Capital and time: uncertainty and qualitative measures of inequality.

ABSTRACT

This review compares Piketty and Marx's approaches to capital and time in order to argue for the importance of qualitative measures of inequality. These latter measures emphasize varying experiences across classes and through history of uncertainty and insecurity. They explore how the social rhythms of capital profoundly affect the ability to plan a life-course. Quantitative measures such as those used by Piketty that focus on the amount of capital that accrues through time cannot capture such important phenomenon. This is especially because their calculations rest on absolute amounts of capital recorded in formal state statistics. Their limits are particularly revealed if we consider issues of informal labour, social reproduction, and changing institutional forms of public debt. If we are to build the inter-disciplinary rapprochement between social science and economics that Piketty calls for it must be through asserting the value of qualitative measures of insecurity and its effects on decision making. These are important to track both at the macro-level of institutions and at the micro-level scale of human lives. It is, therefore, through emphasizing the existing strengths of both anthropology and history that we can meet Piketty's important challenge to make our scholarship relevant to current political and social debates.