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From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a 'Post-Socialist' Age
“The ‘struggle for recognition’ is fast becoming the paradigmatic form of political conflict in the late twentieth century. Demands for ‘recognition of difference’ fuel struggles of groups mobilized under the banners of nationality, ethnicity, ‘race’, gender, and sexuality. In these ‘post-socialist’ conflicts, group identity supplants class interest as . . .” read more
The National Imagination
“Eric Hobsbawm, in the final chapter of a comprehensive survey on the history of nationalism, claimed that as a historical phenomenon, it had passed its heyday. Employing a Hegelian idiom he suggested that the nation-state was now on a declining curve of historical viability, the beginnings of its . . .” read more
The 'Triumph' of Capitalism as a Topic in the Theory of Social Selection
“By ‘capitalism’ I mean a mode of production in which formally free labour is recruited for regular employment by ongoing enterprises competing in the market for profit. This is an evidently Weberian definition: it takes up more or less directly Weber’s account of the rise of bü rgerlicher . . .” read more
Modern, Anti, Post, Neo
“To give it its full subtitle: ‘How Intellectuals Have Coded, Narrated, and Explained the “New World of Our Time”’. An earlier version of this text appeared in the Zeitschrift für Soziologie, vol. 23, no. 2, 1994. A more elaborate variant is forthcoming in my book Fin-de-Siècle Social Theory: . . .” read more
Negotiating Caribbean Identities
“In this lecture I will address questions of Caribbean culture and identity. I want to suggest that such questions are not in any sense separate or removed from the problems of political mobilization, of cultural development, of economic development and so on. The more we know and see . . .” read more
Citizenship, Basic Income and the State
“Proposals for root-and-branch reform of the welfare state are not the prerogative of the radical Right. In recent years, the Left too has been rethinking its approach to social policy. One idea, in particular, has seized the imagination of radical libertarians, liberal socialists, socially minded liberals and communitarian . . .” read more
Explaining New York City’s Aberrant Economy
“While much of the us undergoes a halting recovery from the ‘contained depression’ of the early 1990s, America’s largest city has remained mired in its sharpest downturn since the days of Fiorello LaGuardia. New York’s unemployment rate—which spiked in January 1993 at 13.4 per cent—has continued at . . .” read more
Barbarism: A User’s Guide
“I have called my lecture ‘Barbarism, A User’s Guide’, not because I wish to give you instructions in how to be barbarians. None of us, unfortunately, need it. Barbarism is not something like ice-dancing, a technique that has to be learned—at least not unless you wish to become . . .” read more
What Women Demand of Technology
“Looking back, my interest in technology must have begun somewhere around 1947—it started in my mother’s kitchen where, I still remember, she used to resort to ingenious fuel-saving devices in order to stretch the small sum of money that she had for feeding her six children, elderly parent-in-law . . .” read more
European Cities, the Informational Society, and the Global Economy
“An old axiom in urban sociology considers space as a reflection of society. Yet life, and cities, are always too complex to be captured in axioms. Thus the close relationship between space and society, between cities and history, is more a matter of expression than of reflection. The . . .” read more
The Agonies of Liberalism: What Hope Progress?
