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This article sets out to investigate Weber's major sources of interest in his American journey, namely, rampant capitalism as most evident in some large cities, the presence of Calvinism and of a bourgeois ethos in some Northern areas of the United States, and the persisting relevance of a precapitalist status order in the South. As Weber argued, in these distinct settings different status groups and anthropological types were all connected, each in its own way, with modern formally rational capitalism. The significance of Weber's journey in the Unites States lied in the opportunity this journey offered him to delineate in ideal-typical terms a number of status groups and anthropological types to which he paid attention in the course of this travel., (© 2022 The Authors. Journal of The History of the Behavioral Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Time and temporality are common themes in the social sciences and sociology. The sociological literature on time remains solipsistically empirical, while theoretical elaborations are focused on modernity, capitalism, and technology, through notions of speed and acceleration. Although existing studies on time are imbued with political issues and processes, as the subfield that studies relations of power and politics, political sociology has yet to consolidate a temporal lexicon for studying structures of power and political phenomena. This review situates three recent books on time and politics within a broader sociological literature on time and calls for a political sociology of time. I argue that developing a conceptual apparatus that takes time as an element of power is fundamental to building dialogue across the empirical material and across disciplines. I conclude by offering three avenues for the development of a political sociology of time., (© 2022 The Authors. The British Journal of Sociology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of London School of Economics and Political Science.)

David Riesman's exploration of the other-directed characterological form, suited to corporate capitalism and the rise of the service sector, became one of the most influential sociological analyses of the twentieth century. Yet sociologists interested in the contemporary fate of those dispositional qualities suited to mutual adjustment confront a paradox: why, in an age of increasing interdependencies apparently conducive to the sustenance of other-directedness, are we witnessing rising concerns about the resurgence of social sectarianism? Most accounts of this tension rely upon structuralist explanations of late modernity's disruptive impact, or psychologistic accounts of group allegiance. In contrast, we develop a meso-level analysis that highlights an increasingly consequential duality at the heart of other-directedness itself: the qualities associated with this characterological form still facilitate selective forms of mutuality, but the demands it places upon people in the current era have also prompted growing levels of resentment and antagonism., (© 2021 London School of Economics and Political Science.)

Piketty's propositions for arresting inequality are discussed through the lens of racism/casteism. We focus on the case of India's George Floyds-the persistence of caste and tribe oppression under economic growth in India-through the insights of our long-term ethnographic research. We show that inequalities are intimately tied to dynamics of capitalist accumulation in which racial/ethnic/caste/tribe and gender difference is crucial. We argue for an analysis that truly integrates ideology and the dynamics of political economy. The wider implications, we argue are political; they lie in the question of what is to be done. Despite his ambitions to decenter economics, Piketty remains trapped in the logic of economics for what he proposes are essentially economic reforms within capitalism. Moreover, ideological change cannot be a matter of choice only, and cannot be challenged solely at the level of ideas around economic inequality. It will also have to be fought as a direct contest of oppressive ideologies such as racism, casteism, and patriarchy, leading to new counter-hegemonic positions. We will argue that this takes us from a global history of ideology to a global anthropology of praxis. A first step is to genuinely center conversations with disciplines like anthropology, sociology, and subaltern history studying people and voices from below and from the margins, and the perspectives of scholars and activists from below and from the margins., (© 2021 London School of Economics and Political Science.)

In this brief paper, I argue that the coronavirus pandemic is functioning like an ethnomethodological 'breaching experiment'. In short, it is putting a gigantic spanner in the works of neoliberal governance, in the process exposing the widening cracks and fissures of what I have called the 'fractured society'. I begin by recalling Garfinkel's notion of the breaching experiment and by listing the principal attributes of the fractured society. I then explore the response to the coronavirus in the UK, from the government's initial commitment to 'herd immunity' to its present policy of 'muddling through'. The bulk of the remainder of this contribution addresses precisely how this global health crisis shines a harsh and unforgiving searchlight on the strategies and policies pursued by governments in the UK since 2010, and most especially after the passing of the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. In the closing paragraphs, I examine possible scenarios for a post-fractured society, making particular use of Fraser's concepts on 'reactionary' versus 'progressive populism', and conclude with a comment on sociology and engagement.

