Critical Sociology recent issues

Notes from the Editor

Fasenfest, D. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

About the Authors

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

Solidarity in Question: Critical Theory, Labor, and Anti-Semitism

Smith, D. N. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

During World War II, Frankfurt School researchers studied attitudes in factories across America, finding high levels of anti-Semitism. Since the CIO’s birth in 1935, labor had grown meteorically and seemed fundamentally progressive. But the Frankfurt study of Labor anti-Semitism showed the other side of the coin — namely, that many workers held anti-Semitic views of a kind familiar from fascist propaganda, even during an anti-fascist war. In this issue of Critical Sociology, we excerpt Paul Massing’s contribution to this large unpublished study. Massing’s findings, and those of his co-authors, went almost entirely unnoticed and the corrosive bias they exposed has now largely vanished in the USA. Yet the findings of this study remain pertinent at a moment when, after many shifts of register and key, both labor and anti-Semitism remain significant global forces. The articles by present-day authors that accompany Massing’s article address related issues.

Es Kommt Die Nacht: Paul Massing, the Frankfurt School, and the Question of Labor Authoritarianism during World War II

Worrell, M. P. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

During World War II, Paul Massing, a research assistant at the Institute of Social Research (the famous ‘Frankfurt School’), helped conduct one of the most important research projects in the history of Marxist sociology. Following on the Institute’s earlier work on family and authority dynamics as well as the Weimar proletariat study, the wartime American labor anti-Semitism study resulted in a massive report that was never published. This article introduces Paul Massing, his role in the labor study, and some important findings regarding the effect of union affiliation and other key variables in regard to working-class authoritarianism.

Union Influence on Worker Anti-Semitism during World War II

Massing, P. W. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

Resistance to anti-Semitism, the avant-garde form of political and emotional authoritarianism, was found to be higher among the younger and more highly educated workers organized by the CIO during World War II than those belonging to the AFL or simply unorganized. The CIO’s greater integration of women also contributed greatly to this group’s lower levels of anti-Jewish hatred.

Race-Making and the Garrison State

Cassano, G. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

This essay explores the implications of Paul Massing’s findings that CIO union members were slightly more resistant to authoritarianism than AFL affiliated unionists. I begin by sketching the contours of the different forms of union consciousness produced by the AFL’s craft unionism and the CIO’s industrial unionism. Then, paying special attention to the ‘ethnic’ constituency of CIO unions, I argue that the CIO offered a particularly egalitarian vision of union democracy, at least until the onset of World War II. In the second half of the essay, I examine cinematic representations of race and the manner in which those representations corresponded to a changing racial consciousness among American workers. I end with a discussion of the contours of Cold War unionism, the decline of union democracy as a result of the wartime ‘no-strike’ pledge and Taft-Hartley, and the manner in which the American union movement displaced exploitation onto a racialized ‘Third World’ work force.

Speculative Profit Fetishism in the Age of Finance Capital

Krier, D. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

This article tracks the rise of a new speculative form of ‘profit fetishism’ in the American stock market in the late 20th century as the control of American corporations shifted decisively from production-oriented managers to earning-oriented stockholders. During these years, speculative capitalists made the trading price of corporate stock the primary focus of corporate management. The heightened focus upon stock price coincided with a convergence of stock market actors upon the capitalized earnings model as the primary frame used to value corporate stock, displacing two formerly dominant frames, which focused (respectively) on hard assets and dividend payouts. Despite the notoriously unreliable and unstable nature of speculative accounting with respect to projected future earnings, such accounting profits have become the fetish of an age of speculative finance capital.

