Bourgeois Class Research Articles

How the bourgeoisie’s quest for status placed blame for poverty on the poor

Abstract From the rise of the state to the emergence of capitalism, the poor were seldom blamed for their poverty. Because everyone was born into essentially unchangeable status roles, legitimated by religions and a static understanding of the social world, they could take neither credit for their good economic fortune nor blame for their privation. Most traditional religions insisted that the well-off must be charitable to the poor. This changed with the rise of capitalism and the ideology that legitimated its institutions and practices. Following upon the works of Max Weber and Richard Tawney, the role of Protestantism in generating an ideology that blames the poor for their abject condition has been widely acknowledged. What has been less appreciated is that this ideology has its roots in a new bourgeois class’s struggle for respectability and social status and that this struggle was a principal force fuelling Protestantism’s doctrinal character and success. This ideology depicted the success of the bourgeoisie as the result of virtuous behaviour and the misery of the poor as a consequence of their moral failings. Secular political and economic thought that arose alongside Protestantism also expressed the attitudes and practices of the emerging bourgeoisie, equally blaming the poor for their poverty. Social respect is essential for self-respect, both of which the bourgeoisie realized. Doing so set in motion forces delegitimating ascriptive status. However, it did so at the cruel cost of further debasing the social condition of the poor, depriving them of social- and self-respect.

Veiled Exploitation: The Maintenance of Power through False Consciousness in The Netflix Series Arcane

The focus of this research is to identify and reveal how false consciousness is created and utilized to retain the authority of the industrialist Silco in the Netflix series Arcane. This research aims to show how false consciousness is through the creation of class consciousness, and how it is spread and maintained through state apparatuses and commodity fetishism as a method of exploitation to maintain his authority and status as a leader in Zaun. In this research, the Marxist theory of ideology and state apparatuses by Louis Althusser and commodity fetishism by Karl Marx were employed to answer the research questions. The research used a qualitative method of content analysis. The data is collected and identified by watching the series, where the relevant data is collected from visuals, activities, and dialogues within the series so that it can be analyzed further. Based on the data analysis, the series Arcane depicts false consciousness as a method to exploit the people from the proletariat and bourgeois classes to benefit certain people or groups. Silco creates and maintains false consciousness by utilizing state apparatuses such as ideological state apparatus and repressive state apparatus through ideology. Silco also utilizes commodity fetishism from Shimmer as a way to control the people through false consciousness. As a result, Silco managed to maintain his power as a leader in Zaun, which reveals how false consciousness can be utilized to benefit a certain people, group, or classes to maintain their power within society.

The viability of the welfare state in Botswana: a Gramscian response to Botlhale and Molokwane

ABSTRACT This short piece is a Gramscian inspired response to Emmanual Botlhale and Thekiso Molokwane’s article entitled “The viability of the welfare state in Botswana”. Contrary to Botlhale and Molokwane’s uncritical approach, I argue that as with other welfare states in capitalist societies, Botswana’s welfare state is an instrument used by the ruling bourgeois classes to construct hegemony or renew it (hegemony) when it has been weakened. Furthermore, I argue that Botswana's welfare state, as with other welfare states in contemporary capitalist societies, is threatened by neo-liberalism.

Power Struggle liberating Class Consciousness: A Marxist Analysis of the Novel "The Verdict" by Osman Hanif

The study is an exploration of Osman Hameed’s novel "The Verdict" through a Marxist lens. The study aims to investigate the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeois class, as well as the power struggle between them, which results in class consciousness. The research follows a transformative paradigm.The research is qualitative in nature. We analyze the textual lines using a Marxist lens. The findings reveal contrasting differences between classes, with the bourgeoisie class maintaining hegemony and marginalizing the proletariat class through legal, physical, psychological, and economic oppression. Furthermore, this class struggle contributes to the development of class consciousness in the proletariat. The study is significant as it contributes to understanding the power structures and the class struggle in society.

