Author Archives: Jason Hickel

About Jason Hickel

Jason Hickel is a senior lecturer in anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of a number of books, most recently The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Penguin Random House, 2017). In addition to his academic work, he contributes regularly to The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and Foreign Policy, serves on the UK Labour Party task force on international development, and sits on Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

The Imperative of Redistribution in an Age of Ecological Overshoot: Human Rights and Global Inequality

Abstract: Legal scholars worry that the human rights framework offers little leverage against the problem of economic inequality. By contrast, I argue that Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the right to an adequate standard of living) does provide such leverage. Given the realities of ecological overshoot, if we want to ratchet up the incomes of the poor in order to satisfy their rights under Article 25, we can no longer rely on the usual strategy of aggregate economic growth. Instead, this Continue reading → Continue reading →