‘In this wide-ranging book, Sylvia Walby deploys her vast knowledge and wealth of research to break from inherited paradigms and to tackle the major challenges of globalization’ - Michael Burawoy, Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley ‘What an important book this is! By using the tools complexity theory offers, Walby dismantles the conservative versions of systems theory and provides a new way of approaching the dynamics of intersectional change. Her view of system environment interactions with both stabilizing and destabilizing feedback loops is itself theoretically rich. Walby then uses this model generate significant insights into the contested nature of modernity and the diverse ways that social democratic and liberal states have constructed equality and inequality. Her theoretical model will prove to be an essential resource for researchers concerned with understanding and steering social change’ - Myra Max Ferree, Martindale Bascom Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison ‘Though as critical about the feminist critiques of social theory as she is about social theory itself, in this landmark work Sylvia Walby does not stop at outlining the mistakes in both. Aside from unpacking the conflations that hinder our understanding of the social and political world, she presents an intricate, comprehensive new social theory and explains its major premises and innovations carefully and precisely. She focuses on the dynamics and complexities of social relations, integrating in these dynamics the role of complex inequalities (class, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation). Then, as a grand dessert, the book not only delivers a convincing first empirical test to Walby’s new theory, but also dares to take a normative position, all without resorting to hegemony. As a whole the book is all-encompassing yet open-minded, filled with arguments small and large for further development, or contention, inspiring impulses for active social science professionals of all kinds. The book is also a good starting point for discussions questioning the nature or possibility of social progress. Enabling innovative understandings of age-old complexities through brand-new empirical and normative questions and answers, this book will and should affect all research in social sciences’ - Mieke Verloo, Professor of Comparative Politics and Inequality Issues at Radboud University Nijmegen, and Scientific Director of the QUING project at the IWM, Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna 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. Globalization and Inequalities is essential reading for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics of sociology, social theory, gender studies and politics and international relations, geography, economics and law.
