Injustice

Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences and Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers. With a group of colleagues he helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world. Find out more at www.dannydorling.org

• Letter from America: commentary by Sam Pizzigati;Foreword by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett;1. Introduction; The beliefs that uphold injustice; The five faces of social inequality; A pocket full of posies; 2. Inequality: the antecedent and outcome and of injustice; Inevitability of change: what we do now we could all have enough?; Injustice rising out of the ashes of social evils; So where do we go from here; 3. 'Elitism is efficient': new educational divisions;The ‘new delinquents’: those most harmed by elitism, a seventh of all children; IQism: the underlying rationale for the growth of elitism; Apartheid schooling: from garaging to hot-housing; Putting on a pedestal: superhuman myths; The 1950s: from ignorance to arrogance; 4. 'Exclusion is necessary': excluding people from society;Indebted: those most harmed by exclusion, a sixth of all people; Geneticism: the theories that exacerbate social exclusion; Segregation: of community from community; Escapism: of the rich behind walls; The 1960s: the turning point from inclusion to exclusion; 5. 'Prejudice is natural': a wider racism; Indenture: labour for miserable reward, a fifth of all adults; Darwinism: thinking that different incentives are needed; Polarisation: of the economic performance of regions; Inheritance: the mechanism of prejudice; The 1970s: the new racism; 6. 'Greed is good': consumption and waste;Not part of the programme: just getting by, a quarter of all households; Economics: the discipline with so much to answer for; Gulfs: between our lives and our worlds; Celebrity: celebrated as a model of success; The 1980s: changing the rules of trade; 7. ‘Despair is inevitable’: health and wellbeing;Anxiety: made ill through the way we live, a third of all families; Competition: proposing insecurity as beneficial; Culture: the international gaps in societal wellbeing; Bird-brained thinking: putting profit above caring; The 1990s: birth of mass medicating; 8. Conspiracy, consensus, conclusion.No great conspiracy; Using the vote; Coming to the end; Injustice deepens; What to do;

"For decades researchers have shown the damage inequality does to all society and Dorling's wonderful book extends this. With brilliance and passion Dorling analyses the mind-set of entitlement among those who hold ever tighter to money, power and life's best rewards, generation to generation." Polly Toynbee, The Guardian