“We meet on a triple anniversary: the 25th Anniversary of the founding of Kyoto Seika University in 1968; the 25th Anniversary of the world revolution of 1968; the 52nd Anniversary of the exact day (at least on the us calendar) of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by . . .” read more
Knowledge, Morality and Hope: The Social Thought of Noam Chomsky
“In his first published essay on politics, Noam Chomsky announced his conviction that ‘[i]t is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.’ Acting on that conviction, Chomsky has long supplemented his work in linguistics with writing on contemporary political affairs, focusing principally on . . .” read more
Es Gibt Keinen Staat in Europa: Racism and Politics in Europe Today
“I would like to start by explaining how I came to modify the agreed theme and, to some extent, focus of this contribution. There were some general reasons for doing so, which occurred to me as I was reading the Congress programme, but recent political events provided a . . .” read more
Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America
“Two years ago, a sports announcer in the United States lost his job because he enlarged indiscreetly—that is, before a television audience—upon his views about ‘racial’ differences. Asked why there are so few black coaches in basketball, Jimmy ‘the Greek’ Snyder remarked that black athletes already hold an . . .” read more
A Comment on Nicky Hart
“Nicky Hart’s engaging essay on gender and stratification (nlr 175) is an eloquent contribution to debates about class. As she suggests, male academics, and particularly male academic sociologists, have a long tradition of assuming that women are peripheral to the process of class formation and the construction . . .” read more
Hillsborough, 15 April 1989: Some Personal Contemplations
“When news of the Hillsborough disaster began to reach me, I was still living in Ottawa, Canada—only two weeks before returning to take up an academic position in England. A phone call from a Canadian relative giving the bare outline of the events was followed by ever more . . .” read more
Gender and the Rise and Fall of Class Politics
“Is gender an autonomous form of social stratification? Does it form a compound with other bases of social inequality? How is it related to class, the ‘master’ concept of stratification theory? These questions have been forced into focus in recent years through the emergence of the married yet . . .” read more
The Politics of Post-Fordism: Or, The Trouble with 'New Times'
“The ‘post-Fordist’ hypothesis concerning the development of a new ‘mode of regulation’ of modern capitalism is a fertile and important one. It was developed, following Gramsci’s key early understanding of the significance of mass production and consumption, by Michel Aglietta and other members of the ‘regulation school’ in . . .” read more
Roberto Unger and the Politics of Empowerment
“The largest industrial power of the Southern hemisphere has recently completed one of the most protracted and divisive processes of constitution-making in modern history. The fruits of nineteen months of labour by the Constituent Assembly of Brazil have already aroused violent reactions. ‘Clauses on employment worthy of Cuba, . . .” read more
Historical Materialism, Historical Sociology
“Michael Mann has recently published a large book on the history of power which few historians or sociologists can afford to ignore. Its 549 pages are only the first volume out of three; Mann’s aim will at the end be a massive retheorization of the sociology of power, . . .” read more
Capitalism and Human Emancipation
“Let me say something, first, about Isaac Deutscher, not just in some ritual tribute for the occasion but because it seems appropriate to what I am going to say in my lecture and the spirit in which I intend to say it. I did not know Isaac Deutscher, . . .” read more
Marx and Self-Realization
“Marx was notoriously vague about future society. It is ironic, then, that in the minds of most laymen he is often associated with a very specific utopian vision. As anyone familiar with Marx’s works will know, no blueprint for this vision actually exists. Nevertheless, it would be very . . .” read more
Beyond the Boundary Question
“Class politics, once the unquestioned centre of the socialist project, has became the object of intense controversy. There have been many reasons for this startling development—the appearance of the so-called new social movements and the continued failure of traditional Left parties to effect fundamental social change are just . . .” read more
The Prospects of Labour and the Transformation of Advanced Capitalism
“Even a pair of very myopic eyes are sufficient to discern the mood of the Left today, particularly the Socialist Left, in the countries of advanced capitalism. The general picture is one of gloom, with some extra-dark strokes over the British Isles, some pale-pink touches where holding operations . . .” read more
The New Questions of Subjectivity
“The Dominant Ideology Thesis by Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner is first of all the story of a hunting exploit. It relates how the authors hunt down and finally kill a beast called ‘the dominant ideology thesis’. To save some space for due evaluation . . .” read more
Determinacy and Indeterminacy in the Theory of Ideology
“The analysis of ideologies and forms of knowledge and belief is in a state of disorder. In contemporary Marxism, the autonomy and independent importance of ideology have been stressed at the expense of a discredited economic reductionism. In many ways this is a desirable development, although, as we . . .” read more
Marxism and Demography: A Response
“Wally Seccombe’s ‘Marxism and Demography’ provides a welcome and insightful synthesis of Marxist perspectives and recent advances in demography and family history. Seccombe rightly takes Marxist theory to task for relying on a sterile refutation of long-discarded Malthusian theory in place of addressing the material realities of changing . . .” read more
