Marxism and Class, Gender and Race Rethinking the Trilogy

MARXISM AND CLASS, GENDER AND RACE: RETHINKING THE TRILOGY Published (2001) in RACE, GENDER amp; CLASS, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 23-33, special issue on Marxism and Race, Gender amp; Class. It is posted here with permission of Jean Belkhir, Editor Introduction A taken for granted feature of most social science publications today, especially those about inequality, is the ritual critique of Marx and Marxism in the process of introducing theoretical alternatives intended to remedy its alleged failures. This practice became popular in early feminist literature: Marx and Marxists were criticized for not developing an in-depth analysis of the oppression of women, their economism, class reductionism, and sex blind categories of analysis.†¦show more content†¦I intend critically to examine, from the standpoint of Marxist theory, the arguments for race, gender and class studies offered by some of their main proponents, assessing their strengths and limitations and demonstrating, in the process, that Marxism is theoretically and politically necessary if the study of class, gender and race is to achieve more than the endless documentation of variations in their relative salience and combined effects in very specific contexts and experiences . Race, Gender amp; Class as a Social Science Perspective Long before the popularization of the Race, Gender amp; Class (RGC) perspective, I suspect that most Marxist sociologists teaching social stratification were already adept practitioners. For many years, for example, the Section on Marxist sociology of the American Sociological Association included in its annual program a session on Class, Gender and Race. I certainly called my students attention, in twenty nine years of teaching social stratification and other subjects in which inequality matters, to the fact that everybody s lives are affected by class, gender and race/ethnic structures (in addition to age and other sources of inequality). We are, in Marx s terms, an ensemble of social relations (Marx, 1994: 100, emphasis added), and we live our lives at the core of the intersection of a number of unequal socialShow MoreRelatedThe Changing Social Position Of Children And How It Can Be Researched2266 Words   |  10 Pageschildren and how it can be researched will be described and explained in relation to gender. It will look at the approaches of Functionalists, Feminists, Marxist, the dominant framework, Social construction, Interactionism and it will focus on how these approaches impact on children also in relation to gender. Abbott (2006, p.75) states that education is a central part to an understanding of the manifestation of gender. This is because through school and meeting other students, they develop an identityRead MorePostmodernism and Identity in Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World2797 Words   |  12 PagesGatekeeper explains it best, saying, â€Å"From now on you are the Dreamreader. You no longer have a name†(Murakami, 39). While this could be a nod to American hard-boiled fiction, it is also an obvious nod to the brand of philosophy created by Karl Marx, Marxism. The Marxist definition of identity says that the consciousness of each human is based on their social position, instead of their social position being based on their consciousness. This is an interesting route for Murakami to take, especially given