Event overview
7361
In this seminar, Brett Christophers will challenge the mainstream critique of intergenerational inequality.
Recent years have seen growing concern about so-called intergenerational inequality or unfairness. Housing is widely seen as integral to this inequality: not only do the elderly disproportionately hold housing assets, the single most important component of personal wealth in most Western countries, but they have benefited disproportionately from unprecedented recent periods of price appreciation that have pushed affordability to equally unprecedented unaffordable) levels.
His argument is that this perception of housing inequality distracts us from other, more fundamental bases of inequality, which are structurally endemic to capitalism. This is not to suggest that generational issues are irrelevant. But arguably more important than differences between generations is transmission between them: the intergenerational transmission, in other words, of structural inequalities. Within this, housing is important, indeed pivotal.
Brett Christophers is a Professor of Human Geography at Uppsala University. His books include Envisioning Media Power: On Capital and Geographies of Television, Banking across Boundaries: Placing Finance in Capitalism and, most recently, The Great Leveler: Capitalism and Competition in the Court of Law.
All are welcome and no registration is necessary. Feel free to bring a sandwich.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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13 May 2016 | 1:00pm - 2:30pm |
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