Globalization and Inequalities: Complexity and Contested Modernities

How has globalization changed social inequality? In this groundbreaking book, Globalization and Inequalities, 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 center 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 U.S. and EU.

Walby analyzes 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 undergraduate and graduate students and academics of sociology, social theory, gender studies and politics and international relations, geography, economics and law.

Sylvia Walby is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and holds the UNESCO Chair in Gender Research, at Lancaster University. She is a ′public sociologist′, engaged in research designed to have impact on the world, concerning gender inequality, violence and the economic crisis.

The UNESCO Chair in Gender Research Group, led by Walby, who has held the Chair since 2008, focuses on internationally relevant research on gender relations, and on building global networks for research and policy exchange on gender issues.

With colleagues, Walby has since 2008 obtained funding from: UK Economic and Social Research Council, Home Office, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Northern Rock Foundation, Trust for London, NSPCC; European Commission, European Parliament, European Institute for Gender Equality, EU Presidency, European Value Added Unit, the Council of Europe; UN Women, UNESCO; the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development, and the Canadian Ministry of Justice.

Walby was a member of the HEFCE REF2014 sub-panel for Sociology, a Director of the UK National Commission for UNESCO (2011-3), President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 02 Economy and Society (2006-10), founding President of the European Sociological Association (1995-7), and Chair of the Women′s Studies Network, UK (1989-90). She has been awarded an OBE for services to equal opportunities and diversity (2008), and made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2008) and of the Royal Society of Arts (1996). Teaching is currently focused on ‘violence and society′ (undergraduate) and ‘gender and violence′ (MA).