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Anthropologies of Class: Power, Practice, and Inequality
Rising social, political and economic inequality in many countries, and rising protest against it, has seen the restoration of the concept of 'class' to a prominent place in contemporary anthropological debates. A timely intervention in these discussions, this book explores the concept of class and its importance for understanding the key sources of that inequality and of people's attempts to deal with it. Highly topical, it situates class within the context of the current economic crisis, integrating elements from today into the discussion of an earlier agenda. Using cases from North and South America, Western Europe and South Asia, it shows the - sometimes surprising - forms that class can take, as well as the various effects it has on people's lives and societies.
- GenresAnthropology
248 pages, ebook
First published March 3, 2015
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May 20, 2018
This is a great composite of essays that shows how the anthropology discipline attempts to engage with the concept of class, and social inequality.
The introduction shows the author's gentle rebuke towards his discipline for accepting anthropology's categorisation as the social science that focuses on exotic ethnography, and forgoing engagement with financial inequality and urban class struggle.
The first chapter is an introductory summary of the concept of class, and the differences between the two leading class theorists- Marx's and Weber's- understanding of it. Marx and Weber both understood economic activity as the defining activity of humans as social beings. They foresaw that all of our social roles-- our kinship connections, our religious and political affiliations-- are influenced by our economic status. However, Marx located the junction of struggle in the process of production, while Weber placed it in the process of market purchase. Marx divided people's classes according to whether they survived through ownership of land, labor or skills, or capital or tools. He saw that the dominant class would have disproportionate control over both the process and the gains of production. Meanwhile, Weber saw the division of classes between buyers and sellers in the marketplace.
The 2nd chapter is a beautiful discussion on the anthropology of labor. It shows how we have to reform our simplistic framework of a Global North vs. South, working-class vs. poor, waged vs. non-waged labor to incorporate changing labor relations and how both enfranchised and disenfranchised now mix inharmoniously in both the Global North and South.
The rest of the chapters are specific examples and fieldwork that painfully display the reality of class and its effects on people who live on the lower margins of society. Chapter 3 is about the displaced classes in Spain. An example given of this is technical engineers with white-collar degrees who thought they could move up from the working-class status of their parents, but are employed only as foremen. Furthermore, new class systems are arranged by ownership of credit and debt:
"If credit became the way into middle-class identity and becoming desclasado, lack of credit has become the return ticket to a working-class reality and, associated with that, a declining faith in parliamentary democracy. The financial crisis and the response of a technocratic government are producing a strong feeling of class differentiation and polarization: while the rich get richer (especially those in banking), the rest get poorer."
The 5th chapter is about the supreme power of Walmart, which furnishes 20% of American retail demand, and how its marketing scheme repositioned our definition of economic freedom. Before Walmart, the struggle for economic freedom lay in the expansion of the rewards for labor and won through unions. After Walmart, we felt we won if we got maximum consumption for the lowest buck-- the goal of the "consumer-citizen"-- even at the expense of underpaid fellow workers. This chapter also contains a discussion of the rise of ''consumer-citizenship''.
This is a sad but illuminating and cathartic read, because no matter how theoretical the discussions get, they always hit home, and relate to the systemic societal forces we live through from day to day.
The introduction shows the author's gentle rebuke towards his discipline for accepting anthropology's categorisation as the social science that focuses on exotic ethnography, and forgoing engagement with financial inequality and urban class struggle.
The first chapter is an introductory summary of the concept of class, and the differences between the two leading class theorists- Marx's and Weber's- understanding of it. Marx and Weber both understood economic activity as the defining activity of humans as social beings. They foresaw that all of our social roles-- our kinship connections, our religious and political affiliations-- are influenced by our economic status. However, Marx located the junction of struggle in the process of production, while Weber placed it in the process of market purchase. Marx divided people's classes according to whether they survived through ownership of land, labor or skills, or capital or tools. He saw that the dominant class would have disproportionate control over both the process and the gains of production. Meanwhile, Weber saw the division of classes between buyers and sellers in the marketplace.
The 2nd chapter is a beautiful discussion on the anthropology of labor. It shows how we have to reform our simplistic framework of a Global North vs. South, working-class vs. poor, waged vs. non-waged labor to incorporate changing labor relations and how both enfranchised and disenfranchised now mix inharmoniously in both the Global North and South.
The rest of the chapters are specific examples and fieldwork that painfully display the reality of class and its effects on people who live on the lower margins of society. Chapter 3 is about the displaced classes in Spain. An example given of this is technical engineers with white-collar degrees who thought they could move up from the working-class status of their parents, but are employed only as foremen. Furthermore, new class systems are arranged by ownership of credit and debt:
"If credit became the way into middle-class identity and becoming desclasado, lack of credit has become the return ticket to a working-class reality and, associated with that, a declining faith in parliamentary democracy. The financial crisis and the response of a technocratic government are producing a strong feeling of class differentiation and polarization: while the rich get richer (especially those in banking), the rest get poorer."
The 5th chapter is about the supreme power of Walmart, which furnishes 20% of American retail demand, and how its marketing scheme repositioned our definition of economic freedom. Before Walmart, the struggle for economic freedom lay in the expansion of the rewards for labor and won through unions. After Walmart, we felt we won if we got maximum consumption for the lowest buck-- the goal of the "consumer-citizen"-- even at the expense of underpaid fellow workers. This chapter also contains a discussion of the rise of ''consumer-citizenship''.
This is a sad but illuminating and cathartic read, because no matter how theoretical the discussions get, they always hit home, and relate to the systemic societal forces we live through from day to day.
Displaying 1 of 1 review