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Study of the consumption of counterfeit products casts consumers as reflexive agents who knowingly break the law (through the consumption of illegal commodities). Because this analysis is pitched at the level of meaning rather than structural constraints, it produces a misleading view of reflexive counterfeit consumption as being motivated by resistance or the wish to escape from normative coercion. This article contrasts this with approaches that prefigure meaning in explaining counterfeit commerce by treating the trade as an unavoidable structural feature of capitalism. That is, the structural logic of capital accumulation inevitably creates a black market of counterfeit commerce. It is a parasitic form of illegal consumerism which mirrors conventional capitalist organization, reproducing familiar dynamics of status differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we outline a critique of 'decorative sociology' as a trend in contemporary sociology where 'culture' has eclipsed the 'social' and where literary interpretation has marginalized sociological methods. By the term 'decorative sociology' we mean a branch of modernist aesthetics which is devoted to a politicized, textual reading of society and culture. Although we acknowledge slippage between the textual and material levels of cultural analysis, notably in the output of the Birmingham School, we propose that the intellectual roots of cultural studies inevitably mean that the textual level is pre-eminent. In emphasizing the aesthetic dimension we seek to challenge the political self-image of decorative sociology as a contribution to political intervention. We argue that while the cultural turn has contributed to revising approaches to the relationships between identity and power, race and class, ideology and representation, it has done so chiefly at an aesthetic level. Following Davies (1993), we submit that the greatest achievement of the cultural turn has been to teach students to 'read politically'. The effect of this upon concrete political action is an empirical question. Without wishing to minimize the political importance of cultural studies, our hypothesis is that, what might be called the 'aestheticization of life' has not translated fully into the politicization of culture. We argue that an adequate cultural sociology would have to be driven by an empirical research agenda, embrace an historical and comparative framework, and have a genuinely sociological focus, that is, a focus on the changing balance of power in Western capitalism. We reject the attempt to submerge the social in the cultural and outline the development of an alternative, integrated perspective on body, self and society. We conclude by briefly commenting on three sociological contributions to the comparative and historical study of cultural institutions which approximate... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offers a critique of important contributions made by the `new' approach in the debate on the structure and development of industrial relations in capitalist society. Features of the new industrial relations approach; Influence of the struggle between capital and labour on social and economic relations; Terms of reference for the process of capitalism; Problem of transcending capitalist forms of organization.

It is often maintained that capitalist and socialist systems of organization are diametrically opposed. This paper uses convergence theory and the problem of divergence to attack this position. It is argued that socialist systems are economically integrated into the capitalist world economy, and further, that the ideology of divergence acts as a central dynamic in relations of production in the world economy. The world system perspective associated with neo-Marxist writers such as Wallerstein and Frank, is used to suggest an alternative framework for examining the organizational dynamics of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]