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Critical Sociology
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.541
Citation Impact (citeScore): 1
Number of Followers: 48  
 
  Hybrid Journal Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 0896-9205 - ISSN (Online) 1569-1632
Published by Sage Publications Homepage  [1176 journals]
  • Book Reviews: Marx’s Literary Style by Ludovica Silva

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      Authors: Kaan Kangal
      Pages: 1351 - 1352
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Volume 49, Issue 7-8, Page 1351-1352, November 2023.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-19T09:23:32Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231179778
      Issue No: Vol. 49, No. 7-8 (2023)
       
  • Book Reviews: Labour Conflicts in the Digital Age: A Comparative
           Perspective by Donatella Della Porta, Riccardo Emilio Chesta and Lorenzo
           Cini

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      Authors: Tim Christiaens
      Pages: 1352 - 1355
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Volume 49, Issue 7-8, Page 1352-1355, November 2023.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-19T09:23:30Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231190150
      Issue No: Vol. 49, No. 7-8 (2023)
       
  • Social Forms Beyond Value: Public Wealth and Its Contradictions

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      Authors: Toni Prug, Mislav Žitko
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Revisiting the history of the development of software and communication technologies, this article demonstrates that while the early techno-utopian theories have been balanced by more sombre approaches, the emancipatory potential of productions whose outputs do not take the commodity form deserves further theoretical reflection. Social form and value-form literature provides a way to rethink publicly financed activities and activities of software communities as a variety of social forms of wealth and productions within capitalist social formations. Public wealth, it is argued, is a useful umbrella concept to approach the forms of wealth in the sphere of software, media and communication. With digitally storable matter, due to its replicability at near zero cost, it is of utmost importance that the state provides an institutional framework, primarily for capital, but also for public wealth, to be coded. In this setting, legal form, its content and function play a key role in the contested reproduction between forms of public wealth and capital.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-25T09:46:59Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231215235
       
  • Between (Conceptual) Crisis and Critique: Reclaiming the Critical
           Epistemic Value of Publicness

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      Authors: Slavko Splichal
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Different understandings of what it means to be critical in the social sciences, especially in terms of the distinction between instrumental and reflexive knowledge, can be illustrated by the ongoing conceptual disputes about the critical epistemic value of public opinion and the public sphere as the main instantiations of publicness. The concept of the public sphere has gained prominence in media and communication theory, filling a void created by the decline of critical public opinion discourse, which was overshadowed by promotional publicity and opinion polls. Initially rooted in the German concept of Öffentlichkeit, this idea was revived in the English term ‘public sphere’. Its adoption transcended disciplinary boundaries, sparking fresh critical perspectives in the study of publicness. Yet, this widespread adoption also brought about a certain dilution of the concept’s epistemic depth. The digital age, characterized by the ascendancy of the Internet and the blurring of public–private boundaries, has greatly reshaped our comprehension of the public sphere, and expanded the scope of the concept. Today, however, the public sphere concept faces a fate reminiscent of administrative public opinion discourse following the proliferation of opinion polls. At a time when society is faced with issues related to the control of digital platforms by oligarchs, reevaluation and revitalization of the concepts of the public sphere and publicness become essential for comprehending the dynamics of modern communication.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-24T11:13:35Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231211313
       
  • Waste in Organizations: Discerning (Dis)value in Rational, Natural, and
           Open Systems Perspectives

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      Authors: Nadine Arnold, Christopher Dorn
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Society overflows with waste, and waste and discard studies emphasize the social construction and contingency of waste, outlining it as the negatively valued. However, organizational sociology currently does not reflect these insights and rarely accounts for waste. Therefore, this article asks what kind of theory is required to capture waste in organized contexts. By searching for waste in Scott and Davis’ well-accepted three perspectives on organizations (as rational, natural, or open systems), it becomes evident that each perspective conceptualizes waste based on its theoretical conception of organizations (rational: disorder; natural: disintegration; open: overdetermination) that is mirrored in different accounts of waste. While these perspectives assign negative value to different organizational conditions, they offer little insight into how organizations themselves disvalue entities and generate waste. To overcome this shortcoming, the article introduces an integrative perspective that incorporates the three prevalent perspectives, conceptualizing organizations as closed and open systems (COS) based on Luhmann’s system concept and observation theory. The COS perspective explains how organizations construct waste through their selective indication of values and disvalues. It thereby identifies waste as a contingent yet inevitable part of any organization and shifts attention from the study of symptomatic waste to its underlying origins.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-23T08:16:15Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231214251
       
  • The AKP’s ‘Embedded Neoliberalism’ and the Rise of ‘Authoritarian
           Embeddedness’ in Turkey

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      Authors: Yonca Özdemir
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      By analysing the dynamics of neoliberalism through a Polanyian lens, this article illustrates the complexities and consequences of neoliberalism in the Turkish context. It examines the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey as a manifestation of ‘embedded neoliberalism’. The article delves into the AKP’s ascent to power, its consolidation of authority, and, most notably, its subsequent shift towards authoritarianism and interventionism. It traces the evolution of the AKP’s governance, highlighting its trajectory from a period of ‘soft embeddedness’ to ‘authoritarian embeddedness’. During the ‘soft embeddedness’ phase (2002–2013), the AKP implemented neoliberal policies alongside improved access to credit and social programmes. However, as global economic conditions deteriorated and the contradictions of neoliberalism intensified by 2013, the phase of ‘authoritarian embeddedness’ ensued. This phase not only entailed overtly authoritarian politics but also witnessed an escalation of state interventionism in the economy further contributing to the crisis of the economy and state.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-18T07:14:38Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231212677
       
  • Informalization and Temporary Labor Migration: Rethinking Japan’s
           Technical Intern Training Program From a Denationalized View

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      Authors: Hironori Onuki
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article asks how Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) has promoted a transfiguration of employer into predator who utilizes fraudulent economic strategies to exploit trainees under the abusive conditions. Situating Japan’s case within the global dynamics of temporary labor migration as well as drawing on the critical discussions about the ‘informal economy’, I argue that the formation and expansion of the unequal capital–labor power relations, facilitated by the processes of informalization under the TITP in Japan and the sending countries, has constructed trainees as precarious workers and augmented the dehumanized treatment of these workers by their employers. Specifically utilizing Slavnic’s notion of the two patterns of informalization—‘informalization from above’ and ‘informalization from below’—from a de-nationalized perspective, this article illustrates how the involvement of so-called labor migration intermediaries at both departure and destination sites has affected trainees’ hierarchical and discriminatory relationships with their employers in Japan.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-09T12:05:17Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231209535
       
  • Social Welfare Policy in Post-Transition Chile: Social Democratic or
           Neoliberal'

