Equality Multidisciplinary Perspectives 1St Edition Francois Levrau Full Chapter

Equality: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
1st Edition François Levrau

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/equality-multidisciplinary-perspectives-1st-edition-fran
cois-levrau/
Equality
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by
François Levrau · Noel Clycq
Equality
François Levrau · Noel Clycq
Editors
Equality
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
Editors
François Levrau Noel Clycq
University of Antwerp University of Antwerp
Antwerp, Belgium Antwerp, Belgium
ISBN 978-3-030-54309-9 ISBN 978-3-030-54310-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54310-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting,
reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical
way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software,
or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover image: © Alex Linch/shutterstock.com
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland
AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
At least since the Enlightenment the idea of ‘equality’ has served as one
of the main political and normative discursive ideals in European and
North-American societies. Notwithstanding the consensus on the impor-
tance of this idea(l), explaining what it exactly entails has turned out to
be quite difficult. After all, if we agree that people are to be respected as
each other’s moral equals, what then are the political, social, economic
and normative consequences? Different visions have been proposed and
so it is not entirely surprising that in current societies still a lot of
turmoil exists around equality related issues. Indeed, enduring and even
increasing patterns of socioeconomic inequality have led to fierce polit-
ical, philosophical and public discussions. However, contestations about
how (un)equal societies are today, should not be mixed up with contes-
tations about what kind of equality should be aimed at. These issues
should be carefully disentangled as it should be explained that the answer
to the latter has implications for the answer to the former. For example,
those who defend ‘equality of opportunity’ would not argue ‘inequali-
ties of outcome’ necessarily to be a problem. Discussions however are
also lingering on the extent to which ‘equality’ provides an impetus for
v
vi Preface
policies to recognise and accommodate sociocultural and religious differ-

ences. Indeed, it is not only the gap between the rich and the poor (or
less rich) that is much debated, as one can also witness strong emotions
stirred by the inflow of many (Muslim) migrants and refugees. In the
Western world Muslims and refugees are often portrayed and/or expe-
rienced as a Fremdkörper, the ‘other’ undermining ‘mainstream society’
of which they do not seem part—a discourse that might bear some
resemblances to episodes from Europe’s darkest past.
In this volume we illustrate that several of the challenges that modern
societies face, raise important and interesting issues about equality’s
nature, value, relevance, scope and its relation to other values. Some
of these challenges are rather new and point at innovative insights and
solutions, while often the tensions also have an enduring character and
therefore confront us with the question why they are so persistent. What
exactly is the mechanism that explains their longevity? This is just one of
the many puzzling questions that this book will address. Indeed, when it
comes to equality, the questions are manifold. What articulated norma-
tive ideal of equality should we aim at? What does it exactly mean when
saying that people are morally equal and how should people be treated as
equals? For example, does moral equality imply resource equality or is it
about equal opportunities? How does equality relate to other values such
as liberty and what type of solidarity comes with equality? What are the
conditions that impact on equality? What type of enduring and new chal-
lenges are modern societies facing with regard to equality? Are all kinds of
inequalities bad? What type of socioeconomic and/or sociocultural poli-
cies is to be implemented if some sort of equality is treated as a polar star?
Do people actually believe in the ideal of equality and if so, what exactly
do they believe? How do people react to inequality? Which model of
socioeconomic redistribution do Europeans prefer? How is (in)equality
perceived and depicted in media and cultural products? Does it make
sense to believe that equality of some sort can be realised, or should
we, instead, recognise its utopian character, thereby also considering that
the human selfishness and the innate distrust towards ‘the other’ are too
intractable to transform societies into more egalitarian ones?
As these are all complex questions, we believe the best way to deal
with them is a multi- and interdisciplinary approach. However, while
Preface vii
the concept of equality has been studied in much detail in several disci-
plines, at date books that bring together the disciplinary insights are
rather scarce (notable exceptions are from Baker et al. 2009; Li and Tracer
2017; Lamont and Pierson 2019). While these excellent collections seem
to focus rather on specific issues (e.g. housing market, education, city life,
class, gender, ideology, health care, democracy) or case studies in order
to shed light on equality’s characterisation and importance, the present
collection takes academic disciplines as the entry points to the discus-
sion. Hence, the many issue and examples that will be dealt with serve as
clarifications for how a discipline defines (the importance of ) equality.
This book, thus, could help to fill a gap, as it contains nine disci-
plinary ‘state-of-the-art’ chapters from expert scholars across Europe. We
opted for this approach because from the very moment one starts a
reflection about equality, it is almost impossible not to invoke ideas and
insights coming from a plethora of disciplines. This need for multidisci-
plinary research is nicely captured by Lamont and Pierson (2019, p. 6) in
their recent paper: “At a moment when societies struggle to deal successfully
with inequalities, identifying and exploring connections between economic,
social, psychological, political, and cultural dimensions of inequality holds
great promise. It can clarify why many forms of social inequalities appear
so intractable, often deepening or broadening over time. It also can provide
insights into the kinds of interventions that might attenuate, ameliorate, or
counteract deepening inequalities.” Books that bring together the view-
points of several disciplines are even more important in a time where
scholars and politicians tend to be experts in only one field of exper-
tise. Some ninety years ago, José Ortega y Gasset (1932) already worried
about what he called the Barbarism of specialisation. As such the current
volume also feeds into the current trend towards more interdisciplinary
approaches to pressing social, political and economic issues. We therefore
express our hope that this book will invite the reader to look beyond the
boundaries of his/her own expertise or field of interest and get inspired
by the many insights that are provided by other disciplines.
Antwerp, Belgium François Levrau

Noel Clycq
viii Preface
References
Baker, J., Lynch, K., Cantillon, S., & Walsh, J. (2009). Equality: From theory
to action. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lamont, M., & Pierson, P. (Eds.). (2019). Inequality as a multidimensional
process. Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 148(3),
1–190.
Li, M., & Tracer, D. (2017). Interdisciplinary perspectives on fairness, equity, and
justice. Cham: Springer International Press.
Ortega Y Gasset, J. (1932). The revolt of the masses. New York, London: Norton
& Company.
Contents
Part I Introduction
1 Introduction: Equality as a Multifaceted Concept 3

François Levrau and Noel Clycq
Part II Theories & Histories
2 Egalitarianism: A Tour d’horizon 43

François Levrau
3 Equality, Rights and Community: A Long Term

Perspective 103
Bert De Munck
4 Multiculturalism Today: Difference, Equality

and Interculturalism 135
Tariq Modood and Tamar de Waal
ix
x Contents
Part III Institutions & Policies
5 Religion and Equality in the Workplace:

A Legal-Philosophical Analysis 167
François Levrau and Leni Franken
6 Economic Equality and the Welfare State 199

Wim Van Lancker and Aaron Van den Heede
7 Gender, Anti-discrimination and Diversity: The EU’s

Role in Promoting Equality 231
Ruby Gropas
Part IV Experiences & Impressions
8 How Do People React to (In)Equality and (In)Justice?

A Psychological Approach 267
Johanna Pretsch
9 What Welfare Principles Do Europeans Prefer?

An Analysis of Their Attitudes Towards Old Age
Pensions and Unemployment Benefits 295
Tim Reeskens and Wim van Oorschot
10 A Transdisciplinary Cultural Studies’ Approach

to Inequality: What Can We Learn from Precarity
Studies and Why Does Art Matter? 321
Sieglinde Lemke
Index 347
Notes on Contributors
Noel Clycq is Research Professor in training and education sciences at

the research group Edubron at the University of Antwerp. He focuses on
issues of diversity, globalisation and the governance of learning. In the
past he held the chair ‘European values: Discourses and prospects’ at the
History department and was senior researcher at the Centre for Migra-
tion and Intercultural studies (University of Antwerp). He publishes in
national as well as international journals on issues related to ethnicity,
gender, migration, multiculturalism, education and the family. He (co-
)coordinated large-scale interuniversity projects at the national as well as
the European level, and supervises several Ph.D.-projects on early school
leaving, collective identity formation, emotion and school belonging, the
(un)making of Muslim identities and community education.
Bert De Munck is Full Professor at the History Department at the
University of Antwerp, teaching ‘Early Modern History’, ‘Theory of
Historical Knowledge’ and ‘History of Science and Society’. He is a
member of the Centre for Urban History, Antwerp, and the Director
of the interdisciplinary Urban Studies Institute and the International
Scientific Research Community (WOG) ‘Urban Agency: The Historical
xi
xii Notes on Contributors
Fabrication of the City as an Object of Study’. His research concentrates

on early modern cities, in particular craft guilds, civil society, poor relief
and the ‘repertoires of evaluation’ regarding skills and products. Relevant
publications are Guilds, Labour and the Urban Body Politic: Fabricating
Community in the Southern Netherlands, 1300 –1800 (Routledge, 2018);
‘Disassembling the City: A Historical and an Epistemological View on
the Agency of Cities’, Journal of Urban History (2017), 43, 5, 811–829;
and ‘Artisans, Products and Gifts: Rethinking the History of Material
Culture in Early Modern Europe’, Past & Present (August 2014), 224,
39–74.
Tamar de Waal is Assistant Professor in legal and political theory at the
Amsterdam Law School of the University of Amsterdam. Her disser-
tation Conditional Belonging: A Legal-Philosophical Inquiry into Inte-
gration Requirements for Immigrants in Europe (2017) won the VWR-
prize for best dissertation in legal philosophy in The Netherlands and
Belgium. She has published articles in, among others, Journal of Intercul-
tural Studies, Comparative Migration Studies and Buffalo Human Rights
Law Review. In 2021, her first monograph will be published by Hart
Publishing.
Leni Franken studied philosophy (University of Antwerp/KULeuven)
and religious sciences (KULeuven). She obtained her Ph.D. in polit-
ical philosophy at the University of Antwerp, where she currently works
as a teaching assistant and senior researcher. Her research focuses on
autonomy-based liberalism; church–state relations; financing religions;
neutrality; faith-based schools; and religious and citizenship education.
On these topics, she published two monographs and numerous national
and international journal articles and book chapters.
Ruby Gropas is Adviser on Social Affairs at the European Commission
and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges. She holds a
Lectureship in International Relations at the Law Faculty of the Univer-
sity of Thrace and has worked at the Hellenic Foundation for Euro-
pean and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and McKinsey & Co. She was
Southeast Europe Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International
Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, Visiting Fellow with the Centre
Notes on Contributors xiii
for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford Univer-

sity, and Research Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence.
Her research and publications have focused on migration, European
integration and human rights. She holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge
University.
Sieglinde Lemke is Professor of American Studies in the University of
Freiburg, and a permanent fellow at the Hutchins Centre at Harvard
University. She is also the director of the Black Forest Writing Seminar.
She is the author of three monographs and 35 articles and has given
guest lectures at numerous universities in the United States, Australia,
India and Europe. Her research was funded by the German Research
Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Freiburger Institute for Advanced
Studies, and the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Her
book Inequality, Poverty, and Precarity in Contemporary American Culture
(2017) offers the most comprehensive analysis of the cultural discourse
on socioeconomic inequity.
François Levrau holds a M.A. in Clinical Psychology and a M.A. in
Moral Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences. Currently he is
senior researcher and teaching assistant at the University of Antwerp.
He published about issues related to, multiculturalism, social cohe-
sion, recognition and higher education. Articles appeared among others
in Comparative Migration Studies, Cosmos and History, Ethical Perspec-
tives, Ethnicities, Political Quarterly, Research in Higher Education, Res
Philosophica, Res Publica, The Pluralist.
Tariq Modood is the founding Director of the Bristol University
Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship. He has
held over 40 grants and consultancies (UK, European and the United
States), has over 25 (co-)authored and (co-)edited books and reports
and over 250 articles or chapters in political philosophy, sociology
and public philosophy. He is the co-founding editor of the interna-
tional journal Ethnicities. His publications include Multicultural Poli-
tics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain (2005), Still Not Easy
Being British: Struggles for Multicultural Citizenship (2010) and Essays on
Secularism and Multiculturalism (2019).
xiv Notes on Contributors
Johanna Pretsch is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of

Koblenz-Landau in the Department of Differential Psychology and
Psychological Assessment and a family therapist and systemic counsellor.
While she is dedicated to the transfer of knowledge between theory and
practice, her main research interests are justice experiences of children
and adolescents, individual differences in education, justice in education
as well as the development of civic attitudes and behaviour in children
and adolescents.
Tim Reeskens is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology at
Tilburg University, Netherlands. His research interest lies in the compar-
ative study of political and social attitudes, with a focus on social capital,
welfare attitudes and national identity. Tim is the national programme
director of the European Values Study Netherlands. His work appeared
in several sociological journals, including European Sociological Review,
International Journal of Comparative Sociology and Journal of European
Social Policy.
Aaron Van den Heede worked as a researcher at the Herman Deleeck
Centre of Social Policy at the University of Antwerp from 2008 to 2012.
From 2012 to 2017 he joined the research department of the Belgian
National Union of Socialist Mutual Health Funds. In 2018 he joined the
Centre for Sociological Research (CESO) at the University of Leuven.
His main research topics have been social and health care inequality
and poverty in general. Since 2019, he returned to the Belgian National
Union of Socialist Mutual Health Funds in the role of team leader of an
administrative unit. Aaron holds a master’s degree in Sociology (Ghent
University).
Wim Van Lancker is an Assistant Professor of social work and social
policy at the Centre for Sociological Research, University of Leuven. He
is the governor and treasurer of the Foundation for International Studies
on Social Security (FISS). He published widely in high-ranking journals
and edited volumes on the redistributive outcomes of the welfare state in
comparative perspective, in particular on the design and effectiveness of
social policy measures in relation to poverty and inequality in the early
years. He is co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy.
Notes on Contributors xv
Wim van Oorschot is Professor of Social Policy at KU Leuven,