A Historical Materialist Reading of the Contested Relations between Greece and Turkey

ABSTRACT This article examines the contested relationship between Greece and Turkey from a historical materialist approach. It seeks to explain the very essence of this contestation rather than merely focusing on its surface forms. While doing this, we eschew intra-Marxist theoretical debates not to exceed the research scope. The article argues that the foreign policies of Greece and Turkey have indeed been subject to considerations of the dominant bourgeois classes in both countries that have been stimulated as well as bound by Euro-Atlantic imperialism. It considers the relative comparative advantages of Greece and Turkey’s relational and possessional capabilities. It puts forward that the historical materialist approach has better explanatory power and offers an alternative reading. It elaborates upon the tense relations between the two countries, showing the interwoven connections with imperialism at national and international levels. It underlines how the contestation between Greece and Turkey has been encouraged and delimited by Euro-Atlantic imperialism.

Examining the Impact of Social Classism and Sacrifice in Dickens's a Tale of Two Cities

The present study examines the social stratification in the novel of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859). It shows how the novel traces the conflict between different categories of society. In so doing , the study discovers the core ideas that shape the disparity that exists between the working class and the aristocrats. In his novel A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens discusses the role of cultural domination in France and England as well as demonstrating the goals of the aristocracy. According to Marx's theory of social construction depends on class relationships and division. These relationships are explained using the two terms exploitation and appropriation. This will include the bourgeois class controlling the working class, which would mean that the mode of production and the productive forces of society would be determined by the aristocracy. The study has used a literary model in an attempt to produce a clear view of the relationship between power and the weak in this novel. Having this literary model to Dickens's novel, the findings of this study reveal how the individuals compete each other to attain social power as represented in their social structure.

Arhitektura palate Popović Tonkić u Leskovcu

The economic and social development of Leskovac was accompanied by intensive construction activity. The urban environment was enriched by the construction of private residential buildings, whose owners were distinguished members of the bourgeois class. The palace of industrialist Milan Popović Tonkić occupies a prominent place in the architectural heritage of Leskovac. It was built in 1937 as a monumental corner building for residential and commercial purposes. It was designed by architect Miša Manojlović, who had a private design office in Belgrade with his colleague Isak Azriel. His independent authorship is evidenced by a marble tile placed on the corner part, under the window of the former tavern. Since historical styles were preferred in the circles of clients due to the expression of social position, the author applied an academic style tempered by a personal reinterpretation of experimentation with form. Following the contemporary practice of designing residential architecture, he paid equal attention to the interior of the building, applying high-quality decorative treatment and functional disposition of the Belgrade apartment. After more then a decade since the last historiographic contributions on the history and visual identity of the building, the main goal of this research is to contextualize the Popović Tonkić palace in Leskovac with phenomenological and stylistic aspects of interwar residential architecture.

The Political Economy of Class Formation and Class Structure in the Southern Kurdistan: 1991-2021

This article examines the dynamics of class formation from a historical sociology perspective after the formation of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), roughly from 1991 to 2021. It then reviews the KRG period (1991-2021) to trace the process of class formation in the newly-born government. After that, the researchers explore the pattern and nature of class structure and the state in the Southern Kurdistan from 1991 to 2021. This article presents the role of the world economy and the Southern Kurdistan political parties in class formation. For example, the government relied on the selling of natural resources such as crude oil, and a small proportion of people received a tremendous amount of wealth from the government by utilizing political power, and their class position changed to a new one, which is a bourgeois class. As this is a historical sociology study, the following theories will be used: Dependency theory and the world-systems theory are essential in this article because they will evaluate the relationship between classes and compare the Southern Kurdistan with other countries in the capitalist world system. The qualitative methods which have been used in this article include critical analysis of written sources and secondary data, including official statistics of the KRG.

Dispute Resolution Methods, Fundamental or Human Rights and Legal Pluralism

The analysis of modern political-institutional systems, democratic-constitutional of a liberal mold, if it clarifies the reasons for the presence and diffusion of dispute resolution methods (state awards), of fundamental and human rights (general) attributable to the new elites of power and government, therefore to the bourgeois class, in the context of a monistic and statistic conception of legal systems, then does not explain the reasons for the diffusion and progressive multiplication of alternative methods of resolving disputes, such as fundamental or human rights in more recent eras. It is therefore necessary to analyze the processes of change that have affected the State, the law, the judicial systems, therefore the fundamental and human rights and the methods of resolving disputes in the light of the phenomenon of legal pluralism.

