The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021) with Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at the LSE

Seminar, Sciences Po, Salle du Conseil, 13 rue de l'Université, 75007 Paris

A pioneering book that takes us beyond economic debate to show how inequality is returning us to a past dominated by empires, dynastic elites, and ethnic divisions.

The economic facts of inequality are clear. The rich have been pulling away from the rest of us for years, and the super-rich have been pulling away from the rich. More and more assets are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Mainstream economists say we need not worry; what matters is growth, not distribution. In The Return of Inequality, acclaimed sociologist Mike Savage pushes back, explaining inequality’s profound deleterious effects on the shape of societies.

Mike Savage shows how economic inequality aggravates cultural, social, and political conflicts, challenging the coherence of liberal democratic nation-states. Put simply, severe inequality returns us to the past. By fracturing social bonds and harnessing the democratic process to the strategies of a resurgent aristocracy of the wealthy, inequality revives political conditions we thought we had moved beyond: empires and dynastic elites, explosive ethnic division, and metropolitan dominance that consigns all but a few cities to irrelevance. Inequality, in short, threatens to return us to the very history we have been trying to escape since the Age of Revolution.

Westerners have been slow to appreciate that inequality undermines the very foundations of liberal democracy: faith in progress and trust in the political community’s concern for all its members. Mike Savage guides us through the ideas of leading theorists of inequality, including Marx, Bourdieu, and Piketty, revealing how inequality reimposes the burdens of the past. At once analytically rigorous and passionately argued, The Return of Inequality is a vital addition to one of our most important public debates. 

11 am - 12.45 pm: Presentation and discussion

• Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

• Bruno Palier, Sciences Po, CEE, CNRS
• Sibylle Gollac, CRESPPA, CNRS
• Étienne Penissat, University of Lille, CERAPS, CNRS
• Cédric Hugrée, CRESSPA, CNRS

Chair: Patrick Le Galès, Sciences Po, CEE, CNRS

12.45 - 2.15 pm: Lunch Break

2.15 - 4 pm: Discussion

• Bruno Cousin, Sciences Po, CEE
• Daniel Sabbagh, Sciences Po, CERI
• Pierre Charbonnier, Sciences Po, CEE, CNRS

Chair: Florence Haegel, Sciences Po, CEE

For more information: bruno.cousin@sciencespo.fr

Compulsory Registration

A valid health pass and mask are required to attend this event.

Please arrive 10 minutes before the start of the session. Access to the hall will not be allowed after the start time.