Attached is a recording of Prof. Danny Dorling speaking on "Why social inequality persists" at a Sheffield Humanist Society meeting held on 3rd February 2010.
Among rich countries Britain has one of the most unequal distributions of wealth and income in the world. After a massive increase in inequality in the 80’s the gap is still widening. Many studies have shown that inequality, not just poverty, has adverse effects across the whole of society. To quote the sub-title of the recent book The Spirit Level “more equal societies almost always do better”.
Prof. Dorling’s talk presents the argument that in rich countries injustice as represented by social inequalities is caused less and less by having too few resources to share around fairly, but is increasingly maintained by widespread adherence to beliefs which actually propagate it.
Danny Dorling is Professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield. He is a member of the advisory group for the Equality Trust ( http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/ ). The Equality Trust campaigns “to gain the widest public and political understanding of the harm caused by inequality”. He has recently been on the team that produced a report about inequalities in Sheffield called "A Tale of Two Cities" ( http://sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/research/sheffield/a_tale_of_2_cities_sheffield_project_final_report.pdf ).
Sorry the audio quality isn't great, the speaker was a long way from the recorder and the levels were too low.
