Consumer Citizenship and Cross‐Class Activism: The Case of the National Consumers' League, 1899–1918

Political consumerism is often criticized for its failure to cross class lines, a failure linked to the economic resources and cultural capital of affluent consumers. The early history of the National Consumers' League (NCL) illustrates how an alternative model of consumer citizenship can lead privileged shoppers to draw social boundaries in different ways. The NCL included lower‐class women and children as beneficiaries and occasional allies in consumer campaigns, but distanced itself from the organized labor movement. This alternative model of political consumerism is traced to the gender and class cultures of reformist women in the Progressive Era.     

Middle Class Identity in the Modern World: How Politics and Economics Matter

It is widely accepted that people tend to identify with the middle classes regardless of their social class position. Nevertheless, this “middle class identity bias” is not equally prominent in all western democracies. The goal of this article is to assess the role of political and economic conditions in shaping this phenomenon. By exploring the relationship between class identity and national context in 15 modern societies, I address two main questions: (1) how individual‐level income affects where people place themselves in the class system, and (2) how national political and economic context affects this relationship. In doing so, I offer several important findings. First, although there is a positive relationship between income and class identification in all 15 societies, middle class identification is weakest when income inequality is high. Consistent with previous findings, the results suggest that economic development has a positive impact on class identity. The results also uncover a role for political ideology by suggesting a lingering affect of Communist rule. Even after controlling for economic development and income inequality, respondents in former Communist countries are more likely than others to identify as belonging to a low social class.     

Middle classes,democratization, and class formation

Conclusions This analysis of the South Korean case demonstrates the importance of the historical context for understanding the political role of the middle classes. In late industrialization, as occurred in South Korea and other East Asian countries, the new middle class has emerged as a significant social class, before the capitalist class established its ideological hegemony and before industrial workers developed into an organized class. Neither of these two major classes was able to offer an ideological or organizational leadership to the middle classes. In this context, the middle class can act as more than merely a dependent variable. In South Korea, the minjung movement led by an intellectual segment of the middle class played a critical role in the formation of the working class, by providing an opposition ideology, new politicized languages, organizational networks, and other resources.The Korean experience also highlights the significant role of the state in class formation. The predominant role of the state in economic and social development puts it at the center of major social conflicts. Social tensions and conflicts that emerge in rapid industrialization are directly and indirectly related to the character of the state and the economic policies it implements. A high level of politicization among Korean middle-class members, not only among intellectuals but also among a large number of white-collar workers, is the product of the authoritarian regimes of Park and Chun and their repressive control of civil society. Both the nature of Korean middle-class politics and its relationship with the working-class formation have been shaped by the nature of state politics.The role of the middle class in the South Korean democratization process has been complex and variable, in part because of its internal heterogeneity and in part because of shifting political conjunctures in the transition to democracy. It would not make much sense, therefore, to characterize the Korean middle class as progressive or conservative, because different segments of it were inserted into the shifting conjunctures of political transition differently. At the same time, it would be also unsatisfactory to characterize middle-class politics as simply inconsistent or incoherent, because there exists some definite pattern in their behaviors.This analysis suggests that political behaviors of different segments of the middle class can be explained in terms of their locations within the broad spectrum of middle-class positions between capital and labor and by the changing balance of power between the two major classes. This is to acknowledge the fact that capital-labor relations constitute the primary axis of conflict and that middle-class politics must be understood ultimately in terms of this principal mechanism of class struggle. This is, however, not to assume that middle-class politics is simply a terrain of struggle between the capitalist and the working classes, as many Marxist theorists do. To repeat, in certain historical contexts middle-class politics can have an independent effect on the formation of the two major classes and the outcomes of struggles between the two.     

How limited is reformism?

Conclusion According to the reformist limitations thesis, a labor movement that organizes around a reformist program can never mount a challenge to capitalism itself. This program can be implemented without touching the sides, as it were, of the reigning system. Our own interpretation of the post-war history of the British and Swedish labor movements suggests the opposite. Unless the dominant political element in a reformist labor movement can be deflected from its program, and the internal cohesion of the movement thereby destroyed, a challenge to capitalism is inevitable.In the British case, the labor party remained the politically dominant component in the labor movement, and it turned its back on its own reformist commitments and espoused the defense of profits and managerial prerogatives. For historical reasons, the British trade-union movement never escaped from this dubious political guardianship and hence never developed the resources to continue a reformist political struggle in spite of the labor party.The Swedish social-democratic party shared throughout the post-war period the same focus on stabilization on the terms of an ongoing capitalist system as its British counterpart. But its escape from its reformist commitments was only partial, as its egalitarian traditions and ties to LO were stronger. To the extent to which it kept its political faith and went beyond mere welfarism, it saved itself from the disintegration and marginality of the British labor party and sustained the outward unity of the labor movement. To the extent to which the party fell from reformist grace, the trade-union movement displaced it as the political leading edge of the organized working class. The measure of reformism's compatibility with capitalism is thus the relationship between LO's (and increasingly also TCO's) policies and organization on the one hand, and the vital institutions of capital on the other.The dynamics of class conflict under capitalism point to two institutions the integrity of which must be defended if the system is to survive as such. The first of these is private property coupled to a market mechanism that gives private managements exclusive power over the allocation of productive resources. The social power of private property is exercised impersonally by market forces on the capital market, and personally in managerial prerogatives in the firm. The second vital institution of capitalism is its labor market under-pinned by the bourgeoisie's power to create unemployment and thus subvert opposition to its rule through deflation and failures of business confidence. Here lie the clues to what a progressive - cumulative - transition to socialism looks like. The normal mechanisms and règles du jeu of these two markets give way to political resource allocation, and corporate management yields up more and more of its prerogatives to the mobilized collective will of the workforce. Labor is de-commodified, and the investment function is enmeshed in a net of direct and indirect social controls.To project these changes in a written manifesto would presumably be revolutionary. The development of Swedish trade unionism suggests that, to go on pursuing the basic social justice and job security that reformists have always plodded after, meant implementing these changes anyway - piecemeal and as a matter of pragmatic necessity. The difference between revolution and reform thus boils down to their relative effectiveness in working-class mobilization and thus their historical potential.     

Global Capital and Labor Internationalism in Comparative Historical Perspective: A Marxist Analysis

Labor internationalism has historically developed in response to the increasing globalization of capital, but economic factors in themselves do not provide a sufficient explanation for the relative success of international solidarity in specific geographical and historical contexts. In the past, movements of international solidarity have tended to coalesce where inclusive class-based mobilizations in individual countries have polarized local class conflicts in ways that suggest a convergence of working-class interests on the international plane. As an emergent strategy of economistic labor organizations in various sectors of the capitalist world economy, however, internationalism may in fact promote the politicization of economic trade union struggles and thus catalyze broader levels of class solidarity and unity on the national and local planes.     

Community Solidarity,Political Competitiveness,and Social Rigidity: Relationships With Social and Health Services1

Previous work suggests that solidarity, political competitiveness, and rigidity influence the nature of social and economic change. Hypotheses that these three phenomena affect social well-being at the institutional level of the community beyond the effects of basic socioeconomic and population characteristics are examined in this study. Using data from a sample of North Carolina county-seat communities, a regression analysis with six controls indicates positive relationships of community solidarity and political competitiveness with social and health services. However, there is little indication that social rigidity has any effect on such services. Contrary to theories claiming the relative unimportance of communities, results indicate that community populations with high levels of solidarity and political competitiveness can have a positive influence on institutional growth and structural change.     

Bandits,Brigands and Militants: The Historical Sociology of Outlaws

Outlaws have been prominent actors in a social context which is characterized by collective dissent, conflict, and violence. Bandits, brigands, and militants emerged in societies with the decline of social justice, political stability, and economic prosperity. Their emergence and social networks with different actors and agencies provide us principal motives to deconstruct the social identity of outlaws and determine the factors that fostered collective dissent, conflict, and violence in different societies. This special issue covers a vast geography and different time periods to theoretically and methodologically advance our knowledge in the historical sociology of outlaws. In doing so, we address complex social, political, and cultural issues that rendered outlaws inextricable part of social problems. Exploring the power and activities of outlaws in different social geographies offers us new perspectives to tackle the origins and outcomes of social, political, and cultural dissent across the world.     

