Global inequalities in world-systems perspective: theoretical debates and methodological innovations

During its 500-year history, the modern world-system has seen several shifts in hegemony.

Yet, since the decline of the US in the 1970s, no single core power has attained a hegemonic position in an increasingly polarized world.

As income inequalities have become more pronounced in core countries, especially in the US and the UK, global inequalities emerged as a 'new' topic of social scientific scholarship, ignoring the constant move toward polarization that has been characteristic of the entire modern world-system.

Authors in this book place the issue of rising inequalities at the centre of their analyses.

They explore the concept and reality of semiperipheries in the 21st century world-system and the role of the state and of transnational migration in current patterns of global stratification.