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Farewell to the Category-Producing Class?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2001

Frederick Cooper
Affiliation:
University of Michigan

Abstract

The essay focuses on two points: First, Eley and Nield's emphasis on micropolitics, discourse, and diverse forms of affinity is stimulating and essential but inadequate to the task of understanding when and how the category of working class is useful. Such a task also requires nuanced analysis of interactions on a large scale and at long distance, of control of material resources, and of centralizing institutions. Second, their identity-centered vision of politics is too constraining to make clear the multiple forms of political imagination, connection, and mobilization or to figure out the extent as well as the limits of power.

Type
Brief Report
Copyright
© 2000 The International Labor and Working-Class History Society

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