Social Capital and Communities of Place1

Abstract This paper develops a framework for examining the questions: Does social capital make a difference for well being in communities of place? How might rural sociologists utilize social capital to further well being in communities? The author reviews social capital literature, contrasting rational choice and embeddedness perspectives. Opting for a marriage between embeddedness and conflict theory, he introduces entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) as an alternative to social capital. ESI adds to social capital the notions of equality, inclusion, and agency. Research results are presented which support the embeddedness approach: community-level action (the community field) is not simply an aggregation of individual or organizational actions within the community; social capital and ESI contribute jointly and independently to community action. Examining economic development as a form of collective action, the author concludes?the following: a) ESI contributes to economic development, and b) inclusiveness (internal solidarity) is more closely related to community self-development while industrial recruitment is better predicted by strong external ties.     

Understanding the Sustainability of Insurgency Conflict in Thailand

Abstract

This article seeks to model the insurgency conflict in the three southern border provinces of the Kingdom of Thailand: Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. In so doing, it will explore the sustainability of the conflict by representing it in terms of a conflict life cycle that is responsive to complexity and change. The cycle arises from the cybernetic viable systems theory of ‘living systems’, and is able to foster a better understanding of what is happening empirically on the social level in these provinces, in respect to a situation characterized as one of incessant conflicts. This conflict model that arises suggests that there is an interconnection between the agents involved, and their individual and interactive dynamics. The conflict involves five types of politically related behaviours that occur between two interactive agents: the state (engaged in searching for and making arrests of insurgents) and the insurgents (engaged in violent acts of shooting, bombing, and arson). These agents are studied to the end of being able to determine the precise interactive nature of the political conflict in which they are engaged. In carrying out this investigation both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. The research was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, time series techniques were used to determine inferentially whether the conflict is both rational and involves interactive behaviours. Stage two adopts the Weibull distribution technique to assess the political conflict. In the third stage, a statistical analysis is conducted of the conflict situation in political terms. Finally, it is explained how the model and the methods used in this article may be used to deal with intractable conflict in other social environments, incidentally tracking the likelihood of conflicts being sustainable. Other agencies could utilize this approach in examining other political conflicts so as to be better able to prepare suitable approaches for coping with intractable conflicts to the end of fostering sustainable peace processes.     

Gendered and classed experiences of work–family conflict among lone mothers in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Research on the relationship between lone motherhood and social class is indeed limited. Drawing on 39 in-depth interviews, the overall aim of this article is to increase knowledge of the ways that working conditions and access to economic resources impact on Swedish lone mothers’ opportunities to integrate paid work and family. One assumption is that lone mothers are guided by culturally shaped ideas about the proper way to be a mother, and that variance between mothers’ notions of good mothering and the means for their realization, i.e. sociological ambivalence, may give rise to conflicts and dilemmas. Results show that low incomes, non-standard hours and temporary employment reduced working-class mothers’ prospects of practising the kind of mothering they considered proper, creating dilemmas and high levels of conflict. Mothers could not always effectively use the rights granted to parents by the Swedish welfare state. The variances between notions about good mothering and the means for realizing them were not as big for middle-class mothers, thanks to greater access to economic capital and flexible working hours. Different opportunity structures hence significantly influenced lone mothers’ opportunity to combine paid work and caring commitments in ways they found appropriate.     

Social capital and economic development in regional Australia: A case study

This article reports the findings of a case study of social capital and economic development conducted in two towns in regional Australia between 2001 and 2002. The hypothesis driving the research states that a town displaying a high level of social capital will also display a high level of economic development, while a town with a low level of social capital will display a low level of economic development. Moreover, it is suggested the social capital will exert a positive causal influence on economic development. The study goes some way to confirming this hypothesis and provides empirical evidence to suggest that both bonding and bridging social capital are important for successful community economic development outcomes.     

