Class Relations Research Articles

Understanding the Kashmir Conflict: A Complex Multiplicity Perspective

Understanding the Kashmir Conflict: A Complex Multiplicity Perspective

Housing, debt, and credit score classification situations: what the unique ‘situation’ of mortgage prisoners reveals about contemporary class inequality

ABSTRACT The expansion of debt-leveraged homeownership in Anglo-capitalist economies – including the US, UK, and Australia – has created powerful stratifying effects, which prevailing critical Marxist and asset-based stratification accounts assert are reconfiguring class inequalities. While the Marxist account contends that altered class relations are centred on bifurcations between creditors and debtors, the asset-based one constructs typologies of differing relationships to asset ownership. This paper challenges this for insufficiently acknowledging the role of classificatory credit scoring systems within credit markets in unequally shaping access to debt and subsequently, housing; and the interest-bearing consequences. Drawing on a qualitative case study of 28 interviews with ‘mortgage prisoners’, existing borrowers unable to remortgage even if up to date with payments, and proceeding in close conversation with Fourcade and Healy's notion of ‘classification situations’, I examine how mortgage prisoners’ credit score situation impacts their capacity to (re)access debt-leveraged housing. The results demonstrate: mortgage prisoners’ credit score situation dominates their experience of homeownership; many are hyperaware of their credit score and internalise its moralistic valuation; and some are resigned to or defeated by its apparent impermeability. Examining the mortgage prisoners’ case enhances critical Marxist and asset-based accounts by highlighting the complexity of financialised housing systems and how it impacts stratification and life chances.

Visibility, Precarity and Public Spaces: Reading Matthew Arnold’s “West London” in an Indian Classroom

This essay is an account of my experience of teaching Matthew Arnold's "West London" in an Indian classroom through the conceptual prism of vulnerability. The essay argues that the configuration of public space in Arnold's poem in terms of differential class relations in Victorian society offers a literary mode of visualizing vulnerablity and prompts an ethical recognition of the humanness of marginalized characters. It further demonstrates how the peadgogic exercise of 'reading' such poetry in the contemporary urban Indian context can alert students to the politics of occupying and negotiating public spaces in terms of (the lack of) class position and privilege across diverse cultural and historical contexts.

‘All true histories contain instruction’: Truth and Everyday Heroism in Agnes Grey

The writings of the Brontës have frequently been studied in relation to conceptions of heroism. More specifically, critics have focused on the influence of war heroes such as the Duke of Wellington or Napoleon in the early writings of the siblings, principally those authored by Charlotte and Branwell Brontë. This article, however, explores the conception of ‘everyday heroism’ in Anne Brontë’s novel Agnes Grey (1847). It argues that the ordinary characters portrayed in Brontë’s work embody qualities usually associated with the heroic. Further, the analysis of heroism can reveal new insights into the representation of gender roles and class relations in the novel.

Chen Han-seng, the Institute of Pacific Relations, and Changing Ideas About the Chinese Rural Economy

Abstract The famous sociologist, economist, and historian Chen Han-seng was the founder of the Agrarian China Research Association, publishing influential studies on industrial production and class relations, and their effect on peasant living standards. Through the Institute of Pacific Relations (ipr), Chen engaged in a theoretical dialogue with liberal intellectuals and responded to American, British, and Soviet theories about Chinese society and rural China. Unlike American ipr scholars, such as John Lossing Buck, whose agenda was to investigate the consumer power of Chinese peasants, Chen’s study of living standards emphasized their production capability and the role usury played in it. And unlike the ipr British economists, such as R. H. Tawney, who were generally optimistic about Chinese rural industry, Chen’s research proved Chinese industrialization to be unsustainable and to lower peasant living standards. In reaction to these American and British scholars, Chen tactically changed his concept of “living standards” and developed his own theory of Chinese rural economics.

