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Authors:Marcello Musto Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. While political science has probed the ideological, political, economic and even psychological motivations behind the drive to war, socialist theory has made a unique contribution by highlighting the relationship between the development of capitalism and war. There’s a long and rich tradition of the Left’s opposition to militarism that dates back to the International Working Men’s Association. It is an excellent resource for understanding the origins of war under capitalism and helping leftists maintain our clear opposition to it. In this article, the author examines the position of all the main currents (socialist, socialdemocratic, communist, anarchist and feminist) intellectuals (Engels, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Jaurès, Luxemburg, Lenin, Mao and Khrushchev) of the Left on the war and its different declinations (‘war of defence’, ‘just war’, ‘revolutionary war’). Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-07-01T10:20:58Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221101871
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Authors:Jacqueline Ross, John Welsh Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Tipping has been a legally recognized form of labor remuneration in the United States for many decades, but it is experiencing a resurgence outside of its usual confines in the hospitality sector. The proliferation of the practice is bound to the long-term economic shift into services, as well as the more recent expansion of the gig economy. Tipping informalizes the wage relation, incentivizes the worker in precarity, and internalizes social relations of subordination, and is thus a highly effective technique of labor subsumption particularly suitable for the idiomatic kind of social dependencies and subordination required by an increasingly ‘neo-feudal’ capitalism. Around the spread of the practice, there is an apologetic liberal discourse on freedom and ‘choice’ that emphasizes the supposed advantages of tipping for the worker subjected to it, over and above the increasingly problematic wage relation. Drawing anecdotally on a critical insider-ethnography of laboring in the restaurant industry of the Hamptons (Long Island, New York), and by enlisting a Neo-Roman concept of liberty, the article attempts a critical reappraisal of liberal claims regarding tipping as a form of remuneration in the so-called ‘service sector’. Instead, we indicate how tipping actually produces more appropriately governable worker subjectivities for capital. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-06-23T05:14:48Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221104637
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Authors:Ngai Pun Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Derived from post-industrial society experiences, current social theorists often argue that the working class no longer plays an active role in transforming society, thereby making the issue of working-class solidarity obsolete. This paper critically revisits Marx’s theories on solidarity and re-engages the debates by intersecting macro structural analysis with micro-foundation of working-class solidarity. The article formulates the concept of working-class solidarity in two layers of analysis: the first is a macro structural approach driven by class conflict, social grievance, and economic crisis directly connected to the social transformation of the neoliberal market economy; and the second looks at micro process of cooperation and mutual support at the level of everyday practice, that is, a collective-emotional environment that creates agency and a soft solidarity base for building bonds among working-class youth. The logic of solidarity is rescued through a multiplicity of working-class youth’s behaviors discovered in school and the workplace. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-06-23T05:14:31Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221105445
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Authors:Tom Brass Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Daniel Šitera Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. In Czechia, one of the statistically most equal and least indebted states, almost one-tenth of its (mostly low-income) population is entrapped in debt enforcement proceedings. I foreground such a contradiction to investigate the politics of the debtfare state in East-Central Europe (ECE). This nuances the scholarship on the repolitization of the ECE neoliberal state by populist forces and their instrumentalization of its middle-class welfare state strategies in the 2010s. Identifying the Czech debt enforcement industry as a leading poverty industry in ECE, I explore its depoliticizing origins in the Debt Enforcement Order (DEO), a flagship legal framework regulating the creditor–debtor–bailiff relations. Interpreting the political struggle over the DEO-centered debtfare state strategy, I then trace its limited repolitization since the mid-2010s, which redirects its reforms from their original pro-creditor and -bailiff prioritization to a prioritization of low-income debtors. This politics complements the repolitization of the neoliberal state beyond populism. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-06-13T01:41:59Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221104177
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Authors:Madalitso Zililo Phiri Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Forty years have passed since the implementation of the pernicious neoliberal structural reforms on the African continent in 1981. If 2021 marked a 40-year commemoration of a diabolical neocolonial project such as neoliberalism, then the year 2020 signified another 40-year period of rebirth aborted, as the Lagos Plan of Action of 1980 was undermined in favour of the Berg Report of 1981. These two periodizations delineate African liberation or continued neocolonial oppression, yet also coincide with Thandika Mkandawire’s life’s strivings. How do Mkandawire’s ideas on social policy, inspired by radical African Nationalists, aid in the dismantling of contemporary forms of racialized neoliberal social policy making' Mkandawire’s life straddled two 40-year periods (1940–1980 and 1980–2020) marked by sui generis contributions to African and global social sciences. This paper recasts his scholarly contributions on transformative social policy as a prophetic theoretician of African liberation. Mkandawire’s scholarly corpus provides a programmatic approach to the unmaking of a hierarchical racialized neoliberal global order. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-06-07T08:39:25Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221100832
