ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses and compares the influential perspectives on the world history of inequality provided by Jared Diamond, Ian Morris, Yuval Noah Harari, James C. Scott, and David Graeber and David Wengrow. It identifies some significant differences between these five narratives in terms of how they view money, technology, agriculture, and urbanism. Particular emphases are placed on the underestimated role of artifacts in organising social relations, the degree to which material aspects are accorded causal significance, and the extent to which technology is understood as an object of social theory. The chapter argues that these considerations should be crucial in accounting for inequalities, not least the global asymmetries that have been generated since the Industrial Revolution. General-purpose money and market-based technologies have solidified enduring and increasing inequalities between different segments of world society.