Belgium. His expertise is in the field of the EU-comparative analysis of
the relationships between culture and welfare state. He is initiator and
coordinator of the Welfare Attitudes repeat modules of the European
Social Surveys 2008 and 2016, and co-editor of The Social Legitimacy of
Targeted Welfare: Attitudes to Welfare Deservingness, Edward Elgar, 2017.
He is Honorary President of ESPAnet, the Network for European Social
Policy Analysis.
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Ten capabilities according to Martha Nussbaum (Source

Nussbaum [2000]) 63
Fig. 6.1 Social expenditures as % of Gross Domestic Product
(GDP), 1880–2015 (Source Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and
Max Roser [2018]) 205
Fig. 6.2 Cycles of want and plenty over the life course (Source
Rowntree [1901], taken from Hills [2015]) 208
Fig. 6.3 Income sources in contemporary welfare states over
the life course (Source EU-SILC 2016, author’s
computations) 209
xvii
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 6.4 Social spending and poverty (panel A) and income

inequality (panel B) (Source OECD SOCX database
and OECD Income Distribution database. Note Poverty
rate is the share of individuals living in a household
with an equivalized disposable income below 60% of
median equivalized disposable household income in the
country of residence. Disposable household income is
equivalized using the modified OECD-scale to render
incomes of households of different size comparable.
Income inequality is measured by means of the Gini
coefficient. Social expenditures comprise spending on
social protection, labour market policies and health care,
and tax breaks with social purposes) 213
Fig. 6.5 National income (NNI) per capita and poverty (panel A)
and income inequality (panel B) (Source OECD Income
distribution database. Note national income (NNI) per
capita is expressed as a precentage of average NNI per
capita across OECD countries. For the definition of
poverty and inequality, see note under Fig. 6.4) 217
Fig. 6.6 Poverty (panel A) and income inequality (panel B)
based on market and disposable income (Source OECD
Income distribution database. Note: Redistribution is
measured as the difference in percentage points between
market income and disposable income. For definition
of poverty and inequality, see note under Fig. 6.4. The
dashed bar shows the amount of redistribution achieved) 220
Fig. 9.1 Distribution of preferences towards redistribution of old
age pensions and unemployment benefits across countries 302
List of Tables
Table 7.1 A comparative look at the scope of EU

Anti-discrimination Directives 246
Table 9.1 Effects of individual level variables from multilevel
multinomial regression analyses for explaining
preferences for equity and equality over need 305
Table 9.2 Parameter estimates of multilevel multinomial
regression analyses of bivariate national-level covariates
explaining preferences for equity and equality over need 311
Table 9.3 Parameter estimates of multilevel multinomial
regression models of multivariate national-Level
covariates explaining preferences for equity and equality
over need 313
xix
Part I
Introduction
1
Introduction: Equality as a Multifaceted
Concept
François Levrau and Noel Clycq
1.1 Introduction
At least since the Enlightenment the idea(l) of equality had a deep influ-
ence on the Western world. Despite individual differences, at a deeper
level, it was thought that all people are morally equal and therefore
should be treated as equals and thus with equal respect and concern.
While a political and moral consensus on the importance of this idea(l)
gradually emerged, explaining what it conceptually, discursively, and
politically entails has turned out to be very difficult. In the nine chapters
of this book, it will become clear that equality, despite its function as a
leading (moral and political) ideal, remains what Gaillie (1956) coined
an ‘essentially contested concept ’, both in terms of theory and practice.
F. Levrau (B)
Centre Pieter Gillis, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
e-mail: Francois.levrau@uantwerpen.be
N. Clycq
Edubron, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
e-mail: noel.clycq@uantwerpen.be
© The Author(s) 2021 3

F. Levrau and N. Clycq (eds.), Equality,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54310-5_1
4 F. Levrau and N. Clycq
In this introductory chapter we outline some of the main issues in the

study of equality, many of which will be picked up in more detail by
the contributing authors of this book. We start with the Enlightenment
as this was the period where ‘equality’ was forcefully put on the political
and philosophical (albeit mostly European and North-American) agenda.
While the ideal was put forward, history shows that in many cases the
equal treatment of all people was still often distorted. In the next two
sections, we deal with contemporary challenges on the socioeconomic
and sociocultural level. After characterizing these ‘two faces of inequality’
we explain why and when inequality is a moral wrong and which types
of policies can be implemented to make societies more egalitarian. We
then consider the question why some forms of equality are so persistent
and why skeptic voices remain. In the last section, the nine chapters of
the book are presented.
1.2 Moral Equality: An Enlightened

and Spiritual Ideal
The ‘enlightened’ eighteenth century was a remarkable period as it
was the century wherein European and North American philosophy
reached a highpoint. Philosophers in France (e.g. D’Alembert, Diderot,
Montesquieu, Voltaire), but also in Scotland (e.g. Hutcheson, Hume,
Reid, Smith), Germany (e.g. Kant, Lessing, Mendelssohn) and America
(e.g. Franklin, Jefferson, Paine)—to mention just some countries and
famous intellectuals—were convinced that one should rely on ‘reason’
to shape societies’ economy, politics, education, and culture. ‘Reason’
provided an instrument that would solve all problems. Moreover, as all
people were thought to be gifted with reason, they were, from a moral
point of view, considered to be each other’s equals. A just government,
therefore, needs to treat all people with equal respect and concern. While
this reasoning seems straightforward, we discuss below the many tensions
that came with it. Moreover, this ‘Age of Reason’ did not appear ex
nihilo. The bold statements that the use of ‘reason’ and the idea of ‘moral
equality’ would improve human society and the living conditions of all
people originated in the successes that came along with the scientific
revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The belief in reason-

able and scientific progress also matched with ideas of earlier thinkers
such as Bayle, Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, Locke, Spinoza, and human-
ists like Erasmus and Moore. Several movements, ideas, and inventions
thus paved the way for the Enlightenment as an intellectual culmination.
The development of the preponderance of the notion of reason was often
argued to be one of the main triggers for the emancipation of individuals
from religious dogmas, but it has recently been argued that we have to
go beyond the antithesis between ‘religion’ and ‘Enlightenment’ because
the Enlightenment is in many respects indebted to religious sources and
beliefs (see Gillespie, 2008; Sorkin, 2008, but see also the chapter of De
Munck in this book).
A famous dictum that is often associated with the Enlightenment is
‘Liberty, equality and solidarity’. This dictum reflected the philosophical
and political ideals that have helped people to end the traditionally and
hierarchically structured Ancien Régime, known for the privileges and
power of the nobility and clergy executed at the expense of the common
people. However, while the French revolutionaries aimed to replace this
regime with a reason-based system, their ‘Revolution’ ended in terror
(Robespierre). For historians, the terror that came along with the French
Revolution implied the end of the Enlightenment as a relatively distinct
period in time. Yet, although the Enlightenment, as a period, ended in
rather bloody way, philosophers and politicians today can still think of
themselves as ‘enlightened intellectuals’ to the extent that they embrace
some elements of the so-called ‘revolutionary ideals’. In that sense, the
Enlightenment could be seen as an intellectual movement the end of
which has not been reached (and maybe will never be reached). Bristow
(2017) puts it thus: ‘For Enlightenment thinkers themselves, however, the
Enlightenment is not an historical period, but a process of social, psycho-
logical or spiritual development, unbound to time or place’. Indeed, in a
matter of speaking, the ideals of ‘freedom, equality and solidarity’ serve
as a perpetuum mobile. After all, as the idea of ‘moral equality’ is spread
around the geographical and temporal spectrum we can see that more
and more people indeed want to be treated as equals. In a quote that
seems also appropriate for current times characterized by socioeconomic
inequality (see below), Tocqueville (2002, p. 6) puts it likes this: ‘Is it
credible that the democracy which has annihilated the feudal system and
vanquished kings will respect the citizen and the capitalist? ’ Once people
have come into contact with the ideal of equality, sooner or later they
will revolt when they are not treated as equals. This means that equality
reflects a strong moral intuition.
Notwithstanding the complexity with which one is faced when
starting to elaborate on the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and
solidarity—particularly what it means to put them into practice—the
essence of these ideals remains crystal clear. People, it was argued, should
be stimulated to become more self-directed both in thought and action,
as this awakening of the intellectual and autonomous powers is key to
a more fulfilling human life. People should thereby become free to live
according to their own chosen conception of the good life and be able to
reject or release the chains that bind them (liberty). Kant (1970, p. 54)
stated in still one of the most cited philosophical passages that ‘Enlight-
enment is man’s emergence from his self -incurred immaturity. Immaturity is
the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.
This immaturity is self -incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but
lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The
motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have the courage to use
your own understanding! ’ Therefore, what ultimately emerged from the
eighteenth century, was a rather ‘spiritual image’ of the human being.
People can vary from a physical point of view, but not from a spiritual
point of view, considering they are each gifted with reason and thus with
a capacity for autonomous thinking. No matter how different people are
in terms of body, capacities, age, gender, etc., at the most fundamental
level they are all the same and are therefore each other’s moral equals
(equality). This perspective highlights the humanity within each indi-
vidual being—and thus the equal moral value—and it is this humanity
that is protected by means of all types of ‘equality politics’. Solidarity,
then, refers to the involvement of individuals with other individuals:
people should take care of each other because they are connected and
are all part of one ‘spiritual species’.
As we have seen, views on politics, philosophy and science in the
Western world reached their peak during the Enlightenment. The idea of
the moral equality of all men, along with freedom and solidarity, grad-
ually led to established principles such as (1) the democratic governance
where all people must have an equal say in matters that affect all; (2)
the rule of law that equally protects people against the power of the
state by ensuring that the government is bound by its own laws; (3)
the welfare state with social rights that ensure that all people have equal
and sufficient opportunities to make use of their liberties; and (4) the
democratic (and assumed meritocratic) institutions such as the educa-
tional system and the labour market that ensure upward social mobility
for all categories of individuals. The idea of human equality was also
taken up formally in all kinds of declarations, charters, and modern
constitutions, notably the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and
the Citizen (1789), the American Declaration of Independence (1776),
the US Constitution (1787), and later also in the Universal Declara-
tion of Human Rights (1948), the Charter of Fundamental Rights of
the EU (2000), and was followed in international organizations such as
the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Amer-
ican States, and the African Union. As the idea of human equality spread
throughout the Western European and Anglo-American world, it has also
generated a series of political and emancipatory movements designed to
contest the lingering presence or enduring effects of older ethnic and
racial hierarchies (i.e. decolonization, African–American civil right move-
ment, multiculturalism) (Kymlicka, 2007). Moreover, it also inspired
movements to contest all types of hierarchies, such as gender, disability
and sexual orientation.
1.3 Why Enlightened Politics Were/Are Not

Always so Enlightened
However, if history makes one thing clear, it is that we cannot speak of
an obvious linear and straightforward trajectory towards more equality
for all; neither in the (recent) past, nor in current times. Despite the
positive depiction made by Pinker (2018) and Rosling (2018), ‘equality’
has been (and probably will always be) a precarious ideal, the survival of
which cannot simply be assumed. More often than not, the ideal and its
realization has been impeded by all sorts of countermovements, ideals,

or convictions (see also the chapter of De Munck in this book).
A first example of how linear progress is hampered is ‘race science’.
Rather than that the so-called rationalization and scientification of Euro-
pean states led to more (universal) equality, in the nineteenth and
twentieth century a whole ‘race science’ was developed precisely to ratio-
nally prove that the white European race was superior and to legitimize
the subordination of other races. This ultimately gave rise to specific
convictions (i.e. social darwinism) and policies (i.e. eugenics, separatism,
racism, and fascism) (Bashford & Levine, 2010).
A second example relates to revolutionary France as it became clear
that equality was ‘bounded’ to specific groups in society. The Enlight-
enment ideals of ‘Fraternité, Liberté & Fraternité ’ were, for example, not
meant to be applied to the ‘natives’ in France’s colonies. The political
and legal equality that was enforced by the French Revolution also left
intact the socioeconomic inequality and therefore the associated polit-
ical and social lack of freedom. On the basis of the right of election,
there was a distinction between ‘les citoyens actifs’ and ‘les citoyens passifs’,
which means that the constitution excluded some three million of the
total of seven million men (women were excluded from the beginning)
above twenty-five from all electoral transactions. Moreover, the political
and legally validated economic freedom of the bourgeoisie led to huge
socioeconomic inequalities with the lower classes (Tocqueville, 2002).
So, while ‘equality for all’ was at least officially proclaimed by many
leading thinkers during the Enlightenment, what history illustrates is
that despite people being eager to protect the so-called universal ideal
of human equality, they usually defended that idea within the realm
of specific (e.g. national) contexts and/or communities, and most often
only for specific categories of citizens within these contexts. Entitlement
to civic rights, for example, was (and still is) restricted (in every nation
state of the Global North), and from the very start this created processes
of civic stratification (Morris, 2009). To put it like this: the universal
moral equality was rapidly translated into concrete policies to protect
specific rights of specific people, in casu government’s own citizens. This
is already visible in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,
a document influenced by the idea of a universal human nature, and
drawn up by the French National Constituent Assembly in 1789. That

