George Kunnath

Prof Armine Ishkanian

This course is compulsory on the Postgraduate Certificate in Social and Economic Equity. This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes.

This course is only available to Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equities who are enrolled in the Postgraduate Certificate in Social and Economic Equity.

This course focuses on the foundations of social and economic equity – ‘foundations’ here means both historical foundations of these inequalities (including colonisation and post-colonial moments) as well as foundation understandings of what are inequalities.

The course considers the histories & legacies of inequalities and how these shape current realities,  including issues around racial capitalism and the impacts of wealth inequalities.  This historical (historiographical) look at inequalities then leads to an analysis of the approaches to defining & measuring inequality; the impacts of wealth inequality; and alternative economic models that can influence both how we understand inequalities and how we enact change to alleviate inequalities.

Specifically, course starts an overview lecture focusing on inequalities, power, and intersectionality. It moves onto a historical analysis – specifically looking at how the historical legacies of plantation shape and produce income and wealth inequalities in the present. This leads analysis of wealth inequalities (as opposed to income inequalities), its consequences, and how it can be tackled.  The course uses racial capitalism to understand the links between the historical legacies of slavery and the contemporary issues of global wealth inequalities.  At this point, the course moves to a more economic understanding of inequalities.  It introduces students to an analysis of income inequalities and how these are measured in orthodox economics. From there, the course critically engages with alternative economic perspectives and how they shift the understandings of economic inequalities – this includes degrowth, heterodox, and feminist economics.  The aim is to offer a broad understandings of the debates across ways of understanding economic inequalities that students can use in understanding specific contextual issues. 

Aside from lectures and seminars, the course also includes additional learning events: a City of London Inequalities Walk and an LSE Inequalities Scavenger Hunt.  The first links to the study of wealth inequalities as students understand how the geography and wealth in the city of London today links to colonial histories.  The second brings the study of inequalities to the LSE, where students, through clues, discover LSE’s own history in both maintain and challenging inequalities – the hunt is followed by a seminar where students link what they have been learning in the course to LSE’s history as an academic institution.

Finally, the course hosts a roundtable with alumni of the programme who work in areas of economic change (through policy advocacy, national government, or social movements).  This links theoretical concepts presented in the course to professional practice.

31.5 hours of classes in the Autumn Term.

This course will consist of approximately 30 hours of class teaching hours – including workshops, lectures, seminars, roundtables, and creative learning spaces over the course of nine days of intensive teaching.  This will take place in the first full two weeks of September, prior to the beginning of Autumn Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework in the AT.

In week 4 of AT, students will submit a 750 -word formative essay outline stating what they hope to write about in their summative essay.

• BECKFORD G., 2021. “Plantation Society. Toward a General Theory of Caribbean Society” in BARROW C., REDDOCK R., (ed.), Caribbean Sociology. Introductory Readings, Ian Randle Publishers and James Currey Publishers and Markus Wiener Publishers.
• OGLE, V., 2020. ‘Funk Money’: The End of Empires, The Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as an Economic and Financial Event. Past & Present, 249(1), pp.213-249.
• MELAMED, J., 2015. ‘Racial Capitalism.’ Critical Ethnic Stuides, 1(1), pp.76-85.
• WORLD BANK GROUP (2006) World Development Report, particularly chapters 2: Inequalities within countries; chapter 3: Equit from a global perspective; and chapter 4: Equity and wellbeing.
• HICKEL, J., 2021. ‘The anti-colonial politics of degrowth’, Political Geography, 88, pp. 1-3.
• ALVES, C. & KVANGRAVEN, I. H. (2021) ‘Does economics need to be decolonised?’ Economics Observatory, available here: https://www.economicsobservatory.com/economicsfest-does-economics-need-to-be-decolonised
• GOSH, J., 2021. ‘Women in (Recognized) Work: Feminist Economics’, Lecture given to New Economic Thinking, available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l9yiFaFme8

Essay (85%, 2500 words).

Oral examination (15%).

In Winter Term, students will appear in a 15-mnute oral examination to further demonstrate their understanding of the foundations of social and economic inquality.