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This paper highlights the relevance of Marxian class analysis to understand the changing nature of agrarian classes under capital‐intensive agriculture. It is a methodological exercise that builds on Patnaik's labour exploitation index (E‐criterion) in three major respects to construct a new index, namely, the Modified Labour Exploitation Index (MEI), to differentiate peasant classes. First and most important, it incorporates the role of mechanisation, which, so far, has been ignored in the methodological attempts to differentiate within the peasantry. Second, it underscores the importance of non‐agricultural (and non‐rural) bases of simple reproduction in the countryside by incorporating hired‐out labour by agricultural households to the non‐agricultural sector into the classification criteria. Finally, it makes surplus labour exploited through land leasing empirically testable by using Marx's differential and absolute rent to differentiate between subsistence and commercial leasing. The new index is then empirically tested using primary data collected from rural Haryana, India. The paper argues that MEI is an effective criterion for understanding changing class dynamics, the shifting modes of the livelihood of the poor peasantry and the largely hidden accumulation processes in agrarian societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines the variety of agrarian classes of labour and the challenges they face in organizing and pursuing their interests. By taking the cotton sector in Burkina Faso as a case study, it analyses how various 'classes of labour' organize and mobilize for collective action to raise their claims: poor cotton farmers and workers in the cotton factories. Poor and middle farmers recently came to the fore when they boycotted cotton production in large numbers. The study focusses on the boycott campaign, and more broadly on class struggle and collective action by farmers and workers, on interclass alliances, and on capital's attempts to play the classes of labour against one another. The boycott campaign provides an outstanding case to analyse the interests of the various classes of labour and of opportunities for rural–urban mobilization and alliances across classes of labour. I argue that poor farmers and factory workers along the chain of cotton production can be considered as various classes of labour that are not necessarily antagonistic to one another but, first and foremost, to capital. In order to achieve radical transformation in the agrarian context, what is needed are networks and organizations to establish interclass solidarity and alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1990s Chilika Lake saw a conflict over aquaculture practices that culminated in a process of de facto privatization of the lake waters and the implementation of illegal shrimp cultivation. An earlier article explored the class dynamics of the conflict and the present paper, based on a 2015 fieldwork revisit, reviews the unfolding of the socioeconomic dynamics underlying the illegal aquaculture activities. Looking at recent developments in the implementation of illegal shrimp cultivation in the lake, it interrogates the underlying balance between coercion and consent, and the implications for the livelihoods and protest politics of the fishing people. The paper draws attention to the reality of occupational displacement, analysing its implications for the viability of the fisher people's oppositional movement. Through doing so, it draws renewed attention to the complexity of state–society relations underlying the dynamics that govern conflict and critically contributes to recent debates on subaltern politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Agricultural Census (NAC) held in Argentina in 2018 shows that the concentration and centralization of agrarian capital in this country's heartland of grain and oilseed production is an ongoing process. An extensive academic literature has attributed this trend to the dynamics of capitalist development in agriculture in general and to Argentina's political economy in particular. Tying into these discussions and based on a case study, this paper argues that an analysis of how the growth of large corporations works in and through class differentiation helps to further explain the dynamics of concentration and centralization. This includes (i) examining the strategies of big companies to diversify capital functions across various value chain links and (ii) elucidating how they have established particular relations to smaller capitals, intermediate classes, and workers, as well as the related patterns of exploitation and appropriation of surplus value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich aus einer klassenanalytischen Perspektive mit der arbeitsweltlichen Dynamik der Corona-Pandemie. Auf der Basis eines Mixed-Methods-Designs, eines thematisch breiten arbeitssoziologischen Zugangs und von zwei Erhebungswellen des Arbeitswelt-Monitors „Arbeiten in der Corona-Krise" werden die Pandemieeffekte im April/Mai 2020 und im April/ Mai 2021 miteinander verglichen. Quantitativ zeigt sich eine bemerkenswerte Kontinuität in der Risiko- und Lastenverteilung. Die beiden „harten Lockdowns" unterscheiden sich kaum in den absoluten Betroffenheiten mit subjektiven Infektionsrisiken, wirtschaftlichen Lasten und verschlechterten Arbeitsbedingungen sowie im Zugang zum mobilen Arbeiten – und damit auch nicht in den vertikalen und horizontalen Klassenungleichheiten, die sich aus dem Zusammenspiel der Einzeleffekte ergeben. Zugleich deuten die qualitativen Interviews darauf hin, dass sich im Pandemieverlauf die Wahrnehmung der gesellschaftlichen Risiko- und Lastenverteilung