The politics behind avocado production

Sociological traditions engender not theoretical uniformity but diversity. This is clearly evident in neo-Weberian statements of class formation and relations. Frank Parkin's development of the social closure notion in class analysis provides an implicit critique of Giddens' account of mobility closure in class structuration. The model of class contained in Parkins's elaboration of the concept of social closure posits a direct relation between class formation and social power relations, provides an account of exploitation in class relations, explains intra-class divisions through the concepts used in understanding inter-class divisions, and contains a unified statement of communal and class divisions. In each of these endeavours to contribute to our understanding of class relations, Parkin's formulations are found wanting.

Reviewed by: Globalized Authoritarianism: Megaprojects, Slums, and Class Relations in Urban Moroccoby Koenraad Bogaert Lino Camprubí (bio) Globalized Authoritarianism: Megaprojects, Slums, and Class Relations in Urban Morocco. By Koenraad Bogaert. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Pp. 312. Paperback $28. Readers may remember Casablanca as a place where European refugees (played by Humphrey Bogart) could find a passage to allied territories or get stuck in the Vichy-controlled enclave. For Koenraad Bogaert, it is one of the cities in which global neoliberal politics are produced. More specifically, they are constructed through urban projects and in conjunction with authoritarian rule. A political scientist by training, Bogaert goes against much of the established literature in that field in defending his triple thesis, i.e., that neoliberalism is not a global model imposed from above but produced locally and with local specificities; that politics happen not only through parties and elections but through urban demolition and construction; and that globalization does not always mean democratization but often quite the contrary. Globalized Authoritarianismexplores these theoretical themes through the concrete cases of the upgrading of Casablanca slums and the retooling of the Bouregreg Valley between Rabat and Salé. The book engages extensively with literature on urban and political theory, Arab politics, and global capitalism, as the author declares himself heir of Marx, Foucault, and Lefebvre. And yet he succeeds in building an analysis of his own for this much-understudied region of the world. The introductory chapter explains the book's argument. At its core is the reinterpretation of neoliberalism as a "set of projects." It depicts global capitalism as being produced in different places through concrete, local transformations by agents that operate both in global markets and in local [End Page 326]politics. While in the 1980s, neoliberalism worldwide meant dismantling state developmentalist and welfare structures, in the last two decades, it has a more active and creative approach to biopolitics that consists of turning all citizens into consumers. Converting slums and traditionally run-down cities into gentrified theme parks, major ports, and financial centers is both a way of producing surplus and of managing populations. The state, understood as a plurality of actors with various interests, becomes a major force in moving class projects forward (and class is here not an essentialist notion to define social strata as much as, again, a number of projects aimed at stratifying society). Chapter 1 sets the argument in the context of Arab politics and discussions of the "Arab regime." It pleads to stop seeing liberal democracies as the end point of globalization and all other societies as deviations from that rule. Instead, we need to look at varieties of capitalism in their own terms. Chapter 2 offers a history of neoliberal biopolitics from the 1980s to the present worldwide but also in Morocco with the transformations initiated by the monarch Hassan II and, even more importantly, by his son Mohammed VI. Cities were at the center of some of these changes, particularly Casablanca with the 1980s riots and the 2003 bombings, which were blamed on the radicalization of slum dwellers. This serves as the historical foundation for the analysis of class politics developed in chapter 3. The Bouregreg Valley occupies chapter 4, which looks at the financial and political intricacies that made the Valley's funding possible. This sets the stage for chapter 5's revisiting of the historical shifts discussed in chapter 2. Chapter 6 explores the book's second example—Casablanca slums—again very attentive to financial procedures and to the actual consequences that these projects had on the inhabitants of bidonvilles, including impoverishment and displacement. Historians of technology will appreciate Bogaert's approach to political theory and analysis through concrete studies of material transformation. They are likely to miss, however, both more history and more materiality. Most of the chapters consist of (subtle and solid) theoretical discussions. When the examples finally come up (the first one on p. 123), the analysis is still peppered by theoretical points and largely economic and political analysis. Further studies might benefit from a closer look at practices of demolition and construction (materials and tools, construction designs and elements, labor organization) and at wider geographical and...

Investigations of the british rural middle classes — Part 1: From legislation to interpretation

