University of Illinois
History 301 (LIR, Sociology 301)
Prof. Diane P. Koenker
Spring 2000

Discussion/Study Questions for Joyce, ed., Class, Part C
February 16-18, 2000

I.

1. According to E. P. Thompson, class is not a structure or category, but a historical relationship, something that "happens." How does it happen? Is it bound to happen? If we stop history in its tracks at a given point, can we "see" class? Why or why not?

2. Is class, according to Thompson, something "objective," "out there," or "inside our own heads"?

3. Which comes first, according to Thompson, "class" or "class struggle"? How does rebelliousness in defense of custom translate into class or class consciousness?

4. Katznelson expands Marx's "class-in-itself-class-for-itself" into analytical levels of class formation. What are these levels? Is a progression from one to the next implied or inevitable?

5. What is "class formation" according to Katznelson? Thompson?


II.

6. For Gareth Stedman Jones, what is the relationship between "experience," "consciousness," and "language"? What is the "essentialist conception of class," according to Stedman Jones? Which comes first, language or interests?i

7. For Scott, language of class and language of gender are both ways of articulating difference. Which is more fundamental? Is "working class" a universal category, or a masculine one?

8. What is Joyce's use of "class"? How does his argument about "master narrative" and "dominant myth of class" relate to the approaches of Thompson, Katznelson, Marx, or Weber? Is there an irreducible essence of class, whatever the language used to express it? Or can class itself be divided and subdivided, and if so, on what grounds?

9. Donald Reid, in introducing Ranci¸re's work, contrasts "sociological" constructs with deconstructionist readings of "interruptions." What does he mean by the statement, "Rancière endows neither literary nor sociological evidence with primacy?"

10. Are manual laborers capable of abstract thought? Is this abstract thought necessarily "class consciousness," or something else, less, or more, or different?

11. Sewell addresses labor historians obsession with materiality: they believe "those features of the historical situation regarded as material are assumed to have greater causal power than features regarded as cultural or political or ideological." Why should the material take causal precedence? What is the material, anyway? Is money material or symbolic? Does the value of labor come from material product, or something else? How did the "myth of the material" arise in social thought, according to Sewell?

III.

12. Some of these writers consider gender as alternate forms of identity to class. Does "nation" figure into any of their analyses? Should it? When Jones, Joyce or Thompson write so evocatively about the experience of a national political language and its relationship to class, does this imply that class formation is peculiar to specific nation-states?

13. If you could invite one of these authors to participate in class discussion, which one would you choose? What question would you most want to ask?

14. Do you consider yourself a materialist or an idealist when it comes to explaining causality in history? Why?






Back to Main Page