Maquiladora Production, Rising Expectations, and Alterglobalization Strategy

Horowitz, M. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

Hailed by advocates as engines of job growth, the export factories in Mexico’s maquiladora zone often spur severe criticism in activist circles for worker exploitation and abuses. Yet how do workers themselves perceive their wages and working conditions? In this essay I draw from several years of cross-border advocacy and 130 interviews with maquiladora workers in Reynosa and Juarez, Mexico to describe workers’ perceptions. I demonstrate that workers’ views are dynamic and ambivalent, bound up with their migratory histories and cross-border reference groups. Specifically, workers tend to express contentment with their working conditions, while sharply condemning their wages. Next, I consider the implications of the growing ‘cross-border justice movement’ along the Mexico-US border. I argue that a deepening of transnational advocacy networks holds the most strategic promise as a ‘counterhegemonic’, progressive politics.

A Tough 'Cell': Implementing Lean Production at Toledo Jeep

Howison, J. D. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:04:13 PDT

This article attempts to expose the contradictions embedded in lean production by examining the early stages of transition from a Fordist to ‘lean’ model at the Toledo Jeep Assembly Plant in north-west Ohio. Initial research was conducted during 1999 and 2000 — prior to the opening of the new production facility — and is based on interviews with production workers, UAW representatives, and plant management, in addition to direct observations and content analyses of DaimlerChrysler documents. The effort is seen as part of a larger literature that deals with changing perceptions of, resistance to, and acceptance of new forms of work.

Notes from the Editor

Fasenfest, D. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:12 PDT

About the Authors

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

"Late" Capital: Amusement and Contradiction in the Contemporary Funeral Industry

Sanders, G. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

The contemporary funeral industry exists in a restive, unsettled state within late capitalism. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnography, I discuss recent crises that have revealed apparent cultural contradictions in the funeral industry. The funeral industry mediates and transforms these inherent contradictions as evidenced by the meanings made available to the consumer (via consumables). I argue that many of these constructed meanings are at odds with one another while still permitting consumers to occupy multiple positions simultaneously. This is accomplished in part due to the incorporation of amusement along multiple levels of the funerary apparatus, from the institutional logic of the industry, to the enacted bereavement rituals of participants. Amusement, then, works to resolve, bracket, and perpetuate contradictions.

Capitalism and the Carnival Character: The Escape from Reality

Langman, L., Ryan, M. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Every social epoch fosters certain distinctive kinds of `social character' — a widely shared constellation of values and self-identity. Today, as the crises of capitalism become more and more evident, we have also witnessed the emergence and diffusion of the `carnival character' for whom public rituals of moral transgression express a critique of capitalist culture — and at the same time, the transformation of political critique into a profitable commodity serves to reproduce the very conditions that elicit critique. Whereas for Bakhtin, the peasant carnival served to sustain feudalism, today, as Marcuse first suggested, the commodification of `de-sublimation' serves to reproduce capitalism.

A Feminist Re-reading of Theories of Late Modernity: Beck, Giddens and the Location of Gender

Mulinari, D., Sandell, K. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

This article is a critical reappraisal of the understandings of gender and the location of women within theories of late modernity. These theories, as articulated by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, have gained a wide use, not the least since they claim to account for changes in intimate relations. We will use four major feminist interventions for our argument — the problematization of the public-private divide, feminist theorizing of kinship, feminist understandings of labour, and the heterosexual matrix. We argue that the late-modern story is made through violently created presences — of the reinvention of the heterosexual matrix, the private sphere as the location of women/gender, reproduction coupled to biology, and gender as an intimate relation between women and men — and absences of analysis of reproductive and productive labour, of the role of the state, and of gender as a social relation constituted through and within other social inequalities.

Critique with Anthropological Authority: A Programmatic Outline for a Critical Sociology

Willig, R. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Contemporary conditions show that critique is not necessarily used as a means of emancipation. On the contrary, it has become a well-established weapon for communication strategists in the maintenance of contemporary relations of dominance, and is also utilized as an individualized control function. The anorexic, the depressive, and those suffering from stress or anxiety are all characterized by extremely negative self-criticism and an unbearable weariness of being themselves. The article formulates the first steps towards revitalizing the concept of critique so that it becomes possible to formulate a critical sociology which applies the positive characteristics of the concept as a yardstick for society's moral development.

