Based on the award-winning monograph Relational Inequalities (Oxford 2019), this talk is an introduction to relational inequality theory (RIT). RIT makes the following claims: Resources, like money, jobs and dignity, are generated and distributed relationally in organizations. Actors makes claims on those resources. Some people are denied access to organizational resources through processes of inclusionary and exclusionary closure. Others appropriate resources based on their ability to exploit weaker actors in interactional and exchange relationships. Actors are more or less powerful in these claims making processes and this relational power tends to be associated with categorical distinctions such as class, occupation, gender, education, citizenship, race, and the like. Institutions and organizational fields influence, but do not determine action and opportunities. Rather actors, use cultural and other tools to devise local strategies of action. Introducing both a theoretical tool kit and a broad set of research exemplars Relational Inequalities is intended to challenge both more macro and micro sociological approaches to inequality.

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, directs the Center for Employment Equity, and convenes the Comparative Organizational Inequality Network (COIN). His major focus is on organizational inequalities and his most recent monograph, with Dustin Avent-Holt, is Relational Inequalities: An Organizational Approach (Oxford 2019).

Dustin Avent-Holt is Associate Professor of Sociology at Augusta University. His research focuses on understanding how various forms of inequality emerge and develop over time. Along with Don Tomaskovic-Devey he co-authored Relational Inequalities: An Organizational Approach (2019, Oxford University Press) and is now further refining, testing, and applying the basic propositions of the theoretical argument developed in their new book.