea of Meritocracy" before "The Abuse of Science." More on these chapters soon....

ACCESS

First, click here.

Log in with uw net id.

Click on the link under "click here to start the proxy"

Click on the link for electronic journals (under "resources")

Choose E and scroll waaaay down to "Ethics"

There are four different databases that store this journal. It doesn't matter which one you use. THe article is from January 1999 (volume 109, issue 2) and begins on page 287.

I used the JSTOR database, chose the "browse the journal" option, and selected that issue, where I found the article. All the databases that store this journal are pretty intuitive to use.

DISCUSSION

What, by Anderson's reckoning, is so wrong with those who press a "luck inequality" understanding of the point of equality?

What, according to Anderson is the point of equality? Why, in her mind, is this a better 'point' for equality than the versions she is critical of?

Would there be significant policy differences between the theories based on remedying luck inequality and Anderson's theory of equality?

What sort of changes would we need to make to our existing tax structure, social policy, etc. to meet the demands of Anderson's theory of equality?

Discuss these and other questions below.

How does Phillips end the book? Has she satisfactorily answered her own questions?

One interesting conclusion, found on pg. 131: Economic inequality may not present a problem for equality of worth, unless the gap is too wide, but "in the case of race and gender, I have pressed this point further to argue that political equality is incompatible with any kind of gap." (131). She immediately goes on to suggest that skepticism is warranted about the rather strong version of this point she's making. What are her reasons for coming to this conclusion? This is one of the more interesting points of the book, I think.

See you Wednesday morning. Don't forget to send me your book preferences today or tomorrow.

Chapter 5 shifts gears considerably. She begins with a crucial question for political theorists. I think the best phrasing of the question is a little different than hers. I would put it this way: "What are the boundaries of the political?"

What does this question mean?
How can we begin to answer this question?
How should we answer this question?
Why is this question so important for Phillips?

Phillips then spends the bulk of this chapter discussing two approaches to political theory that take a somewhat broader view of "the political" than our liberal tradition: civic republicanism and deliberative democracy.

For each of these traditions, try to define and summarize them before class if you can. Also, think about how they might lead to a better (or worse) approach to the problem of inequality and democracy that we've been thinking about here.

As our long weekend comes to a close, it's time to prepare to consider some of the key themes and issues from the remainder of Anne Phillips' book Which Equalities Matter?

Chapter 4: "From Access to Recognition"

Here, Phillips moves from the independent discussions of political and economic inequality in the last two chapters to think about how they might interact with each other directly. She begins by stating what has probably been obvious to us for quite a while--that inequality in the level of political participation and efficacy is a) quite significant, and b) has a number of complicated causes, of which economic inequality is one. Even if we all agree on this, there are still several important questions we need to ask ourselves:

1) Is this a problem?
2) Why is this a problem?
3) What, if anything, can be done about it?

How does Phillips answer these questions?

Phillips identifies a conundrum in this article. On the one hand, extreme poverty is an affront to the notion of equal human worth (which, she suggests, we've already made a commitment to when we've commited to democratic politics). However, as she says, "a society premised on citizen equality is poorly served by welfare poicies that target the poor as objects of compassion and treat them as a category apart..." (80). What is her solution to this problem?

From there, she discusses the segregation problem with income inequality. This is something we could talk a great deal more about in the US context, and it will come up for those of you reading Kozol's book later. If high levels of inequality create conditions under which the wealthy segregate themselves from the poor (gated communities, private schools, exurbs, etc) does this present a challenge for democracy? What kind of challenge?

In the next section (84-90) Phillips outlines her ideal of 'recognition' and the ways in which it's challenged by both economic inequality and cultural difference and domination. Is the recognition ideal a possibility? Can these challenges be overcome? Why does she reject the assimilationist solution in the cultural sphere but not the economic one? How is her ideal of "convergence" different than assimilation?

I just recieved notice from the bookstore that there will be no more copies of Which Inequalities Matter? coming in to the bookstore, as the publisher is apparently out. I'll try to get some chapters put on electronic reserve, but if you don't yet have a copy you'll probably need to do your reading from the reserve copy or photocopying the book.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Tell me which book you want to do (and your second choice) by next Tuesday. Email is fine.

In this chapter, Phillips explores the issue of economic inequality *in itself* (the issue of the relation between political and economic inequality is saved for chapter 4). There are two questions that we need to consider, coming at the problem from different directions:

1) Should we care at all about economic inequality?

2) When, and to what degree, is economic inequality acceptable?

