PK Articles

The Constructions of Economic Inequality: by RICHARD GOLDIN

The scientific methodology suggests that social or political change can be brought about by illuminating the “facts” to greater numbers of people. This perspective has been challenged in the last decades by the emergence of a different political strategy; one in which “facts” do not function politically as fixed, observable or measurable. In this constructivist strategy, social science facts are not countered by differing facts. Instead, the approach is to re-interpret dominant American norms and values in ways that give the desired political meaning to the facts proffered through the social science perspective. These scientific and constructivist strategies do not engage one another, since to do so would legitimize the other’s approach. Instead, each struggles to shape the political world in their own image. The result is our current politics – a seemingly endless cacophony of disjointed political conversations in which the social scientific and the constructivist strategies talk past each other.

The ongoing disagreements over economic inequality are an example of this battle. The social science perspective attempts to construct inequality as a purely materialistic phenomena, and thus always susceptible to “objective” measurement. As a political effect, this method produces objects such as Inequality for All, the recent Robert Reich film. In Reich’s film, the torrent of charts and graphs represent a political strategy in which existing structural relations can be altered by revealing to the audience the measurable facts of inequality.

This social science approach is in tension with a constructivist politics in which “economic inequality” does not mirror measurable material differences or their effects. Instead, the constructivist perspective determinedly shuns real world specificities. The primary strategy is not to contest the existence of great economic inequality, but, rather, to intertwine inequality with the norms of individualism and opportunity. By ignoring any structural determinants or quantitative analyses, and instead focusing on “individuality,” the constructivist approach attempts to portray measurable and observable material inequality as the inevitable outcome of American values.

The workings of these constructivist mechanisms requires us to examine political conflicts through a different optic than the one provided us by our social science training. It necessitates a re-thinking of the complex constructions of American norms and values and the impact of these constructive processes on our own political engagements.

Consider the American worship of individualism.