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      Authors: Paul W. Posner
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Chile’s massive 2019 protests indicate a pronounced discrepancy between the country’s alleged establishment of social democracy and the public’s perception of pervasive inequity. To understand this discrepancy, this analysis evaluates the extent to which Chilean social welfare policy conforms to social democratic norms of promoting solidarity, equity, and universalism. Analysis of poverty reduction, pension, health care, and education policy demonstrates that Chile’s center-left governments succeeded in mitigating some of the more extreme elements of the social welfare policies inherited from the Pinochet regime. However, they failed to reverse their underlying logic, which reinforces stratification and inequity and undermines incentives for the cultivation of solidarity among the working and middle classes. As a result, social welfare policy in Chile continues to resemble the neoliberal welfare regime implemented by the Pinochet dictatorship while the establishment of a social democratic welfare regime remains an aspiration for present and future leftist governments to realize.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-08T11:00:02Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231209424
       
  • The Role of Competitive Project-Based Funding in the Commodification of
           Academic Research: A Marxist Analysis

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      Authors: Luis Arboledas-Lérida
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The current growth of competitive project-based funding (CPBF) as a funding instrument for academic science reveals that public funding plays a critical role in the spreading of the capitalist relations of production in academia. However, this issue has not been properly addressed in the extant literature. This paper examines CPBF in the light of the determinations of capitalist relations of production captured by the Marxist notion of ‘formal subsumption of labour under capital’. It will then show that CPBF mediates commodity-based productive relations between funding agencies and academic institutions, and that the latter are, in turn, premised on the separation of academic labour from the objective conditions of knowledge production. It will be also demonstrated how CPBF reproduces and deepens that split, leading from the partial to the complete formal subsumption of academic labour under capital. Our analysis challenges the assumption that increased public funding will put to a halt the commodification of academia and academic research.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-03T11:58:19Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231209679
       
  • Managerial Contradictions and Satisficing in the Lean Workplace

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      Authors: Chiara Benassi
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-03T11:55:59Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231208625
       
  • Ibn Khaldûn and the Political Economy of Communication in the Age of
           Digital Capitalism

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      Authors: Christian Fuchs
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Ibn Khaldûn (1332–1406) was a philosopher, historian and sociologist. This paper asks: What elements of the Political Economy of Communication are there in Ibn Khaldûn’s work and how do they matter in digital capitalism' It presents relevant passages from Khaldûn’s main work Muqaddimah and points out parallels between the Muqaddimah and works in Political Economy, especially Karl Marx’s approach of the Critique of Political Economy. The comparison of Khaldûn to Marx is not an arbitrary choice. Several scholars have pointed out parallels between the two’s works with respect to general Political Economy. It, therefore, makes sense to, also, compare Khaldûn and Marx in the context of the Political Economy of Communication. The paper analyses the relevance of Khaldûn’s ideas in digital capitalism. Khaldûn’s works are situated in the context of media and communication theory, digital automation, Facebook, Google, labour in informational and digital capitalism, Amazon, the tabloid press, fake news and post-truth culture. The analysis shows that Khaldûn’s Muqaddimah is an early work in Political Economy that can and should inform our contemporary critical analysis of communication in society, communication in capitalism and class society, ideology and digital capitalism. What connects Marx and Khaldûn is that they were critical scholars who although living at different times in different parts of the world saw the importance of the analysis of class and communication. Their works can and should inform the Political Economy of Communication and the analysis of digital capitalism.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-11-02T08:49:05Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231206488
       
  • Extractive Labor: A Lethal Legacy of Racialized Colonial Rule

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      Authors: Arthur Scarritt
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      How and why does colonial domination kill off the very labor it depends on' While settler colonial studies provide one of the only theorizations of the systemic elimination of populations, they see it as antithetical to labor exploitation, and thus cannot answer this question. I therefore build on recent critiques of settler colonial studies to develop the concept of racialized extractive labor regimes: race marking labor as disposable, as realizing value through expending workers’ lives. I then articulate these dynamics through a comparison of the highly divergent cases of early colonialism in Peru and what is now the United States, first across initial settlement and then as they shifted to racialization decades later. While settler colonial studies emphasize land acquisition as colonialism’s defining feature, my comparison reveals that elites’ drive for indelible inequality actually shapes colonial projects. And in order to maintain their vaunted positions, elites ultimately construct racialized extractive labor regimes that predicate their domination on the regularized elimination of racialized Others. This analysis therein provides new insights into the elitist nature of colonialism and the logics of elimination and racialization through which it runs.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-30T09:21:30Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231209884
       
  • ‘Play’ing College Football: Campus Athletic Worker Experiences
           of Exploitation

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      Authors: Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      It is well-established in the literature on the economic dimensions of US college sport that it has become a site of professionalized, value-producing work that does not equitably compensate the campus athletic workers responsible for the production of value therein. Yet, while these interventions make highly compelling political economic claims, few focus on how college athletes themselves experience the system and thus the exploitation they might endure. Drawing on testimony from semi-structured interviews conducted with 25 former college football players, we aim to expand discussions of exploitation beyond debates over compensation through our analysis of the contrast between ‘work’ and ‘play’ that exists in the lives of campus athletic workers. Utilizing a non-deterministic Marxian theory of exploitation, this paper explicitly interrogates the way capitalist ideology permeates college football by centering the important tension between ‘work’ and ‘play’ that contributes to that ideology as experienced and understood by college football players.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-30T09:17:25Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231208036
       
  • Zygmunt Bauman: Narrating a Contested Life

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      Authors: Shaun Best
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-25T09:29:44Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231206667
       
  • Ibn Khaldun and Critical Inquiry: A Response to Christian Fuchs

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      Authors: Graham Murdock
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-24T10:46:48Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231201050
       
  • Rethinking Social Rights as Social Property: Alternatives to Private
           Property, and the Democratisation of Public Politics

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      Authors: Silke van Dyk, Markus Kip
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Although the transformation of welfare states carries far-reaching implications for property relations, there is an astonishing amnesia regarding property in research concerning the welfare state. To date, the French sociologist Robert Castel is the only thinker to have illuminated the connection between property and social rights: he understands transfer payments and public infrastructures as social property and describes them as rehabilitation of the previously propertyless. Starting out from Castel’s concept of social property, the article discusses its strengths and weaknesses and elaborates conceptually on what it would mean to think of social rights consistently as social property. The authors argue that it is a worthwhile endeavour to think further with and go beyond Castel’s concept of social property. This allows not only to think about public alternatives to private property and to theorise the dismantling of social rights as expropriation, but also to think further on the democratisation of social rights.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-24T10:42:38Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231195378
       
  • Aesthetic Approach for Critical Sociology of Contemporary Communication
           Technology