Durkheim's Concept of Anomie: Some Observations*

Most interpretations of anornie emphasize the normative aspect. However, Durkheim viewed anomie as involving more than a lack of norms or a conflict of norms. Discussions in The Division of Labor in Society and Suicide show that according to Durkheim the primary threats to social solidarity in modern societies are weak or ineffective structural constraints on individualistic needs and desires. In modern industrialized societies the primary mode of social control is not a set of rules or norms, although they do have a cohesive function, but the development of solidary, interdependent social relationships among diverse individuals. Crucial in the development of solidary social relationships is the rate and nature of social change. For modern or modernizing societies the most important form of social change is industrialization. If industrialization is too rapid then the likelihood of social inequality, economic crises, and family disruption is greater. New and solidary forms of social relationships are not allowed to develop properly. This results in weak constraints on individualistic needs and desires that have been “excited” by the industrialization.     

The dynamic transformation of political systems through social contract: a game theoretic approach

 We consider how the political system of the state evolves in the process of economic development. We present a dynamic public goods economy with non-overlapping generations, which confronts the free-rider problem without the state. In each generation, individuals enter under the unanimous rule a social contract of the political system, either monarchy or democracy, and then attempt to establish the state under the contracted political system. If the state is established, it provides public goods by enforcing tax on its members. Our game theoretic analysis shows: (i) the state can be established if and only if social productivity in terms of the capital stock of public goods is lower than a critical level; (ii) individuals choose democracy if social productivity is sufficiently high, while monarchy may be chosen if it is not; (iii) social productivity stochastically converges to the critical level over generations; and (iv) a simulation result shows several transformation patterns of political systems. Received: 21 June 1994/Accepted: 7 November 1995     

Identity and solidarity in the complex of citizenship: The relational approach

Within modernity, social identity and solidarity are deemed to be conflicting terms on principle. What has been called the culture of difference triggers a weak solidarity anywhere. But, if it is really so, how can we explain the rise of new social solidarities, a phenomenon which is nevertheless occurring throughout Europe along with concomitant processes of fragementation and differentiation? The author's general argument is that conflicts between social identities and solidarities cannot be understood in terms of a clash between individual and holistic perspectives. We need a relational perspective. From this angle, the author tries to explain why and how a post‐modern societal balance between social solidarity and social identities (i.e. a new citizenship) is emerging today, from the society rather than from the state, in such a way as to build up new forms of interdependencies and links between identities and solidarities. Sociologically speaking, it may be that a new societal semantic is emerging, according to which citizenship is a complex of rights and duties not only of individuals but also of social groups, arranging civic life into a number of ‘universalistic autonomies’ capable of reconciling collective goals and self‐management practices, solidarity and identity issues. This is the new challenge for post‐modern societies. The name of this new game is ‘societal citizenship’ or citizenship of social autonomies, including regional ones.     

Envisioning European Solidarity between Welfare Ideologies and the European Social Agenda

This article uses the debates of the Working Group ‘Social Europe’ of the European Convention for the Future of the European Union that drafted the Constitutional Treaty to explore the views on the European social model among representatives of the European political class. The debates within the European Convention on basic social values, social objectives, the Union's competences, the open method of coordination, the coordination of social and economic policies as well as the role of social partners provide insight into the emerging visions of European solidarity at the crossroads between welfare regime ideologies and Europeanization. It is argued that, despite an overall consensus regarding a greater future role of the European Union in social policy, the contours of the European social model and the scope of the Union's competences remain contested. However, the observed cleavages are to be found mainly on the left–right political scale, and this suggests that we might gradually be observing a re-politicization of the social policy discourse at European level. Nevertheless, the holding on to arguments of subsidiarity and especially sovereignty represents a barrier to envisioning European solidarity and developing a stronger European social agenda.     