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Authors:Zaheer Baber Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Haley Kwan Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. This article draws on a study conducted over a period of 17 months, including chatnography and semi-structured interviews with 30 female platform drivers working in China’s hail-riding industry, and makes three important contributions to the labour process and the social reproduction process scholarship. First, it fills a gap in the burgeoning literature on the gendered experience of gig work and of work–family flexibility in an on-demand economy. Women’s surplus production, as a means of subsistence for oneself and the family, is contradictory to childcare commitments in the labour process. Second, it theorises that the communicative space is a space for social reproduction in which labour-power is replenished outside the household. Labour productivity is not solely determined by algorithmic logic and platform control, but rather is organised by the social reproduction process. Third, it discusses how female platform workers negotiate technological insecurity and resist the platform’s control over and sexual exploitation in the communicative space. This sheds light on how the social reproduction process creates a potential for women’s solidarity. Women fight against sexual harassment and gender-based violence by utilising communication technologies, such as WeChat and TikTok. The social reproduction process organises labour resistance in a time of individual and collective crisis. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-06-03T02:24:58Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221101451
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Authors:Carol Chan, Rosario Fernández-Ossandón Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Many Chilean women employers desire domestic workers who are also ‘partners’ or ‘someone to do life with’. Taking ‘partnership’ or ‘compañerismo’ seriously, this paper draws on an affective labor framework and economic sociology to examine how care and power operate in affective and highly commodified labor relations between Chilean women employers and migrant Filipina domestic workers. We contextualize this discussion within historical relations of servitude in Chile and salient demands for more horizontal social and gender relations. We show that rather than reinforcing power or control, employers’ emphases on affective aspects of the labor relation enable their willful ignorance of power hierarchies, through normalizing the racialized presence of the worker in the household. However, explicit talk about money exposes the material conditions of affect and care in this racialized affective relationship. This reveals the uneven distribution and production of both care and power in the household, and highlights the disruptive nature of care work as affective labor. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-06-02T10:11:11Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221100268
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Authors:Kaxton Siu, Shuheng Jin Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Mechanisms to control Hong Kong’s young workers are embedded in inadequate labour protections within the government’s social welfare system and in prevalent informalization workplace practices. This article maintains that these control mechanisms have their origins in Hong Kong’s colonial era. Following Harvey, we argue that these control mechanisms are expressions of contradictions of capital in production and reproduction spheres. We identify the foundational and moving contradictions of capital expressed in Hong Kong’s lack of social welfare and employment protections, commodification of education, speculation in the housing market, patterns of work casualization and technology-induced labour-saving strategies, leading to precarity and everyday distress among young workers. New control mechanisms and contradictions of capital notwithstanding, this article highlights experiments to create spaces of resistance by Hong Kong’s young working classes in the hope of resisting the increasing degradation of their everyday living standards. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-06-02T08:12:45Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221097907
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Authors:Lauren Langman, George Lundskow Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Lauren Langman Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. At this moment in time, the very future of democracy in America has become a serious question. Many journalists and commentators have raised questions of crisis of White, Christian, male authority that impel an ‘illiberal democracy’, one-party rule, and/or a new civil War. The wave of progressive movements in the 1960s, resurgent in the 21st century, and challenging traditional, essentialist, identities and values were experienced by many as threats and dangers, fostering fears, anxieties, and grievances that elicited backlashes engendering various reactionary movements that are now a powerful force. These ‘authoritarian populisms’, racialized nationalisms, gendered ethnoreligious nationalisms, neo-fascisms, and indeed some clearly fascist movements extolling racial, gender, or Christian supremacy are mobilizing to preserve the culture and country of the ‘real people’ who feel victimized, challenged, and face demise. A basic fault of modern political economies has been the fundamental conflict between political democracy, majority rule, and/or rules of law and the economic anarchy, which privileges a few while many face duress; these conditions lead to the irrationality and scapegoating, especially racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism flourish to foster a variety of authoritarian, reactionary mobilizations across the globe. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-05-20T08:43:38Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221093028