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      Authors: Balca Arda
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Critical theory has already marked that technology often threatens civil liberties, personal autonomy, and rights. Heidegger, later Marcuse, emphasized how technology is not value-free in its own revealing power of the surrounding environment, external and inner nature. Throughout this paper, I explore how the aesthetic approach engages with critical theory and contributes to the sociology of media and communication. For this, I will theoretically survey the terms of sociality under the forces of immediate communication, ubiquitous surveillance, and the compression of time and space that Baudrillard and Virilio once problematized through the lens of critical technology theory to adapt it to media and communication studies. I contend that techno-aesthetics that converge with Rancière’s dissensus can provide practical suggestions on an updated vocation of critical sociology. This article discusses the potential of aesthetic and social criticism of media for democratizing technology that Feenberg inserted. It is urgent to acknowledge the changing spatio-temporal aesthetic regimes that affect the societal imagination and limits of sociality and action to determine the next steps for achieving a commons-based society.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-24T07:43:28Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231206511
       
  • The Dialectical Sociology of Michel Freitag and the Critique of
           Communication Society

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      Authors: Claude Leduc, Maxime Ouellet, André Mondoux
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Michel Freitag developed a ground-breaking sociological theory synthesizing the thought of sociology’s founders into the form of a dialectical sociology that conceives of the symbolic as ontological to social reality. After outlining his conceptualization of the historical evolution of society through its ‘modes of reproduction’, we will see how his analysis of contemporary societal transformations rests on a critical theory of communication and technology that, while entering a dialogue with the works of the Frankfurt school, especially those of Habermas, seeks to overcome their inherent contradictions. According to Freitag, the development of capitalist globalization alters the very substance of society as it tends to morph itself into a self-regulating cybernetic system. His sociology allows us to apprehend phenomena tied to the development of contemporary digital technologies such as the drive towards a new form of algorithmic governmentality fueled by digital oligopolies that increasingly dominate globalized capitalism, the rise of fake news in the era of post-truth and the transformation of subjectivity. Finally, his critique enables potent reflection on the dialectical possibilities of overcoming the dynamics of contemporary alienation.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-11T11:10:35Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231201253
       
  • On Digital Fetishism: A Critique of the Big Data Paradigm

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      Authors: Andrea Miconi
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The article takes into exam the current literature about Big Data and data capitalism, from the perspective of the critical Internet theory. Particular attention will be placed to the ideas of data exploitation and raw data, which will prove to betray a form of digital fetishism: in short, the focus on the final results of the production process, rather than on the social relations by which the very same process is fueled.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-11T06:19:11Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231202873
       
  • Frankfurt School Legacy and the Critical Sociology of Media: Lifeworld in
           Digital Capitalism

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      Authors: Paško Bilić
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Just as the Frankfurt School responded to the radicalisation of the working class in Germany and the rise of post-war consumerism in the United States, today, we are confronted by platform monopolies, automated hyper-consumption and technological control. Critical approaches to digital media have exposed the structural coupling of Internet use and capital accumulation for almost two decades. However, many authors building on this tradition can struggle to understand how online social interaction is controlled beyond the worn-out critique of false consciousness or beyond conceptualising all digital activity mediated by data as labour. This paper will attempt to theoretically untangle the Marxian ontology of labour and the Frankfurt School-inspired critique of everyday life. This is not just theoretical nit-picking. Society becomes completely dominated if we accept no difference between wage labour and lifeworld activities. Each contains its internal struggles. The value form regulates both in different ways.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-10-10T11:37:42Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231201386
       
  • Last Rites for Development Studies'

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      Authors: Tom Brass
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-29T09:07:13Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231202027
       
  • About the Authors

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      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-28T04:45:33Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231205147
       
  • Ibn Khaldûn and the Political Economy of Communication: A Reply to
           Graham Murdock

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      Authors: Christian Fuchs
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-28T04:43:54Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231201382
       
  • Arab Spring, Its Aftermath, and James Davies’ Inverted J-Curve

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      Authors: Andrey Korotayev, Alisa Shishkina
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-27T12:15:34Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231200490
       
  • Classes Without Labor: Three Critiques of Bourdieu

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      Authors: Josh Seim, Michael A. McCarthy
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article offers three interrelated critiques of Bourdieusian class analysis. First, Bourdieu replaces classes on paper with capitals on paper. He offers a false break from Marx in an effort to make capital more ‘relational’ via a theory of social space, but in doing so he neglects capital’s fundamental relation to labor. Second, Bourdieu offers a theory of domination without exploitation. Bourdieu’s classes live against one another, but it remains unclear how some classes might also live off of others. Third, and as a consequence of the first two missteps, he emphasizes position over production. Bourdieu typically sees ‘production’ as a form of ‘position-taking’ and as something best examined toward the top of social hierarchies. By largely ignoring labor and exploitation, he generates a theory of positions at the expense of a theory of production.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-25T10:39:57Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231200898
       
  • Challenging Capitalism Begins in Everyday Lives: The Culture of Meci, the
           Gift and the Commons

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      Authors: Metehan Cömert
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In the grand tradition of the social sciences, the quest to build a future beyond capitalism is accused of having no basis in reality. Through fieldwork conducted in the Fındıklı district of Rize in Turkey, this study challenges this claim and proposes a distinct perspective to construct an anti-capitalist alternative project based on the long-standing culture of meci, a solidarity-based practice rooted in voluntary participation without any expectation in return. The study first explores how meci has shaped everyday life in a historical context and then shifts its focus to the politically revitalized content of the culture prompted by the electoral success of a leftist political figure in the 2019 local elections. Inspired by the idea of creating cracks in capitalism, the study concludes by exploring whether meci could be understood through the lenses of the gift and the commons – two concepts that hold the potential to challenge the foundational principles of capitalism.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-23T12:17:20Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231197660
       
  • After the Arab Uprisings: Rejoinder to Reviewers

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      Authors: Valentine M. Moghadam
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-19T07:05:10Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231200217
       
  • A Revolutionary Spring' Reflections on After the Arab Uprisings

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      Authors: Heidi Gottfried
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-12T09:08:36Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231200190
       
  • The Mobility–Immobility Dynamic and the ‘Fixing’ of
           Migrants’ Labour Power

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      Authors: Sam Scott, Johan Fredrik Rye
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Low-wage labour migration from lower- to higher-income economies has become a precondition for capital accumulation. As a part of this, neoliberal actors (businesses and states) strive to actively produce migrants with a strong work ethic. They do this in numerous ways. In this paper, we draw upon labour process theory to argue that a ‘mobility–immobility dynamic’ is a major way capital now controls precarious workers. The mobility–immobility dynamic relates to low-wage workers’ need to move (and often circulate) internationally but, once they have moved, a desire by businesses and states to keep them in place. The fixing of migrants both across space (through transnational mobility) and in place (through immobility) underlines the importance of a multi-scalar approach to understanding the control of the transnational working-class. We draw on evidence from European horticulture – 36 in-depth interviews with migrant workers, employers and community stakeholders in Norway and the United Kingdom – to highlight the mobility–immobility dynamic in practice.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-09-12T09:07:06Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231197341
       