verschiebt. In den stark betroffenen unteren Klassen bildet sich nämlich ein Spannungsverhältnis zwischen dem Stolz auf die eigenen Beiträge zur Pandemiebewältigung und den verfestigten Klassenungleichheiten in den Arbeitsfolgen heraus. Letztere werden zunehmend als Missachtung der eigenen Leistungen und als Angriff auf die menschliche Würde erlebt. The paper addresses the work-life dynamics of the Corona pandemic from a class analytic perspective. Based on a mixed-methods design, a broad thematic approach and two survey waves of the Work-Life Monitor "Working in the Corona Crisis", the pandemic effects in April/May 2020 and April/May 2021 are compared. Quantitatively, there is remarkable continuity in the distribution of risks and burdens. The two "hard lockdowns" hardly differ in absolute levels of subjective infection risks, economic burdens, deteriorated working conditions, nor do they differ in access to mobile work – and thus they do not differ in the patterns of vertical and horizontal class inequalities resulting from the interplay of these effects. At the same time, the qualitative interviews suggest that perceptions of the social distribution of risks and burdens shift over the course of the pandemic. Particularly in the lower classes the entrenched inequalities in the pandemicʼs implications are increasingly experienced as a disregard for their own efforts from the early stages of the pandemic and as an attack on their dignity as human beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the class relations emerging in a contract farming scheme in Mozambique. Debates in the literature about contract farming characterise this market arrangement as leading to farmers losing control over production at the hands of capital. By discussing both the drivers and impacts of changes in the division of property and labour, this paper reveals a complex class structure in which the pressure of merchant capital on farmers is internalized within households and transferred onto workers and sharecroppers. This challenges the pertinence of conventional policy that prescribes empowering contract farmers without considering their varied class positions and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introductory paper argues that it is vital to reorient class analysis away from its long term preoccupation with class boundaries in the middle levels of the class structure towards a focus on the class formation at the top. This will permit sociological analysis to engage more effectively with concerns about the '1 percent' and accentuating wealth which are increasingly evident. Accordingly I sketch out the persistence of the 'problematic of the proletariat' in sociological analysis before considering theoretical resources which might permit an engagement with the 'wealth elite'. This paper serves to introduce the other papers of this special issue which use the GBCS to explore different facets of the wealth elite in Britain today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject-matter of the paper is the theory of class struggle proposed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, one of the leading representatives of libertarian political philosophy in the radical tradition of Murray N. Rothbard. The author reconstructs and critically comments on the theory at hand. The author's remarks focus on the ethical and methodological background of Hoppe's approach, the main question being whether the latter theory is consonant with the thinker's positions on ethics and methodology, as well as with his political standpoint. The author argues that not only does class analysis not contradict other core beliefs of Hoppe but it also represents an indispensable element of his libertarian philosophy. There is, however, a significant tension between the class approach and Hoppe's secondary philosophical position - his historical idealism. The article is concluded by indicating some further issues in the Hoppean theory of class that, in the author's opinion, should be subject to future inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several decades, the distinction between ‘white-collar’ (non-manual) and ‘blue-collar’ (manual) work occupied a central place in the analysis of working-class consciousness. According to many scholars, the expansion of non-manual employment was key to dismantling traditional working-class identities. Although several analysts noted the irrelevance of the white-collar/blue-collar distinction as a determinant of class consciousness, the most recent research on class in Chile continues on the traditional argument. However, the empirical research supporting such a contention has been scarce. In this paper I test that hypothesis. Based on quantitative and qualitative data, I show that the distinction between manual and non-manual labor does not lead to significant variations in workers’ class consciousness. Therefore, its use in recent research on class (e.g. the contention that non-manual employment reinforces a ‘middle-class’ consciousness among workers) is deemed questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The paper presents a critique of the discourse of precarity that assumes that regulated era labor relations in advanced capitalist economies represent the norm, while 'irregular work' represents a historical aberration under capitalist employment. We argue that this approach fails to inform labor theorists in any meaningful way as it conceals the differences in the social relations under which work is performed. The catchall term 'precarious labor' makes it difficult to design policies for specific social groups who are non-homogenous in social relations. We propose a Marxian socio-spatial class framework that gives visibility to