Inequalities

Inequality is a broad concept that takes many forms but can be generally thought of as an uneven distribution of power. It is not easy to imagine inequality. What one sees depends very much on where one is situated and where one is looking. Consider Zanzibar; for example, the Indian Ocean islands, which put the zan into Tanzania. Tan came from the German colonial name for mainland Tanzania, which was Tanganika. Zanzibar Town, like Bristol in the United Kingdom, was a key port for the trading of people as slaves among other tradable entities. People were stolen from the mainland of Africa to be sold into an international slave trade. That the grandeur of these cities is built on such exploitation of other people is sufficient to make one uneasy about the magnificent buildings that remain from that period. Slavery, the ownership of one person by another person, is an extreme example of inequality, an inequality of rights, of consumption and ability to command goods where one person is commanding and the other is the “goods.”

Another example is Sheffield, a city in England that came to be a city because it was for a short time the best-known place in the world for making steel. The remaining men making steel, mostly employed in the Stocksbridge plant, have been laid off because of the aftereffects of the economic crash of 2008. That steel was often used to make armaments; more recently, it was used in making cars. The city emphasizes cutlery rather than weaponry production. However, it was not because of spoon manufacturing that Sheffield was bombed during World War II. Although some children in Sheffield are taught that steel was invented in Sheffield, the techniques of turning iron into steel were developed in China after having first been brought from villages in Africa, where smiths first made rudimentary steel in furnaces, now long forgotten. Usurping history is another extreme example of inequality.

Inequalities exist in access to health care, in how law operates, and in low pay for people doing the most dangerous, most boring, or hardest of jobs. Inequalities are easily observed in the differences in what people are able (have the power) to do, to choose, to use and the places that they are able to go. Yet inequality has to be distinguished from differences in identity, just as equality does not mean sameness. When there is a relatively small difference in two people's ability to command goods and to choose the direction of their lives, they are not unequal but do have different experiences.

The focus in this entry is on economic inequalities. Various people have stressed the importance of looking at a broader range of variables; however, some contend that many of the inequalities that exist today can be traced back to people's means—in subsistence societies, this may take the form of livestock and land but in many parts of the world primarily means money. Examples include politicians “buying” votes and voters “buying” politicians (economic power relates to political power) and richer people affording better health care and more nutritious food (economic power relates to life expectancy). Thus, those with money can often translate this money into other forms of power and advantage. However, the power of their money depends on what their money is worth compared to that of others.

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