Class counts: comparative studies in class analysis
ISBN: 9780521553872
Platform/Publisher: ACLS / Cambridge University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Ten pages at a time; Download: Ten pages at a time
Subjects: Sociology;

Class Counts combines theoretical discussions of the concept of class with a wide range of comparative empirical investigations of class and its ramifications in developed capitalist societies. What unites the topics is not a preoccupation with a common object of explanation, but rather a common explanatory factor: class. Four broad themes are explored: class structure and its transformations; the permeability of class boundaries; class and gender; class consciousness. The specific empirical studies include such diverse topics as the sexual division of labour in housework, gender differences in managerial authority, friendship networks in the class structure, the expansion of self-employment in the United States in the past two decades, and the class consciousness of state and private-sector employees. The results of these studies are then evaluated in terms of how they confirm certain expectations within the Marxist tradition of class analysis and how they pose challenging surprises.

Erik Olin Wright was born in Berkeley, California on February 9, 1947. He won first place in mathematics at the 1964 National Science Fair with a project on Möbius strips. He received a bachelor's degree in social studies from Harvard University in 1968 and studied history for two years at Balliol College, Oxford. During the Vietnam War, he received a deferment from military service to attend a training school in Berkeley for Unitarian ministers. He also worked as a student chaplain at San Quentin State Prison. He received a doctorate in sociology in 1976 from Berkeley and became a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin. He spent his entire teaching career there.

He was a Marxist sociologist who studied the complexities of social and economic classes and explored alternatives to capitalism. He wrote more than 15 books including Envisioning Real Utopias and How to Be an Anti-Capitalist for the 21st Century. He died from acute myeloid leukemia on January 23, 2019 at the age of 71.

(Bowker Author Biography)


hidden image for function call