THE INFLUENCE OF CHINA AND JAPAN ON EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURE AND ART AT THE END OF THE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

Europe turned to Eastern cultures at the stage of oversaturation with its own traditions or at the stage of finding ways out of the crisis in the cultural and artistic life of society. Obviously, the fascination with Chinese cultural traditions - first at the mundane level, and later at the level of art and architecture - during the Baroque and Rococo period testified to the oversaturation that gradually grew in the Baroque and Rococo styles, and therefore the appeal to China became a hidden attempt to find something fundamentally new, non-standard. It is quite clear that without a deep understanding of the foundations of ancient Chinese culture, such citation of Chinese motifs in art and in the architecture of country palaces and park pavilions turned them into simplified theatrical scenery.
 In the same way, the same fascination with Japanese culture in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries took place against the background of increasing crisis phenomena in society, when the processes of secularization intensified against the background of the industrial revolutions and the rise to the forefront of the bourgeois class, and that is why Japanese culture with its philosophy of Taoism and Buddhism, which penetrated into all spheres of social life, into art and architecture, was perceived as a desirable way out of stagnation. At the same time, once again, external forms were copied, which were transformed on local soil without a deep understanding of the philosophical and religious background.
 It should be noted the impact on European culture of the opening in 1897 of the unique temple complex of Dunhuang. As a result of the unstable situation in China during the reign of the Qing Dynasty, many unique artifacts from the Dunhuang sanctuaries were bought for nothing by Europeans and ended up in museums in Europe. This caused another stage of interest in Chinese culture and architecture. The use of aesthetic properties of traditional Chinese and Japanese culture made it possible to enrich the figurative concept of European Art Nouveau. The painting techniques of Art Nouveau period originate from the characteristic painting techniques of China and Japan. However, there is a difference in the influence of Eastern cultures on the art and architecture of Art Nouveau period: if in art such analogies can be traced quite clearly, in architecture at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, this influence was a much more complex phenomenon than the "Chinoiserie" style of the 18th century: Art Nouveau architects did not literally reproduce Chinese and Japanese buildings, but instead creatively rethought the principles of their formation, layout, function and decoration.

The dilemmas of socialist education between 1918 and 1920 according to Krupskaya (1869-1939)

The present article has as general objective to analyze the differentiated access to education enjoyed by the bourgeois class and the working class in Russian socialist society between 1918-1920, according to N.K. Krupskaya (1869-1939). To achieve this goal, the theoretical framework was based on the work "General questions of pedagogy: organization of public education in the USSR", written by Krupskaya herself. A specific part of this work, especially in the chapter entitled "On the Question of the Soviet School", examines the distinctions between the bourgeois and working classes in terms of accessibility to education and pedagogical practice. The research problem is: What should a school capable of forming emancipated individuals look like from Krupskaya's perspective? To answer the question, we used bibliographical research. The results of the analysis showed that Krupskaya made it clear that education in socialist society was shaped by the influence of the wealthy class in society. She stressed the conversion to an emancipatory approach that recognized the importance of intellectual training and productive work equally.

NEPAD and the Challenge of Africa’s Development:

Abstract:The critical necessity of development for Africa in the 21ˢᵗ century is an issue around which there is considerable consensus. There is, however, little agreement on the nature of the crisis, the required development framework, and the ‘desired state’. In the context of the debate, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) has been promoted by its authors and sponsors as Africa’s development blueprint for meeting its development challenges. Much of the criticism of NEPAD has focused, procedurally, on the lack of consultation in its drafting, and, paradigmatically, on its neo- liberal content, the same set of policy instruments that have damaged Africa over the last 20 years. The latter underscores the sense of betrayal that comes through civil society resistance to NEPAD. The question though is this: Why would a group of African leaders, who seem genuine in their concerns, take responsibility for such policy framework? The paper seeks an explanation in the complex interaction between a set of developments since 1980: the neo-liberal hegemony at the level of state policymaking, internal policy atrophy, coercive power of compliance, but equally the new constituencies (class forces) that have been thrown up in the last two decades – within the state, economy, and importantly the civil society in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the latter is premised on the ‘death of the emancipatory project’ and the dominant politics of the petty bourgeois class in Africa. It is in this sense that we understanding NEPAD as a class project, hence, its import.Introduction