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Authors:Fouad Mami Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Ning Zhang Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Nupur Pattanaik Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Lisa Y.M. Leung Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the need for online food delivery services (such as Deliveroo and Foodpanda), creating new job opportunities for South Asian youths. However, outbreaks of infected cases in districts populated by South Asians have spurred ‘racist’ remarks by customers, perhaps triggered by a flurry of negative mainstream news reports and social media outbursts targeted at South Asians. These behaviours reveal the added precariousness of ethnic minority employment. This paper examines the inter-sectional politics of race and class involved in platformed work, in the case of food delivery services. It discusses how the algorithmically controlled platformed economy may have an impact on racial minority workers. Employing the conceptual framing of ‘invisibility’, and notions around ‘platformed/ gig labour’, it argues that neo-liberalised infrastructural capitalism aggravates algorithmic surveillance of racial minority workers. It suggests the possible resilience of racial minority workers in the globally popular business model. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-05-03T06:44:37Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221091449
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Authors:Ivan Light Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Max Weber insisted that followers grant charismatic authority, but he did not address the cultural prerequisites that enable leaders to acquire it from them. Prophecy is the royal road. When a prophetic tradition has taught people to expect saviors in times of crisis, believers are primed to award charismatic authority to someone who resembles their expectation. The case of Donald Trump illustrates the importance of prophecy on the bestowal of charismatic authority. Within the Republican Party, two distinct prophetic traditions validated Trump’s salvific mission, thus enabling him to acquire power of command. Adhering to Biblical prophecy, conservative Protestants identified Donald Trump as God’s agent in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ. Also within the Republican Party, adhering to developmental economics, secular conservatives identified Donald Trump as a heroic entrepreneur whose vigor would restore America’s greatness. Because of Trump’s striking resemblance to Batman, the comic superhero’s many fans also had prior ideational access to Trump’s salvific mission. In the United States, the messianic prophecy of a tough-guy entrepreneur can derive from sacred culture, academic culture, popular culture, or from all three. The confluence produced a voter bloc primed to award charismatic authority to Trump. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-04-23T09:53:51Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221087425
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Authors:Tat Chor Au-Yeung, Jack Qiu Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Informed by the economic sociology of work, this qualitative study employs a dynamic and multi-dimensional notion of embeddedness to critique the social bases of gig work and the platform-mediated labour market, with a series of embedding, disembedding and re-embedding forces. Conducting in-depth interviews with 24 gig workers, the findings reveal how gig work is incorporated into Hong Kong’s labour market and the ways in which gig work is reshaping the power of workers via digital platforms. First, gig work is institutionally embedded in a policy framework centred on weak regulation and protection, resulting in platforms’ expandable and retractable control over labour. Second, gig work is embedded in occupational norms and professional practices, in which workers practise multi-platforming and marketplace resistance when defending their interests. Finally, the embedded connectivity of gig work boosts the scalability of labour market competition but engenders algorithmic opacity. The marketplace bargaining power of gig workers is twofold: workers’ dependence on platforms and their working status. Hence, the embeddedness of gig work and platforms is far from stable but involves new tensions that challenge the gigification and platformisation of work. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-04-14T09:20:53Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221090581
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Authors:Yuyang Kang, Ka Ho Mok Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Human capital theory has been one of the most influential theories in national policymaking since the 1980s. The major assertion is that individuals can attain better employment outcomes through investing in degrees and credentials. Following the economic reforms of the late 1970s, Chinese families have reverted to the tradition of investing in the education of their children, hoping that the human capital accumulated through higher education will translate into economic capital, enhancing their children’s upward social mobility. However, the rapid expansion of Chinese higher education since 1999 has caused an educational inflation, adversely affecting graduate employment. This article critically examines China’s response to global capitalism through bureaucratic adjustment of higher education expansion in managing the market transition and social reproduction of labour challenges within a relatively short historic period of ‘compressed development’. Without effective articulation between higher education expansion and the changing labour needs during the market transition, the rush to higher education expansion has created different forms of social and economic contradictions. More specifically, this article argues that social embeddedness including parental influence, institutional policies, and social capital are important factors to be considered in explaining the relationship between education and work in the Chinese context. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-04-14T09:17:53Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221088894
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Authors:Tommy Tse Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. This research challenges the growing theoretical Global North–South divide and refines an ‘ex-centric’ theorisation of creative labour in the context of the increasingly monopolising but competitive capitalism in Asia. While it argues that job insecurity is not just a universal, objective condition, but varying, subjective experiences of anxiety and dissatisfaction for creative workers, we adopt a pluralist epistemological approach and identify the nuanced intersections among key global, local, and sectoral trends – increased use of digital technology, an Indigenous and outdated work ethic, and a devaluation of creativity both in industry and society – that co-configure Hong Kong creative workers’ divergent perceptions of and responses to job insecurities. Rather than merely focusing on job tenure insecurity and employment insecurity, we classify and highlight the conceptual distinctions among eight types of job insecurity for Hong Kong creative workers, some of which enable creative worker-actor’s response, resilience, and resistance to the exploitative creative labour process. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-04-14T09:15:37Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221087345