Understanding Social Structure in the Context of Global Uncertainties

Entrena-Duran, F. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

This article proposes a three-dimensional model to understand the complex dynamics inherent in the construction, deconstruction and/or reconstruction processes of current social structures, embedded in the context of global uncertainties. The socioeconomic, politico-institutional and symbolic-legitimizing dimensions of these social structures are analysed.

How Does Tie Strength Affect Access to Social Capital Resources for the Careers of Working and Middle Class African-Americans?

Parks-Yancy, R., DiTomaso, N., Post, C. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

This study uses qualitative interviews with 50 working and middle class African-Americans to explore how they use social capital resources from their strong and weak ties to obtain education and jobs. As expected, the strong tie relationships of middle class blacks provided college information, while the working class did not discuss such assistance. The working class respondents relied primarily on strong tie relationships for social capital resources, but this did not always improve their career trajectories. Conversely, the middle class interviewees' networks consisted of both strong and weak ties who offered social capital resources that helped with their careers. Still, while both class groups had social ties that provided information about jobs, neither group knew many people who could actually hire them. Thus, while the middle class respondents had greater access to social capital resources, their advantages were not as large as one might expect, given their class divisions.

Review Essay: Democracy and Imperialism in Africa: Reflections on the Work of Claude Ake: Social Science as Imperialism: The Theory of Political Development. By Claude Ake. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1982. Pp. 236. $30.00 (paper). ISBN: 9789781211300. Feasibility of Democracy in Africa. By Claude Ake. Dakar: CODESRIA, 2000. Pp. 208. $26.00 (paper). ISBN: 9782869780828

Agozino, B. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Book Review: Environmental Sociology. 2nd ed. By John Hannigan. New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 194. $41.95 (paper). ISBN: 0415355135

Jones, A. W. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Book Review: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. By Vijay Prashad. New York: The New Press, 2007. Pp. 364. $26.95 (cloth). ISBN 9781565847859

Egan, D. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Book Review: Liberal Modernity and its Adversaries: Freedom, Liberalism, and Anti-Liberalism in the 21st Century. Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Volume 10. By Milan Zafirovski. Boston: Brill, 2007. Pp. 579. $139.00 (cloth). ISBN 9004160523

Dombrowski, D. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Book Review: The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal. By Mark Krikorian. New York: Sentinel (Penguin Group), 2008. Pp. 294. $23.95 (cloth). ISBN: 9781595230355

Oppenheimer, M. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Note: Books

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Books Received

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:33:13 PDT

Notes from the Editor

Fasenfest, D. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

About the Authors

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

Globalization, Downsizing and Insecurity: Do We Need to Upgrade Marx's Theory of Alienation?

Archibald, W. P. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

Earlier, this author investigated and found wanting popular claims that technical and social organizational changes associated with globalization have now greatly lessened alienation for factory workers in fully industrialized countries. Here he follows up his suggestion that any credible account of globalization must consider increased competition and employment insecurity and their effects upon alienation. Theoretically, decreased security could have made workers more concerned with having any employment at all and less with intrinsically interesting work over which they have control. Nevertheless, research on the 1930s and the current period of downsizing provides much more support for decreased security having further disempowered workers. Demands at work may well have increased more for managers and professionals, but they have also had greater resources for coping with such increased demands. While these new developments suggest that Marx's theory of alienation needs to be updated, they are consistent with its original thrusts.

Bring the Salmon Home! Karuk Challenges to Capitalist Incorporation

Hormel, L. M., Norgaard, K. M. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

With capitalism's introduction, Karuk people have experienced radical declines in the productivity of Klamath River salmon fisheries, dire impoverishment, and a new order of threats in the form of hunger and diet related diseases. We use interview, survey, medical and archival data to describe how capitalism has been an unsustainable system in the case of the Karuk because it is organized around market extraction and destroys cultural knowledge and behaviors that served to keep fish harvests sustainable. Using world-systems theory, we propose a fifth frontier exists, that of health. Despite the impacts of 150 years of direct genocide, Karuk people continue to survive and are revitalizing culture and community, which supports the idea that capitalist incorporation is not fully complete but partial. Karuk resistance and revitalization is epitomized in the campaign to remove four dams on the Klamath River and thereby 'Bring the Salmon Home' to the upper basin.

