Limited research has been devoted to investigating assumptions about competition dynamics established through a neoliberal lens. Advocates argue that competition fosters innovation and benefits consumers by incentivizing private enterprises to develop better products or services at competitive prices compared to their rivals. Critics argue that competition exacerbates inequality by disproportionately rewarding high achievers. Rewarding high achievers reflects the meritocratic aspect of competition, which has been widely assumed to be rooted in the individualistic culture of Western countries. Contrary to this assumption, the ideology of meritocratic competition thrived in ancient collectivist Asian countries. Moreover, the assumed linear relationship between individualism, competition, and inequality is contradicted by economic literature, which suggests more individualistic nations display lower income inequality. Despite extensive economic and cultural examination of competition, competition’s political dimensions remain understudied. This interdisciplinary book challenges conventional assumptions about competition, synthesizing evidence across economics, culture, and politics.

The dominant assumptions positing a linear relationship among individualism, capitalism, competition, and inequality are often rooted in the perspectives of social scientists, whose focus is frequently confined to the West in modern times. I argue that these dominant assumptions have been formulated without sufficient opportunities or willingness to consider societies with cultures and systems different from those of the West. In this regard, this book challenges these dominant assumptions by presenting compelling counter-evidence that (1) competition occurs in every society throughout history whenever humans seek to survive and thrive; and (2) competition does not necessarily lead to inequality, but often serves as a tool to mitigate it, as competitions prevent absolute hegemony and allow individuals to challenge incumbent powers or privileged groups across cultures, systems, and eras. This closing chapter encourages readers to reassess their existing beliefs about the sources and consequences of competition and to strive for a deep understanding of competition arenas that they may choose to enter or inadvertently launch.

The book concludes by synthesizing the major findings and discussing the compelling questions it raises about future trade policy negotiations. This chapter focuses on the troubling implications of a lobbying landscape dominated by individual firms. It discusses the ways that intra-industry trade may increase societal inequality, as well as links between firm lobbying and the societal backlash to hyperglobalization. The chapter also provides policy recommendations and fruitful areas of future research based on the findings of this study.

The plays of Sean O’Casey are filled with aches and pains, debilitating diseases, and traumatic wounds. He was himself a disabled writer. Furthermore, his presentation of disease and disability is inseparable from his critique of class, militarism, and masculinist ideology. This chapter shows how O’Casey’s depictions of disability are more nuanced than they may at first appear. He does demonstrate an essentialist tendency to see female resilience as a triumph over the failures of male impairment, yet, in plays such as Juno and the Paycock and The Silver Tassie, O’Casey allows space for contrary readings that speak with relevance to contemporary understandings of disability.

Does contract law have any role to play in tackling economic inequality, one of the most pressing problems of our time? The orthodox answer to this question is no: contract law should promote autonomy, efficiency, and/or justice in exchange, while distributive objectives should be dealt with exclusively through the fiscal system. Critics of this orthodoxy struggle with the prevailing understanding that contract law around the world has converged on doctrines that are insensitive to distributive considerations. This chapter contributes to this debate by showing how courts in South Africa, Brazil and Colombia prominent Global South countries from different legal traditions – have recently diverged from orthodoxy to embrace the task of using contract law to address inequality. The emergence of contract law heterodoxy in Global South countries draws attention to the existing, if more limited, instances of heterodoxy in the contract laws of the United States and Europe and to the stakes of contract law more generally. This analysis highlights how mounting inequality may increase the appeal of contract law heterodoxy and suggests that the present reign of contract law orthodoxy is neither universal nor inevitable.

Why do most migrant workers still lack access to urban public services despite national directives to incorporate them into cities, reported worker shortages, and ongoing labor unrest? How do policies said to expand workers’ rights end up undermining their claims to benefits owed to them? This opening chapter maps out the challenge of urbanization as development and situates the concept of political atomization and the main findings of this book in the larger context of inequality and authoritarian distribution. The concept of political atomization helps us understand four phenomena better: how authoritarian regimes exercise social control beyond coercion, why the perceived exchange of promised services for loyalty bolsters authoritarian resilience, how public service provision works without elections, and why there have been new gradations of second-class citizenship and structural inequality in China. To show how political atomization works, this book tracks the dynamics and consequences of the process from the state’s perspective through migrants’ points of view. This book uncovers emergent and evolving sources of embedded inequality, social control, and everyday marginalization in China.

The final chapter concludes with broader implications. After recapping how the previous chapters fit together to form a larger window on social control beyond coercion, it scrutinizes the limits of political atomization with a focus on perverse outcomes that result from the accumulated effects of individualization. Next are implications for China for inequality, the economy, migrant welfare and citizenship, and the authoritarian state’s social control toolbox. China is not alone in using political atomization, and a comparative perspective can spur future research on how the phenomenon already exists in not only other developing and authoritarian countries but also in democracies and developed countries. It ends with an examination of inequality and the state, noting that individual-level schemes are no match for systemic deflection and demobilization to address the entrenchment of inequality in social policy.

Chapter 4 explores wealth inequality of the basis of disability, with particular concern for disparities in wealth accumulation, access to homeownership, and discrimination in financial processes such as rental sales, mortgage lending, and housing-related insurance. Contemporary Black disability justice activists announce a broad anti-capitalist critique of wealth inequality and call for the end of public assistance programs that hold disabled people in an economic underclass through asset tests and other means. This chapter presents an intersectional research framework for improved analysis of the wealth barriers faced by Black disabled Americans. Chapter 4 concludes with recommendations for structuring a baby bonds program to guarantee nondiscriminatory implementation and targeted equality of access for Black disabled program recipients.

The introduction outlines four major tasks of this study: (1) to present evidence of disability-based intergroup economic disparity in the United States; (2) to engage the lived experiences of individuals and communities experiencing multiple simultaneous axes of oppression, including disability-based oppression; (3) to contribute to emerging understandings of the importance of intersectionality to economic research and policy; and (4) to contribute to stratification economics in applied terms through direct engagement with policy proposals for a federal jobs guarantee and federal “baby bonds” program. It provides an overview of disability and the US economy, disability and economic research methods, common models of disability, and the challenge of race/disability analogies.

The conclusion reflects on compatibilities and tensions within stratification economics, disability justice, and intersectionality. It points to additional areas of inquiry beyond the scope of this study, including state violence, sex and sexuality, climate change, built environment, voting, and reparations. In so doing it offers an outline of future work that might advance an agenda of disability justice within the work of stratification economics in the years ahead.

Not one of the numerous global risks we confront can be averted without better governance through global cooperation. All these risks – the ones we face now and the ones we may soon face next – transcend national borders, cross the globe, and therefore require global solutions. Moreover, many of these risks are interconnected; thus, they require interconnected solutions. Within the biological and chemical container of the Earth’s biosphere, human civilization is not a collection of individual structures of living that are entirely separate and distinct. It is a complex system of interconnected – and interdependent – networks of all kinds, many of which extend across our imagined political borders. Moreover, the ecologies of the world that human cities and states inhabit are all connected through natural systems. The atmosphere, hydrosphere, and cryosphere of the Earth, the biosphere that comprises the Earth’s ecosystems, are all connected. The many parts make a whole. To find planetary solutions, we must employ systems thinking to create institutions and other political arrangements to achieve effective Earth system governance, which must see and treat the world as a whole. To do this, we need human cooperation in problem-solving at every level of human endeavor. Foremost among our tools in this task must be democracy, and democracy must be devoted to sustainable development. Although democracy is in retreat throughout the world, we must fulfill our duty of optimism by establishing democracy everywhere and at every level, including democratic global governance.