Michael Schwalbe, “Michael Schwalbe Rigging The Game: How Inequality is Reproduced in Everyday Life” (Oxford UP, 2014)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Jan 28, 2016 · 53m

In his new book Rigging The Game: How Inequality is Reproduced in Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2014), Michael Schwalbe identifies the roots of inequality in the appearance of economic surplus as human societies transitioned from communal hunting and gathering societies to forms of sedentary agricultural production that enabled a few to live off the surplus produced by the many. This immanently historical and human development of a class-stratified society was subsequently reified by the exploiting few, and made to appear to others as being the result of divine or natural forces…