Declaration became the basis for a nation of free French citizens, which
became equally protected by the French law. Drafted on the foundational
idea of the ‘universal’ human nature and adjoined rights, it led to a decla-
ration of civil rights (but not necessarily their full implementation) for
(all) French citizens in a specific French national context. The protection
of universal rights thus rapidly became a protection for the equal rights
of particular citizens.
Let us take the elaboration of the last point as our third example.
Throughout history clear signs of processes of civic stratification that
revolve around the question of who is entitled to citizenship or to acquire
citizenship—and thus to equal treatment as equal citizens before the
law and the state—were always present (Morris, 2012). These examples
emphasize the importance of studying the ‘real life’ limitations that are
placed upon conceptualizations of the ‘ideal’ of human equality. From
early on these tensions were present in discussions about race, nationality,
and citizenship, and they are still at the heart of the tensions emerging in
ongoing discussions on migration and the inflow of refugees (Bhambra,
2015; Morris, 2011). Moreover, as several new studies have shown, the
idea of an equal and cosmopolitan European ideal is fundamentally
flawed. Not only, as is shown above, does this ideal go hand in hand
with the emergence of some of the most severe and exclusionary scientific
studies and policy actions, it also steered supranational European politics
in the postwar period. Hansen and Jonsson (2017), for example, showed
that the political discourses and practices of the founding fathers of
European Unity (the current European Union) were rife with references
to the superiority of European civilization and contained fundamental
contradictions in their reasoning and ambitions with respect to equality.
The EURAFRICA project is a particularly illuminating example. After
WW II the emerging ‘European Community’ in the 1950s and 1960s
was mainly focused on the inclusion of the African countries (and its
resources and peoples) colonized by individual European countries such
as France and Belgium into the collective European Unification project
to the benefit of all European states included in this unity. Or, to put
it in the words of Jean Monnet himself: France could give Africa as a
dowry to Europe (Hansen & Jonsson, 2011). This was felt to be neces-
sary to share the ‘benefits’ of the colonies across European countries to
strengthen them all together, instead of strengthening individual Euro-
pean states. So, in the early postwar decades, one can speak of a collective
colonialism (of united European states) rather than of an individual colo-
nialism of individual states. The ideal of universal equality was clearly not
part of the practices of the ‘European unification project ’. Thus even in
such comprehensive and cosmopolitan political and economic projects
to prevent war in Europe and to encourage intra-European cooperation
on a supranational level, the ideal of ‘equality’ was mainly focused on
achieving ‘equality’ for ‘in-group members’ rather than for ‘out-group
members’.
A fourth example is that Enlightenment was not only been held
responsible for the reign of terror during the French Revolution, in
later times it was also accused for being the breeding ground for
fascism, communism, mismanagement in psychiatry, economic exploita-
tion, sexism, extinction species, reckless utopian projects, environmental
pollution, and much more (Garrard, 2006; Gottlieb, 2016). While some
will argue that this has nothing to do with the Enlightenment ideals, the
point is that there are several possible readings of the Enlightenment.
The mentioned historical examples show that ‘equality’ was certainly
part of the political and public narratives in European societies, but
they also illustrate the limitations of the narrative of equality. It sounds
well in theory, but in reality, it was hard to find a society where all
people were indeed treated ‘as equals’ or that really brought the idea of
‘moral equality’ into practice. Also in current times the ideal of equality
is challenged. While some claim that there is a more or less (though
fragile) linear progress towards more equality (Pinker, 2018), others
point strongly at the tenacity of specific inequalities, even to the extent
that certain inequalities—e.g. in the socioeconomic domain as shown by
Piketty (2014)—are increasing, thus empirically denouncing the linear
progress approach. Also in the field of sociocultural equality, it would be
foolish to claim that there is only a steady progress to be observed, as not
all people nowadays enjoy a full and equal amount of respect and ‘new’
groups may encounter stigmatization (e.g. LGBTQ). In the following
two sections we focus on the ‘two faces of inequality’: socioeconomic and
sociocultural face. What are some of the equality challenges for modern
societies?
1.4 Current Challenges

on the Socioeconomic Level
While the recent work of Atkinson (2015), Piketty (2014), Piketty,
Chancel, Alvaredo, Saez, and Zuckman (2018), and Stiglitz (2012) has
put the debate on socioeconomic inequality from a macro-level perspec-
tive back on the agenda and while former President of the United States
of America, Barak Obama, described rising income inequality even as
the ‘defining challenge of our time ’ (Newell, 2013), there is no general
trend to higher inequality when one takes a look at inequality across
the globe. In some countries inequality has risen, while in other coun-
tries it has fallen. Based on estimates from two databases (PovcalNet
which is run by the World Bank and the Chartbook of Economic
Inequality), Hasell (2018) comes to the conclusion that there are clear
regional patterns. Almost all Latin American and Caribbean countries
show very high levels of inequality, but considerable declines from 1990
to 2015. Conversely, advanced industrial economies show lower levels
of inequality, but it increases in most, though not all, instances. There
were, for example, rises in inequality in some of the world most popu-
lous countries, including China, India, the United States, and Indonesia
(together accounting for around about 45% of the world population).
A number of Eastern European countries experienced rising inequality
as they transitioned from socialist regimes. Across the studied countries
from the Middle East and North Africa region, there are falls. In Sub-
Saharan Africa and East Asia and Pacific region, the trends are more
mixed. Even though the figures are different from region to region, it is
clear that socioeconomic inequality still exists. Socioeconomic inequality
is accompanied by several challenges of which we will mention only four.
These closely related challenges all point at the danger that not all people
are treated as moral equivalent persons, in the sense that they cannot fall
back on the same secure and stable grounds upon which they can built
up their personal lives.
The first challenge has to do with the welfare state. Though welfare
policies have been installed for many decades as concrete ways in which
national and European politicians can show the extent to which they
value socioeconomic equality, recent research has illustrated serious flaws
with respect to the protection of vulnerable groups (Cantillon & Vanden-
broucke 2013; Cantillon & Van Lancker, 2013; see also the chapter of
Van Lancker & Van den Heede in this book). The paradox, however,
is that economic growth has not always been a way to feed the welfare
state, but it has rather become a (neoliberal) end in itself and yet a way
to condone the dismantling of the welfare state. Many welfare states in
fact did not succeed in making any further progress in the fight against
(relative) income poverty, particularly within the working-age popula-
tion. How, then, should the welfare state be reconceptualized in an era of
increasing fluidity, globalization, mobility, meritocracy (see below), and
neoliberal dictates that might condone forms of inequality? And, what
type of inequalities can we accept?
This brings us neatly to a second challenge; the role of meritocracy
and hence the expectation that one’s educational and/or labour market
success is primarily (or solely) due to one’s individual ambitions, efforts,
and choices. It is not a coincidence that while the equalizing impact
of welfare states is in decline, meritocratic narratives have become more
popular as they shift the responsibility for one’s socioeconomic situation
towards the level of the individual. What people have or have not, is
what they deserve. Yet, according to some, the welfare system spoils and
even maintains the ‘underclass’ (see, e.g., Dalrymple, 2001). The ethos
that comes along with meritocracy, however, can lead to increasing social
tensions and even to a demonization of the (poor) working class. Owen
(2011), for example, has described how the working class has gone from
‘salt of the earth’ to ‘scum of the earth’. The stereotype of the ‘chav’
is invoked to both avoid engagement with social and economic prob-
lems and to justify the inequality gap. Also egalitarian philosophers such
as Wolff (1998) have argued that ‘luck egalitarianism’—the view that
inequalities are legitimate and thus should not be compensated when
they derive from personal choices—promotes a wrong kind of ethos by
encouraging the state to view the disadvantaged with distrust and as
potential cheaters. Needless to say, but this stereotypical portrayal can
be detrimental for the shared sense of belonging together, in particular

combined with emerging tensions related to an inflow of refugees and
continuing migration (as migrants often preoccupies the less paid jobs).
The question, thus, is the extent to which meritocracy jeopardizes social
cohesion?
A third related challenge has to do with the ‘numerous and rapid succes-
sive technological innovations’ that have dramatically changed current
societies. The evidence and the speed with which these changes take place
have endangered some jobs, especially low-skilled jobs that can be taken
over by all sorts of technology-driven equipment (Goldin & Katz, 2008).
Some highly skilled jobs (especially those with cognitive and manual
routine tasks that can be executed by computers) are also endangered.
Nevertheless, the technological developments also provide opportunities
for the creation of new jobs. These new jobs will increasingly rely on
specific profiles and on the so-called ‘21st century skills’, even though
there is still much debate on what these skills precisely are (Voogt &
Pareja Roblin, 2012). However, all kinds of institutional factors, such as
rigidities in the labour market, the insufficient influx of students (espe-
cially those with a migration background and/or lower socioeconomic
status) to higher education or the use of ‘non-adapted curricula’ (where,
e.g. routine skills are taught and creativity is not encouraged), make some
countries and individuals to greater or lesser degrees able to compensate
for the loss of certain jobs and to match the fast creation of jobs which
arise precisely because of innovation. The emergence of ‘knowledge-based
societies’ that rely on the capacities of their citizens to drive the innova-
tion, entrepreneurship, and dynamism of society’s economy bears the risk
of creating new social and economic division between those that are suffi-
ciently ‘adapted’ and those that have ‘anachronistic profiles’ (due to e.g.
the unadjusted curricula or the mere lack of talent to acquire the wanted
skills). How to secure that people with ‘anachronistic profiles’ will be
treated as equals, given the already mentioned popularity of meritocratic
discourse and the stigmatization of the working poor?
The mentioned appeal to responsibility also becomes apparent in a
fourth challenge that is related to discussions about ‘global and environ-
mental justice’ (e.g. Miller, 2007; Pogge & Metha, 2016). What do we
owe to those with whom we might not have a direct relation, but who
certainly suffer (in)directly because of our actions (e.g. carbon emission)?

Climate change is a global issue, but some will be more disadvan-
taged (IPCC, 2018). The climate change, is just one example, others
are the refugee crisis, the threat of terrorism, the banking crisis, and the
Covid-19 pandemic. Beck (1986) coined the term ‘risk society’ to refer
to those problems and challenges for which national institutes cannot
provide adequate solutions. What is needed is a global form of solidarity
implemented by powerful global policies. However, it remains uncer-
tain whether this can be ever be installed. After all, modern notions of
solidarity and social justice materialized in redistribution are first and
foremost based on national income taxes and national collective agree-
ments. The Brexit is just one example of the fragility of pan-national
organizations, and as we have seen in the previous section, despite the
universal consensus about the moral equality of all people, this ideal has
not automatically lead to a treatment of all people with the same degree
of respect and concern. How, thus, should we deal with the hazards
and insecurities induced by a global world if even our pan-national
institutions and goals seem so fragile?
1.5 Challenges on the Sociocultural Level