  • A Call for Counter-Public Sociology

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      Authors: Rahsaan Mahadeo
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This paper seeks to decenter the academy as the gatekeeper of knowledge, while presenting a critique of ‘public sociology’ and ‘public-facing’ scholarship. I argue that public sociology’s aim to make research more ‘accessible to a wider audience’ presupposes that the university has something to offer to this audience in the first place. This not-so-tacit arrogance only further privileges the university as the primary site of knowledge production, while rendering invisible the many knowledge producers outside the academy. As public sociology continues to curry favor with mainstream media, politics, and policy institutes, it reveals a steadfast faith in the state and capital, while obscuring radical alternatives. In turn, public sociology functions as a counterinsurgency tool via professionalization. Conversely, a counter-public sociology refuses to comply with oppressive state protocols. Instead, it seeks to dismantle them. A counter-public sociology aims not to affirm the university, but to insist that this current academic enterprise remains untenable.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-31T10:40:29Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231195105
       
  • ‘I’m Not a Tenant They Can Just Run Over’: Low-Income Renters’
           Experiences of and Resistance to Racialized Dispossessing

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      Authors: Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Sofia Locklear
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Racialized housing markets are a cornerstone of systemic racial inequality in the United States, affecting socioeconomic, wealth, health, and educational outcomes. To enrich critical sociological research on housing, we examine how low-income renters perceive, experience, and navigate racialized dispossessing, or the everyday processes by which people of color are severed from place, home, and stability in rental markets. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 43 low-income American Indian, Black, Latinx, and White renters across two research sites, we find that low-income renters of color routinely experience other-race landlord and property manager non-responsiveness to housing quality and safety issues while White renters experience responsiveness. We also show how renters of color perceive and experience landlords and property managers racializing them as inferior, at times to justify this dispossession. In contrast to most of their counterparts of color, we demonstrate how low-income American Indian renters in our sample with same-Tribe landlords or property managers are protected from the harms their counterparts face. Finally, we show how low-income renters of color use a variety of strategies to resist this racialized dispossessing, often at great emotional or financial cost. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research and housing policy.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-31T05:40:37Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231196284
       
  • ‘The Fire This Time’: The Long Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalist
           Accumulation and Spectre of Neofascism

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      Authors: Alison J. Ayers
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The era since the Great Recession of 2008/9 has witnessed the rise and increased sway of numerous authoritarian-right movements, regimes and leaders across the globe. Such political developments remain inadequately understood; yet several commonplaces have emerged. First, a tendency to eschew critical enquiry of the range of forces on the radical right, in favour of collapsing such political developments into generalisations such as ‘populism’. Second, such over-generalisations have commonly elided analysis of neofascist forces, strategies and processes. Third, despite some engagement with ‘economic’ factors, examination of these political developments has largely eschewed the underlying organic crisis of neoliberal capital accumulation. This article critiques such commonplaces. The first section problematises the category of ‘populism’ as largely inadequate in understanding the complexity of forces and dynamics on the radical right. The subsequent section argues that an emergent or immanent neofascism exists within such political developments, outlining eight theses on the spectre of neofascism and the conditions that underpin the rise of elements of fascistic politics. The final section concludes with key aspects for an antifascism, arguing that opposing neofascism entails the transcendence of neoliberal capitalism itself. And a meaningful alternative to neoliberal state and capital requires us to look again to socialism.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-31T05:31:28Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231195229
       
  • The Resurgence of Fascism in the Contemporary World: History, Concept, and
           Prospective

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      Authors: Carlos Eduardo Martins
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In this article, we analyze fascism, considering some of the main theoretical debates surrounding the topic, its historical forms, and its temporal insertion in the world-system to propose a conceptual definition which can articulate its central characteristics to concrete historical conjunctures and contingencies, point to future tendencies, and its importance as a phenomenon in the contemporary world. We address its relation to liberalism and conservativism and the forms it assumes in the contemporary world in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-28T12:25:47Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231177493
       
  • COVID-19 and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program in Puerto Rico:
           Anti-Corruption, Fraud Prevention, and Punishment

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      Authors: Jose Atiles
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The US and Puerto Rican governments’ anti-corruption and anti-fraud legislation and policies exacerbated the socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico (PR). This article demonstrates how anti-corruption interventions prevented those in most need from receiving the economic benefits of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and other unemployment insurance benefits. Analyzing this specific instance of anti-corruption and anti-fraud interventions amid the COVID-19 pandemic allows for a deeper examination of how colonial interventions undermined PR’s capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its socio-economic impact and created an unequal recovery. Thus, the article illustrates the contradictions of anti-corruption as punitive governance and the way in which a specific notion of corruption is reproduced through governmental actions, legal practices, and policies. Altogether, this article aims to contribute to the discussion on how colonial and punitive anti-corruption interventions enhance social exclusion, disproportionately harm racialized communities, and undermine people’s capacity to address period of crisis.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-28T11:28:03Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231195224
       
  • Consent, Control, and Contradictions in the Post-Fordist Work Organisation

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      Authors: Alex J. Wood
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-17T08:55:59Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231194366
       
  • You Can Add Up the Parts, You Won’t Have the Sum

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      Authors: Richard Seymour
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Matt Huber’s Climate Change as Class War offers a compelling ecosocialist strategy for achieving energy transition and social transformation by way of class struggle. Its critique of the strategic emphasis on knowledge and individualised guilt is persuasive. Its proposed focus on organising among energy workers is suggestive. However, on two related points, it misses the mark. First, its attack on degrowth as a form of ideology is tendentious. Second, its effort to ground struggle in ‘objective class interests’ fails to cohere. By addressing these two points, the proposed strategy will become more viable, and the relationship to degrowth activists more productive.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-17T08:48:40Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231181561
       
  • Decolonising Disability in Contexts of Illiberalism and Social
           Abandonment: The Case for a Double-Edged Critique from the Postsocialist
           Margins

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      Authors: Ina Dimitrova, Teodor Mladenov
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This paper explores the relevance of the decolonial approach for analyses of postsocialist disablement, taking as its test case the analytical tool of the ‘postsocialist disability matrix’. The question we pose is how much decolonial critique can the analyses of postsocialist disablement embrace without becoming reactionary amidst growing illiberalism and social abandonment in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)' We provide an overview of postsocialist illiberalism, assess critically some central arguments in decolonial disability studies and outline the production of ‘southern bodies/minds’ as a key feature of social abandonment in CEE. We conclude that decolonising disability in the postsocialist region needs to go beyond the North versus South binary to account for the specific experiences of disabled people inhabiting the ‘poor North’. Given these considerations, the double-edged critique implied in the original formulation of the ‘postsocialist disability matrix’ as scepticism towards both the state and the market could also help embrace the decolonising imperative while remaining sceptical towards both Northern and Southern theory production in disability studies.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-11T04:51:16Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231191651
       
