Re: [Marxism] looking for general guidance: class analysis of today'ssociety; practice-theory

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Dear DJD -- are you familiar with the work of Nicos Poulantzas? The best work I've 
> seen based on that approach & focussed on the USA is by Erik Olin Wright at the 
> U of Wisconsin, which came out several years ago.
>
> There may now be more recent work in the field. If anyone is aware of such I'd 
> appreciate being tipped off to it -- ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dan Elliott
> Sacramento

Check Eric Wright's website at: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/

Also check Michael Burawoy's at:
http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/burawoy/

Research Interests

Michael Burawoy has studied industrial workplaces in different parts of
the world -- Zambia, Chicago, Hungary and Russia -- through participant
observation. In his different projects he has tried to cast light --
from the standpoint of the workplace -- on the nature of
postcolonialism, on the organization of consent to capitalism, on the
peculiar forms of working class consciousness and work organization in
state socialism, and finally on the dilemmas of transition from
socialism to capitalism. Most recently he has been studying the peculiar
form of capitalism that has arisen in Russia: how the economy has been
driven by the expansion of a range of intermediary organizations
operating in the sphere of exchange (trade, finance, barter, new forms
of money), and how the productive economy has been recentered on
households and especially women. He refers to these processes of decline
as "involution". He has developed theoretically driven methodologies
that allow him to draw broad conclusions from his ethnographic research
and case studies. Thus, most recently he coauthored a book with 9
graduate students on "Global Ethnography," that showed how globalization
can be studied "from below" through participation in the lives of those
who experience it. Throughout his sociological career he has engaged
with Marxism, seeking to reconstruct it in the light of his research and
more broadly in the light of historical challenges of the late 20th
century.

For an amusing account of his research see Jeff Byles' article in the
Viliage Voice, "Tales of the Kefir Furnaceman," to be found at
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0115/edbyles.php




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