In recent years a specific way of describing current Western societies, and
in particular urban areas, is to define them as ‘superdiverse’ (Castles, De
Haas, & Miller, 2014; Vertovec, 2007). The diversification of societies
also impacts on current perceptions of and considerations on equality.
Indeed, in deservingness studies ‘migrant background’ is one of the few
‘identity categories’ that seems to play a crucial role in people’s view
on who ‘deserves’ support (see also the chapter of Reeskens & van
Oorschot in this book). When it comes to the increase of diversity due
to migration, the challenges for equality are at least fourfold. What these
challenges have in common is that they point at a collapse of social cohe-
sion. If a society lacks a shared sense of togetherness, it lacks the social
basis for redistribution. Socioeconomic challenges, thus, go hand in hand
with important sociocultural transformations in societies. When people
don’t care about the fate of others because they do not feel sufficiently
connected, it will become very difficult to uphold the idea of treating

people as equals.
A first challenge is related to the so-called ‘heterogeneity-redistribution
trade-off ’ (Banting & Kymlicka, 2006). Several studies indicate that
redistributive attitudes would be difficult to maintain when societies
become more diverse. Goodhart (2004) and Pearce (2004) refer to what
they call a ‘progressive dilemma’ between diversity and redistribution.
The idea is that the more different we are from one another, and hence
the more diverse our ways of living and our religious and ethnic back-
grounds are, the less we share a moral consensus or a sense of fellow
feeling, the less happy we will be in the long run and the less we will
support a generous welfare state. According to Putnam (2007) diversity
brings out the turtle in all of us: in the superdiverse era, people are more
afraid of each other and therefore tend to hunker down or withdraw.
The relation between heterogeneity and solidarity has been the subject of
many studies—not least because Putnam believed to have found a ‘social
law’ and therefore invited fellow researchers from all over the world to
examine his thesis. The broad post-Putnam research, in fact, has led to
what Van der Meer and Tolsma (2014) call a ‘cacophony of empirical find-
ings’ that make it difficult to make strong and general statements. While
there are many variables that need to be taken into account, it is clear
that increasing amounts of diversity forms a challenge, in particular for
societies that ware generally imagined as rather homogenous. According
to Bauböck (2016) there is no dilemma, but rather a trilemma between
openness for immigration, multicultural inclusion, and social redistri-
bution. The question then concerns the possibility of achieving social
solidarity in culturally diverse states with fairly open borders.
A second challenge is related to what is known as the ‘recogni-
tion-redistribution trade-off ’ (Banting & Kymlicka, 2006). Policies that
recognize the ethnocultural diversity by means of diversity accommo-
dating and multicultural policies would be detrimental for redistribution
attitudes. The claim here is that recognition policies emphasize too much
what is different and therefore undermine the shared sense of belonging
together as a condition for feelings of solidarity and redistribution atti-
tudes (Fraser, 1995; Koopmans, 2010). Or, as Barry (2001, p. 8) puts
it: ‘A politics of multiculturalism undermines a politics of redistribution’.
However, this is up until now not substantiated by empirical evidence

(Kymlicka, 2012; Levrau & Loobuyck, 2013; Vertovec & Wessendorf,
2010). Whether or not multiculturalism leads to a collapse in feelings
of social belonging, it is a fact that reciprocity and exchange between
equals, have become challenged by ‘social imaginaries’ that construct
rigid boundaries between specific social groups. Nussbaum (2012), for
example, has pointed at the impact of populism and far-right parties
that feeds on a ‘politics of fear ’. Increasing amounts of uncertainty, fear,
complexity, and individualism as a consequence of rapidly changing
social, cultural, and economic processes pose fundamental challenges to
ingrained notions and practices of solidarity that were easier to trigger in
rather homogeneous cultural and stable communities. One of the issues
that societies (from the local to the supranational level) will have to deal
with is how to keep people together given the impact of migration, glob-
alization and technologization which have led to a ‘superdiverse’ and
‘liquid’ modernity, to use the apt phrases of respectively Vertovec (2007)
and Bauman (2000).
A third and related challenge has to do with the observation of
Habermas (2008), namely that large parts of European societies have
become ‘postsecular societies’ as they witness the persistence or resur-
gence of religious beliefs and practices. What is the place of religion
in a society that has become more and more secular? To what extent
is Islam (and other types of religious diversity) compatible with the
western liberal-democratic rule of law, and settled freedoms, equalities,
and rights? This question has become even more important since the rise
of Islamic extremism. While Marx (1978), for example, wrote about the
‘Jewish Question’ in the nineteenth century, nowadays, it seems fair to
say that it is not the situation of the Jews that stirs attention, but of Islam,
eventually leading to a much-debated ‘Muslim Question’ in European
societies (Norton, 2013; Parekh, 2008). Islam has undoubtedly become
‘the religion of the pariahs’, which may destabilize the common ground
for inclusive societies built upon a shared sense of belonging together. All
societies thus have to be vigilant about the possibility that they become
imbalanced as specific groups get negatively targeted.
A fourth threat is caused by the belief in what is called ‘Big Society’, a
political ideology developed in the early twenty-first century that aims for
strengthening the initiatives of citizens and their associations, reforming

public services and addressing the power of local networks in order
to deal with the economic, democratic, and social crisis (Scott, 2011).
Formal British Prime Minister David Cameron (2010), for example,
has argued that ‘the Big Society is about a huge culture change where
people, in their everyday lives, in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in
their workplace don’t always turn to officials, local authorities or central
government for answers to the problems they face but instead feel both
free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities’.
Citizens must be empowered to play a more active role in society. There-
fore the government pulls back and leaves more space for citizens and
professionals, while highlighting the responsibility of people rather than
their weaknesses. While encouraging people to work together in close
networks might seem a promising strategy to foster solidarity and tackle
inequality, the government in fact retreats and delegates responsibility
to the people. Social divisions may then occur between those who are
willing to and capable of empowering themselves both on the indi-
vidual and communal levels and those who are not. Furthermore, the
need for citizens’ initiatives is clearly most stringent in vulnerable neigh-
bourhoods (which are often areas segregated in terms of ethnocultural
origin), but they are frequently populated by residents who are not always
able and do not have the resources to absorb the effects of a receding
government (Engbersen, Snel, & ‘t Hart, 2015). The Big Society respon-
sibilities relate well with the contemporary focus on ‘civic integration for
newcomers’. While in this reasoning multicultural policies are thought
to pamper newcomers leading to a so-called backlash against multicul-
turalism (see above), civic integration would provide newcomers with
the necessary opportunities to find their own way in society (Joppke,
2004). If newcomers fail to integrate, it is easier to assert that it is their
own fault, as they were ostensibly given the necessary tools. The rigor
with which Big Society and civic integration policies are implemented,
is a good illustration of the meritocratic ideal that can be increasingly
detected in current societies (see above). The risk is, again, that not all
people will enjoy equal status: those who find themselves in unequal
circumstances primarily have themselves to blame as they have not taken
up their responsibilities.
1.6 Why and When Is Inequality Is Morally

Wrong?
If we look at the examples of socioeconomic and sociocultural cleavages,
it becomes clear that what is wrong with inequality—and hence why
equality is important—is that the moral equality of people is denied as
some people are considered or treated as inferior or, in the worst case, as
even not fully human. Scanlon (2018) has summed up several specific
reasons why inequality is morally objectionable. The first reason has to
do with the fact that inequality creates status differences that are humili-
ating and stigmatizing. In some societies members of certain groups (e.g.
caste, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation) are perceived as infe-
rior and are therefore excluded from social roles and occupations that
have a high standing. A second reason has to do with the unacceptable
forms of power and control that the rich can exert over those who have
less. The management of large corporations, for example, can determine
the working conditions of the others. When people become extremely
dependent on the owners (in terms of how and when they should work,
what they earn, etc.), their feelings of autonomy and control over their
own life and their self-esteem will decrease, even to the extent that they
might feel humiliated or worthless. A third reason is that a great imbal-
ance in wealth and income jeopardizes the idea of equal socioeconomic
opportunity. People who grow up in a poor family usually have not been
given the same support, did not have access to the necessary resources or
cannot rely upon the full recognition of their agency and thus lack equal
opportunities. The place where the cradle stands has an unfairly large
impact on the possibility to become successful in later life, also due to the
limitations put on poor individuals and families by structural obstacles
and institutional actors such as policymakers, educators, and employers.
A fourth reason is related to the possibility that inequality in wealth and
income undermines the fairness of political institutions. The rich can
manipulate political life in the sense that they can weigh heavily on polit-
ical debates and influence particular outcomes (Christiano, 2012). A fifth
reason is that inequality can result from a failure of governments to treat
all people as equals by ignoring the needs and interests of specific cate-
gories of people/groups thereby differentiating between those deserving
support and those that do not. A sixth reason for why inequality (of
income and wealth) can be called morally wrong is that inequality can be
the result of economic unfair institutions. What is deemed to be unfair
here is, for example, the way in which unequal rewards are assigned
to certain economic roles or positions. Frank and Cook (1996) have
famously declared current society to be a ‘winner-take-all society’.
There are of course other objections to inequality. With an abundance
of figures, Marmot (2004) and especially Wilkinson and Pickett (2009,
2018) have shown that unequal societies have far-reaching consequences
on almost all criteria of health, including for the middle class and even
the higher class. The titles of the books of Wilkinson and Pickett say
it all: ‘Why more equal societies almost always do better ’ and ‘How more
equal societies reduce stress, restore sanity and improve everyone’s wellbeing ’.
Equal societies might also be preferred because it leads to more social
stability. After all, people share a sense of belonging, trust each other
more, and feel that the government cares for all people. If, for example,
a small group owns a disproportionately large part of the resources and if
that group can also slip through the loopholes through fiscal blackmail,
then the poor have reasons to think that their government is mainly in
favour of the ‘strongest’ or ‘richest’. A society that maintains great socioe-
conomic inequality seems to have more attention and respect for the
needs of the rich group. Moreover, if the ‘strongest’ do not set a good
example and if politics seem unable to restrain the ‘strongest’, feelings of
resentment at the ‘bottom’ of society will grow.
The listed arguments make clear that demands for equality are not
necessarily expressions of envy and that redistribution does not necessarily
imply an immoral interference of the individual liberty of the rich who
deserve their wealth (as proposed by Nozick, 1974). However, if equality
is indeed so important, should we then reduce the difference, even if this
means that no one becomes better? Many objections can be made against
this type of reasoning. Some (Parfit, 1984) have said we should focus on
the worst off, while others have claimed it is about making sure that
everybody has ‘enough’ (Frankfurt, 1987). These considerations (which
will be examined in the chapter of Levrau in this book), however, remain
deeply egalitarian when the poorness, lack of priority, or insufficiency
results from unequal status, violations of equal concern, or when they

reflect a lack of fairness in political and economic institutions.
1.7 Politics of Equality

A politics that wants to treat all people with equal concern and respect,
has to engage with the ‘two faces of inequality’ (socioeconomic and
sociocultural inequality). Both the socioeconomic and sociocultural hier-
archies can overlap as the most economically vulnerable groups are
frequently those who score the lowest in terms of sociocultural status.
However, they must be treated distinctly, since highly educated, affluent
immigrants, for example, may also be victims of racism, discrimination
or misrecognition. Thus, although the two politics can work together
(since in reality they frequently focus on the same target groups), they
are nevertheless distinct (because they focus on different dimensions of
equality). According to Honneth (2001), however, the politics of redis-
tribution falls under the politics of recognition because redistribution
claims ultimately are expressions of struggles for recognition (see also
Fraser & Honneth, 2003).
Multicultural policies are good examples of policies that deal with both
recognition and redistribution issues, for they often involve a signifi-
cant redistribution of economic resources and political power besides the
symbolic recognition of cultural identities (see the chapter of Modood
& De Waal in this book). Multiculturalists like Kymlicka (1995) and
Modood (2007) generally argue that it is too one-sided to define justice
exclusively in terms of distribution of material resources. Moreover, they
refer to the fact that thinking in terms of universal rights (such as
freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and assembly) may not address
the specific needs of minority groups. It is precisely in its contrast with
this standard liberalism that one can define the raison d’être of (liberal)
multiculturalism. Indeed, one popular way to deal with cultural and reli-
gious diversity is the implementation of a citizenship model based on
common citizenship rights. Multiculturalists argue that what appears on
the surface to be a neutral system is, on closer inspection, a system that
often favours the majority group. Due to seemingly inevitable processes
of nation-building, it is indeed the majority’s language that is used in

public institutions, the majority’s holidays that are recognized in the
public calendar, the majority’s history that is taught in schools, etc. The
consequence of this inevitable lack of cultural and language neutrality
is that access to one’s culture can be difficult for cultural minorities. A
compensating or accommodating multicultural policy is needed here. In
its liberal incarnation, such a policy is not concerned with bestowing
unfair privileges on certain groups; on the contrary, it tries to balance
laws and eliminate unfair disadvantages. According to multiculturalism,
there are cases in which differentiated treatment and thus the emphasis
on difference is the best way of treating all citizens as equals.
1.8 Enduring Equality

