Social inequalities have conventionally been researched as synchronous
processes within the frame of national borders and articulated in the concept
of class. This means that established scholarship has not adequately
considered the historical dimensions and global entanglements or
interconnections between class and other social classifications that have
shaped existing inequalities. Starting from world system and postcolonial
theories as well as from recent debates on transnationalism, the paper first
presents a set of resources for overcoming current deficits in the research of
inequalities. In order to illustrate how these resources analytically operate,
the second part of the paper discusses the case of social inequalities which
affect Afrodescendants in Latin America