A French Materialist and Decolonial Perspective on Marxist-Feminist Theories and Struggles Today

This short commentary is part of a book symposium about Marxist-Feminist Theories and Struggles Today: Essential Writings on Intersectionality, Labour and Ecofeminism, edited by Khayaat Fakier, Diana Mulinari, and Nora Räthzel. It discusses certain chapters from a French materialist lesbian feminist perspective, as well as from a decolonial feminist perspective. Introducing Colette Guillaumin’s sexage proposal and referring to Monique Wittig’s analysis of the heterosexualization of women and of the “straight mind,” the essay recalls the importance of Black feminists in the United States and elsewhere and proposes a theory of the interlocking social-structural relations of sex, race, and class as complementary elements moving toward a renewal of Marxist-feminist reflections from a historical perspective that also accounts for the colonial roots of today’s discussions on care and reproductive labor.

ADOLF BIBIČ’S INNOVATIVE CONTRIBUTION TO THE MARXIST CONCEPTUALISATION OF POLITICS

Abstract. The article analyses the innovative Marxist conceptualisation of politics proposed by the Slovenian political scientist Adolf Bibič. The latter built on the contributions of Heglo-Marxists and Gramsci to political theory. At the core of his theory, he placed the question of the political power–class exploitation relationship. He distinguished political politics from self-managing politics, and problematised the dominant Western understandings of politics as well as the theories of elitism and pluralism. Moving away from such theories and dogmatic Marxist notions about the withering away of politics, he formulated his project of humanising politics beyond class exploitation and capitalist relations of production. This project assumed a necessary transformation of political practice in terms of the dialectical process of the socialisation of politics and the politicisation of society. Keywords: Adolf Bibič, politics, political science, class relations, economic exploitation.

Five Interconnections of Race and Class

Abstract This paper proposes a five-part empirical typology of interconnections of race and class. We describe the mechanisms whereby (1) race is a form of class relation; (2) race relations and class relations reciprocally affect each other; (3) race acts as a sorting mechanism into class locations; (4) race acts as a mediating linkage to class locations; and (5) race interacts with class in determining other outcomes. Rather than insisting on one or another mechanism as the overarching framework for conceptualising the interconnections between race and class, we propose a theoretical integration of all five within a functionalist model. The model reconciles the empirical effects of race variables with a class-functionalist explanation of race. Our typology of interconnections is useful for situating concrete empirical phenomena, and our theoretical integration of those interconnections offers a coherent explanatory system that captures the recursive causality of race and class.

World-Traveling to the Servants’ Quarters: The Pseudo-Concreteness of Lugones’ Decolonial Feminism

Abstract This article focuses on the role of servants in María Lugones’ “Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception.” I show that Lugones uses and erases the work of servants in developing her understanding of world-traveling. This theoretical marginalization and instrumentalization challenges her claim to capture concrete, lived experience. This article argues that Lugones’ theory is “pseudo-concrete”: it capitulates into the very abstractions it seeks to overcome. Focusing on the role of servants reveals the class character of world-traveling and, in turn, its inability to grasp class relations. This article, thus, invites decolonial feminists to reconsider the advantages of class analysis for understanding not only capitalist domination but also perception, identification, and love.

The ‘agropopulist shift’ toward authoritarianism: the conflict between the MAS government and coca growers from the Bolivian Yungas

ABSTRACT Progressive agrarian populist movements might walk the path toward authoritarianism under concrete hegemonic struggles, social class relations, and state-society dynamics. I propose the notion of the ‘agropopulist shift’ to draw attention to how these movements, when accessing state power, might deploy authoritarian tactics against their former class allies. To illustrate this argument, I analyze a case that demonstrates how, and the extent to which, the government of the former Bolivian president Evo Morales and his political party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), shifted toward authoritarian populist politics to address the social dissent of the coca growers from Los Yungas region.