three key dimensions: 1) the manner in which surpluses are produced, appropriated, and distributed during the labor process; 2) the spatial component of where work is performed, and 3) the degree of market-orientation. Recognizing on the one hand that precarity will always be a ubiquitous feature of capitalist labor markets, and that there are differences within forms of work depending on the social context and location of work on the other, has a number of benefits for contemporary debates. These include a better appreciation of the multiplicity of processes in which labor participates and generates radically new ways of thinking about anti-capitalist resistance across national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on post-Keynesian macroeconomics, the French Regulation Theory and a Neo-Gramscian International Political Economy approach to class analysis to propose an International post-Keynesian Political Economy approach that is used to offer an empirical analysis of European growth models and working class restructuring in Europe between 2000 and 2008. We will distinguish between the ‘East’, the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ and structure our analysis around industrial upgrading, financialisation and working class coherence. We find an export-driven growth model in the North, which came with wage suppression and outsourcing to the East. In the East, the growth model can be characterised as dependent upgrading, which allowed for high real wage growth despite declining working class coherence. The South experienced a debt-driven growth model with a real estate bubble and high inflation rates resulting in large current account deficits. Our analysis shows that class restructuring forms an integral part in the economic process that resulted in European imbalances and the Euro crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers three interrelated critiques of Bourdieusian class analysis. First, Bourdieu replaces classes on paper with capitals on paper. He offers a false break from Marx in an effort to make capital more ‘relational’ via a theory of social space, but in doing so he neglects capital’s fundamental relation to labor. Second, Bourdieu offers a theory of domination without exploitation. Bourdieu’s classes live against one another, but it remains unclear how some classes might also live off of others. Third, and as a consequence of the first two missteps, he emphasizes position over production. Bourdieu typically sees ‘production’ as a form of ‘position-taking’ and as something best examined toward the top of social hierarchies. By largely ignoring labor and exploitation, he generates a theory of positions at the expense of a theory of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the development of Basil Bernstein’s theoretical armories and reinvigorates its relevance to social class analysis in education, while identifying some of the challenges and promises in doing so. The main arguments are grounded in an empirical analysis of the recent Liberal Studies reform in Hong Kong’s senior secondary education. An extended discussion of using a Bernsteinian approach to pedagogy-specific class explanations is developed: (a) transition of code modalities between stages of education; (b) differentiated pedagogic identities in the middle class; (c) pedagogic grammars of specialized habituses; and (d) possibilities for an interruption in the process of social reproduction. It is concluded that continuing to build on Bernstein’s legacy will allow us to achieve a more nuanced understanding of the ways that class works through different pedagogic contexts in order for the conception of an interruption of class reproduction to be useful in guiding transformative practices in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changing contours of politics and democracy in our times by examining the ways in which populations and privileges are increasingly being distributed in cities and countries across the globe. In the light of these changing demographic and social conditions, it asks what are the appropriate terms for analysis of such population groups and their political aspirations, and suggests that we are working with outmoded analytical frames, concepts and languages that belong to another time. It goes on to a brief examination of the kinds of fault-lines that remain and that allow for a range of political initiatives and possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on intergenerational mobility and explores the role of social origin in ending up in various class locations. Latent class analysis was applied to mapping the class structure based on economic, cultural and social assets. Parental education and occupation are used to examine how social origin operates in accumulating the various forms of capital and in getting into different class positions. Out of the forms of capital, economic resources, high cultural capital and prestige of social contacts depend particularly on social origin; these are the main channels affecting mobility into the best class locations. If coming from low educated worker class background, one may get only into one of the bottom class locations, while members of the top class positions come from families where parents hold tertiary degree and have high occupational status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature from various academic disciplines indicates that in recent decades, community resilience (CR) has evolved significantly in conceptualization and operationalization. However, the relevance and empirical inclusion of CR in social and health sciences research remain sparse and fragmented. This scoping review, therefore, aimed to assess the conceptualization of CR in social