Power and Inequality examines the origins and maintenance of different forms of human inequality across time and space, as well as social mobilizations that have challenged them. Seminars within this theme are inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on the scholarly literatures on power and inequality generated by sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and others as well as historians. Questions addressed include: How do elites and ordinary people influence the distribution of social, economic, and political power: and how has this varied across time and space? How do different forms of inequality based on race, class, ethnicity, gender, and spatial disparities interact? Is the overlapping of multiple dimensions of inequality best understood as a matter of additive disadvantage, compound/intersectional social positioning, or via some other model? How do differently scaled systems of inequality—those functioning within the realm of household, community, polity, and international system—relate to one another?
