Dr. Till Hilmar, SOCIUM - Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy, Bremen University, Germany - till.hilmar@uni-bremen.de
In this presentation, I examine convergences between social memory and the study of economic inequality. To do so, I look specifically at wealth. Economist Thomas Piketty's analysis puts the promises of the memory-wealth link in plain sight. Inheritance plays a key role in the unequal distribution of wealth today. Its macroeconomic significance has shifted profoundly over the course of the 20th century, having dramatically increased since the 1970s in North America and Western Europe. The postwar generations in this part of the world experienced a historically exceptional situation in which the fruits of one's labor could guarantee social upward mobility irrespective of inherited fortunes, while those growing up in the 1980s and 1990s encountered a very different world in which the significance of wealth was well on its way to return to levels not seen since the 19th century.
I suggest that the contestation of wealth inequality, as well as its justification, relies on collective interpretations of the past. Both draw on mythologies, narratives of origin, and anticipations of the future which are bound up with meaningful constructions of social obligations, such as in the ways in which family identity is linked to material possessions. Employing theories of social memory (in particular, foregrounding the moral function of memory), I propose, allows to gain a richer understanding of the links between narrative and wealth. In terms of its justifications, this might be, for instance, the idea that wealthy individuals act on behalf of some lineage of material and symbolic meaning and not in their personal interest; or the notion that there is something "pure", "dignified", even "altruistic" about wealth accumulation in the sense that it is concerned with creating lasting values (see Hecht and Summers 2020).
I explore how memory sustains the tension between contestations and justifications of wealth today in two empirical arenas. First, the public debate on taxing wealth is currently intensifying – especially in our current moment, when governments around the world are massively indebting themselves to ward off the economic fallouts from the Covid-19 crisis, and consequently will have to access new sources of revenue in the future. This emerging debate, I argue, is driven by memories of the 20th century. Second, by looking at the phenomenon of wealth individuals who have turned their back on their families – labelled as "class betrayers" by some –, such as the Disney heir, we can gain a grounded perspective on the memory-wealth link: How does the rejection of material possessions signify the departure from particular narratives; and what mnemonic scripts allow for individual transformations out of the secluded world of the top 1%?
Hecht, Katharina and Kate Summers (2020): The Long and Short of It. The Temporal Significance of Wealth and Income, Social Policy & Administration, Online First.
