时间：2015/04/14, 09:30-11:00, 15:00-16:30

地点：yh86银河国际一楼院史馆

主讲人：Salvatore Babones ( Department of Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Sydney )

题目：The Technological Frontier in International Development（09:30-11:00）

     The Global Diffusion of Inequality since 1970（15:00-16:30）

主讲人介绍：Salvatore Babones is an associate professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney.  He writes on comparative international development and on quantitative methods for the social sciences.  His most recent book is Methods for Quantitative Macro-Comparative Research (Sage, 2014).  He is also the editor of a book series for Edward Elgar on the theme of "Emerging Market Societies" that is targeted at promoting the careers of junior academics.

摘要：

The Global Diffusion of Inequality since 1970

Since 1970 income inequality has been stable or rising in almost every country in the world.  It has not, however, risen at the same time or at the same rate throughout the world.  This suggests the globalization, skills premium, and technological change explanations that prevail in the economics literature are likely incorrect, since all of these processes should in principle have relatively uniform global impacts.  Instead, the timing and geo-cultural patterns of rising inequality bear the hallmarks of a diffusion model.  Inequality has not arisen simultaneously around the world; it has "spread" from country to country in recognizable and sensible patterns.  The diffusion model offers a simple, intuitively-appealing alternative to extraordinarily complex regression models of rising inequality.  Diffusion can occur either through emulation (a macrophenomenological mechanism) or through coercion (a macrorealist mechanism).  These two mechanisms are not mutually exclusive.  Either or both can be used by national elites to effect major changes of policy regime.  Diffusion by emulation and diffusion by coercion are two macro-level mechanisms that can be used as a template for understanding the implementation of inequality-increasing social and economic policies in diverse countries around the world.  They can be differentiated through examination of the micro-level mechanisms through which diffusion occurred in specific historical cases.  This injection of agency into the inequality debates requires extensive micro-level work on individual countries, but the clear existence of macro-level trends suggests that this micro-level work should be done within the context of some form of macro-level diffusion model.

The Technological Frontier in International Development

At the foundation of neoclassical growth theory in economics is the concept of the "technological frontier": the world's leading economies are considered to operate at the highest level of available technology, with other countries playing catch-up.  To a sociologist, however, this makes no sense: are homeless people in San Jose, California living at the same technological frontier as engineers on the nearby Google campus?  Or if the technological frontier is considered an integral aspect of a social system taken as a whole, is US society really a model to be copied?  This presentation sociologizes the technological frontier to frame it comparative perspective.  The technological frontier is becoming a characteristic of the individual instead of a characteristic of a country.  The implications of this for economic development in countries around the world -- including China -- are that economic development is best promoted through human development (schools, hospitals, and social services).  The most important priority for development is to being ordinary people up to the developmental level already enjoyed by the middle class.