Thus far we have explained in general terms what equality refers to
(moral equality), how it can be denied (two faces of inequality), how the
denial comes to the fore in previous and current times (the challenges)
and how it can be dealt with (politics of equality). What we have not
considered yet is why some forms of inequality seem to endure. Given the
moral and political consensus about the importance of equality—at least
since the French Revolution, the idea of ‘equality’ has served as one of the
main political and normative ideals in European and North-American
societies as it has been taken up in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, is affirmed in many human rights documents and treaties, is a
nodal point taken up in many national policies, and is at the heart of
many political and philosophical reflections—it is remarkable that many
societies nowadays are still gripped by equality debates. As Lamont and
Pierson (2019, p. 5) state: ‘It is the persistence and deepening of inequality
that raises many of the most troubling issues’. Also Piketty (2014) worried
about the extent to which inequality takes extremely durable forms. In
one way or another structures of advantage and disadvantage seem to be
self-reinforcing and cumulative. Equality-generating policies and realities
that mitigate excessive inequalities are (at least partly) overshadowed by
inequality inducing processes. How does this come? How does inequality
exists, how is it perpetuated and, above all, how does that inequality over
individual life courses and generations become enduring? With Durable

inequality, Charles Tilly (1998) has written one of the key texts that deal
with these questions.
Central in the work of Tilly is the idea of ‘categorical inequality’.
Categories are asymmetrical, unequal social groups that often occur
in pairs and that can only be understood in relation to each
other (e.g. male/female, black/white, citizen/foreigner, have/have-nots,
child/adult,…). ‘The central argument runs like this: Large, significant
inequalities in advantages among human beings correspond mainly to cate-
gorical differences (…) rather than to individual differences in attributes,
propensities or performance’ (Tilly, 1998, p. 7). Tilly sees the boundaries
drawn between the two halves of categorical pairs as essential for creating
and maintaining inequality. Categories have two important functions in
perpetuating inequality: (1) a categorical structure facilitates the exploita-
tion and/or establishment of (old and/or new) favoured members and (2)
the high costs of a change of a categorical order perpetuate the existing
relationships or facilitate the introduction of existing relationships in
new circumstances. According to Tilly there are four basic mechanisms
that create and sustain categorical inequality: ‘exploitation’, ‘opportunity
hoarding’, ‘emulation’, and ‘adaptation’. Exploitation means that if people
already have some power, they can create added value through the efforts
of others (people who usually do not belong to their own category).
The second mechanism, the hoarding of opportunities, refers to the fact
that if members of a non-powerful group see an opportunity to gain
access to a resource that is valuable, they will attempt to monopolize this
access for their own group. By hoarding opportunities and monopolizing
knowledge within their own group, the non-powerful group also creates
inequality. Tilly does not see these mechanisms as deliberately creating
inequality. For him, inequality is rather a side effect of organizational
improvisation of individuals/groups to achieve something for themselves.
The inequality that results from exploiting and hoarding opportunities
is given a more sustainable form by two other mechanisms. Emulation
refers to copying existing social relationships because this is easier than
inventing new social relationships. An example is the phenomenon that
inequality in the division of labour between women and men within
families is ‘copied’ on the labour market in a division between men
and women professions. According to Tilly, this means that inequality

in households—women doing unpaid work for men—has entered the
labour market: women get paid less for work that looks like domestic
or care work. Adaptation is a process of socialization, whereby even the
most disadvantaged develop routines based on the existing structural
inequality. While copying and adaptation help solving many problems, it
also leads to the fixation of categorical pairs, and therefore of inequality.
Tilly is rather pessimistic about the possibilities of politics to reduce or
eliminate the patterns of inequality. According to him, states are also
subject to the described mechanisms. Moreover, they have the power to
legally fixate the categorical couples. States, for example, establish the
categorization of citizens, and thereby install inclusion and exclusion:
who is a citizen, who has a conditional citizenship, etc.? Members of the
dominant categorical groups also have more opportunities for exploita-
tion or for hoarding opportunities. They make continuous decisions
about how to draw the line between groups, how to arrange solidarity,
loyalty, and control, how to monopolize knowledge that leads to more
benefits for themselves.
Equality reduction, in fact, is often the result of the functioning
of a broad democracy, for example in the form of social movements.
However, even in that case, Tilly remains skeptical in the sense that social
movements often create or activate categorical couples, albeit with the
aim of preventing unjust treatment of the ‘weaker’ half of these couples.
In their struggle for recognition and inclusion, they present their own
category as coherently as possible and other categories are excluded or
seen as less important. This is a well-known critique that has also been
formulated by critics of identity politics who claim that struggles for
recognition often lead to essentialisation of a group and to ignoring
the interests of the so-called ‘minorities within the minorities’ (see, e.g.,
Eisenberg & Spinner-Halev, 2005).
However, at the same time (dominant) majority groups also engage in
‘identity politics’ but this is often overlooked as their engagement seems
self-evident and often remains unquestioned. Since the birth of ‘nation-
states’, in particular in the past two centuries, top-down strategies have
been implemented to secure the position of certain cultural emblems,
such as language and religion, deemed essential to further develop-

ment and continuity ‘the nation’ across future generations of ‘nationals’
(Wimmer & Feinstein, 2010). While at the time the imposition of, e.g.
one national language has had a major impact on social life and indi-
viduals, this has become a widely accepted strategy. However, mainly
due to ongoing migration in various countries these issues have come
to the fore again. For example, in national public education systems in
countries (and regions) such as The UK, The Netherlands, and Flanders
curricula on Britishness, Dutchness, and Flemishness are designed to be
taught to all school-aged children in these countries to instill positive
identification and feelings of belonging to the so-called ‘national values
and identity’. Whereas in the past the development of a national iden-
tity was an explicit goal, nowadays these strategies are implemented with
a different goal. Developing these strategies is not necessarily an expres-
sion of mainstream majority’s struggle to have its identity recognized, as
the country’s constitution and various laws explicitly protect majority’s
cultural emblems, rather these strategies are developed to incorporate
‘minorities’ into the national imagination. However, in many parts of
the world, and particularly in Europe, this incorporation process is often
based upon an underlying ‘assimilation rationale’ as minorities are much
more limited (and in some cases even forbidden) to express certain
linguistic, cultural, or religious identities in society’s main institutions
such as schools or public office (Alba & Foner, 2015). This is fundamen-
tally different for the ‘native majority’ as, for example, its mother tongue
language is often the official language and citizens are often obliged to use
them in these institutions. Thus, also from this perspective, minorities
are much more limited in expressing ‘their’ identities and the recognition
of minority identities, languages, and religions in society’s institutions is
often (very) difficult. This leads to an unequal playing field wherein not
everybody can apply the (cultural) resources at their disposal in the same
ways.
Charles Tilly obviously is not the only one who has examined the
mechanisms that explain the persistence of inequality. Lamont and
Pierson (2019) have identified several related social mechanisms that illu-
minate how, over time, particular forms of inequality may be reinforced.
The first mechanisms are ‘evaluation’ and ‘legitimation’. These mech-

anisms refer to the categorization of individuals, goods as well as the
justification of hierarchies. As Lamont and Pierson (2019) explain, eval-
uation is central to the creation of the standards of deservingness and
meritocracy that increasingly guide the distribution of resources as well
as the recognition of status. Banting and Kymlicka (2015), for example,
state that nowadays people are no longer accepting the excessive gap
between the 1% and the rest, but one can also witness hardening
attitudes towards specific recipients, including the unemployed, single
mothers and, especially, immigrants. So, although the public is inclined
to think that the rich do not necessarily deserve all their good fortune
and should be taxed more, it has also apparently started to believe that
the disadvantaged deserve their bad fortune, and is therefore less keen
on supporting them. Likewise, support for multicultural policies is less
substantial if the majority believes that migrants cannot be trusted. In
the words of Kymlicka (2012, p. 2): ‘Multiculturalism tends to lose support
in high-risk situations where immigrants are seen as predominantly illegal,
as potential carriers of illiberal practices or movements, or as net burdens
on the welfare state’. People seem to accept the status quo by holding
to the conviction that the society with its institutions is fair. When
confronted with unjust situations, people solve the felt cognitive disso-
nance by believing that the world is, all in all, a fair place and that people,
therefore, get what they deserve. ‘Legitimation’ thus implies the convic-
tion that those who really want, can become successful and that those
who are poor must be held responsible for not having taken the provided
chances. Enduring equality, thus, does not mean that social mobility is
difficult, but it rather confirms prejudices towards the poor as merely
lazy people. Son Hing, Wilson, Gourevitch, English, and Sin (2019),
for example, have examined why the rising inequality does not lead to
more public outcry. They contend that intensifying degrees of inequality
activates psychological processes that stifle outcry (see also the chapter
of Pretsch in this book). People then are blind to the true extent of
inequality, and legitimize rising disparities, and reject redistribution as
an effective solution. The result is that the institutions that produce all
types of inequality are legitimatized.
‘Policy drift ’ is yet another mechanism that explains why inequality has
such a persistent character. It refers to the effects that follow when policy
arrangements remain static at a time where social conditions shift. This
can happen when political reform is complicated and obstructed while
society is characterized by rapid economic change and weaken political
commitments to equality. A policy that does not observe closely and does
not react rapidly can intensify inequality, for example, when minimum
wages or social benefits are not adjusted to the dynamics of inflation, or
when regulatory arrangements are not adapted to changing markets or
social relationships (Lamont & Pierson, 2019). Another example might
be the emerging knowledge economy the effect of which is that people
with some profiles will become rather anachronistic. A politics of equality
should estimate well the short and long term impact of rapidly trans-
forming economies and should generate sufficient solutions for people
who are left out.
‘Quantification’ (the quantitative measures of performance) and
commodification (the process whereby more and more aspects of human
actions and the results thereof are expressed in a monetary value instead
of the intrinsic or inherent value) are two other mechanisms that provide
insights into the phenomenon of enduring inequality. While metrics
might increase fairness, it can also reinforce inequalities. Metrics can, for
example, obfuscate the needs of the disadvantaged, as all people can be
compared to the same performance standard. Those who fail are seen as
‘losers’, while those who meet the expectations are successful. However,
if the proper situation of the disadvantaged is not properly taken into
account, the idea that metrics can help rewarding merit may in fact rather
reinforce existing inequalities. This eventually leads to an economical
‘survival of the fittest’. The examples can be found in any sector. To give
just three diverse examples: (1) multinationals that have exorbitant bonus
schemes for management but exploit employees; (2) academia with the
‘publish or perish discourse’; (3) hospitals which turned into ‘healthcare
companies’ that maximize profits and minimize costs so that ultimately
the provided care is of poor quality (Sennett, 2006; Verhaeghe, 2014;
Watermeyer, 2019).
1.9 Egalitarian and Skeptical Voices

As illustrated, current societies are still witnessing political, philosophical,
and public turmoil due to issues related to equality. Where tense discus-
sions on increasing socioeconomic inequalities are dominating public
and political debates, discussions on the sociocultural recognition of
difference are also lingering. The persistent gap between the ideal and
the real vis-à-vis equality might lead to rather cynical comments. Skeptics
may invoke the observation that there is an intractable human selfishness
that will prevent equality to prosper, or that those who do act in accor-
dance with what Cohen (2000) has coined ‘the egalitarian ethos’ and
Levrau (2018) ‘the interpersonal ethos’, will be exploited by those who
follow their selfish impulses. Critics here may also point at an innate
tendency to show distrust towards ‘the other’. Moreover, they can argue
that it is nowadays difficult to ignore the impact of harsh populist voices,
the neoliberal hegemony that promotes competition, and a form of
hyper-individualism supported by narrow positivism (e.g. the dominance
of quantitative measurements) and fierce meritocracy in a wide range
of disciplines and professions (including academia and healthcare). This
is, of course, not to say that neoliberalism has brought us anything but
pain; on the contrary, but it is important to study the deep (in)egalitarian
effects of a climate where a certain ideology seems to prevail (Dorling,
2015). However, even in current neoliberal societies there are moments
when people do relate to each other in a spirit of equality and commu-
nity, for example, on a camping trip where everyone—regardless of their
background—lives together in relative harmony and where everybody
both gives and takes equally (Cohen, 2009). This is of course an atyp-
ical situation, but, as Cohen notes, is it not possible to think that it is
only because of the lack of such means and situations that people rely on
market principles that foster greed and egoism? The market systems that
have resulted in large socioeconomic inequalities will not thrive when
the background culture with its social norms places a higher emphasis on
values such as equality, generosity, friendship and care. If people believe
that the right thing to do is to show solidarity rather than to go for the
maximization of individual property, this might have a severe impact on
the functioning and dominance of the free market.
Likewise, multicultural societies seem to be swamped by all sorts of

anxieties. We are neither arguing that people should fully embrace multi-
culturality, nor that the ethnocultural and religious diversification of
societies and cities is only a success of conviviality. We, however, believe
that the worldwide surges of populism have led to a dangerous situation
where the equal rights of people are endangered. We should therefore
be cautious about how things are presented—a critique that also comes
to the fore in the chapter of Lemke in this book. Beaman (2017), for
example, argues that currently too much emphasis is put on (religious)
differences and conflicts. It gets ignored all too often that in the many
everyday negotiations people who may be very different from each other
get along well, inspired by what she calls ‘deep equality’. People spon-
taneously search for what they have in common in order to relate to
each other, and those commonalities often weigh far more than the
differences, which in turn gives rise to an alternative narrative to that
of diversity being a problem to be solved. When people believe that
migrants should be handled with dignity and when the ‘politics of fear ’
(Nussbaum, 2012) is somewhat tempered, the chances will be higher that
solidarity, equality and an enduring, shared sense of belonging together
will be created.
The voice of the skeptic can also be somewhat mitigated by pointing
at the fact that the current states of inequality have regularly stirred
the emotions of those who are committed to the questions and reali-
ties of inequality. After all, based upon large-scale values surveys across
the world, Schwartz (2012) showed that one can find ten basic human
values in almost every ‘society’. Moreover, the most important values
in these societies—rather independent of their socioeconomic, religious,
or ethnic composition—are similar and concern values related to self-
direction, freedom, social justice, and equality. To put it like this:
‘equality’ is not just a philosophical highbrow term, it is something that
is embraced by most people as a fundamental value. In the wake of the
financial and economic crisis, for example, a lot of public and polit-
ical debate has arisen about the legitimacy of the 1% richest, about the
feasibility and desirability of the global tax on wealth, the need for inter-
national redistribution, the (mis)management of the financial sector that
has led to the financial crisis, the ‘bonus culture’ in private and in public
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Chapter VI.
LAW AND JUSTICE.
Though convicts were unhappily supplied at an increasing rate from

