Relational Turn in Inequality Research

Inequality research – in contrast to poverty research – is by definition relational. However, conventional scholarship uses to concentrate on inequalities between classes or strata within national contexts ignoring the multiplicity of relevant unequal relations. Recent contributions have searched for filing this gap at both: the analytical and the methodological level. Analytically, the focus on classes or strata has been expanded in order to integrate gender, race and ethnic relations, not only within national borders but also globally. Methodologically, spatial units of reference (municipalities, national states, regions, etc.) have been substituted by relational units such as regime, figuration, and chain (care chain, commodity chain) which encompass not a previous territory but a changing web of relations.

The first section of the paper presents the main developments associated with this “relational turn” in inequality research. In the second section, the paper uses the example of “regimes of inequalities” involving Afro-descendants in Latin America to highlight the advantages of relational approaches in inequality research.