This article revisits the intellectual history of inequality in the thinking of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) and Dr Ram Manohar Lohia (1910–1967). Both were pivotal figures in the intellectual history of inequality in colonial and postcolonial India. Yet little work has been done to systematically juxtapose the two and their thinking on inequality. This article offers a first comparison, arguing that their ideas on inequality can be seen as the emergence of a unique, Indian version of what, in this (...) article, we term “organic intersectionality.” We build this argument on four claims. First, both were organic intellectuals whose thinking was molded in the marginalized groups from which they arose, but whose ideas developed in unique and organic ways. Second, both had a unique eye to the intersectional and holistic character of Indian inequality, cutting across caste, class, race, and gender. Third, their thinking grew from a deep engagement with religion, which they saw as both legitimizing and delegitimizing inequality. Fourth, both these figures exemplify postcolonial hybridity and thus stand in contrast both to a diffusionist approach whereby ideas are simply diffused from the West to the East, and to a nationalized, self-contained, or decolonial history of ideas. (shrink)

This article maps the conceptual history of global inequality from its marginal status in the 1980s, its minute mainstreaming within research and globalization discourse from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, until its popularization, politicization, and “economization” in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, recession, and the publication of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century in 2014. Asking when, why, and how global inequality became a key concept, it draws upon quantitative and qualitative analysis of global inequality in (...) scientific articles, books, and public media. It traces transformations in the term's temporal and spatial meanings and situates these in the contexts of rising within-nation and declining between-nation inequality, inequality research, inequality in public media, and broader discursive fields. (shrink)

Virksomhedens glemte kamp for social legitimitet.