By Simon Marginson

The article below is abridged from the keynote address given at the SRHE’s 50th Anniversary Colloquium at Church House, London on June 26th 2015.  The full text of this keynote address is available via www.srhe.ac.uk/downloads/SimonMarginsonKeynote.pdf 

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century (2014) clarifies  the distinction between (1)  societies in which incomes are relatively equal and/or there is a high degree of middle class growth and social mobility, which includes (albeit in different ways and for rather different reasons) both the Scandinavian countries and emerging East Asia; and (2) societies like the United States or the UK that are relatively closed in character, with highly unequal wage structures, growing capital concentrations, and static middle classes that are under considerable pressure to defend their past-gained economic and status positions. Continue reading →