Resistance as Sacrifice: Toward an Ascetic Antiracism

Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process—a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context—and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions. First, it highlights a disturbing parity between the people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox—how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into “benevolently racist” actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one that more effectively challenges the self‐oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism, rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world—actions that require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice.     

‘Not one of the family’: Gender and precarious work in the neoliberal university

Gender inequality within the university is well documented but proposals to tackle it tend to focus on the higher ranks, ignoring how it manifests within precarious work. Based on data collected as part of a broader participatory action research project on casual academic labour in Irish higher education, the article focuses on the intersection of precarious work and gender in academia. We argue that precarious female academics are non‐citizens of the academy, a status that is reproduced through exploitative gendered practices and evident in formal/legal recognition (staff status, rights and entitlements, pay and valuing of work) as well as in informal dimensions (social and decision‐making power). We, therefore, conclude that any attempts to challenge gender inequality in academia must look downward, not upward, to the ranks of the precarious academics.     

The white native speaker and inequality regimes in the private English language school

Private English language schools market the language as a tool that helps one connect with others from different cultures. Despite their promotion of English aiding in intercultural communication, these institutions may believe that only the white native speaker is the ideal teacher of the language. This valuing of the white native speaker can consequently act as an organisational inequality regime that marginalises nonwhite teachers. Using qualitative interviews with 10 nonwhite instructors working in schools in Toronto, Canada, this article investigates the ways in which these teachers experience the inequality regime of the white native speaker at work. The findings indicate that the teachers experience this inequality regime as a series of microaggressions that involve space, competence and customer desire. The article concludes with suggestions to dismantle inequality regimes in private institutions.     

On the conditions of authority in academic publics

The discourse of some of the most powerful public figures in today’s world is often incoherent and nonsensical. Incoherent yet authoritative discourse shows that authority does not rest in language but results from non‐linguistic and pre‐textual conditions. The non‐linguistic and pre‐textual conditions are exemplified in an Australian case‐study of a media debate between the Immigration Minister and a refugee, drawing on research by Smith‐Khan (2019a, 2019b). Two such conditions are then examined with reference to academic publics. First, I ask which languages do or do not carry authority, before moving on to speaker identity as a condition of authority. The close association between English and academic excellence has resulted in diminishing the authority of academic publications in languages other than English. The same is true of publications by women and people of colour. I close by reflecting on referencing practices as forms of extending authoritativeness to voices in excluded languages and from excluded scholars in academic publics.     

Celebrating Joan Acker: Sociologist,fearless feminist,friend

Joan Acker's life reflects a time when middle‐class women were expected to be satisfied with maintaining the home front, serving husbands and children, not having paid‐work careers. After living “the ideal” for 37 years, Acker took a new path by earning a Ph. D. and producing path‐breaking scholarship that challenged taken‐for‐granted beliefs about gender, family, work, and organizations. Acker spoke “truth to power” and was an academic heroine in posing feminist challenges to injustices involving gender, social class, and race/ethnicity, particularly (but not solely) related to the workplace. This overview lets Joan tell her story and offers reflections on her milestone publications as seen by Pat Martin.     

Getting low educated and older people into work: The role of fiscal policy

Raising employment, in particular employment among older individuals and low educated individuals, stands high on the agenda of policy makers in many OECD countries. Increased sensitivity in recent years to rising inequality has made the challenge only larger. In this paper we evaluate alternative fiscal policy scenarios to face this challenge. We construct and use an overlapping generations model for an open economy where individuals differ not only by age, but also by innate ability and human capital. The model allows us to study effects on aggregate employment, per capita income and welfare, as well as effects for specific age and ability groups. We show that well-considered fiscal policy changes can significantly improve macroeconomic productive efficiency, without increasing intergenerational or intragenerational welfare inequality. Our results strongly prefer a reduction in the labor tax rate on older workers and on all low-wage earners, financed by an overall reduction in non-employment benefits. An alternative financing option is to raise the consumption tax rate. These results are to be seen as long-run effects for economies at potential output.     

Socioeconomic status and the dynamics of preferences for income inequality in the United States, 1978–2016

Although considerable evidence indicates that public preferences for income inequality and redistribution vary across socioeconomic groups (i.e., occupation and income), much less is known about the temporal dynamics of these preferences. The purpose of this study is (a) to examine whether the attitudinal distance between managerial/professional workers and unskilled manual workers has changed (converged or diverged) over time and to (b) explore the reasons for and implications of the dynamics of preferences in the past several decades. Using data from the General Social Survey 1978–2016 (23 time‐points; N = 27,211), this study finds that the influence of occupational class has lost some of its significance in shaping public preferences for income inequality and that the declining effect of occupation can be explained in part by the attitudinal convergence between better‐ and less‐educated citizens. Findings suggest that proequality coalitions across educational boundaries play a remedial role in bridging the occupational divide over government redistribution in the United States.     

中国城镇居民功能不平等计量分析——基于阿马蒂亚·森的能力方法

以阿马蒂亚.森的能力方法为基础,利用问卷调查获得的数据对我国城镇居民功能不平等进行测算的计量结果表明,我国城镇居民功能不平等程度远低于收入分配不平等程度。从城镇居民功能不平等计量结果来看,目前我国社会相对稳定,但局面不容乐观,社会不稳定因素仍然存在。当前我们要关注收入分配不平等,也要关注人们在住房、休闲、人际关系、健康、工作满意度等功能分配方面的不平等。     

教育不平等的测度及与收入分配的关系

教育是人力资本形成的重要途径,公平的教育分配对基础广泛的经济增长与贫困的减少具有显著的重要性。在教育与收入分配关系的理论与实证研究中,已有不少文献从教育存量角度对其进行探讨,然而专门从教育不平等角度进行的研究则不多。文章首先对国外有关教育不平等系数的测定方法进行总结与评述,随后从理论与实证两个层面对教育不平等与收入分配的关系研究进行评述,并在既有研究的基础上,对相关后续研究提出进一步的研究思路。