the mother-country, the demand for free labourers throughout Van
Diemen’s Land became more urgent continually. The young men
who settled either as wool-growers, farmers, or labourers, wanted
wives. All above the lowest rank needed servants. The sheep were
too many for the shepherds. There was too little produce in
proportion to the land; and too few dwellings in proportion to the
produce; too much or too little of almost everything, for want of a due
proportion of labour. The same thing is the case at home; only here
the proportions are exactly reversed. It will be very strange if in a
short time we do not rectify the condition of each country by the
exchange which would be equally beneficial to both.
Ireland and Van Diemen’s Land are islands of about the same
size. They are each favoured by nature in an unusual degree, having
all the requisites of fertility, variety and beauty which can fit them to
be the abodes of a thriving and happy population. The arable lands
and pastures of both are excellent. The one has fisheries of salmon,
herring and cod; the other of whales, and seals for export, and of a
large variety of fish for home consumption. Both have fine natural
harbours, ridges of protecting mountains, stores of mineral treasure,
inland lakes, and fresh springs wherever man may incline to fix his
abode. Both have, with all these advantages, their natural hardships
and social troubles.
The natural hardships of each might be almost entirely removed
by a well-conducted reciprocity of assistance. Ireland has a
population of eight million; Van Diemen’s Land of only twenty-five
thousand. In Ireland, multitudes of half-starved wretches pine in
idleness, and many die by the way-side, of that wasting of limb and
heart and life which is the form in which poverty perpetrates murder.
In Van Diemen’s Land, the labourer is liable to be worn out by toil,
and fretted by seeing half his produce rotting on the ground, or
wastefully bestowed on swine; while articles which he has always
considered almost as necessary as food cannot by any means be
procured. With him, abundance is not wealth, and plenty brings not
the happiness for which he looked. If the wide sea did not lie
between, he would beckon to a dozen Irishmen to come and nourish
themselves with his superfluity, while he gathers about him the
comforts which spring out of their industry, and solaces himself with
a due portion of that repose, without a certain share of which the
best ends of life cannot be attained. Why should not a bridge be built
across this wide sea with the capital which is now unproductively
expended on the maintenance of these paupers? Why should not
the charity which cannot in Ireland give subsistence to one without
taking it from another, be employed in a way which gives support to
many, to the benefit of many more? Whatever funds are judiciously
employed on emigration are used as if to bring to a junction with the
over-peopled country a rich region, into which a hungry multitude
may be poured, to the relief of the old, and the great advantage of
the new land. If the wealthy among the inhabitants of the old country
would gladly if they could, call up such a new region, drest in fertility,
from the surrounding sea, why do they delay effecting what is to their
purpose the same thing? Since they cannot move the land to their
poor, why do they not agree to devote what they now give in baneful
charity to removing their poor to the new land? Till such a general
agreement is arrived at, why do not individuals thus apply their
charity, knowing that thus they not only relieve for a time, but
establish for life;—that they not only assist the immediate objects of
their bounty, but provide for their descendants of many generations?
The rich should choose for their almoners the agents of emigration.
Those who have little to give should unite their resources to send
abroad a few of the young labourers of both sexes who are eager to
go. Those who have no money to give, should bestow their services
in spreading the knowledge of the facts how poor-laws aggravate,
and emigration alleviates, if it does not remove, pauperism.
If this had been done long ago, the places whither we now
transport our criminals might at present have been as remarkable for
the good moral condition of their inhabitants as they actually are for
the reverse. If it were now to be done effectually, it is yet possible
that Botany Bay may in time outgrow the odium attached to its name,
and become the chosen resort of the upright and industrious.
Indigence causes crime; and by the prevention of indigence and its
consequent crime, we may become better able than we now fancy
ourselves to dispense with the institution of penal settlements;—
whose results are as disgraceful to British wisdom as that of a legal
pauper provision.
When Jerry and Bob were landed at Launceston, they were as
unable as those who sent them were disinclined, to reflect on the
difference between their being sent there, innocent, to provide an
honest livelihood for themselves, and being deposited as a curse
upon this new region,—both guilty and one hardened, proscribed by
the old country and dreaded by the new, and prepared to baffle all
the professed objects of their punishment. The guilt of these lads
was distinctly referrible to indigence. Their parents could give them
little wherewith to provide for their bodies, and nothing of that care
and instruction which were peculiarly needful to them in their
circumstances of temptation. Being thus made outcasts, they acted
as outcasts; from which time it became a struggle between
themselves and society which could inflict the most misery upon the
other. They put society in fear, violated its rights, mocked its
institutions, and helped to corrupt its yet innocent members. Society
inflicted on them disgrace, bondage, and banishment; and from all
this misery no good resulted, however much was proposed.
The judge who pronounced sentence on Jerry and Bob told them
that it was necessary to the security of society that they should be
prevented from inflicting any further injury by their evil deeds.—
There are two ways by which such prevention may be accomplished;
one by the death, the other by the reformation, of the offender. Death
was too severe a punishment for the offence of these lads; the judge
must therefore have contemplated their reformation, or have thought
only of England when he spoke of society. Did the law gain its
object?
“I say, Bob,” said Jerry one evening, when they had got the leave it
is so easy to obtain to go out of bounds, and work for themselves
over-hours,—“I say, do you remember what that fellow in Newgate
read us about that cursed gaol where the people are mewed up as
close as if they were in a school, and closer?”
“What that where they are shut in by themselves all night, and
hard worked all day, and nobody may speak but the parson, and he
praying and preaching night and morning, till a fellow’s spirit is
downright broken? Remember it! aye; and glad enough I have been
many a time that we are not there. I’d rather be hanged twice over.”
“Hanged! Yes: there’s not much in hanging. I have seen it several
times, and thought to myself, ‘if that’s all, I should not mind it.’ But we
are the best off, after all. I was horribly afraid, when old wiggy began
to whimper, that it was to be the hulks, or a long prison, instead of
going abroad; for one never knows what they mean when they say
‘transportation.’ You would not have looked so downcast as you did if
you had known what was before you.“
“Not I. I never thought to be made of so much consequence. ’Tis
good fun to see them quarrel which shall have us, and to get them to
bid rum and brandy against each other to seduce us away. We that
could not get dry bread at home,—how easy it is for us to fill our
stomachs with the choice of the land, and get drunk with our masters
at the end of the day,—our masters being luckily of our own sort!”
“Yours, that is, Bob; not mine. But I don’t know but I like mine as
well. He gives me plenty of spare hours, on condition of my bringing
back what I earn. You should have seen what a fright he looked in
when somebody said the folks were growing moral at home, and no
more convicts were to be sent out.”
“He was as sorry as some honester folks would be glad, Jerry. But
as for dividing your earnings with your master,—they are a queer
sort of earnings, I have a notion.”
“Easily got enough. ’Tis only just prowling on the downs in a dark
night to meet a stray sheep; or making a venture into the fold. Then,
if one gets so far as into the bush, there are other ways that you
know nothing of yet, Bob.”
“I never can make out how you get seal oil from the woods; being
as we are thirty miles from the sea.”
Jerry laughed, and offered to introduce his brother one day to
somebody in the bush he little dreamed of.
“Do you mean, Frank, poor fellow, or Ellen? They would not go so
far to meet you.”
“Do you think I would ask them? It will be time enough for me to
notice Frank when I have a house of my own to ask him into. I shall
be the master of such as he before his time is out.”
“You need not carry yourself so high, Jerry. You are in a worse
bondage than he just now.”
“Curse them that put me into it, and let them see if I bear it long!
However, hold your tongue about it now. There is the moon through
the trees, and the free turf under our feet. What a pity there is
nobody with a heavy purse likely to pass while we are resting in the
shadow under this clump! ’Tis such dull work when there is nothing
better to be had than sheep and poultry, and so many of them that
they are scarcely worth the taking!”
“I like roving for the sake of roving,” said Bob. “I have plenty of
mutton without stealing it.”
“I like robbing for the sake of robbing,” replied his brother; “and the
mutton is only the price of my frolic. But there is something I like
better. Let us be off, and I will show you, (if you’ll swear not to blab,)
how you may get such sport as you little think for. Learn to handle a
gun, and to cross a farm-yard like a cat, and to tap at a back-door
like a mouse within a wainscot, and you may laugh at the judge and
the law, and all the dogs they have set to worry us.”
“Why no, thank’ee,” replied Bob. “I am trying after a character, you
know, so I shall stay where I am. I’ll light my pipe; and I’ve got rum
enough to last till morning both for myself and somebody I rather
expect to meet me.”
“Take care she be not too deep for you, Bob. If ever you want a
wife with no more sense than a monkey, and not half as many tricks,
ask me, and I will show you how to get one.”
So much for the reformation of the offender. The other kind of
security on which the judge expatiated was that afforded by the
criminal being made a warning.
A waggon load of new convict-labourers arrived at the Dairy Plains
one day, when the accustomed gang was at work on the road which
was not yet completed. The masters who happened to be present
were too much taken up with observing the new-comers to pay any
attention to the looks of their labourers. They did not see the winks,
and the side-long smiles, they did not hear the snapping of fingers
behind their backs; they had no suspicion that some in the waggon
were old acquaintances of those on the road. On the first opportunity
after the fresh men were left with the others, and only one or two
over-lookers near, there was a prodigious hand-shaking and
congratulation, and questioning. “How did you get over?” “How did
you manage to get sent here?” “How do you like transportation?”
“You’ll soon learn to know your own luck.” “This is a fine country, is it
not?” &c. &c.
“I was so cursedly dull after you all went away,” observed one of
the new-comers, “there was nothing to stay for: but I very near got
sent to Sidney.”
“Well; you could soon have got away, either home or here. But
how do you find yourself off?”
“With a bed to myself and a blanket, and rare good living to what I
had when I was an honest man. The thing I don’t like is the work; but
they say we are to have plenty of spirits.”
“To be sure; and as to the work,—what do the poor wretches at
home do but work as hard as you, and for less than you can get in
spare hours. But where’s Sam? Why did not he come too?”
“He got baulked, as he deserved for being a fool. What did he do
but send his sister to the justice to know how much he must steal to
be transported, and no more? The justice set the parson at him; and
between the two, they have cowed him, poor fellow, and he will
never better his condition.”
“Perhaps he is afraid. Perhaps he believes what the judge said
about our being a warning. And yet he tipped me the wink when that
was said, and when some of the pretty ones in the gallery began to
cry.”
“He knows better than you think. If you were as moped as a linnet
in a cage, he would know nothing of it; because you are too far off
for him to see what became of you, in that case; but, being as you
are, a merry, rollicking set, he would like to be among you; and that
sort of news travels fast.”
Another of the party did not like his lot so well. He said nothing of
the disgrace, though he felt it; but he complained of the toil, of the
tyranny of the masters, of the spite and bickerings of his
companions.
“If you don’t like your company, change it,” replied one to whom he
had opened his mind. “Such a good hand as you are at a burglary, I
don’t wonder that you had rather steal enough in one night to live
upon for a month, than work as commoner hands do. You had better
go back. Jerry will tell you how. Nothing is easier.”
“Well; but there is my little woman yonder, that they were so kind
as to send over at the same time; how is she to get back? She can’t
turn sailor, and get her passage home in that way.”
“Trust her for making terms with some gull of a sailor,” replied the
other, laughing. “It is only following an old trade for a particular
reason; and you’ll give her leave till you touch land again. But let me
hear before you go; there are some acquaintance of mine in London
that will be glad to know you; and you may chance to help one
another; though, to be sure, you take a higher line.”
“Are you thinking of sending over the fee they raised for your
defence?”
“I did intend it, as a point of honour; but they assure me they made
a good bargain of it as it was. They could have paid the fee three
times over out of the plate-chest they stole for it. So I don’t know that
I need trouble myself.”
“So while Counsellor H—— was preaching about your being tried
that people might be safe, there was another robbery going on to
pay him his fees. That’s rare! You should go back, (since the way is
so easy,) and pick Counsellor H—’s pocket. That will mend the joke.”
So much for the security to society from the exhibition of this kind
of warning.
Chapter VII.
CHRISTMAS AMUSEMENTS.
Ellen’s wedding day drew near. Frank and Harry Moore had toiled
together at spare hours to erect and fit up a convenient dwelling; and
there was no fear whatever but that she and her husband would be
amply supplied with all the necessaries and many of the comforts of
life. Her father began to smile upon her, though he muttered
complaints of there being so many changes always going on that
none of them ever knew when they were settled. Her step-mother,
though still hinting that the girl knew what she was about when she
was in such a hurry to come away from a poor parish, seemed very
well satisfied to have matters so arranged, and rather proud than
otherwise of belonging to Ellen. The farmer and his wife whom Ellen
served sighed when they found she was going to leave them, and
observed that it was always the way, as soon as they got suited with
a dairy maid; but as she agreed to go on taking care of their cows till
they could obtain another damsel in her place from Hobart Town,
they treated her very graciously. The only serious drawback to her
comfort was that Harry’s fellow-labourers would go on courting her,
though they knew she was engaged, and that this caused Harry to
be more jealous than she felt there was any occasion for, or than she
could easily excuse. She had no other fault to find with Harry; but
she was more than once on the point of breaking off the match on
this account, and if it had not been for Frank’s interposition, and his
assurances that such feelings were very natural in Harry, she would
have thrown away her own happiness for want of being sufficiently
aware of the danger of such a position as hers to a girl of less
principle than herself.—A circumstance happened, a few days before
her marriage, which everybody else thought very disastrous; but
which she could not think so, since it established a perfect
understanding between Harry and herself.
On the morning of the 21st of December,—the height of summer in
Van Diemen’s Land,—Frank appeared, breathless, in the farm-yard
whither Ellen was just going to milk her cows; Castle at the same
moment was seen at some distance, hastening from the downs
where he ought to have been tending his sheep at this hour; Harry
Moore next leaped the gate and wiped his brows, seeming too much
agitated to speak; the farmer pulled his hat over his eyes, in
anticipation of the news that was coming, and the women crowded
together in terror.—Ellen was the first to ask what was the matter.
“Have your men decamped, farmer?” inquired Frank.
“Yes, almost to a man. Have Stapleton’s?”
“Two out of four; and every settler in the neighbourhood misses
more or less this morning.”
“Now the devil and his imps will be on us in the shape of a gang of
bush-rangers,” muttered the farmer.
“Not on us, farmer. They will more likely go to some distant part
where their faces are strange.”
“If they do, they will send strange faces here, which comes to the
same thing; for one bush-ranger’s face is as devilish as another. One
of us must be off in search of a guard, and our shepherds, and
indeed all of us, must carry arms.”
Ellen turned pale at the mention of arms. Harry drew to her side,
and told her in a tone of forced calmness that three of her lovers
were gone.
“Gone!” cried Ellen joyfully. “Gone for good?”
“Gone for ever as lovers of yours.”
“Thank God!” said she. “Better watch night and day with arms in
our hands than have your head full of fancies, Harry. You will never
believe again that I can like such people: and you shall teach me to
fire a gun, so as to defend the house while you are away; and I shall
not be afraid of anything when you are at home.”
Harry was so alert and happy from this moment that one would
have thought there had been a certainty that no bush-rangers would
ever come again, instead of a threatening that those who had till now
been servants would soon reappear as enemies.
Whatever arms could be found up were put into the hands of the
shepherds, as they were most in danger from violence for the sake
of their flocks. They were desired to keep in sight of one another so
far as that each should be able to make a certain signal agreed on,
in case of his having reason to suppose that there were enemies at
hand. Frank departed immediately for Launceston, for powder and
ball, and a further supply of labourers to fill the places of those who
had eloped. Another messenger was sent to the seat of government
to give information of what had happened. During the absence of her
brother, Ellen heard enough of the evils inflicted by runaway convicts
to alarm a stouter heart than any young girl devotedly attached to
her lover ever had; and to add to her uneasiness, her father once
more became gloomy, and poor little Susan clung to her side
wherever she went. Harry left his work twenty times a day to tell her
that all was quiet, and bid her not be alarmed. During the day, she
followed his advice pretty well; but in the evenings, so many tales of
horror went round that, though she did not believe the half of them,
her confidence was shaken; and she went to bed shuddering to think
of what might have happened before morning.
The bush-rangers seemed to be less dreaded by the settlers than
the natives. The bush-rangers came down in a troop, carried off what
they wanted, occasionally shooting a man or two during the process,
and then went completely away. The warfare of the natives was
much more horrible,—their movements being stealthy, their revenge
insatiable, their cruelty revolting. They would hover about for days or
weeks before committing an outrage, planning the most wicked way
of proceeding, and seizing the most defenceless moment for
pouncing on their victims. Castle asked aloud, what Ellen inquired in
her heart, why all this was not told them before they came, and what
there was in wealth which could compensate for such alarms as they
were now suffering under? Frank satisfied her, in some degree,
when he returned on the 24th,—the day before her wedding. He told
her that though the first settlers had suffered dreadfully from the
murders and plunder of the hostile natives and runaway convicts,
this was not a sufficient reason to deter other settlers from following,
since, owing to the vigorous measures of the Australian government,
such outrages had been repressed and nearly put an end to. He
pointed out to her that the horrible tales she had been told related to
former times, and assured her that, except in some districts near the
wilder parts of the island, the face of a savage had not been seen for
years.—Ellen pointed to the mountain wastes on which their
settlement bordered, and Frank acknowledged that the Dairy Plains
lay as open to an attack as most newly-settled districts; but he had
been assured at Launceston that there was no need to terrify
themselves with apprehensions as long as they were armed and
properly careful in their movements; since the sound of a musket
would disperse a whole troop of savages, and they attacked no
place that was not left absolutely defenceless. He had distinctly
ascertained what he had before conjectured,—that it was not the
practice of runaway convicts to plunder settlements where their
faces were known, and that the only danger therefore arose from the
probability that they might injure the savages, who might come down
to wreak their revenge upon the innocent settlers.
“If this is all,” sighed Ellen, “there is nothing——”
“To prevent your being married to-morrow, Ellen. So I have been