  • Before and After the Arab Uprisings

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      Authors: Lisa Hajjar
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-08T06:43:00Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231191760
       
  • Women, revolutions, and democracy in MENA

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      Authors: Jack A. Goldstone
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-08T06:41:20Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231191487
       
  • The Hispanic Outreach: Network Analysis of a Community-Based Policing
           Program in South Los Angeles

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      Authors: Daniel Gascón
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article examines the nature, movement, and controversies of the information flowing through a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) community-based program in a predominantly Latino migrant neighborhood of South Los Angeles known as ‘the Hispanic Outreach’ (HO). Combining Actor-Network and Critical Race theories enables me to examine the world of police and Latino civilians through the groups, social actions, facts, and objects that compose it, as one single, unified set of interwoven associations and processes. Findings show that the HO claims to serve the public’s interests in safety in high crime environments but instead stirs local interracial conflict and Latino residents’ fears over questions of citizenship, belonging, and access to resources, and deepens state penetration into communities it deems as racial threats. I show how networks are state tools that reproduce and reinforce racial power and situate these findings within the field of Critical Sociology, particularly the areas of policing and Latino studies. And this article ends with a discussion of several potential research directions.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-07T12:23:54Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231190593
       
  • Visioning Alternatives to Segregated Education: A Disability Justice and
           Access-Centered Pedagogy Approach

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      Authors: Sara M. Acevedo, Lydia X.Z. Brown, Jess L. Cowing
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In the United States, as in most of the Global North, disability has historically been regarded as a deficit, requiring clinical intervention, professional oversight, and special schooling. This ideology, referred to as ableism, is linked with settler colonialism and the matrix of oppression that upholds racial capitalism. The aims of this paper are twofold: First, we examine the correlation among normative whiteness, racialized exploitation, and the depiction of disabled Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as disposable others. Second, we employ a joint biopolitical and settler colonial analysis to re-examine US special education drawing on our experiences as disabled, critical disability studies scholars—two of whom are negatively racialized and two of whom are queer. Finally, we draw upon the principles of Disability Justice and Access-Centered Pedagogy to formulate recommendations for an alternative to segregated education for all students, centering the experiences of those disproportionately impacted by systemic oppression.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-08-05T09:24:10Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231188737
       
  • Old and New Organizational Forms in a Complex Society: A
           Systems-Theoretical Perspective

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      Authors: Cristina Besio, Veronika Tacke
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This contribution demonstrates the potential of Niklas Luhmann’s organization theory to enrich current research on organizational phenomena. Although this theory originated more than half a century ago, we show that it is a powerful instrument to describe and understand the role that different old and new forms of organizations play in current crises and transformation processes. Hereby, we stress two combined advantages of the theory: (1) Luhmann offers a strong concept of organizations as self-referential networks of decisions. This helps to distinguish them from other social entities, for example, groups, social networks, or families. Moreover, the assumption of ‘substitutability of structures’ allows us to grasp the dynamics of a variety of organizations and does not fail to confront even ‘fluid’, ‘virtual’, ‘temporary’, and ‘unconventional’ forms of organization unknown at the time of the theory’s origin. (2) This theory of organization is unique as it is embedded in an encompassing theory of society that offers several concepts suitable to explain the reciprocal influence of organizations and broader social contexts. This prevents any under- and overestimation of the organization phenomenon in modern society.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-07-28T10:02:28Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231189472
       
  • Reflections on Climate, Class, and Strategy

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      Authors: Matthew T. Huber
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-07-25T12:29:11Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231189452
       
  • Labor Recruitment and Coloniality in the Agricultural Sector: On
           Plantation Archives, Underclassing, and Postcolonial Masculinities in
           Switzerland

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      Authors: Dina Bolokan
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This study provides insights into mechanisms of underclassing in modern society based on interviews with recruiters of agricultural workers in Switzerland. I show that narratives that racialize and ethnicize workers are nurtured by colonial legacies. This reveals that plantation practices and discourses have shaped Switzerland and remain as powerful means of enforcing agricultural racial capitalism. Furthermore, I argue that postcolonial masculinities drive these intersubjective relations. Tracing and situating these postcolonial subject formations on farms allows one to see how caring narratives entangle with a dehumanizing grammar and how this colonial logic is incorporated into social consensus on extractive labor practices. Finally, this reveals how coloniality operates in a postcolonial country that claims political neutrality.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-07-13T10:23:49Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231185675
       
  • The Political Economy of Precarious Work in India: A Case of Languishing
           Social Policy'

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      Authors: Pankil Goswami
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The paper critically dissects the contemporary policy landscape and its ability to counter precarious work for construction workers in the Indian context. By focusing on the governance challenges faced by welfare institutions and the pre-existing fault lines exposed by the pandemic, the paper argues that social policies are languishing and inefficient to respond to the challenges of growing precarity. The paper uses Breman’s conception of ‘Footloose labour’ to understand informality related to construction workers and Gilbert and Terrell’s social policy analytical framework to understand the institutional response. The two major arguments that make the social policy languish are the inability of the policy to alter neoliberal employment relationships and the operational challenges that institutions face in implementing welfare schemes for many footloose labourers. Moreover, the situation is further exacerbated by inherent contradictions of the state which is entangled between promoting economic growth through neoliberal policies while consecutively ensuring labour welfare. If the Institutional challenges persist along with the persuasion of neoliberal reforms, footloose labour is only going to be further marginalized and pushed to limits.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-07-12T11:20:27Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231185270
       
  • Vaccine Hesitancy and Attitudes Toward Elite Knowledge in the United
           States During COVID-19

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      Authors: Jeremiah Morelock, Andressa Michelotti, Ly Hoang Minh Uyen
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      To be effective, the battle against COVID-19 and other pandemics must address the social dimensions of the crisis. The objective of this study was to assess whether negative attitudes toward elite knowledge were associated with vaccine hesitancy in the United States during COVID-19. Attitudes toward elite knowledge were assessed using three measures: (a) the Epistemological Style Inventory’s ‘naive realism’ subscale, (b) a measure about supporting education to foster understanding of politics, and (c) a populism scale. Vaccine hesitancy was measured using a 9-item adaptation of the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale used by the World Health Organization. Multiple regression results revealed that naïve realism (.184, p 
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-07-03T09:24:12Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231180267
       
