Sociology 929 Alternative Foundations of Class Analysis Fall Semester, 2006 Professor Erik Olin Wright If “Class” is the answer, what is the question? The concept of class is one of the most contested concepts within sociology. Sometimes this is just a question of how the word class is being used, but behind the alternative uses of the term there often lurks deeper theoretical disagreements about how best to understand the nature and consequences of economic inequality in contemporary societies. This seminar will explore in a systematic and rigorous manner the full range of alternative conceptualizations of class. The focus will be on contemporary approaches, although there will be some attention to classic statements. The course will give students an opportunity both to gain a deeper understanding of the substantive issues around the analysis of class, but also to engage in a very fine-grained manner the problem of carefully defining concepts. Sociologists often take a quite casual attitude towards the problem of concept-formation. While they may worry quite a bit about the theoretical arguments that link concepts together, much less attention is frequently paid to the underlying logic of the abstract definitions of the concepts themselves. Sociology 929. Alternative Foundations of Class Analysis 2 WRITING REQUIREMENTS There are two categories of written requirements for the seminar: 1. Weekly reading interrogations I strongly believe that writing is central to reading and that students should be in the habit of writing memos interrogating anything they read. These should not be standard “reading notes” summarizing main points in an argument, although summaries may be part of such notes. Rather they should be conversations with the readings in which issues are raised, arguments analyzed, problems discussed. These interrogations will form a substantial basis for the seminar discussions so it is worth taking the task seriously. I have no length specification for these interrogations. It is fine for them to be quite short – say 200 words or so – but longer memos are also OK (within reason – remember: I have to read and comment on all of these each week and everyone else in the class will read them as well). These memos should be emailed to me by 6 pm on the Monday night before the seminar meets. I will then read and comment on the interrogations and circulate them to the entire class late Monday night. Everyone should try to read all of these memos before coming to class on Tuesday afternoon. It is very important that you send me your interrogations by the deadline so that i have time to write comments. 2. Term papers Objectives. Term papers in PhD seminars should not primarily be regarded as glorified “homework”; they should be viewed as first drafts of potentially publishable papers. You should mainly be writing in order to communicate to the world, not to simply fill requirements. I thus encourage you very strongly to pick a topic that you really care about and write a paper which (with more work and revisions) could result in a publication. Schedule. In order to give you time to do serious reading and writing for the paper, the last regular meeting of the seminar will be on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (November 21). You will then have four weeks to complete your papers before the seminar’s mini-conference to be held December 16-17 (see below). Written proposals for term papers should be submitted no later than October 24, the 8th week of class. Collaboration. Students are free to write collaborative papers. This can consist either of fairly well demarcated parts of a paper written by each participating student or a fully collaborative project. Length. There is no fixed length for the term papers, but the rough expectation is something in the 20-25 page range (5000-7000 words more or less). Topics. Term papers for the seminar can be on any topic linked to the problem of class. Even though our discussions will mainly be theoretical, it is fine for papers to have a much more empirical focus. The papers should be quite self-conscious about the character of the class concepts used, but the paper need not be primarily about the concepts themselves. Sociology 929. Alternative Foundations of Class Analysis 3 Below are some broad suggestions for possible types of term papers: • Examine some empirical problem in class analysis using either qualitative or quantitative data within one of the approaches to class we have discussed. • Explore the foundations of some of the approaches to class analysis which we have not covered in the seminar such as the functionalist stratification approaches of the 1950s; the gradational and status-centered class analysis of W. Llyod Warner and others; the Marxian class analyses of French structuralist Marxism (Poulantzas, Balibar, Althusser); Gramsci’s approach to class; E.P. Thompson’s historicist approach, etc. • Take one of the broad traditions we have explored and then map out the variations within that “school” or tradition – varieties of Weber-inspired class analysis, varieties of Marx- inspired class analysis, varieties of Bourdieu-inspired class analysis, etc. • Examine the implications for philosophical/normative discussions of justice and inequality of different views of class analysis. • Take some interesting piece of empirical/historical scholarship in which class-relevant issues play an important role and explore the implications of alternative conceptualizations of class for the way the case study would be developed. This would need to be a fairly fine-grained analysis, not just a quick gloss. Examples of some studies which might be useful foils for such an analysis would include: Boltanski, The making of a class : cadres in French society Bernacki, Fabrication of Labor Ehrenreich, Nickle and Dimed Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal 1890-1940. Fantasia, Cultures of Solidarity Willis, Learning to Labour Zussman, Mechanics of the Middle Class: work and poliics among American Engineers Whalley, The Social Production of Technical Work Crawford, Technical Workers in an Advanced Society: the work, careers and politics of French Engineers MIN-CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS OF TERM PAPERS At the end of the semester we will have a weekend mini-conference during which the term papers will be presented and discussed. There are roughly 18 students in the seminar. This means that we will need about 12 hours of actual presentation time for all of the papers to be presented and discussed. With breaks, etc., this means that we will need almost two days for the conference: all day Saturday, December 16th and part of Sunday the 17th. The conference will be held at a University of Wisconsin retreat on the Wisconsin River north of Madison. This mini- conference will take the place of the last three sessions of the seminar which will not meet in order to give students time to write their papers. Sociology 929. Alternative Foundations of Class Analysis 4 I will organize the mini-conference in the form of a standard professional sociological conference: there will be panels, presentations, and discussions. The conference will have the added value of giving participants practice for such events. Each paper will have roughly 20 minute for presentation and 20 minutes or so for discussion. SEMINAR SESSIONS The seminar discussions will revolve, to a significant extent, around the issues raised by the weekly written memos. I will review these memos and distill a core agenda for the seminar each week, which is one reason why it is important for you to get the memos to me by email by 6:00 Monday evenings. Depending upon how things go, I may also ask students to elaborate their memo as an impromptu presentation so you should be prepared to talk about them. Often in graduate seminars that deal with abstract theoretical matters students are eager to launch into intense debates over the adequacy of various formulations before the details and rationale for the arguments have been really nailed down. For each of the bodies of work we discuss I feel it is very important to spend time at the beginning of each session carefully laying out the arguments in a fine-grained way in order to be sure that we all fully understand the work in question. As an intellectual stance to studying this material, I think it would be good for everyone to play the role of a defender and explicator of each approach we study as well as critic. One other note on the seminar sessions. Academics (not just students) are often better at talking than listening, yet a good seminar depends as much on everyone listening to each other as it does on making fine speeches. Without good listening, the discussion is not a conversation but a disjointed series of proclamations. READINGS There is quite a lot of reading in this seminar. In the reading list which follows I have designated certain readings as “required” and others as “supplementary.” If possible it would be good to dip into the supplementary reading, but I will not expect you to read much of it. Most of the readings are on Electronic Reserve on the Social Science Reference Library website under the listing for Sociology 929. In the syllabus these are marked with an asterisk: *. You can either read these items online or print them out. In addition, the following books are at the Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative on Gilman Street: Erik Olin Wright (ed). Approaches to Class Analysis (Cambridge University Press: 2005) Paul Kingston, The Classless Society (Stanford, 2000) Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (University of California Press, 1998) Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Harvard University Press: 1984) Andrew Sayer, The Moral Significance of Class (Cambridge University Press 2005) There are two books I tried to order but which are currently unavailable [These will be on the library’s e-reserve, but you can get used copies from various web booksellers]: Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol.