Class analysis, culture, politics, theory. Socio prof @UniOslo. Member @EuCulture. Co-organise @ClassesElites. Assoc editor @euro_societies.
Sep 4, 2021 • 26 tweets • 4 min read
What’s useful in Marxism and what should be discarded? That’s the question Anthony Giddens set out to answer in a book that came out 40 years ago: A contemporary critique of historical materialism: Vol 1 - Power, property and the state.
Even beyond the beautiful cover design, the book merits serious consideration. It is one of few works to critically engage with Marxism from outside of it, but not from a hostile position.
Jul 31, 2021 • 69 tweets • 9 min read
Too late for a book review! Too early for a comprehensive assessment! By (somewhat) popular demand, here's The Hopelessly Long Thread about Bernard Lahire’s @BernardLahire The Plural Actor (2011, French original from 1998), which I finally managed to finish this summer. /1
The Plural Actor presents itself as a critical discussion of sociological theories of action, but mostly it’s about Pierre Bourdieu’s «theory of habitus». /2
Jan 4, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Other day I couldn't sleep and ended up rereading Giddens' review of Parkin's Marxism and class theory. By no means Giddens' best, but he nails the fundamental issue: social closure is not _the_ general process explaining social inequalities. jstor.org/stable/656806?…
"control of resources, which are often monopolised 'silently' by a dominant class, because it is structured into the institutions of a society, should not be conflated with group closure, when this means 'exclusiveness' of group membership."
Nov 23, 2020 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Babylon Apple product broke down on me today, but at least I get to sport this again.
Alright, THREAD: Parkin's book is amazing. It is by no means the best social theory I've read. Actually, judged strictly as theory, it's not even top ten. But it's absolutely the most well-written sociological theory I've ever read - and honestly that I expect to ever read.
Aug 9, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Just finished reading Kevin Geay’s remarkable Enquête sur les bourgeois (~ Investigation of the bourgeois) in which he takes a fresh look at the upper class’ relationship to politics.
It departs from the (in France) well-established finding that the upper class feels highly competent in politics, are more often involved in politics and generally succeeds in reproducing its (political/cultural) outlook.