Why Some Classes Are More Successful Than Others
“A theoretical model of class formation must undergird any serious theory of capitalist politics, just as the concrete analysis of class formation must be the prerequisite for the realistic examination of the historical development of any particular capitalist country. So far, in contemporary Marxist research, two approaches to . . .” read more
Giddens' Critique of Marxism
“Critiques of historical materialism tend to be one of two types: either they are hostile attacks by anti-Marxists intent on demonstrating the falsity, perniciousness or theoretical anachronism of Marxism, or they are reconstructive critiques from within the Marxist tradition attempting to overcome theoretical weaknesses in order to advance . . .” read more
State Power and Class Interests
“Work done in the last fifteen years or so by people writing within a broad Marxist perspective on the subject of the state in capitalist society now fills a great many bookshelves; and however critical one may be of one or other article, book or trend, it is . . .” read more
Marxism and Demography
“The primary form of Marxism’s traditional address to demography, dating back to Marx himself, has been through a virulent denunciation of its Malthusian versions. These polemics, however programmatically justified in countering largely reactionary Malthusian population policies, nevertheless have had an anaesthetic effect upon historical materialism—placing the demographic realm . . .” read more
Sociology, Liberalism and the Radical Right
“Ronald Reagan is the first American president of the twentieth century whose political origins do not lie in the broad consensual centre of American politics. Only time will tell whether Reagan will remain true to his oft-expressed conservative beliefs or whether, for the sake of political peace, his . . .” read more
The Separation of the Economic and the Political in Capitalism
“The intention of Marxism is to provide a theoretical foundation for interpreting the world in order to change it. This is not an empty slogan. It has—or ought to have—a very precise meaning. It means that Marxism seeks a particular kind of knowledge, one which is uniquely capable . . .” read more
Marxism and the 'Welfare State'
“The Political Economy of the Welfare State by Ian Gough is the third book to appear in a series of educational texts, ‘Critical Texts in Social Work and the Welfare State’, edited by Professor Peter Leonard. The series is located by Peter Leonard within the ‘crisis’ and . . .” read more
Class Boundaries in Advanced Capitalist Societies
“All Marxists agree that manual workers directly engaged in the production of physical commodities for private capital fall into the working class. While there may be disagreement about the political and ideological significance of such workers in advanced capitalism, everyone acknowledges that they are in fact workers. There . . .” read more
A Reply to Martin Shaw: Whose Crisis?
“The verve of Martin Shaw’s critique in nlr 70 of my book The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology derives largely from his effort to safeguard something he calls ‘Marxism’ from subversion by something called ‘Radical Sociology.’ It is on this issue, a matter of some substance, that . . .” read more
The Coming Crisis of Radical Sociology
“What is sociology? The textbook myth is that it is ‘the scientific study of society’. But this is a notion that few sociologists would straightforwardly defend. If it is not this, however, what is it? There is no easy answer. In fact there is a large question-mark, presently . . .” read more
Literature and Sociology: In Memory of Lucien Goldmann
“Last spring Lucien Goldmann came to Cambridge and gave two lectures. It was an opportunity for many of us to hear a man whose work we had welcomed and respected. And he said that he liked Cambridge: to have trees and fields this near to lecture-rooms. I invited . . .” read more
Avineri’s View of Marx
“The May events in France last year detonated in England an explosion of Marxian literature. Within 12 months several important texts have been newly translated, others brought out in cheap editions. So far the field has been heavily dominated by work of neo-Hegelians within the Marxist tradition: the . . .” read more
Sociology and Psychology (Part II)
“Social developments thus affect even the most recent trends in psychology. Despite the ever-widening rift between society and psychology, society reaches repressively into all psychology in the form of censorship and superego. As part of the progressive integration of society, socially rational behaviour gets melted together with the . . .” read more
Comment on Berger and Pullberg
“Most Anglo-Saxon social scientists are proud of their concentration on fact, and regard the activities of most of their colleagues in continental Europe with amused contempt as ‘metaphysics’ or even ‘mysticism’. History has become the summarization of ever-growing masses of empirical data, sociologists find ever more variables in . . .” read more
Response to Brewster
“It is gratifying to receive comment on one’s ideas as thoughtful and sympathetic as this. Responding to it is but a way of expressing appreciation. Before I do this, however, I must emphasize that I speak for myself only and not also for the co-author of the article, . . .” read more
Reification and the Sociological Critique of Consciousness
“Sociological theories may be grouped around two poles. The first presents us with a view of society as a network of human meanings as embodiments of human activity. The second, on the other hand, presents us with society conceived of as a thing-like facticity, standing over against . . .” read more