These questions come at the issue from two different directions, the first assuming the default position is that this isn't an issue, and the second assuming it is. Phillips is fairly certain the answers are probably going to turn out to be "yes" and "sometimes." The key, then, is figuring out precisely why and when and to what degree we care (and, as she notes toward the end of the chapter, what can reasonably be done about it without making matters worse.


Along the way to her own argument, Phillips nicely introduces several key figures and approaches to the problem of inequality in contemporary political philosophy. It is these figures and approaches I'd like us to discuss.

First, we're introduced to Marx on equality, and it turns out Marx thinks equality is a rather silly idea. And boring. And pointless. Her take on this is spot-on, I think, and I recommend those few pages on Marx with a great deal of enthusiasm.

But the Marx discussion is rather beside the point--she quickly moves on to contemporary philosophy on inequality, beginning with Rawls.

Rawls approach to inequality can be found on pg. 49. Rawls' disembodied brains behind the veil of ignorance prefer simple equality--except: "that all social primary goods are to be distributed equally unless an uneqaul distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advntage of the least favoured" (Phillips, 49)

Question on this point: What does Rawls mean here? More interestingly, how much inequality would this actually allow? Is this clear?

Setting aside for the moment the practicality or interpretability (is that a word?) of this test: do you think it makes sense as a principle? Why/why not?

Moving on, Dworkin (see pg. 55) gives us the misleadingly titled "Equality of Resources" which really means we'll have lots of unequal amounts of various resources, but it's OK if and only if what we have is a logical consequence of the choices we made, AND we made those choices from an initial position of equality. If we choose to invest heavily in alcohol and skimp on fire insurance to do so, and we find ourselves without a home for this reason, that's a form of inequality that society can handle. I only discussed this briefly in class today, so let me say something I should have: an obvious strength of this approach is that it offers a great deal of respect to the preferences of members of society to decide what's good for them. This seems to dovetail nicely with Phillip's notion that "inherent equal worth" is central to the sort of equality that democracy requires.

That said, what do you think of this idea? Other problems/strengths?

(and furthermore: while the clamshell auction make work marvelously on the desert island in his analogy work in an already established society?)

That's all the further we got in class today, but next week when we return we'll look at the rest of the chapter, which includes the following approaches:

The sufficiency approach (Frankfurt, Raz, similar to an idea called "Universal Basic Income promoted by the Belgian political philosopher Phillipe van Parijs--here's a story about van Parijs' idea and some related ones, and here's a link to an organization devoted to promoting the idea in the United States. Van Parijs' most famous paper on the topic is called "Should Surfers be Fed?" which explains why they let him put this picture on the cover of his book.)

Phillips thinks the sufficency approach takes us away from inequality. Why are the sufficiency theorists willing to go there?

I know you will be tempted to comment on your suspicion that this plan is deeply infeasible. I understand that strong urge, but encourage you to resist, and think instead about it's more philosophical strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, we have one of my personal favorites: Michael Walzer's complex equality (64-65). The basic idea here--inequality in any one sphere of life is no big deal as long as you follow the rules to get it. Get rich as an entreprenour, win the election and become president, charm the most attractive person in town into marrying you--great! Just don't use your riches to influence politics, use your political position to enrich your friends, or get a good job because of your spouse. It's using success in one sphere to influence another that we don't like.

What do you think of this approach? If we could contain an extreme amount of economic inequality in this way, would it be permissible?

More posts on the rest of the book coming soon.

In chapter 2, Phillips gets into the nitty-gritty details of her argument about equality.

In the first section (23-30), Phillips sets aside her concerns about economic inequality and just looks a bit more closely at the concept of political equality. One of the central ideas of this chapter is that political 'neutrality' isn't always the clearest path to political equality?

--Why not? Why are feminists often wary of "gender-blind" approaches and black activists wary of "race-blind" approaches to political equality?

--What is it about the social world of modern liberal democracies like the US and the UK that complicates matters in this regard?

--When does "difference" become a challenge for equality? What does Phillips mean when she suggests "difference through equality" (25)?

In the next section (30-35) Phillips suggests that sometimes the best way to approach the problem of inequalities in the social and economic realms is through political means (35).

--Why does she come to this conclusion?

--Do you agree?

--Can you think of some examples as to how this dynamic might work?

In the remainder of the chapter, Phillips discusses some of the ways in which philosophical liberals (remind me to talk a bit about what this means--those who were with me last quarter know, but the rest of you should be aware that this category is somewhat different than "liberals" in the everyday uses of the term) would object to some of her political solutions to the problem of group inequality.

--What are these criticisms?

--How does she respond to them?

As always, feel free to use this thread to post your own questions or comments about this chapter in addition to discussing any of the specific questions and topics I raised here.