There has been a curious gap between theoretical debate and quantitative research on social inequality throughout the history of sociology. The theoretical debates on inequality have above all revolved around the concept of class, and in particular around the adequacy of the Marxist theory of class. From Weber, to Parsons, to Dahrendorf and Giddens, the point of departure of theorizing the natu...

Precis: The writings of Manuel Castells are centrally concerned with the development of a Marxist urban sociology. This article provides a critical examination of the central concepts of these writings. The article begins with some preparatory remarks on Castells's critique of conventional urban sociology and on the Althusserian variant of historical materialism which he adopts. This is followe...

From the middle of the 19 century until the last decade of the 20, the Marxist tradition provided the most systematic body of ideas and social theory for radical critics of capitalism as an economic system and social order. Even those critics of capitalism who did not directly identify with Marxism relied heavily on Marxist ideas about class, exploitation, commodification, the state, ideology. ...

This paper addresses shifts in governance and the re-framing of citizenship discourse in the People’s Republic of China during the 1990s. Drawing upon a Sinicized Marxist-Leninism, public intellectuals and propagandists have sought to represent citizens’ rights primarily as socio-economic beneŽ ts of China’s reform agenda delivered by the Communist Party. This materialist articulation of citize...

Catherine MacKinnon, perhaps the dominant voice of North American feminist legal theory over the last two decades, developed her feminist theory of law through an extended metaphor with Marxism. Marxist thought thus became thoroughly intertwined with MacKinnon’s particular brand of radical feminism in the minds of many feminist legal scholars and activists. As MacKinnon’s work has fallen out of...

This article takes the political engagement of hackers as a prism for examining the relations between technological determinist thinking and collective action. The concept ‘collective action framing’ is borrowed from social movement theory to describe how hackers have appropriated notions of a post-industrial, information society in their struggles against intellectual property laws and state c...