A Question of Inequality

Christopher Steed is a research fellow at Southampton University. He spent twelve years in Whitehall, where he worked on trade policy towards South Africa during the Thatcher years and deindustrialisation. He has twenty years’ experience as a parish priest and currently works for the Diocese of Winchester. A qualified psychotherapist and counsellor, he holds doctorates in sociology and education from the University of Exeter, and in theology and history from Trinity College, USA. He has worked in education and in senior management roles in not-for-profit organisations. He is the author of A Question of Worth (I.B.Tauris, 2016).

Introduction: Setting the Scene
Part I. Landscapes of Inequality
1. A Tale of Two Cities
2. Winners, Losers and New Class Divides
3. Global Divides
4. Half the World: Identity Wars
5. War on the Skin
6. Intact Bodies, Wounded History
Part II. Why We Should Not Just Accept Inequality
7. Moral Outrage: Religious and Philosophical Arguments
8. Why Inequality Matters: Economic and Practical Arguments
9. The Argument from Intensified Social Comparison
10. The Psychodynamic Argument: Marx versus Freud
Part III. Clarifying Social Dynamics of Inequality: Notes on a Theory
11. A Theory of Social Relativity
12. The Politics of Positions
13. Understanding the Triggers: Indifference, Indignity and Inequality
14. Inequality’s Inner Thread: Towards a New Social Category
15. The Effect of Inequality: Demoralisation, Resignation and the Protest
16. The Politics of Equal Worth
Notes
Index