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Authors:Diatyka Widya Permata Yasih Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The article examines the effects of the normalization of a new form of precarious work—tied to the gig economy and shaped by the imperatives of neoliberalism—in impeding the formation of solidarity that would enable workers to challenge structural issues that shape their precarity, although without entirely preventing collective organization. While the article focuses on the manifestation of the new precarity and workers’ responses in the app-based transport service in Indonesia, it seeks insights from the different experiences of other countries. It is argued here that the historical absence of the Standard Employment Relationship (SER), and the historically rooted ineffectiveness of labor and broader society movements aggravate problems in translating the precarity discourse into the organizational struggles of contemporary labor. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-04-09T05:26:47Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221087130
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Authors:Yue Zhou Lin Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Gramscian scholars have engaged with Gramsci’s leitmotif (‘rhythm of thought’) and the stato integrale (integral state), a concept he introduced in Autumn 1930. This represents remarkable progress in the Marxist community. But what requires further attention is the interconnection between an integral state and a totalitarian one, two of the three expressions of state-society formations that Perry Anderson identified as Gramsci’s antinomies. This article argues that the integral state is fragile but hegemonic if it can be sustained. Otherwise, it can degenerate into a totalitarian state. The article refigures the ‘integral state’ as the ‘integral state-society’. It exists relatively, depending on whether the ‘integral momentum’ or the ‘totalitarian tendency’ prevails in a dynamic interaction between radical Left, Far Right, and those currents in between. Identifying this relativity helps to formulate a deeper understanding of Gramsci’s thought and show how his legacy supports a class struggle perspective on the COVID-19 interregnum. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-04-09T05:24:20Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221086490
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Authors:Tom Brass Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Tim Christiaens Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:M. Anwar Hossen Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Sociology is one of the major disciplines to foster understanding and protection of the livelihoods of local people. For instance, the discipline can describe the linkage between the environment and people and the effects of environmental change on local groups of people in a Delta country such as Bangladesh. However, the imperial philosophy of modernity that dominates the discipline and which is evident in the Sociology department at the University of Dhaka (UofD) underscores a considerable distance between academic conceptualizations of local perspectives on issues such as climatic change and the actual views of the local people of Bangladesh. Grounded on this assertion, this paper explores a question: What are the challenges for Sociology to represent Delta people and protect their social justice' The paper depends on the content analysis of sociological practices at UofD: imperial modernity and climatic adaptation. The findings of the paper argue that Sociology has been failing to represent the local meanings of climatic change due to the domination of imperial conceptualizations of modernity. Climate finance conceptualized by a Western perspective, and Sociology, as a discipline, fails to represent locally contextualized meanings related to climate finance; thus, the marginalized groups of people are increasingly facing survival challenges responsible for climate apartheid. Only a decolonized Sociology can challenge this imperial domination and play an effective role in reducing the discipline’s gap of understanding of the local people and in promoting social justice in Delta Bangladesh. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-04-09T05:17:19Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221085687
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Authors:Cihan Tuğal Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Scholars have argued that megaprojects’ turn away from issues of employment, and mass housing are among the core traits of neoliberalism. Turkey, though once seen as a paragon of neoliberalism, problematizes this generalization. Erdoğanist megaprojects have created jobs and residence for millions, and garner consent. ‘Embedded neoliberalism’, a concept frequently used to explain increasing state involvement under neoliberalism, sheds light on the governing AKP’s power, but is insufficient in explaining its core dynamics. Whereas the ‘embedded neoliberalism’ literature downplays the role of the government as a producer, the ‘state capitalism’ literature, as applied to Turkey, overrates the extent to which this country has moved away from neoliberalism. The concept ‘neoliberal statism’ (which puts the emphasis on the consent-generating and political aspects of the new economy) better captures the AKP’s path. Megaproject-driven growth and popular consent, however, are restricted by vulnerabilities that also afflict neoliberal statism as a broader growth strategy. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-04-05T11:56:39Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221086284
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Authors:Raju J Das Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to increased scholarly attention to an important ‘human need’: good health. This article is about the relation between workers’ health and capitalist production, as Marx examines it in his magnum opus. While Marx’s main focus in Capital Volume 1 is on the production of surplus value by workers and its appropriation by capitalists, he does provide insights into how capitalism ruins the health of workers themselves, although these insights are scattered. In this article, I systematically re-articulate and analyse Marx’s thoughts about workers’ health in relation to some of the key-categories of his political economy: the value of labour power relative to wages; employment precarity; long working day; hidden abode of production; capitalists’ despotic control over workers; and the capitalist transformation of nature. I briefly relate Marx’s ideas about workers’ health from Capital Volume 1 to some contemporary research on the social dimensions of health. I also show that Marx’s explicit ideas about workers’ health, which are my main focus, point to a broader approach to the topic that is only implicit in his thinking. I draw out some practical implications of this approach. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-03-28T09:14:46Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221083503 Issue No:Vol. 1 (2022)