Christoph Kleßmann's imposing synthesis on workers in the East German ‘worker state’ is nothing less than a political and social history of the Ulbricht era. In 800 tight pages, the author stages a remarkably solid and clear story in which rulers and workers move between two reference poles: the expectations of the official ideology and the achievements of the West German rival. He skilfully relates the history of all central institutions involved in labour processes and legislation, describes the forms taken by social tensions and compromises, and alternately looks at broader tendencies, regional specificities and enterprise cases. His unifying thread remains the tumultuous changes in class relations under the impact of a Soviet-like version of socialism and the existence of the Federal Republic, yet he manages to make sense of most political, economic and social developments in the GDR until 1971. Other authors such as Jeffrey Kopstein had previously attempted a similar exercise, but their works were not able to benefit from the number of pages allowed by the series on the History of Workers and of Labour Movements in Germany, which publishes this book. Kleßmann makes use of this literature but also distinguishes himself from other authorities such as Peter Hübner on labour relations, or André Steiner on the economy, whose work inspires key passages in his book, by means of the preponderance attributed to what he calls the ‘West German magnetic field’. Rarely does an author provide such a meticulous look at West Germany while writing on East Germany. Although the argument that East German rulers and workers used the Federal Republic as a ‘reference society’ and ‘gauge’ for developments at home (p. 27) is not new, Kleßmann's use of the ‘magnetic field’ metaphor allows him to ascribe social and political developments in the GDR to the influence of the Federal Republic in a much more extensive manner than has usually been done. This claim to a coherent and grand idea is very ambitious and stimulating, but it turns out to be rather frustrating when the author uses the magnet concept as a catch-all metaphor. With it he also explains developments that were merely common to the two German states, such as the emergence of a vast social policy, or born out of specific political constraints, such as worker claims for free elections. As enlightening as it may be to provide a role for the Federal Republic in a monograph on the GDR, it does not need to be the final word on the subject.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Class Dynamics from Socialism to Post-Socialism

In the past three decades a remarkable shift has occurred, even an inversion, within the sociological agenda. In the 1970s no self-respecting British sociologist could ignore the concept of class: class analysis was a major concern, if not the key concern of British empirical sociology. At this time the sociology of 'race relations', as it was characteristically called, was a relatively marginal sociological specialism; and even within that specialism much theoretical work was devoted to the relation between 'race and class'. As AIi Rattansi's dissection of the neo-Marxist position in chapter 3 of this volume shows, among Marxists there was a tendency to reduce race to a 'subset' of class, even to see it as an obfuscation of 'real' class relations; or at the least, to see class as 'determinant in the last instance'. While the leading neo-Weberian, John Rex, who revisits some of his earlier work in chapter 2, outlined the specificity of a 'race relations situation' (Rex 1970), his framing of 'race relations' was principally in relation to class contexts and social and political power. The task of breaking free of this modernist preoccupation with class as the central dimension of social differentiation was all the harder because of the strength and sophistication of the classical models of the accounts of class and social divisions offered by Marx and Weber.KeywordsEthnic MinorityEthnic IdentityMiddle GroundRace RelationStructure ContextThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This analysis has two basic objectives: First, to understand as precisely as possible the inner structure of Weber's concept of class, its similarities and differences from Marx's concept, and its relationship to the problem of exploitation; second, to use this interrogation of Weber's work to defend the importance of the concept of exploitation for sociological theory. To understand the foundations of Weber's class analysis one must look beyond his most synoptic treatments of class in Economy and Society and see how his concept of class is intimately linked to his investigations of the broad problem of rationalization in modern society. Class, in these terms, is the way economic power is distributed when economic action is organized to the greatest degree in an instrumentally-rational manner The problem of exploitation-the extraction of labor effort from workers-is treated, in this framework, primarily as a problem of technical efficiency and economic rationality in creating work incentives and effective discipline. This conceptualization leads to a relatively impoverished understanding of the nature of antagonistic interests generated by class relations. IF THEORETICAL frameworks are identified as loudly by their silences as by their proclamations, then one of the defining characteristics of class analysis in the Weberian tradition is the virtual absence of a systematic concept of exploitation. Nothing better captures the central contrast between the Marxist and Weberian traditions of class analysis than the difference between a class concept centered on the problem of life chances in Weber and a concept rooted in the problem of exploitation in Marx. This is not to say that Weber completely ignores some of the substantive issues connected to the problem of exploitation. For example, Weber, like Marx, sees an intimate connection between the nature of property relations in capitalism and the problem employers face in eliciting high levels of effort from workers. But he does not theorize this issue in

This analysis has two basic objectives: First, to understand as precisely as possible the inner structure of Weber's concept of class, its similarities and differences from Marx's concept, and its relationship to the problem of exploitation; second, to use this interrogation of Weber's work to defend the importance of the concept of exploitation for sociological theory. To understand the foundations of Weber's class analysis one must look beyond his most synoptic treatments of class in Economy and Society and see how his concept of class is intimately linked to his investigations of the broad problem of rationalization in modern society. Class, in these terms, is the way economic power is distributed when economic action is organized to the greatest degree in an instrumentally-rational manner. The problem of exploitation—the extraction of labor effort from workers—is treated, in this framework, primarily as a problem of technical efficiency and economic rationality in creating work incentives and effective discipline. This conceptualization leads to a relatively impoverished understanding of the nature of antagonistic interests generated by class relations.

It has been claimed that class analysis cannot explain contemporary social hierarchy and new forms of cultural alignments. The recent works of class theorists, on the other hand, rejects the arguments of the “death of class,” instead propose a modification of class theory with an emphasis on culture and identity. Drawing on Beverly Skeggs and Mike Savage ’ s studies among this group, the paper argues that including cultural formations into class theory these studies bring along a new perspective to the subject. In a recent study with Bennett et al. Culture, Class, Distinction (2008) Savage focuses on cultural dimension of class in contemporary Britain. However, the article questions the way the study explains people ’ s experiences of class in their everyday life. Indeed, the paper argues that Savage and Bennett et.al’s work gives a vague explanation of class identities and cannot explain questions about the everyday practices of class and identity. This is not to deny that the pattern of class and culture has been changed, rather the paper urges us to consider how relations of class are made and re-made within everyday life and how this effects class identity.