The paper identifies and examines various multiple renditions of the so-called Weber Thesis of an historical association and convergence between ascetic Protestantism, above all Calvinism, and the emergence and development of modern capitalism as an economic spirit and system. Specifically, it detects at least four different versions and formulations or interpretations, thus casting doubt in the common view of the Weber Thesis as a single and monolithic theory or hypothesis. The paper also considers the status of the multiple versions of the Weber Thesis in post-Weberian and contemporary sociology and related disciplines like economics and history. It concludes that the weaker, relaxed renditions of the Weber Thesis have attained a greater success and more endured in contemporary social science than have its stronger, stricter versions., (© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Thomas Piketty's imposing volume has brought serious economics firmly into the mainstream of public debate on inequality, yet political science has been mostly absent from this debate. This article argues that political science has an essential contribution to make to this debate, and that Piketty's important and powerful book lacks a clear political theory. It develops this argument by first assessing and critiquing the changing nature of political science and its account of contemporary capitalism, and then suggesting how Piketty's thesis can be complemented, extended and challenged by focusing on the ways in which politics and collective action shape the economy and the distribution of income and wealth. Although Capital's principal message is that 'capital is back' and that without political interventions active political interventions will continue to grow, a political economy perspective would suggest another rather more fundamental critique: the very economic forces Piketty describes are embedded in institutional arrangements which can only be properly understood as political phenomena. In a sense capital itself - the central concept of the book - is almost meaningless without proper consideration of its political foundations. Even if the fact of capital accumulation may respond to an economic logic, the process is embedded in a very political logic. The examples of housing policy and the regulation, and failure to regulate, financial markets are used to illustrate these points., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.)

This article offers a 'local', British, reading of Piketty's landmark book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, suggesting that the challenge it offers to sociological approaches to inequality is more fundamental than hitherto recognized. The variations in 'national trajectories' exposed by Piketty reveal Britain to be anomalous in terms of standard approaches to the path dependencies embedded in different welfare regimes. Using the recent work of Monica Prasad on 'settler capitalism' in the USA and the tax and debt-finance regime associated with it, the article suggests that colonialism and empire and its postwar unravelling has had deep consequences for British social stratification, albeit largely neglected by British sociologists. Finally, it points to the fact that the form of tax and debt-finance regime that has become reinforced in Britain is at the heart of recent radical reforms to higher education. These are the currently unexplicated conditions of our future practice as sociologists and, therefore, an obstacle to building a critical sociology on the foundations laid out by Piketty., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.)

I set out and explain Piketty's model of the dynamics of capitalism based on two equations and the r > g inequality (his central contradiction of capitalism). I then take issue with Piketty's analysis of the rebuilding of inequality from the 1970s to the present on three grounds: First, his model is based on the (neo-classical) assumption that companies are essentially passive actors who invest the amount savers choose to accumulate at equilibrium output - leading to the counterintuitive result that companies respond to the secular fall in growth (and hence their product markets) from the 1970s on by increasing their investment relative to output; this does indeed imply increased inequality on Piketty's β measure, the ratio of capital to output. I suggest a more realistic model in which businesses determine investment growth based on their expectations of output growth, with monetary policy bringing savings into line with business-determined investment; the implication of this model is that β does not change at all. And in fact as other recent empirical work which I reference has noted, β has not changed significantly over these recent decades. Hence Piketty's central analysis of the growth of contemporary inequality requires rethinking. Second, despite many references to the need for political economic analysis, Piketty's analysis of the growth of inequality in the period from the 1970s to the present is almost devoid of it, his explanatory framework being purely mathematical. I sketch what a political economic framework might look like during a period when politics was central to inequality. Third, inequality in fact rose on a variety of dimensions apart from β (including poverty which Piketty virtually makes no reference to in this period), but it is unclear what might explain why inequality rose in these other dimensions., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.)

Economic theories of uncertainty are unpopular with financial experts. As sociologists, we rightly refuse predictions, but the uncertainties of money are constantly sifted and turned into semi-denial by a financial economics set on somehow beating the future. Picking out 'bits' of the future as 'risk' and 'parts' as 'information' is attractive but socially dangerous, I argue, because money's promises are always uncertain. New studies of uncertainty are reversing sociology's neglect of the unavoidable inability to know the forces that will shape the financial future., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.)

This article investigates the contribution made by Norbert Elias (1897-1990) to the problematization of old age by analyzing his text "Envelhecer e morrer". Here, the sociologist is seen as an author of texts which can help build up references that span disciplinary boundaries, or even overcome the polarization between 'health-' and 'social-'related knowledge, making it possible to form the desired field of study on ageing. Though Elias sometimes aligns himself with ideas bordering on an idealization of ageing from a pre-capitalist 'Golden Age', he does offer insights which deserve to be taken into consideration, especially when he relates the contemporary experience of ageing to the invention of modernity itself.

