Inequality Seminar: Shawn Dorius, "The Global Prestige Hierarchy and the Unequal Distribution of Cultural Wealth"
Shawn Dorius, assistant professor of sociology at Iowa State University, will present "The Global Prestige Hierarchy: A Culture Theory of Global Inequality" from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 24 in W113 Seashore Hall.
Building on theories of prestige that recognize the institutional order as a proximate cause of status hierarchy, Dorius proposes a cultural account of global inequality and the rank ordering of nations into a global status hierarchy. In this framework, the global institutional order is structured by the world polity and the beliefs and values of world culture. Developmentalism is the unifying transnational cognitive framework, or worldview, that legitimizes and propagates a rigid global status hierarchy through the conferral of social honor to high status countries. Dorius systematically evaluates four necessary conditions for such a theory, including a) consensus and b) stability of prestige judgements among world raters, c) agreement between subjective and objective indicators of national prestige, and d) long-run stability of objective status hierarchy. He concludes with formal, statistical tests of the theoretical model. Results provide strong, quantitative evidence for a taken-for-granted cultural model of development and hierarchy that is grounded in shared values among world citizens. This work both challenges and augments prior accounts of global inequality.
The poster for the seminar is available here.
The Inequality Seminar is a seminar and speaker series that provides a forum on campus for faculty and graduate students who are interested in inequality broadly defined. It is an opportunity for faculty and graduate students to present their research and to hear about other inequality-related work from researchers on and off-campus.
The Inequality Seminar meets Mondays from 1:30-3 p.m. in W113 Seashore Hall.
If you are interested in hearing about future talks (which well be held each Monday throughout the semester), or if you have any questions about the Inequality Seminar, please contact Sarah Bruch at sarah-bruch@uiowa.edu.