What are the key processes that contribute to inequality? This section of the essay, ‘Political and Social Inequality: A Review’, from the Institute of Development Studies examines four key, generic processes. They offer an actor-oriented framework for understanding how inequality can be maintained or transformed. These processes are: (i)’othering’ and objectification; (ii) spatial and symbolic boundary maintenance; (iii) emotion management; and (iv) subordinate adaptation (which involves strategies including trading autonomy for protection).
The inequality literature provides only limited focus on the processes and experience of inequality. Official development practice tends to assume ‘barriers’ or ‘constraints’ that have to be eliminated on the road to development. This static, concrete metaphor lacks reference to the actors who are continuously building and transforming these barriers. A more actor-oriented approach points to who is doing what and in relationship with whom, enabling a development agency to identify existing dynamic processes that it could seek to either strengthen or minimise. A focus on agency also encourages the development actor to see him or her self as one of those involved in the nexus of political relationships concerned with struggles to maintain or reduce inequality.
In a literature review of the treatment of inequality in the USA, Schwalbe and colleagues propose four generic processes central to the reproduction of inequality. In any specific context it is likely that two or more of these processes could be identified:
- ‘Othering’ and objectification: ‘Othering’ involves defining into existence a subordinate group by inventing categories and categorisations. Categorised people may be treated as objects and regarded as without agency.
- Bordering and boundary maintenance: Preserving inequality requires maintaining spatial and symbolic borders or boundaries between dominant and subordinate groups. This may be done through the accumulation and transmission of cultural and social capital, through the management of space or through the threat or use of violence.
- Emotion management: The emotions of subordinates may be managed by those with an interest in preserving the status quo by regulating discourse, conditioning emotional subjectivity and scripting mass events.
- Subordinate adaptation: Types of adaptation may involve: trading power for patronage; forming alternative sub-cultures; and hustling or dropping out (such withdrawal may involve active rejection of the beliefs and practices of the dominant culture). Most strategies of adaptation have dual consequences, challenging some inequalities while reproducing others.
Social exclusion can be conceived as boundary maintenance. An understanding of inclusion recognises interdependence between self-defined categories, embraces cultural diversity without hierarchy and provides autonomous (self-owned) spaces for decision-making. Recommendations for a reflective and critical approach to addressing boundary maintenance and other processes that contribute to inequality include the following:
- Be aware that supporting a boundary challenge can give the subordinate group sufficient confidence (because they are backed by powerful people) to go further in their challenge than they might otherwise do, potentially incurring a violent response.
- Understand that processes of inequality are complex and unpredictable. Maintain awareness through activities such as regular immersion-style visits, listening to many different voices and organising talks and seminars.
- Base risk management on investing in non-instrumental relationships of trust with the leaders potential beneficiary organisations. This requires self-awareness, a capacity for reflection and a willingness to work with others beyond the short-term.