telling Harry.”
“There was no occasion, thank you. I never meant to put it off. The
more danger, the more reason for our being together. Besides, it will
help to take father’s mind off from his discontent. He has been
wishing himself back in Kent every hour since you went.”
“Indeed! Well now, I think that such an occasional fright as this is
little to the hardship of living as we did at A——, to say nothing of the
certainty of there soon being an end to it. The only two evils our
settlers suffer from will grow less every year; the scarcity of labour,
and danger of theft. To make up for these, we have the finest climate
in the world, abundance of all that we at present want, and the
prospect of seeing our children, and their children again, well
provided for.—But you must be in a hurry now, dear, considering
what has to be done to-morrow. So go, and cheer up, and trouble
your head no more about black or white thieves.”
Ellen had, however, little more than usual to do this day, as hers
was not the kind of wedding to require preparation. The travelling
chaplain who was to come and perform the Christmas service, was
to marry the young people, and thus only was the day to be marked
as different from any other. The settlers, no doubt, thought much of
their friends in England, and of the festivities which are there enjoyed
by all but those whose poverty deprives them of the means: but the
seasons are so entirely reversed in Van Diemen’s Land,—it is so
impossible amidst the brilliant verdure, the heat and long days of the
Christmas season there, to adopt the festivities carried on at home
beside the hearth and over the punch-bowl, that Christmas-day was
allowed to pass quietly, and the grand holidays of the year were
wisely made on the anniversaries of their settlement in their present
abodes,—of their entrance on a life of prosperity.
No fairer morning ever dawned than that on which Ellen arose
very early, and stole out to find that refreshment in the open air
which she was not disposed to seek in more sleep. She had rested
well for a few hours, but the first rays of the sun finding their way into
her chamber, (which was more like a clean loft than an English
bedroom), roused her to thoughts that prevented her sleeping again.
It was too soon to be looking after her cows; so she took her knitting,
and sat on the bench outside the house, whence she could look over
a vast tract of country, and where she was pretty sure of an hour’s
quiet. She had some thoughts to spare for her old Kentish
neighbours; and began to fancy how her grandmother would be
getting up three hours after, when it would be scarcely dawning, to
make the room tidy, and light the fire to boil the kettle; and how the
old couple would put on their best, and draw over the hearth with
their Christmas breakfast. Then she thought of the many boys and
girls she knew who would be going to church, with red noses, and
shivering in their scanty clothing. Then she sighed when she
remembered that she might never more hear psalms sung in a
church; and again she smiled while fancying Mr. Fellowes’s great
dinner to half the parish,—a dinner of roast beef and ale and plum
puddings, and Mr. Jackson there to say grace, and the clerk to sing a
Christmas carol, and every old man giving a toast by turns, and
some one perhaps to propose the healths of their friends far away.
She blushed, all alone as she was, when she wondered what they
would say if they knew she was to be married so soon, especially if
they could see Harry. It was strange, while her mind was thus full of
pictures of a frosty day, of a smoking table, of a roaring fire, lamps,
and a steaming punch-bowl, to look up and observe what was before
her eyes. The scene was not even like a midsummer morning in
Kent. It was not dotted with villages: there were no hop-grounds, and
all the apples grown within five miles would hardly have made an
orchard. There were no spires among the trees; nor did the morning
mists rise from the dells or hover over the meadows. All was clear
and dry and verdant under the deep blue sky. No haze hung over the
running streams that found their way among the grassy hillocks.
Neither oak nor beech grew on the hill side, nor pines on the ridges
of the mountains behind; but trees to whose strange foliage her eye
was yet unaccustomed reared their lofty stems where it did not
appear that the hand of man was likely to have planted them; and
myrtles and geraniums grew up roof-high, like the finest monthly
roses in England. Instead of the little white butterflies flitting over the
daisied turf, there were splendid ones alighting here and there in the
neighbouring garden, larger and gayer than the finest of the flowers
they fed upon. Instead of the lark rising from her dewy nest into the
pink morning cloud, there were green and crimson parrots glancing
among the lofty evergreens. Instead of flickering swarms of midges,
flies shone like emeralds in the sun. Instead of a field-mouse
venturing out of its hole, or frogs leaping across the path, speckled
and gilded snakes (of which Ellen had learned not to be afraid)
wriggled out into the sunshine, and finding that the world was not all
asleep, made haste to hide themselves again.
“If I could fancy any part of this to be England,” thought Ellen, “it
would be yonder spot behind the range of woodland, where the
smoke is rising. If that were but grandfather’s cottage, how I would
run and bring them here before any body else was up. They will be
so sorry not to have seen me married, and not to know Harry! But I
cannot make out that smoke. I did not know that anybody lived there,
and it looks more than enough to come from a single chimney.
Perhaps the man that found the brick clay, and talked of having a
kiln, may have settled there. I will ask Harry. I wonder what o’clock it
is now! He said he should finish his morning’s work first, that he
might stay when he did come. How odd it seems that there are so
few people to do things here, that a man can scarcely be spared
from his work on his wedding day! They must be all over-sleeping
themselves, I think. I’ll just get the milk-pails, and that may wake
them; and if the cows are milked a little earlier than usual, it will not
signify. I only get fidgetty, sitting here, and fancying noises; from
missing the singing-birds, I dare say, that are busy among the
boughs on such a morning as this in England. It was an odd squeak
and whistle that I heard just now; perhaps a quail or a parroquet, or
some other bird that I don’t know the note of yet. Or it might be one
of those noisy black swans on the lake yonder. I will not stay any
longer to be startled. That was only a butterfly that flew dazzling
before my eyes; and these flies do not sting, so I need not mind their
buzzing. There! I had rather hear that lowing that I have been used
to from a child than any music in the world. I should be sorry indeed
to give up these cows, for all I am going to have one of my own.”
Ellen purposely made some noise in getting her pails, that she
might wake somebody and find out how time went. She could not
account for the sun being so low in the sky till she heard the farmer
growl that he wished people would be quiet till it was time to get up;
which it would not be for two hours yet.
After pausing before the door to watch the distant smoke, which
had much increased, Ellen repaired to the cow-yard, immediately
behind the dwelling. She stumbled on something in the litter which
she mistook for a little black pig, till its cry made her think it was
something much less agreeable to meet with. Stooping down, she
saw that it was certainly a black baby; ugly and lean and dirty; but
certainly a baby. She did not scream; she had the presence of mind
not to touch the little thing, remembering that, for aught she knew,
the parents might be lurking among the sheds, and ready to spring
upon her if she should attempt to carry away the infant, which had
probably been dropped in the hurry of getting out of her way.
Trembling and dreading to look behind her, she stepped back into
the house, and now roused the farmer in good earnest. In a few
minutes, the whole household was in the cow-yard; the men not
choosing to separate, and the women being afraid to leave their
protectors. The child was still there, and nothing was discovered in
the general search of the premises which now took place. When the
farmer saw the smoke at a distance, he ascribed it at once to a party
of natives having set the grass on fire in cooking their kangaroo
repast. He thought it probable that two or three spies might be at
hand, and the rest of the party ready for a summons to fall on the
farm as soon as it should, by any accident, be left undefended. He
would not have the child brought into the house, but fed it himself
with milk, and laid it on some straw near where it was found, in a
conspicuous situation. Beside it he placed some brandy, and a
portion of food for the parents, if they should choose to come for it.
“There is no knowing,” said he, “but they may be looking on; and
one may as well give them the chance of feeling kindly, and making
peace with us.” And he silenced one of his men who began to
expatiate on the impossibility of obtaining any but a false peace with
these treacherous savages.
Nothing could satisfy Harry but standing over his betrothed with a
musket while she was milking. As for her, every rustle among the
leaves, every movement of the cow before her, made her inwardly
start; though she managed admirably to keep her terrors to herself.
The arrival of the chaplain happened fortunately for collecting the
neighbouring settlers; and, by the farmer’s desire, nothing was said
of what had happened till the services he came to perform were
ended. Harry and Ellen were married, amidst some grave looks from
the family of which they had till now made a part, and the smiles of
all the guests. Ellen’s disappointed lovers,—the only people who
could possibly disapprove of the ceremony,—were absent; and she
tried not to think about what they might be doing or planning.
The barking of the dogs next drew the party to the door, and they
saw what was a strange sight to many of the new-comers. A flock of
emus, or native ostriches, was speeding over the plain, almost within
shot.
“What are they?” inquired one.
“’Tis many a month since we have seen an emu,” observed
another. “I thought we had frightened away all that were left in these
parts.”
“What are you all about,” cried a third. “Out with the dogs and after
them! Make chase before it is too late!”
“A decoy! a decoy!” exclaimed the farmer. “Now I am certain that
mine is a marked place. These savages have driven down the emus
before them, to tempt us men out to hunt, and they are crouching
near to fall on while we are away.”
He was as bold, however, as he was discerning. He left three or
four men to guard the women and stock at home, and set off, as if on
a sudden impulse, to hunt emus with the rest of his company,
determining to describe a circuit of some miles, (including the spot
whence the smoke arose) and to leave no lurking place unsearched.
Frank went with him. Castle insisted on following his usual
occupation on the downs, declaring himself safe enough, with
companions within call, and on an open place where no one could
come within half a mile without being seen. This was protection
enough against an enemy who carried no other weapons than
hatchets and pointed sticks, hardly worthy of the name of spears.—
Harry remained, of course, with his bride.
The day wore away tediously while the home guard now patrolled
the premises, now indolently began to work at any little thing that
might happen to want doing in the farm-yard, and then came to sit on
the bench before the door, complaining of the heat. The women,
meanwhile, peeped from the door, or came out to chat, or listened
for the cry of the dogs, that they might learn in which direction the
hunting party was turning.
“Ellen,” said her husband, “I do wonder you can look so busy on
our wedding day.”
“O, I am not really busy! It is only to drive away thought when you
are out of sight.”
“Well then, come with me across the road,—just to our own
cottage, and see how pretty it was made for us to have dined in to-
day, if all this had not happened. Frank was there after you left it last
night; and there is more in it than you expect to see.—Now, don’t
look so afraid. It is no further than yonder saw-pit; and I tell you there
is not a hole that a snake can creep into that we have not searched
within this hour.—I do not believe there is a savage within twenty
miles.—O, the baby!—Aye. I suppose it dropped from the clouds, or
one of the dogs may have picked it up in the bush. ’Tis not for myself
that I care for all this disturbance: ’tis because they have spoiled
your wedding day so that you will never bear to look back to it.”
Ellen wished they were but rid of their black foes for this time, and
then she should care little what her wedding day had been. They
said that one sight of a savage in a life-time was as much as most
settlers had.—She must step in passing to see what ailed the poor
infant, which was squalling in much the same style as if it had had a
white skin;—a squall against which Ellen could not shut her heart
any more than her ears.
“I must take it and quiet it,” said she. “I can put it down again as
we come back in ten minutes.”
So lulling and rocking the little woolly-headed savage in her arms,
she proceeded to her own cottage, to admire whatever had been
suggested by her husband, and added by her neat-handed brother.
“What bird makes that odd noise?” inquired Ellen presently. “A
magpie, or a parrot, or what? I heard it early this morning, and never
before. A squeak and then a sort of whistle. Hark!”
“’Tis no bird,” said Harry in a hoarse whisper. “Shut and bar the
door after me!”
And he darted out of the cottage. Instead of shutting the door,
Ellen flew to the window to watch what became of Harry. He was
shouting and in full pursuit of something which leaped like a
kangaroo through the high grass. He fired, and, as she judged by his
cry of triumph, reached his mark. A rustle outside the door at this
moment caught her excited ear; and on turning, she saw, distinct in
the sunshine on the door-sill, the shadow of a human figure, as of
some one lying in wait outside. Faint with the pang of terror, she
sunk down on a chair in the middle of the room, with the baby still in
her arms, and gazed at the open doorway with eyes that might seem
starting from their sockets. Immediately the black form she dreaded
to see began to appear. A crouching, grovelling savage, lean and
coarse as an ape, showing his teeth among his painted beard, and
fixing his snakelike eyes upon hers, came creeping on his knees and
one hand, the other holding a glittering hatchet. Ellen made neither
movement nor sound. If it had been a wild beast, she might have
snatched up a loaded musket which was behind her, and have
attempted to defend herself; but this was a man,—among all his
deformities, still a man; and she was kept motionless by a more
enervating horror than she would once have believed any human
being could inspire her with. It was well she left the weapon alone. It
was better handled by another. Harry, returning with the musket he
had just discharged, caught a full view of the creature grovelling at
his door, and had the misery of feeling himself utterly unable to
defend his wife. In a moment, he bethought himself of the back
window, and of the loaded musket standing beside it. It proved to be
within reach; but his wife was sitting almost in a straight line between
him and the savage. No matter! he must fire, for her last moment
was come if he did not. In a fit of desperation he took aim as the
creature was preparing for a spring. The ball whistled past Ellen’s
ear, and lodged in the head of the foe.
They were indeed safe, though it was long before they could
believe themselves so, or Ellen could take courage to cross to the
farm to tell what had happened. As there were no more traces of
lurkers in the neighbourhood, it was supposed that the one shot in
the grass was the mother, the one in the door-way, the father of the
infant which no one now knew what to do with. It might be dangerous
to keep it, whether it flourished or died under the care of the settlers;
and there seemed to be no place where it could be deposited with
the hope of its being found by its own tribe. When Frank and his
companions returned from the hunt, they threw light on this and
other curious matters, and brought comfortable tidings to the inmates
of the farm. The Castles, indeed, and they alone, found as much
matter of concern as of comfort in what Frank had to tell.
In following the emu hunt, the farmer and his party had skirted a
tract of woodland, called the bush, within which they perceived
traces of persons having lately passed. On searching further, they
came upon a scene rather different from what they had expected,
and not the most agreeable in the world, though it fully accounted for
the visit of the natives.—Under a large mimosa, which waved its long
branches of yellow flowers over the turf, and made a flickering
shade, lay Jerry, enjoying the perfection of convict luxury; that is,
smoking his pipe, drinking rum, and doing what he pleased, with a
black wife, who, having skinned the kangaroo and lighted the fire,
squatted down on the turf, waiting for further orders. If it had not
been for the child she carried in a hood of hide on her shoulders, she
would have been taken for a tame monkey, so little was there human
in her appearance and gestures; but the tiny face that peeped over
her shoulder had that in it which bespoke humanity, however soon
the dawning rationality might be destined to be extinguished.—On
seeing the hunting-party, Jerry sprang to his feet, seized his arms,
and whistled shrill and long; whereupon so many hootings and
whistlings were heard through the wood, so many ferocious faces
appeared from among the brakes on every hand that it became
prudent to explain that no war was intended by the hunting-party.
Frank and Jerry were the spokesmen; and the result of their
conference was the communication of news of much importance to
both parties. Jerry learned that the settlements below were so well
guarded and reinforced that any attempt at plunder must fail; and he
assured Frank that he was about to depart at once with his band to
one of the islands in Bass’s Strait, to live among, or reign over the
natives, as many a convict had done before him. He owned that his
black wife was stolen, and that her husband having been knocked on
the head in the scuffle, the rest of the savage party had gone down
to wreak their revenge on the first whites they could meet with. He
was really sorry, he declared, to hear how Ellen’s wedding-day had
been disturbed; and solemnly promised to draw off the foe to a
distant quarter, and watch that they did not again molest the Dairy
Plains. Frank could trust to these promises, as poor Jerry, amidst all
his iniquities, retained a rude sense of honour, and a lingering
attachment to his family,—especially a pride in his sister Ellen.—
Frank learned with great satisfaction that Bob’s disappearance from
the neighbourhood was not owing to his having run away. He had
refused to do so, his ambition being to become a great man in the
settlement, provided he could accomplish his object without too
much trouble and self-denial. He had made a merit of remaining at
his work when his comrades eloped, and had, in consequence, got
promoted to a better kind of employment, by which he had it in his
power to make a good deal of money.
“And now, Ellen,” said Frank, on concluding the story of his
morning’s adventures, “I must go and bring you the wedding present
poor Jerry left behind for you.” And he explained that a sun-dial was
hidden in a secure place, whence it should be brought and put up
immediately.
“Is it stolen, do you think?” inquired Ellen timidly. “Indeed, I had
rather not have it.”
“It is not stolen. A watch-maker, a clever man enough, came over
in the same ship with the lads, and Jerry paid him for making this dial
for you, knowing you had no watch. He could easily have sent you
money, he said, but thought you would like this better, since there is
little that can be bought in these parts that you have not without
money.”
“I don’t know how it is,” observed Ellen; “but though it is very
shocking that Jerry has got among these people, and into such a
brutal way of life, I feel less afraid of them now that he is there. If it
were not for this, I should feel that such a fright as we have had will
set against a great deal of the good we have fallen in with here.”
“It always happens, Ellen, all through life, and all over the world,
that there is something to set against other things; and never more
so than when people leave their own country. If a man quits England
through intolerable poverty, he must not expect to find everything to
his mind, and abundance besides. If he goes to Canada, he may
gain what he emigrates for,—food for himself and property to leave
to his children; but he must put up with tremendous toil and hardship
till he can bring his land into order, and with long, dreary winters,
such as he had no notion of before. If he goes to the Cape, he finds
a better climate and less toil; but from the manner of letting land
there, he is out of the way of society and neighbourhood, and cannot
save so as to make his children richer than himself. If he comes
here, he finds the finest climate in the world, and an easy way of
settling; but then there is the plague of having convicts always about
him, and the occasional peril of being robbed;—and in some few of
the wilder parts of the island, of an individual here and there being
murdered. But this last danger is growing less every year, and
cannot exist long.—Now, since there is evil everywhere, the question
is what is the least? I, for one, think them all less than living in
England in hopeless poverty, or even than getting a toilsome
subsistence there with the sight of hopeless poverty ever before
one’s eyes, and the groans or vicious mirth of pauperism echoing
through the alleys of all the cities of England. I, for one, feel it well
worth anything troublesome we have met with, or can meet with