Choosing our Ancestors: Thorstein Veblen, Radical Institutionalism and Sociology

Cassano, G. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

Symbolic Exploitation and the Social Dialectic of Desire

Cassano, G. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

Utilizing the work of Thorstein Veblen, I argue that the interrogation of `symbolic exploitation' should be of pressing concern to sociologists who hope to end economic exploitation. Contesting economic exploitation must begin with the destruction of traditional sovereign action patterns of desire that ensnare agents. Such a work of destruction must simultaneously be a work of construction, the construction of counter-hegemonic cultures of solidarity that reject the normative systems of status distribution associated with pecuniary capitalism. With this self-recognition on the part of the laboring classes, the end of economic exploitation becomes both palpable and possible.

Finance Capital, Neo-Liberalism and Critical Institutionalism

Krier, D. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

Classical critical institutionalism is compared to recent `neo-instititutionalism' in economics, sociology and organizational studies. Both approaches developed during a regime change within capitalism, crisis periods of economic change and destabilized relationships between capitalist sectors and social institutions. Unlike mainstream economics, institutional approaches map these changing connections between capitalist sectors (finance and industrial capital, for instance) and between economic and social institutions. The critical institutionalists were much more critical of society, mainstream economics and finance capital as a destructive force, a stance that has continuing utility for the analysis of global capitalism and neo-liberal finance capital. The new institutionalists, while uncritically positivist and administrative in their orientation to the capitalist system, have nevertheless devised useful concepts and theories of economic organization and structure. A new, condensed critical institutionalism is needed to better analyze neo-liberal finance capital in this era of globalization.

`IR Experts' and the New Deal State: The Diary of a Defeated Subsumed Class

Hillard, M., McIntyre, R. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

This essay develops and applies Resnick and Wolff's conception of `subsumed classes', groups that receive a portion of surplus value for helping capitalists reproduce their class position. We profile the rise and fall of one such subsumed class, the industrial relations (IR) experts whose theories and practices sought to depoliticize and curb the militancy of the US labor movement. We argue that these IR experts established themselves as a subsumed class in the 1930s and then lost that position in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Ghost World of Alienated Desire

Worrell, M. P. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

Some Comments on `State Capitalism'

Oppenheimer, M. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:20:03 PDT

Notes from the Editor

Fasenfest, D. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:40 PST

About the Authors

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

Marx, Globalization and Alienation: Received and Underappreciated Wisdoms

Archibald, W. P. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

At the World Congress of Sociology in 2006, the official rationale for re-examining `alienation' within a global context was that alienating factory work has now been eradicated, humanized and/or simply compensated for by high levels of consumption in post-industrialized societies, with alienation from work having been `exported' to offices there and sweatshops in newly industrializing countries. However, alienation from work in industrially developed countries does not appear to have decreased, nor have longstanding inequalities in alienation favoring high status employees been reversed. Instead, any credible account must recognize cyclical and long-term economic crises and continued downsizing that have produced levels of un- and under-employment and job insecurity in industrially developed countries that have sometimes rivaled those in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Specifically how these trends have affected alienation is taken up in a subsequent article.

Globally Segmented Labor Markets: The Coming of the Greatest Boom and Bust, Without the Boom

Asimakopoulos, J. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

A world social structure of accumulation (SSA) is forming based on global segmentation of labor, financialization, and a neoliberal trade regime. Unlike its Fordist era counterpart, this SSA lacks a corresponding regime for consumption because it has outsourced production to low-wage authoritarian regions. This is resulting in inadequate purchasing power within developed nations for whom global production is intended, raising the potential of global crisis. In fact, these emerging structures may implode before any significant accumulation occurs when the US consumer debt bubble that has been fueling consumption bursts. The article concludes that the emerging system is intensifying class contradictions embedded in private property relations that will lead to intensified downturns. Therefore, the only structural solution is not reform but fundamental reorganization of socioeconomic relations. However, this requires a new transnational labor-activist movement willing to challenge the legitimacy of capitalism with radical counter-ideology and militant direct action.

