This event will debate Thomas Piketty’s urgent new book, Capital and Ideology, and will feature an interdisciplinary panel of experts. The conversation will probe his views on race and slavery, the nature of capitalism, the impact of political divides, and the contours of long-term social change. Piketty, in conversation with interlocutors, will present the book’s framework and his historically-informed approach for understanding and combating inequalities today.

This discussion is linked to a just-published special issue of The British Journal of Sociology, featuring a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary set of responses to Piketty.

Meet our speakers and chair

Gurminder Bhambra (@GKBhambra) is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex.

Jens Lerche (@JensLerche) is Reader in Agrarian and Labour studies in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS.

LSE alumnus Thomas Piketty (@PikettyLeMonde) is Professor at EHESS and the Paris School of Economics.

Sanjay G. Reddy (@sanjaygreddy) is Associate Professor of Economics at The New School for Social Research.

Diego Sánchez-Ancochea (@dsanco) is Professor of the Political Economy of Development, University of Oxford.

Nora Waitkus (@nora_wait) is Research Officer at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE and Assistant Professor at Tilburg University.

Poornima Paidipaty (@paidipaty) is an LSE Fellow in Inequalities.

More about this event

The Department of Sociology (@LSEsociology) seek to produce sociology that is public-facing, fully engaged with London as a global city, and with major contemporary debates in the intersection between economy, politics and society – with issues such as financialisation, inequality, migration, urban ecology, and climate change.

The International Inequalities Institute (@LSEInequalities) at LSE brings together experts from many LSE departments and centres to lead cutting-edge research focused on understanding why inequalities are escalating in numerous arenas across the world, and to develop critical tools to address these challenges.

The British Journal of Sociology (@BJSociology) is a leading international sociological journal, with a focus on the social and democratic sociological questions of our times, the journal leads the debate on key methodological and theoretical questions and controversies in contemporary sociology.

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series of debates about the direction the world could and should be taking after the crisis.

This event will have live captioning and BSL interpreters.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSECOVID19

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from Debating Capital and Ideology.

A video of this event is available to watch at Debating Capital and Ideology.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.