and health sciences research; determine the availability of tools measuring this construct; and identify the psychometric properties of available instruments. Findings highlight how CR has shifted from a peripheral ecological concept to a central goal in the psychosociological discourse. Though several common core elements were identified in the included literature, results indicated little consensus regarding the conceptual or operational definitions of CR. Furthermore, there is minimal evidence on robust metrics that comprehensively measure CR as a complex psychosocial construct. Review results thus highlight the importance, and provide pragmatic implications, regarding the inclusion of core elements of CR in community-based strategies and development efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent approaches to class analysis in advanced capitalism have been largely disconnected from the capitalist labour process. This paper has three basic goals. First, we suggest a composite Marxist model of current class structure grounded in ownership, managerial authority, specialized knowledge and value relations in the capitalist labour process. Secondly, this model is used for an empirical assessment of continuity and change in class structure, based on a series of national surveys in Canada in the period 1982–2010. Thirdly, using the same series of surveys, we use this model of class structure to evaluate the extent to which employment class positions are relevant for understanding shifting expressions of class consciousness. Within the employed labour force in this particular advanced capitalist country, we find a generally declining conventional working class and expanding proportions of managerial and professional employees. Connections between employment class positions and class consciousness can involve complex mediations. Evidence for the persistence of strong hegemonic consciousness among corporate capitalists is provided by an additional unique series of surveys. This persistence contrasts with declining working class identity and increasingly mixed class consciousness among most other employment class positions. However, pro-labour oppositional consciousness is found to dominate among unionized industrial workers and professional employees in the private goods-producing sector, who may be among the most directly exploited workers in value terms in an emergent ‘knowledge economy’. The findings suggest the continuing relevance of pursuing class analyses based on production relations in advanced capitalist economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ᅟIn this paper, I argue that anthropology is in the unique position to bring to the fore the way people experience the current much turbulent world in social, economic, and cultural terms while trying to make their lives possible. This process can be fully illuminating by using class analysis not as a static category but as a dynamic dimension embedded in the formation of social relations. In this light, I use my own ethnographic work in Piraeus, Greece, as an example showing that even though agents are seemingly integrated passively into asymmetrical power games, they themselves perceive this process in their own way, informed by their past and present experiences of coercive conditions and class consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we estimate the order of magnitude of the double Fourier coefficients of a function of the class (⋀1, ⋀2) BV(p(n) ↑ ∞, φ) over [0, 2π]2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the variety of discourses on social inequalities in postcommunist Bulgaria. The focus is on academic discourse, but political and everyday interpretations are presented as well. Politicians generally avoid talking about social differences and prefer instead the dichotomy of "elite" versus "the people," whose interests the politicians vow to protect. In popular consciousness, the main division is between "the rich" (mafia, politicians, ex-nomenklatura) and "the honest poor." In sociology, three main research trajectories have emerged: from class-based to status-based stratification; from one-dimensional to multidimensional stratification; and from a Marxist class model to a social network model. Perhaps the most important characteristic of Bulgarian society is its high level of poverty, according both to income indicators and self-perception. In this context of a pervasive sense of poverty, status differences lose their significance. This in turn prevents the establishment of group or class solidarity, as everyone feels she or he is competing with all others. Starting in 2013, a new trend can be observed: of social protests organized by those who say they feel powerless and manipulated by corrupt elites. As they try to initiate new types of economic negotiations with the government, sociologists have a responsibility both to study this new movement and to push the problems it raises into public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Noting the insights to be gained from Wolff and Resnick's lucid and insightful comparative explication of neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian economic theories, this paper reflects on new theories of human behavior in late neoclassical theory that open doors to socially contingent understandings of subjectivity. In theirContending Economic Theories, Wolff and Resnick illustrate that different methodologies and entry points matter with respect to understanding crucial social issues such as income distribution, poverty, capitalism, and the class composition of profits. They offer an avenue for appreciating the nature, conditions, and consequences of class processes without insisting on a totalizing ontology, centered subjects, or economism. This approach to Marxian class analytics is compatible with many insights of poststructuralist feminism and, as exemplified by the work of many within AESA, has provided fertile ground for a reinvigorated class politics interested in proliferating differences that enable alternative class, gender, sexual, and racial ways of being. