Ithaca College

With David Blaney (Macalester College), Naeem Inayatullah published, “Race and Global Inequality” in Race, Gender, and Culture in International Relations: Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Randolph Persaud and Aina Sajed.

Abstract and links below:

Contemporary thinking justifies global inequality by linking market outcomes to individual effort and individual skill.  Major Western thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Smith, and Marx rationalize inequality by making racialized arguments.  Adam Smith’s and Karl Marx’s produce incisive critiques of how capitalism produces inequality. Nevertheless, this critique is coupled with their support of capitalism’s progressive historical role which is used to explain and validate Western society’s colonial violence. Contemporary international relations theory shows a clear preference for unit-level analysis over a more system-level investigation.  This preference hides Western colonial violence and excuses inequality by stressing the connection between individual effort/skill and market reward.

You can read the pre-published version of the chapter here: https://faculty.ithaca.edu/naeem/docs/Papers/RaceGlobalInequality/

More on the book here: https://www.routledge.com/Race-Gender-and-Culture-in-International-Relations-Postcolonial-Perspectives/Persaud-Sajed/p/book/9780415786430