Sylvia Walby offers an innovative new theoretical framework for explaining social inequalities around the world. A highly anticipated new book from a major name in the social sciences.

How has globalization changed social inequality? Why do Americans die younger than Europeans, despite larger incomes? Is there an alternative to neoliberalism? Who are the champions of social democracy? Why are some countries more violent than others?

In this groundbreaking book, Sylvia Walby examines the many changing forms of social inequality and their intersectionalities at both country and global levels. She shows how the contest between different modernities and conceptions of progress shape the present and future.

The book re-thinks the nature of economy, polity, civil society and violence. It places globalization and inequalities at the centre of an innovative new understanding of modernity and progress and demonstrates the power of these theoretical reformulations in practice, drawing on global data and in-depth analysis of the US and EU.

Walby analyses the tensions between the different forces that are shaping global futures. She examines the regulation and deregulation of employment and welfare; domestic and public gender regimes; secular and religious polities; path dependent trajectories and global political waves; and global inequalities and human rights.

1. Introduction: Progress and modernities
What is Progress?
More money or longer life?
Progress as a contested project
Economic development
Equality
Human Rights
Human development, well-being and capabilities
Competing projects: neoliberalism and social democracy
Contesting conceptions of progress
Multiple Complex Inequalities
Multiple and intersecting inequalities
Complex inequalities: difference, inequality and progress
Modernity? Postmodernity? Not yet Modern? Varieties of Modernity?
Modernity or postmodernity?
Late, second or liquid modernity?
Multiple modernities?
Not yet modern?
Varieties of modernity
Defining modernity
Globalization
Globalization as the erosion of distinctive and separate societies
Resistant to globalization
Already global
Coevolution of global processes with trajectories of development
Implications of globalization for social theory
Complexity Theory
2. Theorising multiple social systems
Multiple Inequalities and Intersectionality
Regimes and Domains
System and Its Environment: Over-Lapping, Non-Saturating, Non-Nested Systems
Societalisation not Societies
Emergence and Projects
Bodies, Technologies and the Social
Path Dependency
Co-evolution of Complex Adaptive Systems in Changing Fitness Landscapes
3. Economies
Redefining the Economy
Domestic Labour as Labour
State Welfare as part of the Economy
What are Economic Inequalities? What is Progress in the Economy?
From Pre-Modern to Modern: The Second Great Transformation
Global Processes and Economic Inequalities
What global processes?
Country Processes
Varieties of Political Economy
Varieties of employment relations
Varieties of Welfare Provision
Critical turning points into varieties of political economy
4. Polities
Reconceptualising Types of Polities
States
Nations
Nation-States?
Organised religions
Empires
Hegemon
Global political institutions
Polities Overlap and do not Politically Saturate a Territory
Democracy
Democracy and modernity
Redefining democracy
The development of democracy
5. Violence
Developing the Ontology of Violence
Modernity and Violence
Path Dependency in Trajections of Violence
Global
6. Civil societies
Theorising Civil Society
Modernity and Civil Society
Civil Society Projects
Global Civil Societies and Waves
Examples of waves
7. Regimes of complex inequality
Beyond Class Regimes
Gender Regimes
Ethnic Regimes
Further Regimes of Complex Inequalities
Disability
Sexual orientation
Intersecting Regimes of Complex Inequality
8. Varieties of modernity
Neoliberal and Social Democratic Varieties of Modernity
Path Dependency at the Economy/Polity Nexus?
Welfare provision
Conclusions on welfare
Employment regulation
Inequality
Conclusions on political economy
Path Dependency at the Violence Nexus
Modernity and path dependency
Indicators
Development, inequality and violence
Gendered violence
Path dependency of the violence nexus in OECD countries
Violence, economic inequality and the polity/economy nexus
Conclusions on violence
Gender Regime
Public and domestic gender regimes
Development and the public gender regime
Domestic and public gender regimes and gender inequality
Varieties of public gender regimes
Democracy and Inequality
9. Measuring progress
Economic Development
Equality
Economic inequality
Global economic inequality
Beyond the household
Economic inequalities and flows
Economic inequalities in summary
Inequalities in non-economic domains
Democracy
Human Rights
Human Development, Well-Being and Capabilities
Key Indicator Sets: What Indicators; What Underlying Concepts of Progress?
Extending the Frameworks and Indicators of Progress: Where do Environmental
Sustainability and Violence Fit?
Environmental sustainability
Violence
Achievement of Visions of Progress: Comparing Neoliberalism and Social Democracy
Economic development: neoliberalism vs. social democracy
Equality: neoliberalism vs. social democracy
Human rights: neoliberalism vs. social democracy
Human development, well-being and capabilities: neoliberalism vs. social democracy
Trade offs or complementary?
10. Comparative paths through modernity: neoliberalism and social democracy
Political Economy
Violence
Gender Transformations: The Emergence of Employed Women as the New Champions of Social Democracy
Employed women as the new champions of social democracy
Dampeners and Catalysts of Economic Growth: War and Gender Regime
Transformations
Conclusions
11. Contested futures
Financial and Economic Crisis 2007-9
Contesting Hegemons and the Future of the World
12. Conclusions
The Challenge of Complex Inequalities and Globalization to Social Theory