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In
The Origins and Dynamics of Inequality, Jon Wisman provides a re-interpretation of economic history and society. He argues that the struggle over income, wealth, and privilege-inequality-has been the principal, defining issue in human history and provides a novel framework for understanding inequality today.
List of contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter One: Introduction: Inequality, Sex, Politics, and Ideology
- Chapter Two: Blame it on Sex
- Chapter Three: From Aboriginal Equality to Limited and Unstable Inequality
- Chapter Four: The Dynamics of Religious Legitimation
- Chapter Five: The State, Civilization, and Extreme Inequality
- Chapter Six: The Critical Break: The Bourgeiosie Unchained
- Chapter Seven: Theological Revolution and the Idea of Equality
- Chapter Eight: The Shift Toward Secular Ideology
- Chapter Nine: Workers Gain Formal Political Power
- Chapter Ten: From American Exceptionalism to the Great Compression
- Chapter Eleven: Simon Kuznets' Happy Prognosis Crushed in an Ideological Coup
- Chapter Twelve: Inequality, Conspicuos Consumption, and the Growth Trap
- Chapter Thirteen: The Problem is Inequality, not Private Property and Markets
- Chapter Fourteen: What Future for Inequality?
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Jon D. Wisman is Professor of Economics at American University in Washington, D.C. He served as President of the Association for Social Economics in 2002 and has twice been selected by American University as the Outstanding Teacher of the Year. He was also a recipient of the 2023 Veblen-Commons Award, in recognition of his significant contributions to the evolutionary institutional economics.
Summary
In The Origins and Dynamics of Inequality, Jon Wisman provides a re-interpretation of economic history and society. He argues that the struggle over income, wealth, and privilege-inequality-has been the principal, defining issue in human history and provides a novel framework for understanding inequality today.
Additional text
The writing is dignified, assured, magisterial, and eminently accessible to a generalist reader. Wisman shows how pushing for less inequality is like pushing against gravity-- pushing against gene-driven competition to acquire positions of higher status. The problem is not with this competition, but with how institutions channel its expression... The overall value of the book is that it offers a re-interpretation of human history where the struggle over inequality is the driving force. It provides a novel explanation of why inequality exists, how it has been expressed through history, and what must be understood to create a fairer, more humane future.
