Global Capitalism and the Dynamics of Inequality

According to the study released by Oxfam on 18 January 2016, the 62 richest people own as much as the poorest half of the world's population. It is thus no coincidence that the scholarly debate on worldwide inequality, its structural patterns and its process dynamics, has flared up once again. However, old instruments of analysis either strictly based on national societies or one-dimensionally focused on material resources no longer seem to be effective.

The CAS Research Focus will center around the complex inequality dynamics in global capitalism. These are a result of the interplay between both intra and inter-societal inequality constellations. The Research Focus will center on questions of interdependency, connections and reciprocity between national and global inequality dynamics – both in the OECD world and in the "global south": are intra and inter-societal inequality reductions mutually exclusive? Must the reduction of inequalities in certain regions of the world go hand-in-hand with their increase in other societies? How do democracies (but also dictatorships) and capitalism function together? What descriptions can develop from an analysis of the capitalist (post-)modern era? And which concepts are suitable from an interdisciplinary perspective for describing, understanding and explaining them?

Spokesperson

• Prof. Dr. Stephan Lessenich
  (Department of Sociology, LMU)

Research Focus Group

• Prof. Dr. Martin Geyer
  (Department of History, LMU)
• Prof. Dr. Christoph Knill
  (Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science (GSI), LMU)
• Prof. Dr. Clemens Pornschlegel
  (Institute of Modern German Literature, LMU)
• Prof. Dr. Uwe Sunde
  (Faculty of Economics, LMU)

Visiting Fellows

• Dr. Claudio Llanos Reyes
  (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile)
• Prof. Bob Jessop, Ph.D.
  (Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, England)
• Prof. Nivedita Menon, Ph.D.
  (Centre for Comparative Politics & Political Theory, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India)
• Prof. Timothy P. Moran, Ph.D.
  (Stony Brook University in New York, USA)

Events

• Lecture Series in the Winter Semester 2015/16 – "Global Capitalism – Who gets What and Why?"
  (Winter Semester 2015/16)
• International Workshop – "Capitalism and Democracy"
  (Summer Semester 2016)
• Lecture by Prof. Bob Jessop, Ph.D. – "From Rational Capitalism and Democracy to Political Capitalism and Post-Democracy"
  (Winter Semester 2016/17)
• International Workshop – "Global Capitalism: Openings and Closures"
  (Winter Semester 2016/17)
• International Conference – "Global Capitalism and the Dynamics of Inequality: New Problems, Old Concepts?"
  (Summer Semester 2017)

CAS^Video

Please find video recordings of this Research Focus here: CAS^Video – Global Capitalism.