Spatial political economy: The ideology of Nature, State–space and the oil commodity frontier

In this article, a spatial political economy approach is used to examine the development of global capitalism through an analysis of the expansionary movement of commodity frontiers. It surveys the early history of oil exploitation in Chile and offers a close analysis of Patagonia’s constitution of its oil commodity frontier as Cheap Energy. It is argued that focusing on the internal relation of space and Nature can enhance our understanding of capitalism as an emergent and dynamic totality grounded in particular places where value is extracted. The article sheds new light on the spatialities of Import Substitution Industrialisation in Latin America using the case of Chile and its development agency, Corfo, and reveals how the capitalist ideology of Nature was wrought as a state project. The political economy of scale in this context is examined by analysing the central role of state and class relations in the environment-making process of capital accumulation. The article advances a new understanding of State–space within uneven and combined capitalist development. The spatial political economy lens allows for a fresh understanding of past history, which may help us understand the current ‘green’ energy transition by means of the production of space and Nature.

ECS-SC: Long-tailed classification via data augmentation based on easily confused sample selection and combination

The long-tailed distribution data poses many challenges for machine learning because the tail classes are extremely scarce. Long-tailed data augmentation is a powerful technique for enriching the tail class diversity. However, existing methods often treat each class independently, assuming that classes are isolated from each other. These approaches overlook the presence of easily confused tail classes, making it challenging for models to distinguish between them accurately. In this paper, we propose a long-tailed classification method based on data augmentation, which utilizes multi-granularity knowledge to select and combine easily confused tail samples, thereby enhancing the classification performance of these samples. First, we utilize multi-granularity knowledge and semantic relation trees to build a class relation matrix. This matrix records the relationship between classes and helps the model search for easily confused classes from bilateral branch samplers. Second, we crop and combine the easily confused head and tail class samples in a foreground–background manner to generate new samples, thereby augmenting the model training. The extensive head class knowledge is transferred to the scarce tail class samples through the combination of fore-background, and the discriminative and generalized abilities of the model are improved. The experimental results affirm the effectiveness of our proposed method.

The Influence of Patriarchal Society on the Reconstruction of Feminine Identity in the Selected Novels of R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand: A Comparative Study

The study compares how patriarchal culture affects the reconstruction of the feminine self in several novels by top Indian authors R.K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand. The writers examine social dynamics and cultural influences to highlight the difficulties women face when redefining themselves in patriarchal societies. In The Guide and The Dark Room, R.K. Narayan portrays women within Indian culture. Rosie and Savitri show how women struggle to escape cultural norms. Rosie breaks patriarchal norms by becoming a dancer, and Savitri's journey from modest housewife to confident woman illustrates women's challenges. Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable and Two Leaves and a Bud graphically show how patriarchy affects women. Female tea plantation workers, Bakha's sister, and other Anand characters represent women's oppression and exploitation due to class hierarchies and societal norms. The characters' fight for equality and dignity is shaped by class and gender relations. The study uses secondary and qualitative research methods and pragmatism to understand the reconstruction of the feminine character in these two authors' novels. As the discussion and analysis section shows, both authors wanted to show women's efforts to escape their misery by empowering them because they could not make independent decisions. Both authors discuss how patriarchal ideas and social norms shape feminine identity and women's struggles for self-discovery, independence, and empowerment. Narayan and Anand's female protagonists challenge social norms and fight for equality.

Exploitation, patriarchy and petty commodity production: class, gender and neocolonialism in rural eastern Uganda

Processes of gendered exploitation within villages are integral to world-historical capitalism. Analysing them informs pathways to change. This article illustrates three forms of ‘everyday exploitation’: ‘direct’ exploitation of labour by petty capital, ‘indirect’ exploitation through petty commodity production, and the ‘triple exploitation’ of labouring class women through the interplay of capitalism and patriarchy. This is done through detailed data on class, gender and generational relations within agriculture and brickmaking in an Ugandan village facing a ‘neo-colonial absence’ of public services. Increasing out-migration, meanwhile, underlines a growing crisis of simple reproduction amid pauperising petty commodity production and scarce wage-labour.