This paper argues that although classical sociology has largely overlooked the importance of social relations with the material world in shaping the form of society, Braudel's concept of 'material civilization' is a useful way to begin to understand the sociological significance of this relationship. The limitations of Braudel's historical and general concept can be partially overcome with Elias's analysis of the connection between 'technization' and 'civilization' that allows for both a civilizing and a de-civilizing impact of emergent forms of material relation that both lengthen and shorten the chains of interdependence between the members of a society. It is suggested that the concept of the 'morality of things' employed by a number of commentators is useful in summarizing the civilizing effects of material objects and addressing their sociological significance. From the sociology of consumption the idea of materiality as a sign of social relationships can be drawn, and from the sociology of technology the idea of socio-technical systems and actor-networks can contribute to the understanding of material civilization. It is argued that the concept of 'material capital' can usefully summarize the variable social value of objects but to understand the complexity of material civilization as it unfolds in everyday life, an analysis of 'material interaction' is needed. Finally the paper suggests some initial themes and issues apparent in contemporary society that the sociological study of material civilization might address; the increased volume, functional complexity and material specificity of objects and the increased social complexity, autonomy and substitutability that is entailed. A theory of 'material civilization' is the first step in establishing a sociology of objects.

This paper is an examination of the popular TV drama E.R. What is notable for health geographers about E.R. is how the show offers a representation of health care and the role of place in creating ways to provide care. Indeed, the place of health care-the emergency room-is the point of reference for the show's weekly dramas and centers the activity on the screen. We posit that the show's success stems from how crisis has become a central component of discourses about health care and that E.R. offers one highly seductive interpretation of how to deal with crisis in health care and care delivery. E.R. provides a representation of crisis by constructing three scales of intervention as the best sites to respond to and fix crisis: bodies, medical networks, and the urban social relations of the city. Order is designed around these scales which serve to map out where medical interventions can be made within the discursive regime of crisis. What E.R. provides is a powerful, if limited, "realistic" portrayal about the role of health care today-a role that is increasingly considered to be shaped by the need to intervene in crisis.

This paper explores the potential of Bourdieu's approach to capital as a way of understanding class dynamics in contemporary capitalism. Recent rethinking of class analysis has sought to move beyond what Rosemary Crompton (1998) calls the 'employment aggregate approach', one which involves categorizing people into class groups according to whether they have certain attributes (e.g. occupations). Instead, recent contributions by Pierre Bourdieu, Erik Wright, Aage Sorensen, and Charles Tilly have concentrated on understanding the mechanisms that produce class inequalities. Concepts such as assets, capitals and resources (CARs) are often used to explain how class inequalities are produced, but there remain ambiguities and differences in how such terms are understood. This paper identifies problems faced both by game theoretical Marxism and by the rational choice approach of Goldthorpe in developing an adequate approach to CARs. It then turns to critically consider how elements of Bourdieu's approach, where his concept of capital is related to those of habitus and field, might overcome these weaknesses. Our rendering of his arguments leads us to conclude that our understanding of CARs might be enriched by considering how capital is distinctive not in terms of distinct relations of exploitation, but through its potential to accumulate and to be converted to other resources. This focus, we suggest, sidesteps otherwise intractable problems in CAR based approaches.

Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, studied in isolation, shows mainly an elective affinity or an adequacy on the level of meaning between the Protestant ethic and the 'spirit' of capitalism. Here it is suggested that Weber's subsequent essays on 'The Economic Ethics of World Religions' are the result of his opinion that adequacy on the level of meaning needs and can be verified by causal adequacy. After some introductory remarks, particularly on elective affinity, the paper tries to develop the concept of adequate causation and the related concept of objective possibility on the basis of the work of v. Kries on whom Weber heavily relied. In the second part, this concept is used to show how the study of the economic ethics of India, China, Rome and orthodox Russia can support the thesis that the 'spirit' of capitalism, although it may not have been caused by the Protestant ethic, was perhaps adequately caused by it.

A conception of money as a 'neutral veil' masking a 'real' economy was adopted by orthodox economic theory after the Methodenstreit, and is also to be found, in a different form, in Marxian political economy. Both derive from an erroneous functionalist and anachronistic 'commodity' theory of money which, as Post-Keynesian economists argue, cannot explain the distinctive form of capitalist credit-money. Orthodox economic theory and classic Marxism have tacitly informed and flawed historical sociology's understanding of money's role in capitalist development. Mann and Runciman, for example, consider the 'economy' exclusively in terms of the social relations of production and imply that money is epiphenomenal and is to be explained as a response to the needs of the 'real' economy. They do not recognize the structural specificity of capitalist money and banking nor its importance. An alternative account of the autonomous historical conditions of existence of the specifically capitalist form of bank and state credit-money and its role in capitalist development is outlined.

