News & announcements from ASA Marxist Section members
The Marxist Section hosts three sessions and a Business Meeting at the 2018 ASA meeting in Philadelphia. The sessions include "Open Topic on Marxist Sociology," "Capitalism and Its Crises: Economic, Political, Ecological," and Roundtables.
In 2018 the Marxist Section elected a new Chair, two new Council members, and gave awards to six of its members for outstanding work.
This article examines the US political process and the duopoly party system within a vast array of state strategies and elite manipulation. It contends that analyses of the political process as a real engine of change and that significant differences within the two-party system are flawed because they do not account that they serve as mechanisms for how power and dominance in maintained and reproduced.
Central to this argument is the idea that segments of the population, including some of the most exploited and oppressed, derive material and ideological benefit from the misery associated with the inequalities that are rooted in the current established social order. It is this complexity that demands an explanation that can move beyond simple dichotomies (e.g., elite vs. non-elite) to a greater understanding to how individuals collaborate with a system that is rooted in inequality. This article examines one of the ways that the U.S. state facilitates the incorporation of millions of individuals into the rank-and-file of policing, correctional, national security, and military organizations. Coercive occupations are deeply embedded in U.S. society and contribute to a way of life for millions as premier job suppliers. Yet, allegiance cannot be reduced to economic motives and interests, because loyalty is also culturally contrived.
Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award The Sweezy Book Award goes to the author(s) of the best book published in the past two years in the area of Marxist theory and research. The committee will select the book that best demonstrates the most thoughtful, competent, or innovative analysis of a [...]
A Statement Against White Supremacy The violent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and President Donald Trump’s responses following this overt expression of white supremacy reminds us in Marxist Sociology that we cannot expect silence and business-as-usual to magically improve social relations. In fact, our work as Marxists shows that, on the [...]
The 35th Annual Qualitative Analysis Conference Creating, Negotiating, and Transcending Social Boundaries in Everyday Life Hosted by St. Thomas University Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada May 16 to 18, 2018 Abstract submission deadline: September 15th, 2017 Boundaries are key concepts in the social science tool-kit. They are social, physical, temporal, [...]
Join with us in congratulating the winners of our section awards! ASA MARXIST SOCIOLOGY SECTION AWARDS 2017 Marxist Sociology Lifetime Achievement Award: Lauren Langman, Loyola University Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award: Stefano Longo, North Carolina State University Rebecca Clausen, Fort Lewis College Brett Clark, University of Utah The Tragedy [...]
The task at hand is to place the political economy of repression within the contours of U.S. history. It involves sketching in broad terms how, over time, repression is the product of dynamic and fixed relations between capital and labor. The goal is to represent how capital is able to repress labor given essential prerequisites.
Examination of the limit serves as a powerful tool for revealing the hidden characteristics of concepts, and also their relationship with other concepts. This article follows the processes of sovereign exceptionalism from Marx to the capitalist estrangement of labour from Marx to their limit figures. The paper builds on comparisons between the proletarian and the homo sacer; however, the focal point is not on the figures themselves, but their importance in understanding the effect of biopolitics on power relations. Building on the concept of pouvoir constituant as discussed by Carl Schmitt, this paper addresses the ways in which different types of constituent power form structures that can then be used against the constituents themselves. The limit figures suggest a process of abjection is co-created in the establishment of power structures, and that overcoming this process requires a conscious dis-agreement with the politics of policing.