Revamping the Sociology of Class: A Note on So and Hikam's Proposal

Abstract

The discussion of within sociology has certainly reached a crisis point. As wealth and power have continued to polarize on a national and global scale over the past decade, the gulf between the realities of and sociologists' ability to rationally understand these realities has grown to truly gaping proportions. The most influential debate on within the field, centered on the structuralist Marxist attempt to explain the dynamics of by producing increasingly ornate yet static class maps, finds itself unable to rise above quibbles over which individuals belong in the working and which in the middle class. Moreover, this neo-Althusserian school of class analysis shows no signs of overcoming either its consistent neglect of the global dimension of relations, or its moribund structuralist credo which reduces consciousness and struggle to simple effects of static positions in class structures. In fact, even the leading figure in this research paradigm now seems steadily less confident in tone, speaking openly of unfulfilled aspirations and elusive goals (Wright 1989:270). In this stagnant climate, the recent call by Alvin Y. So and Muhammad Hikam, in their Sociological Perspectives article 'Class' in the Writings of Wallerstein and Thompson: Toward a Class Struggle Analysis (1989), for a shift toward a more dynamic, historical, and global approach to the sociological investigation of phenomena comes as a much-needed breath of fresh theoretical air. The purpose of this comment is to endorse this effort in general, while suggesting that So and Hikam's formula for progress is in need of revision in one crucial area.