Atencingo Revisited: Political Class Formation and Economic Restructuring in Mexico's Sugar Industry1

Abstract Sugarcane growers have had a close relationship to the state since the 1940s when a series of decrees established a heavy state intervention in the sugar industry, which then became highly regulated. Growers became loyal to the state in exchange for low but secure incomes and other social guarantees. After the introduction of economic liberalism in Mexico during the mid-1980s (called "neoliberalism" in Mexico), the sugar industry became largely de-regulated, and sugar mills were reprivatized. This article explores the process of political class formation in the sugarcane region of Atencingo, in the state of Puebla. Whether cane growers posit peasant, proletarian, or peasant-entrepreneurial demands is examined, as is the character of organizations and alliances that direct producers have established since the 1930s (oppositional, popular-democratic, or bourgeois-hegemonic). This paper documents the emergence of a peasant-entrepreneurial class and presents initial results from a survey questionnaire administered in 1995. Rather than offering an economic argument based on a narrowly defined class position, this explanation emphasizes the prevailing regional cultures, the forms of state intervention, and the types of leadership-the crucial mediating determinations that explain political outcomes in Atencingo and other regions of rural Mexico.     

The social welfare impact of privatisation in sub‐Saharan Africa: A discussion

Against the background of rising levels of anxiety around the state of the social fabric in South African society, this paper explores the disjuncture between the post-apartheid state’s policy discourse on social cohesion and the local discourses of South African residents in 24 focus groups held in townships around the country, which reveal significant levels of social fragmentation and intense contestation regarding the new regime of rights. The paper argues that the state’s policy discourse on social cohesion is part of an attempt to manage a complex social environment in terms of a project of developmental nation-state building that seeks to constitute the social domain as a normative realm of imagined homogeneity in which citizenship is premised on constitutional values. I argue that while the state’s concern with the ‘social’ relates to the critical question of solidarity in modern democracies, this has led, in the South African context, to the constitution of the social domain as a site of pathology, divorced from the broader political and economic relations of power in which this ‘pathology’ is embedded. At issue in this interaction between state and local discourses on the question of solidarity are the terms of membership in the political community. Who will and will not be part of the ‘new’ nation?     

Memories of Conflict and Present-Day Struggles in Europe: New Tensions between Corporatism,Class, and Social Movements

This lecture addresses the connection between the production in the present of particular memories of the past and the ability to frame present-day conflicts in ways that render certain possibilities legitimate while excluding others. Through the ethnographic material I have gathered during my career I will show how different projects of the future (personal and collective) appeal to memories of conflict that link responsibilities and generations at different scales. Taking as my object of observation the transformations in economic relations in a heavy industrial region of northwestern Spain I will trace the connections between the languages and practices of contention, the reconfigured structures of production and governance, and the production of diverse memories (and silences) of conflict. Diverse memories produce struggles framed in class terms, or struggles framed in terms of corporatist interests, or in terms of contingently defined social claims. Through this often ambivalent delimitation of conflicts between past and present, the field of possible futures gets configured and with it the spectrum of possible political action.     

Contradictory tendencies in the political culture of Croatian youth: unexpected anomalies or an expected answer to the social crisis?

A successful democratic consolidation of post-socialist societies depends, among other things, on their citizens’ political culture, younger generations included. Moreover, youth civic engagement today and in the future is a guarantee of the continuity and development of democracy, which means that scientists need to gain insight into young people’s political culture. In this paper we look at political values, institutional trust and participation as relevant components of the civic political culture. The analysis is based on quantitative data collected in the empirical studies of Croatian youth, carried out between 1999 and 2013. Based on longitudinal study results, a downward trend is identified regarding selected political culture indicators: acceptance of liberal-democratic values, trust in social and political institutions, interest in politics and party preference. However, there is a simultaneous increase in participation in various types of organizations, especially political parties. The interpretation of established tendencies is placed in a broader context of an inherited democratic deficit, economic recession and social crisis. Current trends are both indicators and consequences of young people’s inadequate political socialization as well as weaknesses of political institutions and various actors during the transition and consolidation period.