Göran Therborn: Globalization and Inequality. Issues of Conceptualization and Explanation

The conceptual part of the paper specifies the term “globalization” by distinguishing three kinds of global processes: (i) the moulding of actors and their conditions by their past, i.e., the enduring weight of global history, (ii) global flows of goods and services, of capital, of people, of information and ideas, and (iii) global entanglements of national and global institutions and organisations. Together with national processes this set of processes makes up an explanatory model of global outcomes of inequality. Inequality is also specified into three kinds: vital inequality, existential inequality and resource inequality, and four basic mechanisms of inequality are identified: distanciation, exclusion, super-/subordination and exploitation. The explanatory model is then applied to long-term developments of vital and economic inequality in the world. The former, as measured by infant mortality and life expectancy, has decreased substantially in the second half of 20th century, whereas income inequality has increased. Global flows of medical knowledge seem to have played a crucial role in reducing vital inequality. The weight of global history, as measured by GDP per capita in l820 and l900, and national processes of political economy appear to account for most of today’s global resource inequality.