Framing a Total Social Fact

Abstract

Chapter 8 draws together the insights of the chapters that precede it to argue that in an age increasingly characterized by translocal livelihoods, conventional measures have failed to capture the extent of inequality. This is due to the prevalence of static, atomistic, and economically foreclosed conceptions of wealth, which under-represent both the scale and fungibility of inequality, viewing it as a local phenomenon mediated through income, where a more complex reality is preferable. It reflects on the example of Cambodia—a country where inequality is purported by macroscopic indicators to have declined in the last decade, but which more detailed studies reveal to be an endemic issue—to exemplify the need for a mobile approach to the measurement of inequality. In doing so, it concludes by demonstrating that a person’s inequality derives not only from multiple places, but also multiple forms of wealth and well-being. Inequality, viewed thus, is a ‘total social fact’ whose origins and remedies are far less tractable than conventional measures have shown.