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Authors:Christoph Sorg Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. With the advent of digitalization, the more techno-optimist among critics of capitalism have articulated new calls for post-work and post-scarcity economics made possible by new advances in information and communication technology. Quite recently, some of this debate shifted for calls for digital-democratic planning to replace market-based allocation. This article will trace the lineages of this shift and present these new calls for digitally enabled and democratic planning. I will then argue that much of the discussion focuses on capitalism’s laws of economic motion, while rendering less visible capitalism’s social, political, and ecological ‘conditions of possibility’. To remedy this shortcoming I will ask how these fit into the recent debate and suggest avenues to extend the discussion of democratic planning in that way. Concretely, I will discuss features of a postcapitalist mode of reproduction that abolishes capital’s subordination of non-waged and waged care work. The following part will focus on both planning’s need to calculate ecological externalities and consequently determine sustainable and egalitarian paths for social and technological development on a world scale. The last section will elaborate on the ‘democratic’ in ‘democratic planning’ in terms of planning’s decision-making, multi-scalar politics, and politics of cultural recognition. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-03-17T10:03:36Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221081058
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Authors:Joe Pateman Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. According to an old legend, Vladimir Lenin, the founder of Soviet Marxism, overlooked Karl Marx’s theory of alienation. For Marxist humanists, this theory underlies the emancipatory thrust of Marx’s thought, and since, in their view, Lenin’s acolytes ignored alienation, communist regimes failed to empower the workers. Considering these claims, this article challenges the legend that Lenin himself neglected Marx’s theory of alienation. It argues that this theory was central to Lenin’s Marxism. In fact, Lenin was among the first to discover the concept in Marx’s work, although he also analysed the concept independently. Like Marx, Lenin criticised capitalist alienation and defined communism as a non-alienated society. After the October Revolution, however, Lenin struggled to realise this goal. Responding to a failed European socialist revolution, a brutal civil war, a deadly famine and widespread cultural backwardness, Lenin made concessions to alienation. Nevertheless, Lenin’s legacy provides an important insight into alienation today. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-03-08T01:06:46Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221080552
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Authors:Markus Lundström Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Whereas the sociology of food has drawn attention to differences between corporate and alternative foodways, the political imaginations underpinning the latter are often overlooked. This article distinguishes between different political imaginations of the community kitchen, a set of practices characterised by collective preparation and redistribution of food. The analysis builds on ethnographic and archive material in Sweden to outline how the folkkök (people’s kitchen) was once an institutional practice to address urban food insecurity, soon outsourced as altruistic soup kitchens, and then regenerated a century later by the anarchist movement. By distinguishing between altruistic and anarchistic imaginations in this analysis, the article adds another layer to the critical sociological study of alternative foodways. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-03-03T11:37:50Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221077604
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Authors:Linea M. Petersen, Sine N. Just, Emil Husted Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Using unconditional basic income (UBI) as its empirical prism, this article offers new impetus to the foundational debate within critical theory as to whether and how redistribution and recognition can relate productively to each other. We explore the possibility of redistributive solidarity, arguing that unconditional and universal redistribution may be a means of furthering the recognition of different subjectivities that are not solely defined by their productive relations of labor. Seeing such redistributive solidarity as a potential but not necessary outcome of UBI, we develop a typology of existing UBI experiments that divide these according to whether they seek to affirm or transform the current social order based on principles of growth or degrowth. Surveying these four types of UBI, we find that the envisioned form of economic redistribution shapes the potential for social recognition. While the relationship is one of utopian potential rather than causal necessity, UBI may indeed enable redistributive solidarity. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-03-02T04:45:25Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221080364
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Authors:Peter Anton Zoettl Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. This article discusses the life and death of juvenile drug dealers in the state of Bahia, Brazil, where the drug business has become omnipresent and a growing number of youths from the urban periphery are taking up a career with one of the country’s many drug gangs. The price most of them pay for their economic success as traffickers is high: they are repeatedly imprisoned under harsh conditions, suffer severe physical violence and, at times, die at young age. Drawing on the narratives of juveniles from Bahia and the writings of Bataille and Baudrillard, the youths’ approach to life is discussed as a knowingly illusory attempt to regain their sovereignty within the boundaries of consumer capitalism. It is argued that their death is not a blow of fate, but rather the premeditated consequence of their acquisition of consumer-citizenship ‘on credit’ and, ultimately, their refusal to constitute Brazil’s modern precariat. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-04T12:11:19Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211073500