Equality Multidisciplinary Perspectives 1St Edition Francois Levrau Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Equality Multidisciplinary Perspectives 1St Edition Francois Levrau Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Equality: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

1st Edition François Levrau

ISBN 978-3-030-54309-9 ISBN 978-3-030-54310-5 (eBook)

Cover image: © Alex Linch/shutterstock.com

policies to recognise and accommodate sociocultural and religious differ-

Antwerp, Belgium François Levrau

1 Introduction: Equality as a Multifaceted Concept 3

Part II Theories & Histories

2 Egalitarianism: A Tour d’horizon 43

3 Equality, Rights and Community: A Long Term

4 Multiculturalism Today: Difference, Equality

Part III Institutions & Policies

5 Religion and Equality in the Workplace:

6 Economic Equality and the Welfare State 199

7 Gender, Anti-discrimination and Diversity: The EU’s

Part IV Experiences & Impressions

8 How Do People React to (In)Equality and (In)Justice?

9 What Welfare Principles Do Europeans Prefer?

10 A Transdisciplinary Cultural Studies’ Approach

Noel Clycq is Research Professor in training and education sciences at

Fabrication of the City as an Object of Study’. His research concentrates

for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford Univer-

Johanna Pretsch is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of

Wim van Oorschot is Professor of Social Policy at KU Leuven,

Fig. 2.1 Ten capabilities according to Martha Nussbaum (Source

Fig. 6.4 Social spending and poverty (panel A) and income

Table 7.1 A comparative look at the scope of EU

© The Author(s) 2021 3

In this introductory chapter we outline some of the main issues in the

1.2 Moral Equality: An Enlightened

revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The belief in reason-

1.3 Why Enlightened Politics Were/Are Not

realization has been impeded by all sorts of countermovements, ideals,

drawn up by the French National Constituent Assembly in 1789. That

1.4 Current Challenges

be detrimental for the shared sense of belonging together, in particular

certainly suffer (in)directly because of our actions (e.g. carbon emission)?

1.5 Challenges on the Sociocultural Level

connected, it will become very difficult to uphold the idea of treating

However, this is up until now not substantiated by empirical evidence

strengthening the initiatives of citizens and their associations, reforming

1.6 Why and When Is Inequality Is Morally

results from unequal status, violations of equal concern, or when they

1.7 Politics of Equality

of nation-building, it is indeed the majority’s language that is used in

1.8 Enduring Equality

individual life courses and generations become enduring? With Durable

and women professions. According to Tilly, this means that inequality

such as language and religion, deemed essential to further develop-

The first mechanisms are ‘evaluation’ and ‘legitimation’. These mech-

1.9 Egalitarian and Skeptical Voices

Likewise, multicultural societies seem to be swamped by all sorts of

LAW AND JUSTICE.

Though convicts were unhappily supplied at an increasing rate from

You might also like