Related Papers
Challenging Social Class In American Political Discourse: Bernie Sanders, Occupy Wall Street, and the New Discourse of Inequality
2016 •
Nora Hoel
The 2016 election needs a class-oriented agenda
2016 •
Stephen Amberg
Bernie Sanders’ popularity in the current presidential campaign has raised the possibility in the minds of many on the left that there could be a broader electoral movement of activists with a class-based agenda. Stephen Amberg writes that while President Obama has pursued some class-based policies, his ability to promote change has been largely limited by Congress to administrative actions. Looking ahead, he writes that by supporting Congressional and state legislative candidates who are committed to this agenda, Sanders and those like him may help to turn the Democratic Party’s focus towards a more class-oriented agenda.
The (Neo)socialist Kairos: Bernie Sanders at Georgetown University
Kristiana N Wright
Since Donald Trump’s historic upset in the 2016 presidential election, Democratic primary candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has become a leading figure in the struggle to sever the “corporate establishment ties” of the Democratic Party so it can become “a grass-roots party of working people, the elderly and the poor” (Sanders, 2016a). The speech “My Vision for Democratic Socialism in America,” delivered on November 19, 2015, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., exemplifies the spirit of Sanders’ candidacy in all its complexity. I analyze the Georgetown speech with a focus on dimensions of class, democracy and war, and consider Sanders’ relationship to the American Socialist tradition and the kairos of U.S. politics today.
Rethinking Redistribution and Recognition: Class, Identity, and the Conditions for Radical Politics in the "Postsocialist" Age
Magnus Nilsson
In "From Redistribution to Recognition?" Nancy Fraser formulates a theory aiming at defending only those versions of identity politics that can be coherently combined with socialist politics. Many commentators have criticized the analytical distinction between economic and cultural injustice underpinning this theory. I argue, however, that it is Fraser's inability to uphold this distinction that makes her argument problematic, and that a clearer analytical distinction between the categories class and identity makes possible both a more theoretically satisfying critique of the "postsocialist" condition and the formulation of a radical politics that addresses economic as well as cultural injustices.
Identity politics
T-hustler Sadomba
imogen tyler
The problem that the concept of ‘class’ describes is inequality. The transition from industrial to financial capitalism (neoliberalism) in Europe has effected ‘deepening inequalities of income, health and life chances within and between countries, on a scale not seen since before the second world War’ (Hall et al., 2014: 9). In this context, class is an essential point of orientation for sociology if it is to grasp the problem of inequality today. Tracing a route through Pierre Bourdieu’s relational understanding of class, Beverley Skeggs’ understanding of class as struggles (over value), and Wendy Brown’s argument that neoliberalism is characterized by the culturalization of political struggles, this article animates forms of class-analysis, with whichwe might better apprehend the forms of class exploitation that distinguish postindustrial societies. Taking a cue from Jacques Ranciere, the central argument is that the sociology of class should be grounded not in the assumption and valorization of class identities but in an understanding of class as struggles against classification. In this way, sociology can contribute to the development of alternative social and political imaginaries to the biopolitics of disposability symptomatic of neoliberal governmentality.
The Collapse of the American Upper-Class Collective Identity: Capitalism and The Nouveaux Riches in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth
The collapse of the American upper class collective identity pdf
2019 •
Wisam A Chaleila
Abstract This paper examines the American upper-class collective identity in terms of clannishness and capitalism in Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth (1905). It also demonstrates that the changes this class known as the vieux riches undergoes trigger its annihilation. Therefore, the survival of such class is probated by maintaining the tenets of capital and lineage; otherwise it will be consumed by the less prestigious and newly emerging class recognized as the nouveaux riches. In the novel, both classes are illustrated as contrasting forces separated by imaginary boundaries that are by no means static but rather dynamic. The changes in question are yet traceable in the salient modification of particular pronouns. That is, the first-person plural (we) embodied by Lily Bart and her set, and the third- person (he, they) exemplified by Simon Rosedale and his ilk, lose their distinctness towards the end of the novel. All in all, the class boundaries become nebulous as soon as the foreign heterogeneous lineages assimilate into the blood-based American genteel class. The assimilation is made possible on account of the capitalist competitive system symbolized by Rosedale. This system is illustrated as one that conduces to the obliteration of the upper-class collective identity allegorized by Lily’s fall. To this end, the validity of Thorstein Veblen’s theory regarding class “predatory test,” premised on Darwinian and Spencerian principles of evolution, will be applied to Wharton’s novel to enhance the proposed arguments and because Wharton’s thematic tropes align with Veblen’s philosophy. Key Words: Collective Identity; Racism Darwinism; Capitalism; Predatory Test; Class.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Identity Destabilised: Living in an Overheated World BY Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Elisabeth Schober (eds), London: Pluto Press, 2016, 260 pp.
2020 •
Alex Jong-Seok Lee
Language and Work Group
The Problem with Woke Capitalism
2023 •
Sibo Rugwiza Kanobana
CLASS THEORY AND CLASS POLITICS TODAY
Hugo Radice
No abstract available. This paper was published in the annual journal, Socialist Register, 2015. Issue title: Transfrming Classes