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Authors:George Lundskow Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. From the earliest days of the British North American colonies, violence permeates American society. At the political-economic level, violence established and expanded the nation through slavery and military conquest. At the inter-personal level, people chose violence to resolve disputes, and for entertainment. The one consistent element has been the ‘masterless men’, white males who feel that whiteness and divinely endowed liberty entitle them to more than they currently have in property, employment, or status. Endowed with the right of self-determination and cultural reinforcement for feelings of inherent superiority, they have embraced fantastical conspiracies and restorative violence as personal gratification and cultural terror management whenever they feel that perceived social inferiors are succeeding beyond their appropriate social position, especially through military service, economic entrepreneurship, and election victory. Conspiracy and violent fantasy promise to restore racial-masculine hierarchy from an allegedly ideal past to fulfill God’s divine purpose for the United States. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-02T07:08:50Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211073703
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Authors:Anthony R. DiMaggio Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. This paper examines the impact of partisanship, rightwing media, and social media on attitudes about contemporary conspiracy theories. Mainstream scholarly views that ‘both sides’ of the political aisle indulge routinely in such theories are challenged. I adopt a Gramscian hegemonic framework that examines rising rightwing conspiracy theories as a manifestation of mass false consciousness in service of a political-economic system that serves upper-class interests. Issues examined include the QAnon movement, ‘big lie’ voter fraud conspiracism, and Covid-19 conspiracy theories, and the way they related to partisanship, rightwing media, and social media. I provide evidence that Republican partisanship, rightwing media consumption, and social media consumption are all significant statistical predictors of acceptance of modern conspiracy theories. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-01-29T10:26:20Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211073669
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Authors:Saif Shahin Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. This article adopts a poststructural approach to examine the relationship between the news media and international relations. It compares 15 years of international aid coverage from two donor nations, the United States and Britain, and two recipient nations, India and Pakistan, to understand the types of identities news media construct for a nation in relation to other nations. Despite their differences, the news discourse in all four nations has a neoliberal orientation. Moreover, neoliberalism underpins a hierarchical structure of relations that privileges some nations as superior and makes other nations willing participants in their own subordination. While scholars of press–state relations regard newsmaking as epiphenomenal to foreign policymaking, this article argues that newsmaking and policymaking are mutually constitutive social phenomena: both draw from and, in turn, reproduce a shared conception of national identity vis-à-vis other nations. In doing so, the article illustrates the productive power of news media in international relations. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-01-27T10:59:32Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211072455
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Authors:Alexander Paulsson, Till Koglin Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. While measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 disturbed both global and local markets, some commentators also argued that the pandemic could be seen as the beginning of the end of neoliberalism. Although neoliberal reforms have come under pressure, little is known about the implications of COVID-19 in or across specific sectors. Scaling down the rich theoretical–historical debates about neoliberalism to the regional level, we study the impact of COVID-19 on the marketized public transport system in Stockholm, Sweden. During COVID-19, ridership dropped as did ticket revenues, which put the market under operational and financial distress. Drawing on a discussion of the norms and techniques of marketization, we probe how the contracted bus operators responded to the pandemic, how they tried to save the market from collapsing, and whether the measures taken suggest an organized move away from neoliberal policies. Adding to recent debates of COVID-19 and neoliberalism’s longevity, we conclude that although the norms underpinning marketization remained unquestioned, the techniques were partly re-evaluated in the midst of the global crisis as a way to protect the established neoliberal policies from falling apart. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-01-27T10:55:18Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211069862
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Authors:Jeremiah Morelock, Felipe Ziotti Narita Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. In this article, we analyze the role of conspiracy theories, especially the spread of QAnon during the COVID-19 pandemics, in the legitimation crisis and epistemic crisis in contemporary democracies. We discuss Habermas’ theory of legitimation crisis and the potential for reactionary movements in times of such crisis, as well as Hofstadter’s description of the paranoid style in political culture. We explain the notion of ‘epistemic crisis’ as theorized by Larry Laudan and discussed recently in relation to social media. We discuss anti-intellectualism in Hofstadter’s terms, and explain its connection with populism. Finally, we explain how all of this comes to bear on the contemporary proliferation of conspiracy theory, using QAnon and the COVID crisis as our point of reference, and examples from the United States and Brazil to illustrate our points. QAnon fueled COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and COVID-19 conspiracy theories rocketed QAnon to a place of major influence. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-01-24T12:23:06Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211069614
