The Inequality Regime of AI
Power, Allocation, and the Struggle for Justice
Massimo Ragnedda & Maria Laura Ruiu
Routledge, 2026
A sociological account of how artificial intelligence reorganizes inequality through prediction, classification, infrastructure and institutional allocation.
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Artificial intelligence does more than reproduce existing bias. It increasingly shapes how people and populations are classified, predicted and allocated opportunities, resources and risks. The Inequality Regime of AI develops a sociological framework for understanding this transformation. Moving beyond conventional digital-divide approaches, the book examines a shift from inequalities of access and participation toward inequalities of prediction and allocation. It asks who controls the data, models and computing infrastructures through which people become legible, who has the authority to act on predictions, and who can contest their consequences.
The book also examines environmental inequality, techno-colonialism and digital feudalism, before considering alternatives based on critical AI literacy, algorithmic commons and redistributive infrastructures.
Key concepts
The AI Inequality Regime
AI understood as a social and institutional system that distributes visibility, resources, opportunities and risk.
The Allocative Turn
A shift from asking who can access digital technologies to asking how predictive systems classify people and shape life chances.
The AI Stratification Spiral
How unequal conditions can enter data, inform predictions and institutional decisions, and generate new data that appear to validate prior classifications.
Algorithmic Habitus
How algorithmically structured environments interact with dispositions, practices and social position.
Computational Metabolism and Techno-colonialism
The material, environmental and geopolitical inequalities underlying AI infrastructures.
Algorithmic Commons and Redistributive Infrastructures
Possible alternatives to concentrated control over data, compute and predictive capacity.
The AI Stratification Spiral
Teaching The Inequality Regime of AI
The book can be used in courses on digital sociology, media and communication, science and technology studies, AI ethics, digital inequality, political sociology, environmental sociology and technology policy.
Free Teaching & Adoption Guide
A two-page resource including:
- learning outcomes;
- key concepts and chapter suggestions;
- a ready-to-use 90-minute seminar;
- discussion questions;
- an AI allocation mapping exercise.
Download the Teaching Guide [PDF]
Considering the book for a course?
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About the authors
Massimo Ragnedda
Professor of Media and Communication, University of Sharjah. Research on digital inequalities, digital capital and the societal consequences of AI. ORCID Google Scholar Research Gate
Maria Laura Ruiu
Associate Professor of Media and Communication, American University of Sharjah. Research on digital and environmental inequalities, communication, social capital and the societal consequences of AI. ORCID Google Scholar Research Gate
Citation and book details
Ragnedda, M., & Ruiu, M. L. (2026). The Inequality Regime of AI: Power, Allocation, and the Struggle for Justice. Routledge.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003689379
ISBN: 9781041173687