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

Democracia e a Agenda de Desenvolvimento 2063 em África. Do passado ao futuro

Democracy and development are two intertwined concepts and processes, especially since the advent of neo-liberalism in the late 1980s. On the African continent, the adoption of an economic development model and system of governance based on neo-liberalism was not the result of a free choice of most local political entourages adhering to the socialist model and one-party regimes, but rather of the diktats of a post-Cold War environment in which state and institutional neo-liberalism dominated, notably the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and of states in the Global North. As a result of this, many African states were forced to carry out reforms and openings in a hurry contrary to their preferences for schemes that would guarantee the survival of their regimes, the development of a local matrix, territorial integrity, and the possibility of maturing internal democratic processes and a local bourgeois class that would later sustain both liberal democracy and a market economy. The failure of the openings operated in that context led to collective decisions within the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU) to relaunch a development model based on local reality, whose AU Agenda 2063 appears as a response to this challenge. Therefore, with this article, I bring to reflection, through the historical method and contextualization, some elements that allow us to understand the attempt to move towards a local development model guided by Africans, amidst the difficulties of continental integration processes, of generational transition, in a continent where half the population is under 25 years old, but the gerontocracy seems not interested in yielding power.

Rasijalističko tumačenje „kriminaliteta Romaˮ Čezara Lombroza

Prejudices about Roma and their ancestors as delinquents are still present in various genres of racist narratives, from everyday speech, through media reports to political performances. Reading several works of the founder of criminology, Cesare Lombroso, reveals that an elaborate antigypsyist discourse was also present in scientific literature in the past. The analysis of this specific form of racism shows a wider ideological framework in which the fantasies about the Roma were shaped - as a dark reflection of the progress of the 19th century and the rise of the bourgeois class. The comparison of Lombroso's view of "Jewish" and "Gypsy" crime is of particular value, since it indicates the different genesis of the stigmas of these ethnic communities. An important segment of the work includes the analysis of the sources used by the Italian criminologist. The persistence of the content reproduced by this author points to the long-term influence of the social processes that shape them, regardless of the sources of ideological legitimization. The positivist phase of biological justification of such beliefs is only one segment of the history of Roma stigmatization.

A Study of Human Relations and Discrimination in the Gha͂tu Site

This paper analyzes the Gha͂tu site from the human relations and discrimination perspectives. Human relations have been badly deteriorated and the individualist approach has been ameliorated in modern societies. This Gha͂tu site, which helps discourage this trend, is a good example of harmony and equality. Most Gha͂tu followers are from the lower middle working class known as the common people. In spite of their good friendship and unity, they are discriminated against by the bourgeois class. They are tagged lower class proletariats. The rich people always dominate and discriminate against the poor people as it is an ongoing process. They cannot raise their voice against the rich people because of their unspeakability. Most Gha͂tu participants are women and little girls who are doubly marginalized; by poverty and femininity. Both women and poor people are treated otherwise in societies. Marxist feminism raises the voice of females, proletariats, or the poor and concerns with how to promote the socio-economic condition of these people. Treating a man by another man as commodities is an issue for Marxist philosophy. So, this paper focuses on questions like, when will the harmonious relations between humans be maintained? Establishing a harmonious relationship between humans and equal socioeconomic status is the major focus of this study as projected in the field of literature. The study employs Marxist feminist theory and Elton Mayo’s theory of human relations respectively for the analysis of this Gha͂tu site.