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Authors:Filomin C. Gutierrez Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The article problematizes state penality as a mechanism of repression of precarious workers through a war on drugs in the Philippines. The narratives of 27 arrested ‘drug personalities’ in Metro Manila tell of how methamphetamine energizes bodies and motivates minds for productive work. Bidding to be classified as willing and able workers and family men, the study’s participants orient to a moral stratification that pits the ‘moral versus immoral’ and the ‘hardworking versus lazy’. Qualifying their drug use as strategic and calculated, they uphold the neoliberal values of individual choice and accountability. Their support for the anti-drug campaign stems from their recognition of a drug problem and the socioemotional toll of the dysfunctions of living in the slums. While trade liberalization facilitates methamphetamine inflow, a war on drugs fuels an authoritarian populism. As the state reaffirms symbolic mission to protect its citizens, it blames precarity to a problem population. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-01-08T06:30:56Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211070236
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Authors:Paul Joosse, Dominik Zelinsky Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. This paper explores the role anger plays in charismatic movements. Although scholars have long recognized the importance of emotions to the etiology of charisma, they tend to focus on mutual affection among leaders and followers, paying less attention to how anger—and particularly its subspecies, ressentiment—patterns charismatic power. Drawing on literature from political science, populism research, and the cultural sociology of charisma, we argue that ressentiment, which is associated with self-disvalue and an invidious need to blame outsiders, is key to theorizing the emotional energy that charisma delivers to revolutionary upheaval. The Weberian source for the intervention is his lesser known concept of ‘berserk-charisma’. Reorienting the focus of charisma research to account for its aggressive, ‘outward’ dimension has the benefit of drawing us closer to the vision Weber had for its social-historical relevance. We demonstrate our insights using the case of charismatic/populist support for Trump. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-01-07T05:48:34Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211063131
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First page: 545 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:David Fasenfest First page: 549 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Jordanna Matlon First page: 553 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Freeden Blume Oeur First page: 559 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Michael Burawoy’s 2021 essay, ‘Decolonizing Sociology: The Significance of W.E.B. Du Bois’, forges dialogues between the scholar denied and established theorists with the aim of reconstructing the sociological canon. My commentary situates the author’s essay and his own Du Boisian turn in a long career dedicated to reflexive science and recomposing theory. I reflect on the seemingly innocuous notion of a dialogue itself: its implications for sociological theory and practice, and how it supports decolonial efforts. Thinking with Toni Morrison, Hazel Carby, Lisa Lowe, and others, I offer a sketch of a decolonial methodology—what I call a Du Boisian shadowplay—that brings into view the intimate dimensions of imperialism. Ultimately, such a feminist methodology reconstructs dialogues that reflect on researcher standpoints and nested imperial histories; and in the face of today’s social crises, nurtures dialogues that are animated by an ethic of love. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-23T10:14:48Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221077095
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Authors:Michael Burawoy First page: 571 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Aleksandr Buzgalin First page: 587 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Olga Barashkova First page: 591 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The author characterizes the main stages in the rise of the Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism (PSSCM) and highlights its most important features, distinguishing it from other tendencies of Marxist thought in Russia. The latter include the orthodox version of Marxism, the social democratic tendency, and the ‘Russophile’ tendency. In contrast to these trends, the PSSCM is oriented toward elaboration of a dialectical materialist methodology; toward development of creative Soviet and world traditions in the study of social alienation and de-alienation; toward the critical use of Marx and his followers’ achievements with the aim of developing the main elements of the ‘Capital’ of the 21st century; and toward studying the prospects for the future ‘realm of freedom’ (Marx) as the dialectical sublation not only of capitalism, but also of the entire system of relations of social alienation in the context of facing the contemporary global problems. A feature of the article is its extensive bibliography of works by Russian Marxists. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-22T10:30:45Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205221077069
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Authors:Andrey Kolganov First page: 609 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The author shows the changes that the system of commodity relations is undergoing in the early 21st century. These changes are seeing the market take on an all-encompassing character, and we are witnessing a comprehensive manipulation of market actors by corporate capital. The present-day market is limited and undermined not only by state regulation but also by a process of socialisation, which represents the totality of transitional relationships and institutions. Having characterised this new quality of the relations of the market, the author demonstrates the specific nature of these processes in contemporary Russia, where the most modern forms of market relations and the most archaic are being propagated simultaneously. The green shoots of socialisation are characterised by the contradiction between the retention of a number of the achievements of the preceding system, and the development of shadow state regulation and ‘manual control’. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-04T12:55:54Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211065605
