Barry Eidlin - Rethinking Class and Social Difference

Series Editor: Julian Go

Political Power and Social Theory is a peer-reviewed journal committed to advancing the interdisciplinary understanding of the linkages between political power, social relations, and historical development. The journal welcomes both empirical and theoretical work and is willing to consider papers of substantial length. Publication decisions are made by the editor in consultation with members of the editorial board and anonymous reviewers. For information on submissions, and a full list of volumes, please see the journal website at www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/tk/ppst

Recent Volumes:

Volume 22: Rethinking Obama, 2011

Volume 23: Political Power and Social Theory, 2012

Volume 24: Postcolonial Sociology, 2013

Volume 25: Decentering Social Theory, 2013

Volume 26: The United States in Decline, 2014

Volume 27: Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age, 2014

Volume 28: Patrimonial Capitalism and Empire, 2015

Volume 29: Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States, and Publics, 2015

Volume 30: Perverse Politics? Feminism, Anti-Imperialism, Multiplicity, 2016

Volume 31: Postcolonial Sociologies: A Reader, 2016

Volume 32: International Origins of Social and Political Theory, 2017

Volume 33: Rethinking the Colonial State, 2017

Volume 34: Critical Realism, History and Philosophy in the Social Sciences, 2018

Volume 35: Gendering Struggles Against Informal and Precarious Work, 2018

Volume 36: Religion, Humility, and Democracy in a Divided America, 2019

Senior Editorial Board

Political Power and Social Theory

Student Editorial Board

Edited By

BARRY EIDLIN

McGill University, Canada

MICHAEL A. MCCARTHY

Marquette University, USA

United Kingdom North America Japan

India Malaysia China

Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2020

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83982-021-2 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83982-020-5 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83982-022-9 (Epub)

ISSN: 0198-8719

List of Contributors

Contents

Barry Eidlin and Michael A. McCarthy

Marie Gottschalk

Mathieu Hikaru Desan

Jen Schradie

Kevan Harris

Gowri Vijayakumar

Zophia Edwards

Katherine Eva Maich

List of Figures and Tables

Introducing Rethinking Class and Social Difference: A Dynamic Asymmetry Approach

Barry Eidlin and Michael A. McCarthy

Social class has long existed in tension with other forms of social difference such as race, gender, and sexuality, both in academic and popular debate. While Marxist-influenced class primacy perspectives gained prominence in US sociology in the 1970s, they faded from view by the 1990s, replaced by perspectives focusing on culture and institutions or on intersectional analyses of how multiple forms of social difference shape durable patterns of disempowerment and marginalization. More recently, class and capitalism have reasserted their place on the academic agenda, but continue to coexist uneasily with analyses of oppression and social difference. Here we discuss possibilities for bridging the gap between studies of class and other forms of social difference. We contend that these categories are best understood in relation to each other when situated in a larger system with its own endogenous dynamics and tendencies, namely capitalism. After providing an historical account of the fraught relationship between studies of class and other forms of social difference, we propose a theoretical model for integrating understandings of class and social difference using Wright et al.s concept of