Wealth Inequality and Elites in the Global South Perspectives from Brazil, India, and South Africa

Introduction: Wealth Inequality and Elites: Rethinking Inequality through Southern Perspectives

Aroop Chatterjee

Brazil

Framing Inequality in Brazil: Financialisation and Wealth

Lena Lavinas

1. Colonial Legacy and Accumulation Patterns in Brazil

Lena Lavinas, Mariana Fix, Guilherme Leite Gonçalves, Ana Carolina Cordilha, Pedro Rubin, João Paulo D. Constantino, and André Doca

2. Mapping Wealth in Brazil

Lena Lavinas, Guilherme Leite Gonçalves, Ana Carolina Cordilha, and Pedro Rubin

3. Urban Property and Wealth Concentration

Mariana Fix, João Paulo D. Constantino, and André Doca

India

4. Wealth Elites of India: Temporal and Spatial Trajectories

Surinder S. Jodhka and Vamsi Vakulabharanam

5. Caste, Capital and Political Networks: Wealth Elites and Accumulation Dynamics in Hyderabad City Region

Purendra Prasad and Raviteja Rambarki

6. Wealth and its Accumulation in Bombay/Mumbai, the “Billionaire Capital of Asia”

Sripad Motiram and Kiran Limaye

South Africa

7. Elites, Contradictions, and Accumulation: The Historical Making of South Africa’s Unequal Wealth Distribution

Aroop Chatterjee

8. Asset Management as a Mechanism of Elite Continuity: Financialisation and Ownership on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Aroop Chatterjee and Comfort Molefinyana

9. “The land ownership never changes”:

Elite Power, and Gated living in Waterfall City

Ujithra Ponniah

Conclusion: Elite Processes and the Dynamics of Wealth Inequality in the Global South

Aroop Chatterjee

Biography

Aroop Chatterjee was the principal investigator of the Wealth Inequality and Elites in the global South project. He is a Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. He leads the research agenda on wealth inequality at SCIS. Research interests include wealth inequality, economic elites, and political economy. He has an MSc Development Economics with distinction from the School of Oriental and African Studies, a BSc Economics from the University College London.

Surinder S. Jodhka was the co-lead of the India segment of the research project. He has taught at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the University of Hyderabad, and Panjab University. He researches social inequalities with focus on caste in contemporary times, agrarian change, and the political sociology of community identities. He has authored/edited 20 books and published more than 100 papers. He is the recipient of the ICSSR-Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists 2012 and the Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contribution to Development Studies 2024.

Lena Lavinas was the lead coordinator of the Brazil research. She is a full professor at the Institute of Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and her research examines how welfare regimes adjust to changes in contemporary capitalism under the aegis of financialization. Her latest book was The Takeover of Social Policy by Financialization: The Brazilian paradox (2017).

Vamsi Vakulabharanam was the co-lead of the India segment of the research project. He is with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Economics Faculty), has written books and articles on: Inequality in India and China; Development and Diversity of Cities through axes like gender, caste, and religion; and agrarian change; and he was awarded the Amartya Sen award by the ICSSR in 2013.