  • Revisiting Marcuse’s Technological Rationality: Nuclear Fusion
           Advancement in the Age of Climate Change

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      Authors: Diana Stuart, Ryan Gunderson, Brian Petersen
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In December 2022, a scientific breakthrough in fusion energy resulted in widespread media attention with a focus on fusion as a key strategy to mitigate climate change. In this article, we draw from Herbert Marcuse’s work on technological rationality to examine fusion technology in this context. We explore if fusion is seen as a way to master nature, if it protects current power relations, and if a focus on fusion might detract attention and resources from alternatives. Illustrating technological rationality, much attention is being given to the potential achievement of fusion energy, it is being championed by already powerful economic actors, and despite that it is unlikely to be ready in time to support necessary climate mitigation, it may be detracting support for more effective and just strategies that already exist. In this context, framing fusion as a solution to climate change represents what Marcuse calls ‘one-dimensional thinking’.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-06-23T08:55:07Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231181629
       
  • Colonial Capitalist Heterochronicity: Socio-Ecological Rhythms of the
           Sugar Plantation and the Formal Subsumption of Historical and Cultural
           Difference

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      Authors: Zahir Kolia
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The Black and Third World Marxist tradition have demonstrated that colonialism is inseparable from historical accounts of global capitalism. This paper contributes to that project through an account of heterochronic capitalist time by indexing both its uneven incorporation of socio-ecological temporalities and its disciplining of enslaved people. To illustrate this, I examine how Western industrial temporal relations are generative of, and imposed through, its conflictual relations with Indigenous Taíno and enslaved West African socio-ecological forms of time within the Caribbean sugar complex. In addition, I emphasize that despite colonial capitalism seeking to merge African and Indigenous socio-ecological temporal knowledge into abstract labour, it is never a totalizing process. In effect, while colonial capitalism wields various techniques to incorporate Indigenous and African life worlds, there are always phenomenological remainders of cultural temporal difference that do not reproduce the logic of capital. Highlighting two contrasting postcolonial readings of Marx’s notion of subsumption, I argue that we can index the existence of a multiplicity of non-linear and cyclical forms of eternal time that comingle and link past, present and futurity. Inscribing their own emergent dialectics, however, I caution that preserved forms of temporal difference can potentially be taken up in service to reactionary political projects.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-06-22T10:59:56Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231181111
       
  • Precarious Participants, Online Labour Platforms and the Academic Mode of
           Production: Examining Gigified Research Participation

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      Authors: Monique de Jong McKenzie
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In an economic environment defined by precarious and gig-based labour contracts, academic research has been reimagined as a source of income for research participants. In addition, with the rise of online labour platforms, researchers have turned to online labour platforms as a solution to the increasing difficulty in recruitment of participants in research. This present context makes explicit the hidden labour that research participants have always done in the production of research outputs within academia. This paper develops a Marxist lens through which we can understand the material conditions of the circulation of capital through academia and the role of research participants in this mode of production. By developing this broad analytical framework for the academic mode of production, this paper further argues that our present economic epoch of the gig economy and specifically the use of digital labour platforms for academic research, has accelerated the subsumption of research participation as a source of income through the fragmentation of work and the gigification of everyday life.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-06-19T11:01:25Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231180384
       
  • From Social Sphere to Intermediary Association: A Critical Analysis of
           Civil Society’s Neoliberal Transformation

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      Authors: Acar Kutay
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In this paper, I examine the neoliberal transformation of civil society through Mitchel Foucault’s insights concerning knowledge, power, and governmentality. The objective of this paper is to trace the evolving understandings of civil society and how they relate to governmental rationalities and technologies of power. The traditional notion of civil society as a distinct and autonomous sphere has shifted toward an intermediary associations approach under neoliberalism. I posit that the mobilization of non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations by states, international organizations, and donor agencies since the 1990s constitutes a form of governmental technology, influenced by neoliberal rationalities. This technology serves the neoliberal agenda of undermining the social state, promoting market creation, and encouraging non-partisanship. This argument suggests that the rise of civil society as intermediary associations coincides with the decline of society.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-06-07T11:29:51Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231180263
       
  • Between De-Growth and Eco-Modernism: Theorizing a Green Transition

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      Authors: Stephen Maher, Joshua K. McEvoy
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-06-06T05:14:17Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231177370
       
  • Demolition, Division and Displacement: Examining the Preservation of
           Whiteness in Rotterdam Municipal Housing Policy

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      Authors: Madeline C. Arkins, Bonnie E. French
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Recent gentrification policies from the municipality of Rotterdam have involved the demolition of social housing, resulting in the displacement of migrant communities. These developments have been criticised by several United Nations Special Rapporteurs as violating the human right to adequate housing. Through qualitative content analysis of municipal policy documents and expert interviews, this article examines how whiteness is preserved in Rotterdam municipal housing policies between the years 2006 and 2022. Using critical race theory, this study identifies three key stages through which whiteness is preserved: in the conceptualisation of theories underpinning policies; the language codified in policy documents, and the implementation of the policy. This research offers a clear example of systemic racism today; how it operates through policies that villainize low-income migrants and justifies the maintenance of the status quo of racial hierarchy in Rotterdam.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-05-29T09:32:27Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231176837
       
  • Averting Catastrophe: Crisis, Class and Climate Change

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      Authors: Feyzi Ismail
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-05-25T09:15:52Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231177178
       
  • Decolonizing Voices From Rojhelat: Gender-Othering, Ethnic Erasure, and
           the Politics of Intersectionality in Iran

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      Authors: Ahmad Mohammadpour
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The state murder of Jîna Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in Tehran on 16 September 2022, while in custody of the Islamic Republic’s morality police, prompted a widespread uprising across Iran unprecedented in scale since the popular 1979 revolution. Adopting the Kurdish catchphrase ‘Jin, Jîyan, Azadî’ (Woman, Life, Freedom), this movement was largely centered in Kurdistan (known as Rojhelat) and Balochistan, two ethnically minoritized and economically de-developed regions, where the state deployed deadly violence and brutality to crush the protests. This article juxtaposes two competing narratives of this uprising. The first insists on branding the movement as a singular ‘national’ uprising of ‘Iranian women’. The second recognizes a plurality of women, particularly those from marginalized nations, such as Kurdish and Balochi women, and underlines the structural national, ethnoreligious, and linguistic oppression elided in the narrative of undifferentiated Iranian womanhood. Drawing on the notion of intersectionality, I argue that the elite nationalist discourse of Iranian womanhood reproduces the state’s ethnoreligious and linguistic suppression of non-Persian-speaking marginalized communities. Moreover, such a selective reading of gender inequality in Iran is unable and/or unwilling to embrace the intersectionality and multiplicity of women’s life experiences in Iran, particularly in its ethnic peripheries. This article offers a critical reassessment of Iranian feminism and its methodology of privilege, proposing instead a decolonized approach that invites nationalist Persian/Iranian activists to interrogate Persianness as a marker of official national identity and institutionalized supremacy.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-05-20T05:27:32Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231176051
       