The Social Determinants of Ideology: The Case of Neoliberalism in Southern Europe

Tsatsanis, E. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

The specific research questions that lie at the heart of this article correspond to three related but distinct areas of inquiry: a) the ideology of neoliberalism and the broad empirical question concerning its suggested status of present-day `hegemonic' ideology; b) the explanatory power of `class' with regard to questions of ideology; and c) regional patterns of popularity of neoliberal ideas in Europe, with a focus on the countries of southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece). The findings of the study reveal that: a) there are surprisingly low levels of support for neoliberal ideas across Europe; b) class (when conceptualized and operationalized more subtly) continues to be a very useful explanatory tool of relative ideological orientation; and c) social and institutional differences between northern and southern Europe are also reflected at the ideological level.

North--South Relations and the Ecological Debt: Asserting a Counter-Hegemonic Discourse

Rice, J. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

We examine position papers by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) arguing for recognition of the ecological debt. We utilize Toulmin's (2003[1958]) model of argument analysis to outline the major claims advanced. The results illustrate the argument is comprised of four interrelated claims: 1) Northern historical development and present disproportionate production and consumption are founded on a socio-ecological subsidy or the underpayment and, at times, explicit looting of the natural resource assets of Southern countries; 2) the Southern external financial debt should be cancelled because it promotes the socio-ecological subsidy; 3) levels of Northern production and consumption are unsustainable over the long term because they are predicated on the North—South socio-ecological subsidy; 4) equity for present and rational obligations to future generations demands Northern countries begin paying back the accrued socio-ecological subsidy, an obligation defined as the ecological debt.

Global Inequality, Human Rights and Power: A Critique of Ulrich Beck's Cosmopolitanism

Martell, L. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

This article is a critique of Ulrich Beck's advocacy of a cosmopolitan approach to global inequality and human rights. It is argued that cosmopolitanism does not bring a new and unique perspective on global inequality. In fact Beck's proposals on migration would reinforce inequality and anti-cosmopolitanism. It is argued that his `both/and' perspective on hybridization and contextual universalism is undermined by inequality, conflict and power that are glossed over in Beck's approach. I argue that human rights interventionism as advocated by Beck falls short of cosmopolitanism, in ways which are shown by qualifications about power and inequality that Beck himself makes in his arguments.

American Reporting of School Violence and `People Like Us': A Comparison of Newspaper Coverage of the Columbine and Red Lake School Shootings

Leavy, P., Maloney, K. P. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

The 1999 shootings at Columbine High School received saturation coverage by the American media. How did newspaper reporting of the 2005 Red Lake Indian Reservation School shootings, the largest school killing since Columbine, compare with the press's representations of Columbine? In this article we perform a qualitative content analysis of three newspapers (The New York Times as the national paper of record, and local papers in the communities in which the events occurred) over a two-week period following each event. We found that the reporting of Columbine and Red Lake differed in terms of quantity, content, and form. Columbine was immediately marked with social significance and became a national story while Red Lake received significantly less coverage, mostly local. Red Lake reporting was explicitly raced and classed while the prominent role of race and gender in the Columbine killings was largely ignored by local and national media.

Book Review: Peace Out of Reach: Middle Eastern Travels and the Search for Reconciliation. By Stephen Eric Bronner. Lexington, The University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Pp. 197. $24.95 (cloth). ISBN 0813124469

Gilmore, S. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

Book Review: The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. 332. $24.99 (paper). ISBN: 9780521539340

Islam, S. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

Note: Books

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST

Books Received

Blumer, N. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:31:41 PST