Parental inheritance and its effect on Annie Ernaux in "la place"

Annie Ernaux, the slippery writer from the misery of the working class to the beauty of the bourgeoisie. This writer lived under the care of her parents, who devoted their efforts to having a stable life similar to the life of the bourgeois class, but there the environmental impact, the cultural base and the poverty prevented it. The entry of the writer into the monastery school and her accompaniment with the sons of the bourgeois class was the first reasons that fueled her feeling of alienation and the miserable life she leads in relation to her colleagues. This comparison made her resentful of her parents, as she compares her friends' mothers and fathers who speak kindly to their daughters, and her father's harsh and rude words. All these events prompted the writer to escape from the working class to the bourgeoisie. The narrator was angry at the father's language and behavior, and even at the deceitful language he was using, describing her father as shy and silent in front of people he thought were important. This research will approach the subject of the parental heritage at Ernaux in his novel La Place which will be realized through the personal effects on his life. Moreover, a retracing of the manifestations of the influence of social class on the author is done in the research without for getting the theme of religion, its role and its relationship with social class. The researcher will discuss the scope of the convenience of the style used by the author in order to convey the image of the social world in the novel. The state of Ernaux s psychological division will take in itself a reason for the mobility in the class it has known. Keywords: parental heritage, social class, religion social mobility.

Domination over the Risorgimento: Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony in Luchino Visconti’s Senso (1954)

AbstractIn this article I argue that Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony assumes a pivotal role in advancing the romantically tinged narrative in Luchino Visconti’s film Senso (1954) through a politically recoded message. Visconti offers in this film a reflection upon the political climate in Venetia during the Risorgimento through the pre-eminent role of music. In particular, Bruckner’s music emphasizes the condition of the Venetians under Austrian rulers by dominating as an oppressive and overpowering force, not unlike the Austrian supremacy over the north Italians. Bruckner’s music, which relies on a decisively Wagnerian idiom, conveys throughout the film ideas of betrayal, on both the microlevel and the macrolevel. Such betrayals refer to the Christian Democracy, which excluded the Marxist partisans from governing post-war Italy. These events mirror, for Visconti, the failed revolution of the bourgeois-driven Risorgimento in the 19th century due to the idleness of the aristocracy. Interpreted through Visconti’s Marxist ideology, Bruckner is thus an indicator that the hegemony of the elite remained in place, unchanged and unaltered. As the sonic representative of the Austrian monarchy, it opposes the Risorgimento ideal of the bourgeois class and reassures the supremacy of the ruling class.

The Scene of Eviction: Reification and Resistance in Depression-Era Narratives of Dispossession

AbstractBecause evictions pervaded US working-class cityscapes during the Great Depression, newspapers actively covered their developments and aftermaths, trading in eviction as a commodifiable experience that could entertain readers at the expense of pathologizing evictees and naturalizing summary process. Against this eviction reportage, this essay identifies a disconnected coterie of authors and artists who represented evictions and anti-eviction protests in their works, mapping out an urban geography that attends to the sociospatial and historical politics of forced ejection. In the writings of H. T. Tsiang and Ralph Ellison in particular, eviction constitutes a spatial politics of violence and exclusion, revealing the state’s protection of private property and bourgeois class interests over the well-being of its working-class and unemployed residents. Illustrating the sociospatial politics of eviction, these authors exploited and contested popular genres of eviction reportage, which narrated dispossession as a pathology of the poor to legitimate the state’s violent protection of private property. Challenging this pathologization as well as the scapegoating of Communist agitation, this essay contends that these texts account for how the juridical architecture of eviction itself creates the space and social mechanisms for anti-eviction resistance to take place. In so doing, this article positions housing and homeless justice as a politics central to the aesthetic experimentations and legacy of 1930s proletarian modernisms.

The Polish Peasantry in Soviet Belarus: From the NEP to Collectivization (1924–1930)

This article explores the Bolsheviks’ social and economic policies towards Polish rural communities in the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic (the BSSR) during the transition from the New Economic Policy (NEP) to forced collectivization. The article focuses on how the Soviet apparatus and its propaganda actively promoted kolkhozes among Polish peasants. To combat so-called bourgeois classes, the Soviet authorities methodically drove out Polish landlords and wealthy peasants from all forms of social and economic life. In 1930, during mass collectivization and so-called dekulakization, Polish families were subjected to deportation from Soviet Belarus. Forced collectivization also saw attacks on the Roman Catholic Church. The authorities established a few Polish collective farms to attract Polish peasants to collectivization, but they were not popular among the peasants.