‘Welfare and Inequality in Marketizing Social Orders’ / December 4th, 15.30 hrs in the Posthumus room, IISG
Abstract
The world-scale expansion of markets and market relations ranks among the most transformative developments of our times. We can refer to this process by way of a generic if inelegant term – marketization. In a recently published book titled Welfare and Inequality in Marketizing East Asia (Palgrave 2018), I have explored how processes of marketization have registered across East Asia’s diverse social landscape and its implications for patterns of welfare and inequality. Proceeding from a synthetic critique of political economy, including the policy literature on 'inclusive growth' and the scholarly literature on welfare regimes, the book places welfare and inequality at the center of a more encompassing comparative approach to political economy that construes countries as dynamic, globally embedded social orders defined and animated by distinctive social relational and institutional features. At the IISH talk I will introduce the book, devoting special attention to its analytical framework, which I am presently seeking to develop into an agenda for research on welfare, inequality, and social orders that may be pursued across a variety of settings.
Jonathan D. London
Jonathan D. London is Associate Professor of Political Economy at Leiden University’s Institute for Area Studies. He has previously held positions at the City University of Hong Kong and Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore. A leading scholar of contemporary Vietnam, London holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
IISH Seminar
This lecture is part of the monthly IISH Seminar series. In principle, seminars take place every first Tuesday of the month.