Erik Olin Wright

Erik Olin Wright
Erik Olin Wright giving a lecture at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (March 13, 2013)
Born (1947-02-09) February 9, 1947[1]
Berkeley, California, U.S.
Nationality American
Other names scholar, professor
Academic background
Education Ph.D
Alma mater Harvard College (B.A. 1968)
Balliol College (B.A. 1970)
University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1976)[1]
Thesis 'Class Structure and Income Inequality[2] (1976)
Doctoral advisor Arthur Stinchcombe[3]
Academic work
Discipline Sociologist
Sub-discipline Analytic Marxism
Institutions University of Wisconsin–Madison (1976-)
Notable students Andrew Szasz, Wilmot James, Vivek Chibber, George Steinmetz, Karen Shire, Julia Adams, Devah Pager, Josh Whitford, César Rodríguez Garavito[1]
Main interests Marxist Class Analysis
Website http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/

Erik Olin Wright (born 9 February 1947) is an American analytical Marxist sociologist, specializing in social stratification, and in egalitarian alternative futures to capitalism. He is noted for his divergence from classical Marxists in his breakdown of the working class into subgroups of diversely held power and therefore varying degrees of class consciousness. Wright has introduced novel concepts to adapt to this change of perspective including deep democracy and interstitial revolution.[4]

Early life and education

Erik Olin Wright was born on 9 February 1947 in Berkeley, California. His parents were both Jewish. He received two BAs (from Harvard College in 1968, and from Balliol College, University of Oxford in 1970), and a PhD from University of California, Berkeley, in 1976. Since that time, he has been a professor of sociology at University of Wisconsin - Madison.[1]

Wright began making contributions to the intellectual community in the mid-1970s, along with a whole generation of young academics who were radicalized by the resistance to the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. Since that time, he has distinguished himself from his generation by his steady commitment to research for more than a quarter century.[5]

In 2012, Wright was elected President of the American Sociological Association.[6]

Thought

Social classes

Wright has been described as an "influential new left theorist".[7] His work is concerned mainly with the study of social classes, and in particular with the task of providing an update to and elaboration of the Marxist concept of class, in order to enable Marxist and non-Marxist researchers alike to use "class" to explain and predict people's material interests, lived experiences, living conditions, incomes, organizational capacities and willingness to engage in collective action, political leanings, etc. In addition, he has attempted to develop class categories that would allow researchers to compare and contrast the class structures and dynamics of different advanced capitalist and "post-capitalist" societies.

Wright has stressed the importance of:

  1. control over and exclusion from access to economic/productive resources;
  2. location within production relations;
  3. market capacity in exchange relations;
  4. differential control over income derived from the use of productive resources; and,
  5. differential control over labor effort in defining 'class', while at the same time trying to account for the situation of expert, skilled, manager, and supervisory employees, taking inspiration from Weberian accounts of class and class analysis.

According to Wright, employees with sought-after and reward-inelastically supplied skills (due to natural scarcities or socially constructed and imposed restrictions on supply, such as licensing, barriers to entry into training programs, etc.) are in a 'privileged [surplus] appropriation location within exploitation relations' because, while they are not capitalists, they are able to obtain more privileges through their relation to the owner of the means of production than less skilled workers and harder to monitor and evaluate in terms of labor effort. The owner(s) of the means of production or their employer in general therefore has to pay them a 'scarcity' or 'skill/credential' rent (thus raising their compensation above the actual cost of producing and reproducing their labor power) and tries to 'buy' their loyalty by giving them ownership stakes, endowing them with delegated authority over their fellow workers and/or allowing them to more or less be autonomous in determining the pace and direction of their work. Thus, experts, managers of experts, and executive managers tend to be closer to the interests of the 'bosses' than to other workers.

Erik Olin Wright's work includes Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis (Cambridge, 1997), which uses data collected in various industrialized countries, including the United States, Canada, Norway, and Sweden. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Real Utopias

Wright has more recently been associated with a renewed understanding of a socialist alternative, deeply rooted on social associativism.[8] The transition to this alternative, according to Wright, depends on designing and building "real utopias", the name of a research and book of his. "Real utopias" combine alternatives to prevailing institutions that carry moral principles in accordance to a just and humane world and that are concerned with problems of viability.

Selected works

Monographs

  • Wright, Erik Olin (1973). The politics of punishment: a critical analysis of prisons in America. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 9780060903183.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1978). Class, crisis, and the state. London: New Left Books. ISBN 9780902308930.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1979). Class structure and income determination. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 9780127649504.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1997) [1985 Verso]. Classes. London New York: Verso. ISBN 9781859841792.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1989). The debate on classes. London New York: Verso. ISBN 9780860919667.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1997). Class counts: comparative studies in class analysis. Cambridge New York Paris: Cambridge University Press Maison des Sciences de l'homme. ISBN 9780521556460.
  • Wright, Erik (2010). Envisioning real utopias. London New York: Verso. ISBN 9781844676170.
  • Alternatives to Capitalism: proposals for a democratic economy with Robin Hahnel (2014) New Left Project[9]
  • Wright, Erik (2015). Understanding Class. London New York: Verso. ISBN 9781781689455.

Collected works

  • Wright, Erik Olin; Fung, Archon (2003). Deepening democracy: institutional innovations in empowered participatory governance. London New York: Verso. ISBN 9781859844663.
This is part of the Real Utopias Project
  • Wright, Erik (2005). Approaches to class analysis. Cambridge, UK New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521603812.
  • Wright wrote the preface for: Gornick, Janet C.; Meyers, Marcia (2009). Gender equality: transforming family divisions of labor. London New York: Verso. ISBN 9781844673254. Wright is also the book series' editor.

Journal articles

  • Wright, Erik Olin; Levine, Andrew (September–October 1980). "Rationality and class struggle". New Left Review. New Left Review. I (23).
  • Wright, Erik Olin (September–October 2006). "Compass points: towards a Socialist alternative". New Left Review. New Left Review. II (41).
  • Wright, Erik Olin (February 2013). "Transforming capitalism through real utopias". American Sociological Review. 78 (1). doi:10.1177/0003122412468882.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Wright, Erik Olin (June 2016). "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). University of Wisconsin, Madison Department of Sociology. Retrieved June 20, 2017.
  2. ↑ Wright, Erik Olin (1976). Class Structure and Income Inequality (Ph.D.). University of California, Berkeley. OCLC 175174677. Retrieved June 20, 2017.
  3. ↑ Wright 1976, p. xiv.
  4. ↑ Wright, Erik Olin (2010). Envisioning Real Utopias. London, New York: Verso. p. 321. ISBN 978-1-84467-618-7.
  5. ↑ Ritzer, George (September 15, 2007). Encyclopedia of Social Theory. London: SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. Wright, Erik Olin. ISBN 9780761926115.
  6. ↑ "American Sociological Association". Archived from the original on 4 May 2012. Retrieved 15 June 2012.
  7. ↑ Meiksins, Peter F. "A Critique of Wright's Theory of Contradictory Class Locations". In Wright, Erik Olin. The Debate on Classes. New York: Verso Books. pp. 173–183. ISBN 978-1-85984-280-5.
  8. ↑ Transforming Capitalism through Real Utopias
  9. ↑ "Selected published writings". ssc.wisc.edu. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.