Living with capitalism: comparative histories of inequality (1200-2000) Vrije Universiteit Brussel
A growing body of literature on recent changes in inequality strikingly draws on terminology from the pre-modern past to describe new and often alarming trends. Modern society has been described as ‘neo-feudal’, ‘patrimonial’, ‘oligarchic’, ‘plutocratic’, and ‘dynastic’ - thus invoking clear parallels with pre-modern worlds of stark inequality (McGoey and Thiel 2018; Piketty 2013; Winters 2011; Freeland 2012; Savage 2021; Beckert 2022). Although ...