Suchergebnisse

In postcommunist Estonia, the topic of inequality was considered "embarrassing." The dominant popular assumption was that inequalities just happen naturally. Class and inequality discourse was effectively marginalized due to long-lasting success in focusing attention on nationalizing issues. A "transition culture" that lionized the capitalist future has also contributed to the marginalization of class discourse. Because of this marginalization, and the power of national/ethnic discourse and transitional culture, those most economically vulnerable were deprived of the cultural and discursive resources to resist the most extreme market-oriented policies. Sociologists did discuss inequality more seriously, but mostly according to a gradational and functional stratification paradigm: the central focus has been on individual attributes that divide people into classes. The analysis focusing on relations of exploitation and domination have been virtually absent in postcommunist Estonia. We conclude that the main challenge for Estonian social science is to incorporate concepts of power, exploitation, and domination perspective into study of inequality.

An examination of three prevalent descriptions of globalization -- the post-Fordist state, the withering away of the state, & the internationalization of the state -- finds all three wanting. A weakness common to all three is the tendency to disaggregate the state & the market & assume a zero-sum, antagonistic conflict between the two. A more traditional Marxist approach, one that emphasizes the interrelatedness of the state & the market & that sees globalization as the next step in capital's insatiable desire for cheap labor, provides a more compelling explanation of current developments. The behavior of GB during its membership in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (1990-1992) illustrates the utility of Marxist explanations. In this case, & in many others, globalization has as much to do with the state as with the market. 41 References. K. W. Larsen

THIS SPECIAL ISSUE ON RURAL CLASS RELATIONS COMPRISING PART 2 OF SOCIAL CLASSES IN LATIN AMERICA CONTAINS AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY DALE JOHNSOM AND ARTICLES BY QUIJANO, BLUESTEIN, SINGLMANN/QUESADA /TAPIA, MONTOYA, WERLHOF/NEUHOFF, AND GONZALEZ CASANOVA. A SPECIAL SECTION ON CENTRAL AMERICA HAS ARTICLE ON US COLDWAR POLITICS BY JONAS AND SOME TEXTS FROM 10TH NATL.MTG.OF LASA, AND GUATEMALA UNITY TEXT.

Today's political sociologists are once again interested in the study of the crisis of mass-based parties, anti-politics and anti-parliamentarism, crisis in the authority of the political class, prevailing corporate interests within republican institutions, and populism. Political sociology however, takes the party, as a construct of political sociology alone, without consideration upon its militancy and action, as the party, which objectifies the foundation of a State, and as a result the party becomes, simply an historical category. We approach the problem of the modern state from many angles; analysing the nature of a political party as such; the ideological dangers of determinism and spontaneism which a party necessarily must struggle with; the type of non-administrative internal regime which is necessary for a party to be effective and so on. The problem we seek to elaborate is the specific character of the collective action that makes possible the passage from a sectored, corporate and subordinate role of purely negative opposition, to a leading role of conscious action towards not merely a partial adjustment within the system, but posing the issue of the State in its entirety. In developing this theme – as a study of the real relations between the political party, the classes and the State – a two-fold consideration is devoted to the study of Machiavelli and Marx: first from the angle of the real relations between the two, as thinkers of revolutionary politics, of action; and secondly from a perspective which would derive from the Marxist doctrines an articulated system of contemporary politics, as found in The Prince.

Review of the book "Unseasonal migrations: the effects of rural labor scarcity in Peru", by Jane L. Collins. Its analytical focus is a pattern of seasonal migration undertaken for three generations by highland Aymara-speaking peasants between two production zones: the foodstuff-producing altiplano of Southern Peru, and a coffee-growing region to the North. Nugent points out that the book shows the strength of forces that reproduce non-capitalist classes in the countryside of Peru

The political economy influences SC relations & strategies assumed in SC struggles. Its evolution to finance capitalism increasingly complicates SC relations, producing significant cleavages in the capitalist class that appear in corporate relations. The struggle for control of capital additionally affects relations between capitalists in general & the Wc. Comparative case analyses of three US corporations in crisis illustrate the processes by which capital flow relations influence intra- & interclass relations. 43 References. HA