Approaching inequality: Knowledge claims & vantage points in conversations about wealth in Brazil and the US

• In Event: Global Perspectives on Wealth and Elites

Abstract

A growing literature documents pervasive misperceptions of economic inequality. Researchers have attempted to correct misconceptions through informational interventions, with limited success. These studies sidestep more foundational questions concerning the forms of knowledge and vantage points from which people engage with inequality. We address these questions by centering the interactional process through which ordinary confront inequality. We draw on original conversational data from 18 two-hour focus group interviews, involving 141 participants, conducted in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Boston (US) as part of the internationally comparative WealthTalks project. Our preliminary findings of the US focus groups are threefold. First, whereas scholars have focused on the role of (social) media, the most prevalent knowledge claims made by study participants were those that mobilized their own experiences or vicarious experiences. Experiential claims accounted for half of all references, while traditional media and social media together constituted less than 15 percent of all references. Second, extant research conceives of facts as ‘interventions’ that cause dissonance and prompt belief updating, but we find something closer to the opposite. When participants made experiential references, these often intensified the conversation and changed its course. In contrast, facts helped bring people together by creating common ground. Third, economic inequality is invariably approached through a comparative angle. Participants drew comparisons between places, regions, or nations, and expressed a temporal vantage point to put contemporary inequalities in the context of historical processes. These geographical and temporal vantage points often served to express discontent with inequality and affordability today, while the international and future angle complicated the conversation by suggesting that things might be or get worse. Ongoing data analysis of the Brazilian focus groups will help put the US findings in a cross-national perspective, exploring similarities and differences between our case in the Global North and the Global South.

Authors

• Jonathan Jan Benjamin Mijs, Boston University

• Evan Dietrich Gosen, Boston University

• Nayeli Quiles, Boston University

• Flavio Carvalhaes, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

• Germano Ribeiro Fernandes Da Silva, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

• David Schieferdecker, Freie Universität Berlin