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On the basis of European Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data, this paper conducts a comparative analysis of housing conditions in different European countries by focusing on social class. The variance in housing conditions by social class could provide further insights about the divergence/convergence hypotheses stemming from the comparative analysis of living conditions of European countries. To support this claim, two main dimensions of housing inequality will be identified: tenure and housing well-being. A micro-level data analysis was performed, in order to take account of individual and family costs of access and maintenance of ownership in settings and in periods (such as the present day) of rising housing prices and income resources that decrease in terms of amount and stability. The aim is thus to demonstrate that, despite the difference in well-being in Europe between owners and non-owners (on the average the firsts are better off), homeowners cannot be regarded as a privileged category per se. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to class theory, social class boundaries are akin to social mobility patterns. This study explores these patterns by looking at co-occurring occupations among siblings. The author uses data from Norway's population-wide registers to analyze occupational co-occurrences among siblings across 98 occupations. The association is analyzed in relative terms: how often occupations are held by both siblings compared to what would be expected if there was no statistical association between siblings' occupations. The Mobility Network Clustering Algorithm (MONECA) identifies groups of occupations that are strongly connected. The analysis shows that siblings tend to have the same occupation. Furthermore, non-manual and manual occupations are identified as two separate groups of strongly connected occupations. The analysis also shows a more differentiated structure in occupations, with increased tendencies for siblings to be in more narrow subgroups of the occupational structure. In the non-manual group, occupations in management, finance, business, and sales form a separate cluster from administrative workers, the professions, and cultural-artistic occupations. Beyond this, the occupational structure is differentiated into smaller subgroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical insights associated with the Australian New Left contribute to enriching our understanding of the intricacies of Australian history. Two of the most influential works associated with the movement, A New Britannia and Class Structure in Australian History, are compared to enable a consideration of both objective and subjective accounts of class. This paper has three parts. First, it identifies the historic context of history written in Australia within the Whig tradition of the Old Left. Second, it examines hoto debates xoithin the British New Left came to influence discussions in the Australian New Left. Finally, it suggests that McQueen provided foundations to the theoretical approach to class undertaken in Class Structure in Australian History. It is argued that class remains an important and necessary abstraction in order to engage with the relationship between existing political economic structures and social subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enrollments in higher education have expanded greatly, but without elimination of all forms of inequality. Research in industrialized countries has shown that the path students follow in their transition from secondary school continues to be associated with their social class. This study provides quantitative evidence of that relationship in a non-industrial country like Chile. Multinomial logistic and linear regression of university admission data managed by the Department of Evaluation, Measurement and Registration describing 130,000 applicants for the years 2015 and 2017 were used to estimate the probability of a member of a particular social class choosing a given university and academic field of study. The results show differences regarding law programs and science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs. Class differences were particularly important in the choice of university. Working-class students were more likely to apply to public universities, avoiding elite and especially private institutions. The findings provide further support for Bourdieu's habitus explanation of class reproduction. They suggest more attention to the level of segregation in Chilean higher education and the factors that produce it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

