Submitted by Matthew Sparke
on
March 20 | Resistance, Resilience and Reaction Amidst Rising Inequality
In this talk, Dr. Matt Sparke reflects on the divergent ways in which communities and individuals around the world are responding to the challenges of growing in-country inequality. Author most recently of "Introducing Globalization," Sparke argues that when local forms of suffering, dispossession and alienation are put in their global context it becomes easier to imagine more collective and caring kinds of response. Too often, though, reactionary responses based on various forms of chauvinism, xenophobia, and fear take precedence, blinding communities to the ways they share common vulnerabilities with others. Yet other responses focus just on individualistic strategies of securing personal resilience. The challenge then is to see how these varied responses – the new 3 Rs of resistance, reaction and resilience – relate to one another, and how understanding their overlapping emergence amidst global structural change may ultimately make it possible to turn the passions and preferences for reaction and resilience into the foundations for collectively resisting the processes that produce inequality.