Feeling Moved: Upward Mobility Stories in Socialism

Abstract: This article offers a theorization of socialist upward mobility stories, a heterogenous genre that aimed to capture the experience of class advancement in state socialism, on the example of the Polish People's Republic. Socialist upward mobility stories developed over time in response to the evolving class politics of the state and transforming class relations, and influenced the ways in which class was thought and lived. The genre was characterized by four recurring motifs: the collective character of socialist upward mobility, the state's role as benefactor, the diffusion of upward mobility, and a heightened emotionality.

Exploring the Effects of Labour Migration on Class Relation in a Rural Village of Western Hill of Nepal

Exploring the Effects of Labour Migration on Class Relation in a Rural Village of Western Hill of Nepal

Encountering Innovation, Countering Innovation

What could be gained by putting science and technology studies (STS) in conversation with innovation studies (IS)? These distinct fields have shared people over decades, as they build concepts, careers, institutions, and even nations. I review how this collection offers accounts of how STS and IS have been practiced in different times and locations: resisting underdevelopment, Western and middle-class assumptions about progress, or technology-centric policy. I argue, however, that it is critical to clarify the difference between innovation as an analytic and as an emic and ideological category. Neither STS nor IS should take for granted the ways political economy, class relations, racialization and gendering, and even national(ist) ideologies shape what counts as desirable forms of newness, what newness ought to be contained or criminalized, and the hierarchies of socio-technical transformation that emerge out of that. I offer three examples: San Diego’s “smart streetlights” program where “innovation” as an ideology devalues or erases the creativity and knowledge already manifest among residents; Amazon® Mechanical Turk worker advocacy and the limits of doing scholarship with policy relevance when workers do not have organized power; and mid-twentieth-century Iran, where I show what IBM® throwing computers into the ocean can tell us about innovation as a form of enclosure, repression, empire, and waste of collective resources and knowledge.

Трансформации социальной структуры и политических институтов традиционного черкесского общества через призму хабзэ в конце XVIII – начале XIX в.

The article is devoted to the analysis of transcripts of Circassian adats / khabze in terms of norms relating to class relations and political institutions (pshchyshkhue / grand duke / valii, hey / princely court, mekhkeme) of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. The norms of the period under review indicate a democratic transformation of the class structure of traditional Circassian society and the influence of Sharia on political institutions. Khabze, recorded in the 1840s and 1860s, demonstrate that the code of Adyghe khabze, despite the divergence of socio-political development in the east and west of the country, continued to develop as a single system of law.

The Legal Formation of Class in Migrant Care and Domestic Work

This article analyses the relationship between law and class formation through the case of migrant care and domestic work, and puts sociological class theory into conversation with critical migration research. It contributes to class theory by analysing how law helps produce class relations in the Finnish context. The Finnish state channels migrants into cleaning and domestic work through policy measures, and migration law ties them to the reproductive sector, making law a central social relation that defines migrants’ relation to production. The analysis draws on interviews with migrant care and domestic workers (N = 30) holding temporary work permits and examines their structural and affective descriptions of a position restricted by law. The article argues that the way migrant domestic work is formalised in the legislation produces a class relation for migrants, in which they lack full ownership over their labour power. The findings demonstrate how migrant domestic workers express gratitude for their employment despite experiencing it as devalued, indicating labour as repayment of the ‘gift’ of the residence permit.

Aging Yet Independent Women in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford and Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield

In the Victorian England whose ideal woman was the Angel in the House, a devoted and submissive wife and mother, it would generally be unfortunate for women to be still unmarried past their reproductive years. Using feminist lens, this study compares the Jenkyns sisters (Deborah and Matty) of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853) and Betsy Trotwood of Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield (1850). While aging and single, they are financially independent. Husbandless and childless, the Jenkyns sisters and Betsey could easily fall into the category of redundant women, but they skillfully manage the house and class relations the way the Angels in the House do.