  • Introspective Anthropology' Talking About Me (and You)

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      Authors: Tom Brass
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-05-09T07:11:47Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231172465
       
  • When Feminism Redefines National Liberation: How Tal’at Movement brought
           Feminism to the Core of the Palestinian National Liberation Struggle

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      Authors: Federica Stagni
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      On 8 August 2019, Israa Ghrayeb, a 21-year-old Palestinian living in Beit Sahour, was brutally beaten by members of her family. Since that moment, protests have erupted throughout historical Palestine and beyond, also reaching Palestinian women of the diaspora. Not only did this eventful protest mark the resurgence of a wave of women’s protests in Palestine, but it also brought about the start of a new feminist and anticolonial movement: Tal’at. Using frame analysis to examine the movement’s declarations, Facebook posts, and the archival material available at the Basso Foundation Archive, together with firsthand data collected through interviews conducted during my fieldwork in Historical Palestine, I will try to answer the following questions: How does this new feminist protest-movement differ from the previous ones' What are the elements of continuity with previous Palestinian women’s movements' How did this movement manage to frame an aggregating message in such a fragmented territory'
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-17T05:50:34Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231164964
       
  • Are Services Post-Capitalist' A Marxian Interrogation

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      Authors: Peter Ikeler
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Recent post-capitalist theorizing, particularly Winant, revives the question of service sector growth. At stake is whether an economic system built on the extraction of surplus value can continue to function when ever-larger shares of workers do not produce this; also, whether their growing predominance prefigures post-capitalist relations of production. Most contributions offer imprecise concepts of service work and capitalist productivity, however. This article sharpens these with Marxian theoretical tools and assesses them using 2016–2020 US Census data, finding that less than one-fifth of service employees produce surplus value, while nearly half of non-service employees do. The majority of service and all formal US employees create important use values outside of direct capitalist exploitation. They thus pose a potentially post-capitalist constituency that is heavily—and non-randomly—female and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). The implications of this for the transition away from capitalism, as well as for the transition debate itself, are then considered.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-15T04:49:43Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231164725
       
  • Lean In for Industrial Workers' Comments on Management Divided

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      Authors: Peter Ikeler
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-01T08:36:58Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231164726
       
  • Critical Han Studies Through the Lens of Internal Colonialism: China,
           Guangdong, and Hong Kong

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      Authors: David Chen, Jason A. Miller, Mark Shakespear
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      When the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ has been applied to China, it has often been focused on the plight of ethnic minorities. The political and cultural subordination of non-Mandarin Han groups, however, has drawn little attention. We argue that critical Han studies, by posing a challenge to the state ideology of Han ethnic unitarism, provides a theoretical arsenal capable of broadening the application of the internal colonialism framework to the study of non-Mandarin Han groups and regions in China. To provide empirical support for our argument, we examine ethno-geographic representation among Chinese political elites. We find an internal heterogeneity and ethnic hierarchy between different Han groups who have integrated into the political ruling class of China, which is dominated by the Mandarins, to various extents: the Wu people of Shanghai and Zhejiang represent the top layer of the hierarchy; the Xiang of Hunan, the Hokkien of Fujian, and the Gan of Jiangxi constitute the intermediate layer; and the Cantonese and the Teochew of Guangdong belong to the bottom layer. These findings provide the basis for our discussion of internal colonization in China with a specific focus on Guangdong and Hong Kong.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-01T08:35:21Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231163896
       
  • Men Who Wear Make-up: Young Korean Men’s Masculinity Management in
           the Neoliberal Korea

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      Authors: Gowoon Jung
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Scholars have debated whether hybrid masculinities perpetuate or challenge male dominance and power. This study advances such dialogue by unveiling the kernel of hybrid masculinities through careful examination of young Korean men’s narratives on how to manage appearance and dressing up, especially on wearing make-up. Findings suggest that young men narrate three approaches, namely, expressive, instrumental, and meritocratic, as a means to explain their perspectives on such practices. A close look into their statements on the rationales of dressing-up and wearing make-up—seemingly a social act of hybrid masculinities—shows that such behaviors are pathways to fortify masculine power whose roots intersect with the local socioeconomic structure. This study theoretically contributes to unveiling how the basis of male dominance and power intersects with the normative and pervasive ideal of the neoliberal self, suggesting traditional masculinities are concealed in the complex indigenous assemblage of neoliberalism and lookism.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-25T10:04:25Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231160295
       
  • Profitability and Its Determinants: Operationalizing the ‘Law of the
           Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall’ in the US Economy, 1950–2020

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      Authors: Joshua J. Watterton
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This analysis seeks to demonstrate the theoretical and empirical salience of the ‘law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ in relation to the concrete evolution of the US economy between 1950 and 2020. The theoretical-methodological approach adopted in this study is based on the work of Shane Mage and Murray E.G. Smith. This approach re-specifies the Marxian value categories and ratios for purposes of empirically operationalizing them as a theory of fundamental capitalist dynamics using national accounting data. Contributions include (1) the treatment of systemically necessary unproductive labour as a ‘constant capital overhead cost’ and (2) a method of managing ‘fictitious profits’ that are imputed into the national accounts and thereby enabling a more realistic estimate of ‘social surplus value’ (the numerator of the Marxian average rate of profit) in what has become an ‘era of fictitious capital’. The empirical findings reveal a persistent rise in the organic composition of capital, as well as a rise in the rate of surplus value, accompanied by a long-term downward trend in the average rate of profit in the postwar US economy.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-23T07:59:29Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231160744
       
  • From Climate Change to Sustainable and Inclusive Economies: A Policy
           Agenda

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      Authors: Alfredo Saad-Filho, Fernanda Feil
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Climate change and neoliberalism are threat multipliers: they combine risks, increase instability and penalise disproportionately poor countries and poor people by virtue of their greater vulnerability disruption. This article examines the complex relationships between neoliberalism and climate change, and outlines a democratic economic strategy (DES) to address the transition from neoliberalism to a more dynamic, progressive and egalitarian system of accumulation, and the ‘green’ transition from unsustainable fossil fuel-dependent patterns of production to more diversified and sustainable economies. Both transitions must be pursued immediately, rather than gradually, separately or sequentially, for reasons of efficiency, consistency and legitimacy: the green transition will carry heavy costs and bring difficult political and economic challenges. Public support to address them will be forthcoming only through a shared commitment to transcend the destructive, polluting, exclusionary and income-concentrating logic of neoliberalism. DES offers a pathway to address these challenges and build sustainable and democratic economies.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-21T12:43:48Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231160628
       