View-specific neighborhoods commonly contain class-inconsistent neighbors in graph-based multi-view learning. A key problem is to handle class-inconsistent neighbors under each view. This paper employs jointly sparse learning to filter unreliable neighbors in the union of view-specific neighborhoods, via representing each entity in a weighted sum of its neighbors under each view. The proposed jointly sparse model can be easily solved by an ADMM method. The learned jointly sparse weights can be used to construct a similarity neighborhood graph, and the new graph can be further utilized for multi-view clustering and view-specific graph preconditioning. A fast algorithm for multi-view manifold clustering is then proposed, and two preconditioning approaches are discussed for improving conformability of view-specific graphs and eventually increasing the efficiency of graph-based algorithms for multi-view learning. Numerical experiments are reported, which provide good supports to the proposed methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from 31 OECD countries, this study analyzes labor and capital incomes in the international manufacturing and finance sectors during the years 1995 to 2019. The study examines three periods: the years between 1995 and 2007, before the global crisis; between 2008 and 2019, during and after the global crisis; and the 1995–2019 period overall. In addition, the variables were subjected to general trend analysis, to analysis of the relative change between the beginnings and ends of the various periods, and to analysis of the annual average percentage changes. The results show that in both the manufacturing and financial sectors, the incomes of capital increased more than those of labor. Comparing the two sectors, it can be stated that between 1995 and 2019 the degree of class inequality in favor of capital saw a greater increase in the sector of manufacturing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new estimates of intergenerational earnings elasticity for Australia. We closely follow the methodology used by Leigh [ BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 7 (2007) 1], but use considerably more data (12 waves of HILDA and four waves of PSID). Our adjusted estimates are intended to be comparable to those for other countries in Corak [ Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27 (2013) 79]. Our preferred estimate (0.35) is considerably higher than implied by Leigh's study, and is less subject to sampling variation. In an international context, intergenerational mobility in Australia is not particularly high, and is consistent with its relatively high level of cross-sectional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the role of class analysis in envisioning a better world, in both the past and the present. It critically reflects on class research conducted in the second half of the 20th century in Yugoslavia, and contemporary class research from selected countries of former Yugoslavia, in order to explore the place that class analysis as systemic critique occupied and occupies in a socialist and capitalist context. This approach is informed by Wright's (2015) evaluation of different forms of class analysis through the game metaphor. According to Wright, whereas Marxist class analysis questions "what game to play," Weberian class analysis engages with "the rules of the game" and Durkheimian class analysis examines "moves in the game." Our historical case study of Yugoslav scholarship on class during state socialism illustrates that, despite its role in sanctifying the status quo, class analysis also drew on both Marxism and Weberian inspired life-chances research as tools for systemic critique. On the other hand, our review of post-Yugoslav class research suggests that, currently, class analysis as an instrument for the critique of capitalism is not prominent. Indeed, in contrast to the late Yugoslav period in which sociology engaged class analysis in order to question what game should be played, the post-socialist 1990s and 2000s brought a silencing of Marxist left critique, while sociologists transformed their research into what Wright (2015) would describe as struggles over the rule of the game: problematizing the variety of capitalism that emerged in post-socialism rather than capitalism itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs a political economy approach to offer a narrative of the rural problem of Syria. It traces the relations of production, class formation, and power as they unfolded since 1970. The Baath takeover in 1963 ended forever the liberal era which was characterized by the dominance of the traditional landlord class. The populist Baath era can be divided into a radical period characterized by the populist transformation of the rural sector, and a Machiavellian period; partially retreated from the radical course and transformed the state agrarian policy into a regime survival tool. Then came, the neoliberal era, which aimed at liberalizing markets and restructuring production relations. The paper concludes by examining the roots of the countryside participation in the revolt engulfed Syria in 2011. It argues that the rural revolt could not be explained by the drought of 2007-2010; rather the reasons are to be sought in the state-building and development strategies chosen by the ruling regime.

This article examines conflicting conceptualizations of the human subject in political ecology and geography: Foucauldian views of "subject-making" and Gramscian views of "the person". While Foucauldian work holds that the more complete exertion of power, the more coherent subject-making, Gramscian historical–geographical perspectives counter that, the more complete exertion of power, the more in coherent persons and their class-based collectivities. Outlining incongruities between these approaches, I argue that the "dark side" of Gramscian political ecology—with its emphasis on incoherence and fracture–allows geographers new nuance in understanding the human subject, although not without challenges to the actual writing of such scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a case study of algorithmically controlled manual labour in German manufacturing and delivery logistics, this article develops the concept of cybernetic proletarianization. It does so by joining an empirical analysis of labour processes with theoretical class analysis. Thus, it reconstructs Marx's