IUAES2015 panel session #5 [Room 222]
16 July 2015, 11.00 – 12.30 hrs.
Enrique LARRETA
Institute of Cultural Pluralism, Cândido Mendes University
contact: enriquelarreta946@gmail.com
Abstract
After the 2008 crisis the economic situation within the United States was dominated by the issue of national social inequality. Anti-globalization movements and demonstrations – Occupy Wall Street-came to be in the center of the public scene. The critique of neoliberalism and financial markets, especially from neo-Keynesian and other critical positions (Graeber 2011) were the subject of intense attention from the media.
Thomas Piketty’s Le Capital au XXIe Siècle (Seuil, 2013), published by Harvard University Press in 2014, turned into one of the intellectual best-seller of this decade in the United States and also in many European and Asian countries. Thomas Piketty´s book was preceded by some similar discussions and has been accompanied by others focusing on the issue of inequality. This is the case of Plutocrats: The Rise of New Global Super Rich by Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times, celebrated as one of the books of the year, and the book by Nobel-Prize winner Joseph Stieglitz entitled The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future (2013).
In many intellectuals circles in Latin America Piketty’s book was read as a return of Marxism to the bookshops after the neoliberal season. In China a chapter was quickly translated by Ecochina.org and significantly titled: “Save capitalism from the capitalists by taxing wealth”. The book was widely commented in different national public spheres inspiring changes in the index of ineqality in many countries. Besides the analytical power of the book, I want to map the reception of this book in different public spheres as a way for exploring the distribution of the imaginaries of equality/inequality in an increasingly interconnected global economy dominated by financial and consumption concerns.