  • Critical Theory and Universal Basic Income

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      Authors: Neal Harris
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified interest in alternatives to neoliberalism. One proposal that has been increasingly discussed by both academics and activists is the implementation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This would typically see all citizens awarded a regular cash payment, without conditionality attached. While UBI thus deserves considerable attention from sociologists, as yet critical theorists have not offered an extended engagement with the proposal. In this paper, I provide exactly such a critical theoretical perspective on UBI, subjecting the approach to an extended critique. When viewed through the perspective of critical theory, UBI emerges as a more problematic approach to social change, failing to offer what its most enthusiastic progressive proponents promise: ‘a capitalist road to communism’. Rather, in this article, I argue that, when viewed through the lens of critical theory, UBI appears likely to further entrench, rather than disturb, the neoliberal social formation.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-11T05:22:28Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231151562
       
  • Navigating and Countering Everyday Antimuslim Racism: The Case of Muslim
           Women in Sweden

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      Authors: Mehek Muftee
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In a socio-political context where antimuslim racism has gained momentum, this article aims to understand Muslim women’s everyday life experiences of racialization in Sweden. More importantly, it aims to highlight what strategies are developed in order to navigate and counter these experiences. By using the concepts of double consciousness, orientations, and respectability together with an understanding of Muslims as a racialized category, the article shows how experiences of antimuslim racism are handled by the women in different ways, both on individual and collective level. Being a Muslim woman in Sweden requires developing strategies and sometimes engaging in respectability politics.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-06T09:28:05Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231158496
       
  • Imagining Crises of Neoliberalism: Covid-19 Pandemic and (Im)Possibilities
           of Change in Turkey’s Labour Regime

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      Authors: Erdem Damar
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This study critically engages with the ‘end of neoliberalism’ debates which have peaked following the globally detrimental impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper suggests that crises of the pandemic predetermine neither the end of neoliberalism nor its regeneration. It is argued that ‘death or resurrection’ of neoliberalism is conditioned in the ways through which subjects experience ongoing crises and translate them into particular actions. On that basis, the paper focuses on Turkey’s labour regime under pandemic conditions to reveal how the imaginings and political practices of the Turkish state, companies, and (self-employed courier) workers regenerate the enduring principles of neoliberalism – including (global) market competitiveness, deregulation, labour market flexibility, economic individualism, and status-seeking – even in moments of crises. The paper concludes with a brief discussion on the emerging visibility of alternative modes of practices, which potentially involve new possibilities to mobilise towards post-neoliberal politics under crisis-ridden pandemic conditions.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-01T05:03:13Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231155930
       
  • Expanding Sanctuary: The City of Sanctuary Movement in London

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      Authors: Oska Paul
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The City of Sanctuary (CoS) in the United Kingdom aims to create a culture of welcome for asylum seekers and refugees. This is a politically limited approach because it overlooks the effects of other hostile immigration policies. The emergence of the sanctuary movement as ‘Boroughs of Sanctuary’ (BoS) in London brings these shortcomings into sharp focus, as many residents have other precarious immigration statuses. This article examines the extent to which the Lewisham and Southwark BoS initiatives have successfully negotiated and reconfigured sanctuary at a local level to address this urban complexity. In doing so, it engages with different actors, institutions and factions involved in building sanctuary. While the CoS’ exclusionary politics of asylum is still being reproduced in many ways, people with precarious immigration status are co-opting and reconfiguring the sanctuary framework in ways that expand the asylum-oriented focus of the movement and address the broader violence of the hostile environment.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-14T10:28:18Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231151599
       
  • Unfree Wage Labour

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      Authors: Maja Breznik
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The article develops the concept of ‘unfree wage labour’ that refers to a situation in which a worker must (temporarily and conditionally) give away possession of his labour power to a third party who then sells it to the buyers of labour power. From the perspective of contract freedom and legal equality, it seems irrelevant whether a worker sells his or her labour power to an employer or to an intermediary. However, there is no doubt that labour intermediation increases the economic dependence and social subordination of workers. First, given that the intermediary negotiates with the employer, the worker has a lower ability to influence the terms of employment. Second, given that he or she is a contract worker, they have a lower ability to engage in collective action in the company. Undoubtedly, this worker has significantly lower control over her or his working and living conditions. The question arises whether his or her contract freedom lessened to the extent that we can speak of unfree wage labour.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-07T09:04:20Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205231152914
       
  • Landholding and the Creation of Lumpen Tenants in Freetown: Youth Economic
           Survival and Patrimonialism in Postwar Sierra Leone

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      Authors: Abu Bakarr Bah, Ibrahim Bangura
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article is an ethnographic study that situates the caretaker phenomenon within the wider system of patrimonialism in Sierra Leone. It addresses the ways urban landholding creates a class of lumpen tenants and reproduces patrimonialism in postwar Sierra Leone. The article is based on select data regarding landholding in the environs of Freetown drawn from a larger study of youths and governance. The article shows that in Sierra Leone, patrimonialism, both in its private and state variants, is tied to corruption and economic and political exploitation. In addition, the dependency relationship between landowners and caretakers is a reflection of the unequal access to resources and the everyday application of power. The article points to various economic survival strategies of youths who have migrated to Freetown during and after the war. Moreover, it shows the ways youths build social capital within the patrimonial system of Sierra Leone.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-01T06:53:15Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205221150492
       
  • Global Appeal: Colorblindness, Neoliberalism, and Neighborhood Branding

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      Authors: Watoii Rabii
      Abstract: Critical Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Using content analysis of Buffalo media and 20 semi-structured interviews, I document the use of immigrant entrepreneurialism as a neoliberal urban governance strategy. Racism evasiveness is central to this strategy. I observe that immigrants and refugees are treated as symbolic capital as part of a neighborhood branding strategy that involves parlaying diversity into material benefits. I call this strategy global appeal. Buffalo’s resurgence is a feel-good story that draws on neoliberal market logics, colorblindness, and diversity ideology. These stories allow Whites to evade racism when discussing neighborhood renewal and racist comments. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital, Bell’s concept of neighborhood frames, and Beeman’s theory of racism evasiveness, I argue that immigrants and refugees are used as symbolic capital to construct a neighborhood brand. This is part of a strategy of roll out neoliberalism that relies on two neighborhood frames: revitalization and diversity. The revitalization frame credits immigrants and refugees with contributing to the neighborhood through homeownership, entrepreneurialism, and school enrollment. The diversity frame celebrates people of different races, cultures, and ethnicities coming together while both evading and obscuring racism.
      Citation: Critical Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-01-12T11:42:13Z
      DOI: 10.1177/08969205221146268
       
 
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