Histories of Global Inequality

Thirteen papers offer a historical approach to global inequalities that supplements the existing economic research literature, focusing on themes such as decolonization, international organizations, gender theory, discrimination and human rights, the history of measurement of inequality, and the history of economic thought. (Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 59 (2), June, 2021)

Christian Olaf Christiansen is Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is the author of Progressive Business: An Intellectual History of The Role of Business In American Society (2015). In 2018 he was awarded the Sapere Aude Research Leader Grant by the Danish Foundation for Independent Research, to work on the project An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015. Steven L. B. Jensen is Senior Researcher at the The Danish Institute for Human Rights, Denmark. He is author of the prize-winning book The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values (2016). Before joining the Danish Institute, he held positions with the UN and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Chapter 1 Histories of Global Inequality: Introduction, Christian Olaf Christiansen & Steven L. B. Jensen.- Inequality in the History of Economic and Political Thought.- Chapter 2 Historicizing Piketty: The Fall and Rise of Inequality Economics, Eli Cook.- Chapter 3 The Demise of the Radical Critique of Economic Inequality in Western Political Thought, Michael J. Thompson.- Chapter 4 Products before People - How Inequality was Sidelined by Gross National Product, Philipp Lepenies.- Chapter 5 Inequality by Numbers: The Making of a Global Political Issue, Pedro Ramos Pinto.- Inequality, Discrimination and Human Rights.- Chapter 6 Inequality and Post-war International Organisation: Discrimination, the World Social Situation and the United Nations, 1948-1957, Steven L. B. Jensen.- Chapter 7: A pragmatic compromise between the ideal and the realistic: Debates over human rights, global distributive justice and minimum core obligations in the 1980s, Julia Dehm.- Chapter8 Inequality in Global Disability Policies since the 1970s, Paul van Trigt.- Chapter 9 Protection and Abuse: The Conundrum of Global Gender Inequality, Sally L. Kitch.- Inequality in an Age of Global Capitalism.- Chapter 10 Brewing Inequalities: Kenyas Smallholder Tea Farmers and the Developmentalist State in the Late-Colonial and Early-Independence Era, Muey Saeteurn.- Chapter 11 Challenging Global Inequality in Streets and Supermarkets: Fair trade Activism since the 1960s, Peter van Dam.- Chapter 12 Partnerships Against Global Poverty: When Inclusive Capitalism Entered the United Nations, Christian Olaf Christiansen.- Chapter 13 Third World Inc.: Notes from the Frontiers of Global Capital, Ravinder Kaur.-