This landmark study analyzes and compares the ideologies that develop among unequal social groups. Mary Jackman employs a unique national survey to investigate all three of the most prominent relations of inequality in the United States: gender, class, and race. Where other scholars have emphasized conflict as the emblem of intergroup oppression, Jackman proposes a theory in which both dominant and subordinate groups maneuver to avoid open hostility as they strive to control resources within the confines of their mutual relationship. Hostility, Jackman points out, creates resistance in a relationship. Dominant groups therefore try to preempt the use of force by following a velvet-glove strategy of 'sweet persuasion'. They are drawn especially to the ideological mold of paternalism, in which the coercion of subordinates is grounded in love rather than hate. Dominant-group members pronounce authoritatively on the needs and welfare of all and then profess to 'provide' for those needs. Love, affection, and praise are offered to subordinates on strict condition that they comply with the terms of the unequal relationship. Whether in the home or in the arena of class or race relations, paternalism wraps control and authority in an ideological cocoon in which discriminatory actions are defined as benevolent and affection is made contingent on compliance. Jackman's emphasis on the practice of coercive love in race, class, and gender relations is sure to generate controversy and further research. Sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and anyone interested in group ideology will find here a provocative challenge to conventional views.

This essay critiques Rita Felski’s employment of Axel Honneth’s theorisation of “recognition” for a postcritical literary theory and, in turn, Honneth’s own appropriation of recognition from Hegel. In her article “Recognizing Class,” Felski uses Honneth’s concept of recognition to read Didier Eribon’s memoir Returning to Reims, and to argue for the importance of lived experience in analyses of class and its literary representation. This leads her to indict Marxism for its ideal of a classless society. Why should we will the abolition of class when many workers experience their class as a source of pride and belonging? What workers need is not emancipation from their class, but adequate recognition. By drawing upon Gillian Rose’s Hegelian account of recognition, this essay contends that by assuming recognition in advance as an ideal, Felski and Honneth overlook that without emancipation from bourgeois property and class relations, the recognition they presuppose remains an impossibility.

Bourdieu's analysis of class and culture errs in neglecting two important aspects of social structure: social networks and class relations at work. He expects high-status culture to be useful in class because it is correlated with class, but culture used at work includes both genres related to class (used in domination) and genres unrelated to class (used in coordination). High-status culture is correlated with class but excluded, not used, in the competitive private sector. The most widely useful cultural resource is cultural variety, and social network variety is a better source of cultural variety than is class itself.

In Chapter 5 of PCMP on the 'feudal' mode we extended and developed the concepts of 'possession of' and 'separation from' the means of production as they applied to this mode, although we did not fully recognise the consequences of our position. Similarly, whilst we distinguished between mode of production and social formation and argued that the concepts of modes of production did not represent sub-unities of being of the greater unity of the formation, we did not attempt any analysis of the conditions of existence of economic class relations other than those represented in the concepts of modes of production themselves. As a result of this limitation we neglected to investigate the problems of conceptualising the conditions of more complex forms of class relations and we concentrated instead on relations between a single class of possessing agents and a single class of non-possessing direct producers. In this chapter, drawing on work in process,17 we attempt to remedy some of the effects of the limitations of our analysis of classes in PCMP.KeywordsLabour ProcessClass RelationSocial FormationSocial DivisionDefinite CategoryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This paper argues that the origin of the recently founded Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in England should be theorized in terms of the class relations and tensions of economic regulation in Britain and the use of scale and rescaling to manage those tensions. The paper considers the class logic of neo-liberalism, which has been particularly strongly developed in Britain due to its long-standing liberal settlement, and the problems of socialization of production which neo-liberalism has produced. The class tensions and problems of socialization which first created, and then led to the decline of, centrally-redistributive regional policy are discussed. Analogous processes at the EU level are examined. A key precursor of the RDAs, local economic initiatives, is examined, and the spatial-class relations underlying them discussed. These arguments are then the basis for understanding the partial rescaling of regulation in England downwards from the national state and upwards from the local level, and also the shift from centrally to locally controlled regional policy. This analysis of origins of the RDAs then suggests a number of tensions in the project which will shape its future trajectory; due to these tensions the class relations of the new regional economic governance remain open.

The majority of global commodity chain analysis is concerned with producer firm upgrading, because it is held to engender local-level development. This represents a myopic comprehension of the interaction of firms under capitalism. This article argues, in contrast, that lead firm chain governance and supplier firm upgrading attempts constitute strategies and practices that reproduce global poverty and inequality. Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction represents a starting point in undertaking this endeavour. However, his formulation of capitalist competition ignores class and global economic relations. A Marxian conception of creative destruction, in contrast, rests upon an understanding of globally constituted class relations, which provides a novel perspective in comprehending and investigating processes that re-produce global poverty and inequality. The article substantiates these claims by examining cases of buyer-driven global commodity chains, and lead firm strategies of increasing labour exploitation throughout these chains.