"This article examines Chinese capitalist migration from Hong Kong and Taiwan to Canada which took place under the auspices of the Canadian Business Immigration Program. It begins by setting the context of this migration of Chinese capitalists and their capital through a description of the Program and applying sociological theory to explain the process. More specifically, structural models of migration, world systems, political economy and transnationalism are applied which provide an insight and explanation for this migration. Then the role of the state is examined in relation to mediation and social reproduction. The article ends with a trend analysis of this Chinese capitalist migration and its effect on class, cultural transformation, and race and ethnic relations in Canada.", (excerpt)

Sociobiology is a form of biological determinism which argues that human social organization is constrained by genes that have been selected in evolution. In particular, it regards male dominance, hierarchical society, entrepreneurial economic activity, territoriality, and aggression as a consequences of human genes. It is shown that sociobiological theory is carefully constructed to make it impossible to test, that it makes a number of fundamental errors in attempting to describe "human nature," that there is no evidence for inheritance of human social traits, and that the evolutionary arguments used are merely fanciful, adaptive stories.

Uses an interpretive approach to the work of Robert Kurz, a German sociologist/essayist whose work has been translated and published in Brazil and who has advanced an apparently "catastrophic thesis" regarding the collapse of the "goods-producing society," or hyperdeveloped capitalism. (BT)

Describes an undergraduate sociology project in which students conducted research at working class and upper-middle class shopping malls. The research focused on social stratification and its manifestation in architectural character, spatial relationships, advertising, and consumer behavior. Includes an appendix that reproduces the fieldwork instructions given to the students. (MJP)

Describes a simple in-class exercise that reveals some flaws in capitalist, individualistic-oriented ideology by following specific assumptions to their logical conclusion. Poses the question, if drive and ambition are sole determinants of success could society accommodate a population where everyone possessed those qualities? (MJP)

This article addresses the relationship between insurgent political action and state-supported social services, with particular emphasis on the relationship between urban riots and welfare. Findings from analysis of activism and welfare since the Second World War indicate that urban riots played an important role nationally in short-term expansion of relief-giving in various programs. (DB)

Two perspectives on the sociology of education were identified and related to general sociological perspectives. The theme of constraint and construction was considered in relation to the institution of education and its role in capitalist society. (JN)

Moral and pragmatist sociology has studied capitalism as a set of institutions that require justification, which has historically been offered through forms of rewarding and meaningful work, anchoring the human life course in a narrative of individual and collective progress. However, emerging with neoliberalism, then becoming explicit after 2008, contemporary capitalism has become organised around the logic of assets and wealth as opposed to labour and production. This provokes a vacuum of justification. Once all actors are (as Minsky argued) balance sheet actors and profit becomes a function of sheer temporality, the economy ceases to function as a moral order and instead becomes imbued with existential concerns of temporality, durability, survival, and finitude. Possessed only of certain contingently acquired assets and liabilities, the self becomes wholly contingent in the sense described by Heidegger; that is, as 'thrown' into having had a past and into a relationship of 'care' towards the future. The article identifies symptoms of this existential condition in empirical studies of wealth elites, for whom (in the absence of conventional liberal and production-based measures of worth) problems of meaning, purpose, and finitude are endemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore Karl Marx’s evolving understanding of the temporal dimensions within capitalism, particularly focusing on his reflections during the 1850s and 1860s. This period marks a significant shift in Marx’s theoretical framework, prompted by his in-depth analysis of the world market and diverse modes of exploitation. The article highlights coexisting forms of exploitation and their entanglement in terms of temporalities. From this perspective, capitalism and its history can be investigated as a complex interplay of temporal layers rather than a linear progression. Marx’s 1858 letter serves as a starting point, emphasizing the importance of accumulation as a long-term process and the challenges of a revolutionary project in a globalized capitalist context. Finally, the paper emphasizes Marx’s mature writings, where he envisions the potential for combining historical layers to challenge capitalism. This nuanced understanding has contemporary implications for globalized capitalism and social change discussions.

The article focuses on the concept of racial capitalism, presenting ten theses that explore its theoretical framework and its relevance in contemporary sociological debates. It examines how racialization and capitalism are intertwined, with racial capitalism acting as both a material and ideological process that structures inequality and dispossession. It also emphasizes the historical roots of racial capitalism, including the colonial and slavery systems.