understanding of technical proletarianization as a dialectic between expulsion and reintegration of living labour in production processes. In the cases researched here, a qualitative and quantitative expulsion of living labour could be observed in different forms: First, deskilled flexibilization via digital instructions on working steps; second, a cybernetic mode of work intensification that is based on a permanent digital evaluation of the labour process; third, data-based automation, which builds on the data collected from the labour processes. This expulsion is counterweighted by a process of reintegration of devaluated living labour due to new highly labour-intensive forms of production and distribution, which are enabled by algorithmic work control. However, these processes are highly conflictual, resulting in different 'technopolitics from below', in which workers influence or even disrupt the processes of cybernetic proletarianization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese cyberspace is vibrant with new expressions created and disseminated by Internet users. Generally light in tone, they have been viewed by numerous media scholars as constituting a playful and satirical form of speech which exemplifies "grassroots" netizens' carnivalesque resistance against the authoritarian party-state. Adopting a critical sociolinguistic perspective, the article focuses on the textual constructions of two online buzzwords diaosi and shamate to illustrate the ambivalent class orientation of Chinese Internet discourse. It argues that while the diaosi wordplay appears to signify an underprivileged or grassroots identity, its discursive construction is in effect characterized by an intermediate position which oscillates between identifying with the economically dominant and recognizing the truly subordinate social groups in contemporary China – such as rural migrant workers. The social stratification and hierarchy of Internet users, as well as the simultaneous cooption of digital culture by institutional forces must be taken into account so as to fully evaluate the political implications of playful online practices in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Swiss Political Science Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article offers an initial analyses the mass protests that began in Belarus following the presidential elections of August 2020. Written 'in the heat of events' it has the character of preliminary observations. The authors begin with the background and context of events and the outcomes of the economic and social development of the Republic of Belarus during the 25 years of rule by Lukashenko. A preliminary analysis of the social and class make-up both of the protesters and of those who at the time of writing remained a 'silent majority' is situated in the context of the contradictions within the Belarusian 'power elite'. We attempt to distinguish the main factors behind the developments in Belarus and point to initial lessons of these events for social and humanitarian-oriented networks and organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two years after Erik Olin Wright's death, this article rereads one of his most famous works, Class Counts. This book, published in 1997, can be considered at the same time a contemporary classic of scientific Marxism and the manifest of neo-Marxist class analysis. The objectives of the article are manifold. Firstly, it contextualizes the author's theoretical contribution in his biography, emphasizing his complicated relationship with sociology as a Marxist. Then, it focuses on the book's specific contribution in terms of conceptual work, also looking at the theoretical implications of the empirical results. Finally, it reflects on the resilience of the heuristic capacity of Wright's categories to understand social inequalities in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Intended to capture the entangled history of Marxism, Alvin Gouldner's two Marxisms also frame the intellectual biography of Erik Olin Wright. In the 1970s Wright's Scientific and Critical Marxisms were joined, but later they came apart as each developed its own autonomous trajectory. Erik's Scientific Marxism was the program of class analysis that first brought him international fame. Begun in graduate school, it tailed off in the last two decades of his life, when it played second fiddle to the Critical Marxism of the Real Utopias Project that Erik began in the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erik Olin Wright's scholarship is often considered to be formed by two entirely disjoint projects represented by his early work on class analysis and his later writings on "real utopias." This essay uses Michael Burawoy's recent formulation of the "two Marxisms" thesis as a foil to argue for the continuities rather than discontinuities in the body of work produced by Wright. More particularly, the critical spirit of the real utopias project infused Wright's work on class analysis from its inception. It is further argued that the limitations Wright encountered in realizing those critical aims directly seeded the search in his later work for institutional design principles and an explicit articulation of normative values that could undergird alternatives to capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical right voters and parties are often characterized as conservative and traditionalist on issues of gender, sexuality, and morality. Common wisdom is that they reject the progressive sociopolitical shifts that began in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, some radical right parties, such as the Dutch Party for Freedom, maintain moderate positions on morality issues. Are radical right