Class, Capitalism and Colonialism - Professor John Holmwood

This session discusses inequality and social change in modern society. It sets out how modern society is distinguished from earlier types of society and comes to be understood by sociologists as capitalist modernity with class as a central category of analysis. This displaces the fundamental role of colonialism in modernity with two consequences. The first is that there is difficulty in understanding the continued reproduction of structures that are otherwise identified as being pre-modern. The second is the increasing discrepancy between what is held to be the objective reality of class and everyday understandings of inequality which seem not to map directly onto it. This discrepancy is frequently assigned to an unfortunate intrusion of subjective meanings associated with ‘identity’ – usually, those of gender, race and ethnicity – without either reflection on the implicit failure of class analysis, or a structural explanation of the identities deemed to be problematically subjective. In this session, I will suggest that a proper appreciation of the role of colonialism in the emergence and development of modernity would allow us to understand class and other inequalities differently.

Resources

Oliver Cromwell Cox – Global Social Theory website. https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinke...
Marx: Colonialism and Capitalism – John Holmwood on Connected Sociologies website. https://thesociologicalreview.org/pro...
Weber: Religion, Nation and Empire – Gurminder K. Bhambra on Connected Sociologies website. https://thesociologicalreview.org/pro...
World Inequality Report https://wir2018.wid.world/

Questions for discussion

1. How do sociologists distinguish between traditional and modern society?
2. What do sociologists see as the main features of capitalism?
3. Why does European colonialism continue to matter?

Thiss lecture is part of the Connected Sociologies module on the Politics of Inequality. Read more and download lesson plans here: https://thesociologicalreview.org/pro...