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Authors:Aleksandr Buzgalin First page: 625 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The article presents the research on the social and class structure of modern society from the positions of the Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism. It is shown that late capitalism is characterised by the active formation of inter-class and intra-class layers. The article reveals the contradictions of the ‘creative class’. The ‘creative class’ is divided into (1) the people who are employed in the creatosphere and give rise to the phenomena of culture and the creative qualities of human beings and (2) those who ‘creatively’ produce useless goods. Then it is further divided into people employed in the (1) public and (2) commercial sectors. The author introduces the term ‘the socialiat’ to characterise the public-sector workers who comprise a protoclass within the creative class, shows the core and periphery of it, and provide the analysis of the precariat as the alter ego of the socialiat. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-04T12:36:25Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211072802
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Authors:Lyudmila Bulavka-Buzgalina First page: 645 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. Taking as the main objects of study cultural expanse, artistic creativity and viewing it through the prism of socio-philosophical problems, the author describes the increasing subordination of culture to the market and capital as the evolution of modern society goes ahead, and sets out the reasons for this development. This subordination becomes most intensive as a result of the expansion of the total market for simulacra that is, of the system that is becoming dominant in the world during the 21st century. The market becomes total to the extent that not only the economy, this process transforms co-creativity of people into alienated market relations.The opposite aspect, that of dealienation, co-creativity and unalienated dialogue (Batishchev, Bakhtin) comprises the innate essence of culture, and through preserving the world-wide unity of culture, acts as an alternative to the growing alienation. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-14T10:10:28Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211073356
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Authors:Gleb Maslov First page: 659 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The article is devoted to the study of the Soviet and post-Soviet Marxists’ views on the problem of technical and economic transformations. The stages in the development of Soviet thought in this matter are systematized, and the potential of applying the authors’ key ideas in the context of the challenges brought in by modern technological shifts is shown. With regard to the period after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the emphasis is on the developments of researchers belonging to the post-Soviet school of critical Marxism, as well as colleagues acting in an active dialogue with this focus area. What is emphasized is the high potential of the Marxist tendency in further studies of the contradictions of the economic system caused by technological transformations. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-01-15T10:31:49Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211063596
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Authors:Zhan Toshchenko First page: 699 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The article makes an attempt to prove that along with the recognized concepts of the development of civilization—evolution and revolution—at the present time, it is necessary to talk about such a modality as a society of trauma. At present, 53 countries out of 192 members of the United Nations have been stagnating and recessing for many years, which manifested itself in the disorganization of the national economy, in political instability, in the growth of poverty, and social tension. Particular attention is paid to Russia, which can be attributed as traumatized society. The reasons for the formation of a society of trauma in Russia, its main features are analyzed: disproportions of the national economy, growth of social inequality, and attempts to implement new forms of class struggle. In conclusion, proposals are formulated for getting out of the traumatized state of society. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-05T05:00:03Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211064927
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Authors:Ruslan Dzarasov, Viktoria Gritsenko First page: 713 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The article examines characteristics of digitalization in the Russian economy in its connection with the semi-peripheral position of Russia. The reasons for the lack of efficiency of Russian digitalization and its uneven development in various economy sectors are explained. According to the authors, the root causes of this state of affairs can be seen even in the patterns of the degeneration and disintegration of the Soviet Union, when the features of rent-seeking behavior of the ruling elite were first identified. The article presents the results of a study into the needs for information resources in the sectors of the Russian economy (in comparison with the group of reference countries), which reflect the decline in those in industry and, on the contrary, the concentration in the research and development sector. The authors believe that these data confirm the conclusion about the selective and generally insufficient character of digitalization. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-22T10:23:17Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211073887
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Authors:Michael Voeykov, Galina Anisimova First page: 729 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print. The article deals with the social aspects of economic inequality in society. Special attention is paid to non-monetary indicators of social stratification of Russian society. It substantiates the conclusion that economic inequality in Russian society has reached a critical line fraught with serious social threats. Citation: Critical Sociology PubDate: 2022-02-14T10:05:13Z DOI: 10.1177/08969205211065322
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Authors:Hideo Aoki First page: 879 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Marcus L. Smith First page: 889 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Babak Amini First page: 891 Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
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