supporters still traditionalist? Latent class analysis applied to European Social Survey data from 10 West European countries reveals that radical right supporters belong to three ideologically distinct classes. The fastest growing group is the sexually-modern nativists, who make up about 45% by 2016. Contrary to extant literature, traditionalism no longer appears to be a major motivation for today's radical right. Instead, immigration and nationalism are now the core common concerns for radical right supporters in Western Europe. This development may be due to the Euro crisis and the migration crisis, which have increased the salience of national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay responds to "Money as Art: The Form, the Material, and Capital" by the Marxist economist Costas Lapavitsas with reference to the triple manifestation of crisis in the United States during the spring months of 2020. By triangulating the role of money in the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing mass unemployment, and the historical nationwide revolt in response to the police murder of George Floyd predicated on a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, Nicholas Huber makes a three-part claim. First, that acceptance of the Marxist theory of fetishism forecloses the possibility of conceiving of capitalist money as art in the sense developed by Lapavitsas, insofar as the latter tends toward transhistorical concepts of both art and money. Following from this, any aesthetic function of money in the capitalist mode of production is inseparable from its total social function; that is, capitalist money is at once an economic, political, cultural, and aesthetic mediation unlike any other. Finally, Huber draws on Louis Marin's typology of the frame in correspondence with Erik Olin Wright's integrated class analytic framework to argue that the question of whether money is art or not leads us to a dead end. Huber suggests that a crisis such as the one unfolding in 2020 raises instead the more challenging question of what social system must come into being, such that a theory of capitalist money as art becomes intelligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses polemically, perhaps, the most prominent class analyses today – the occupational and stratification approaches (OSAs) developed by various sociologists and economists. Strongly opposed to the "big class" of conventional Weberian and Marxian typologies, the stratification and occupational models have, unsurprisingly, claimed more realistic grounds. By contrast, key dimensions of social relations such as domination, exploitation and oppression are purposely overlooked. Moreover, the lack of theorization – even marginally regarded, does not take into consideration the qualitative explanatory strength for the analysis of social structure. Alternatively, the underlying optimistic market-oriented belief of the "realistic" class framework overestimates the role of institutions and economics. Thus, this "Smithian" background unveils a market fetishism as well as a functionalist and naturalized vision of class structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the patterns of class inequality and capital accumulation in Brazil, showing the drivers and limits of the decline in inequality that occurred during the Workers' Party governments. It proposes that minimum wage hikes and greater social security changed the demand pattern and kick-started a cumulative causation process. Growth and redistribution thus reinforced each other for a period, and then spelled their own limits. As growth accelerated in the 2000s, a Gini decomposition indicates that class inequality decreased, but confined to changes between workers—capitalist income and social stratification were preserved. This also endogenously led to a regressive structural change, as low-productivity, labour-intensive services grew and international trade patterns worsened. This created a medium-term dependence on commodity prices for balance-of-trade solvency, and heightened cost-push inflation, which could not be overcome under the limited policy framework in place. The constrained basis for reducing inequality and the regressive structural change underscore that developmental strategies requires broad, multi-dimensional inequality-reducing measures and an encompassing catching-up project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry. This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu's class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class positions, nor the role of unsecured credit in facilitating consumption. This article contributes to this area by examining how unsecured credit and problem debt influences consumption and class position amongst individuals with modest incomes. Drawing on 21 interviews with individuals managing problem debt, this article details how class inequality emerges through affective states that include anxiety and feelings of deficit. It also shows how these experiences motivate participants to rely on unsecured credit to consume cultural goods and engage in activities in a struggle against their class position, with the intention of enhancing how they are perceived and classified by others. The findings indicate that cultural class analyses may have overlooked the symbolic importance of mundane consumption and goods in social differentiation. This article further details how these processes entangle individuals into complex liens of debt – which lead to over-indebtedness, default, dispossession and financial expropriation – illustrating how investigations of credit-debt can better inform understandings of class inequality, exploitation and struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]