Chicago's broader notorious reputation of gang and gun violence dominates popular discursive conversations about the city's safety and stability. Through a critical structural perspective, this article explores the constitutive historical continuity and spatialized contours of racial capitalism in the facilitation of structured violence and organized death in city neighborhoods. These dynamics are most relevant where individualized and pathological narratives of interpersonal gang-based gun violence are rampant. The focus is on the context of Mexican Chicago, particularly the transnational site of Little Village. Using hyper-local examples on the environment, education, and labor-based economic markets, I showcase how this diasporic Mexican community is an instructive site highlighting the ongoing presence of colonially constituted structures of expropriation, dispossession, exploitation, and displacement endemic to the United States empire and its resultant violence. I suggest that gang-based gun violence is tied to broader death-making machinery, leading us to robust alternative conceptual frames and reactions when socio-politically engineered 'crime' and violence take place across urban city neighborhood spaces. I conclude with a paired abolitionist perspective and implications for critical sociology and the study of gangs specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on digital labor platforms requires a focus beyond techno-utopianism, foregrounding the role of living labor that materially sustains the fantasies of convenience ingrained in platform capitalism. The gig workers embodying living labor exhausted by location-dependent platform work are mainly migrants. Yet, greater understanding of the complexity of difference production and the gigification of work is needed. The article is prompted by the desire to understand the relationship between entrepreneurialized workers and heterogeneously produced differences within the labor power composition of gig workers active on location-based labor platforms. Drawing on ethnographic data produced together with migrant workers engaged in food delivery and cleaning gigs via labor platforms in Helsinki, the article first analyzes the organizing logic of gig work mediated via platforms through the notion of transversal entrepreneurial tendency, and second, the entwined forms of social, legal, and algorithmic difference produced among gig workers. The article argues that differentiation in labor power composition is dynamically related to the interactions required and facilitated by the platforms. The article contributes to discussions on entrepreneurialization in the contemporary world of work and the specific ways in which the social, legal, and algorithmic production of difference shape the constitutive hierarchies of platform labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ownership has been a core research theme in parts of media and communication science since its establishment as a distinct research field. In particular, scholars in the field of political economy of the media, media sociology and media industry studies typically pay close attention to the role ownership has on various media and communication processes. In this article, we argue, however, that media ownership has been treated largely as a black box ignoring the inner workings and dynamics of it. Filling this void, we reach out to research on ownership from the field of political economy, sociology as well as social and legal philosophy to discuss two options to conceptually grasp the 'inner workings of property'. To showcase the importance of this conceptual redefinition, the article discusses the implications of unpacking property in the realm of digital capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The sociology of media and communications was never explicitly defined – nor was there ever an explicit debate about the sub-field. Not having a clear anchor makes it hard to define what its critical component should be. Nonetheless, a rich yet disconnected tradition of sociology and critical political economy allows flexibility to reconsider communication and social relations in the broader societal dynamics of capitalism. Specifying a critical sociological approach to communication can help better define the role of communication at the micro, mezzo and macro levels of society. The multi-paradigmatic heritage of sociological theory can provide new ways of criticising communication power in contemporary society. Diverse contemporary developments in the critique of political economy give a breadth of understanding of the capitalist mode of production and its internal dynamics. Sociology can add depth to understanding social relations within and beyond the production, distribution and consumption process. This introduction sets out the framework for the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes into exam the current literature about Big Data and data capitalism, from the perspective of the critical Internet theory. Particular attention will be placed to the ideas of data exploitation and raw data, which will prove to betray a form of digital fetishism: in short, the focus on the final results of the production process, rather than on the social relations by which the very same process is fueled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as the Frankfurt School responded to the radicalisation of the working class in Germany and the rise of post-war consumerism in the United States, today, we are confronted by platform monopolies, automated hyper-consumption and technological control. Critical approaches to digital media have exposed the structural coupling of Internet use and capital accumulation for almost two decades. However, many authors building on this tradition can struggle to understand how online social interaction is controlled beyond the worn-out critique of false consciousness or beyond conceptualising all digital activity mediated by data as labour. This paper will attempt to theoretically untangle the Marxian ontology of labour and the Frankfurt School-inspired critique of everyday life. This is not just theoretical nit-picking. Society becomes completely dominated if we accept no difference between wage labour and lifeworld activities. Each contains its internal struggles. The value form regulates both in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]