The Meaningful Construction of Inequality and the Struggles Against It: A ‘Strong Program’ Approach to How Social Boundaries Change

Abstract

When it comes to issues of equality and redistribution, sociologists are particularly prone to think in anti-cultural terms. External, objective, and material forces are conceived as determining unequal distributions without reference to the wills of actors - via hegemony, domination, subordination. But if inequality is imposed by material and coercive force, then it can be remedied only by accumulating power and counter-force, and by exercising them in an instrumental and potentially coercive way.What is missing from this account is meaning, the recognition of its relative autonomy. The imposition of inequality, and struggles over justice, inclusion, and distribution, are mediated by cultural structures. Inequalities are nested inside the discourse of civil society, and so are demands for equality. Vis-à-vis the binary codes of civil society, protest movements pollute hegemonic forces and purify subordinate groups in its name.