Abstract:
How should we think about the relations among race, class and capitalism? Does racism drive capitalism or capitalism drive racism? Can one end racism under capitalism? Or does one first have to vanquish capitalism? W.E.B. Du Bois’ sociology offers a succession of answers to these questions as he wrestled with a life of public and political engagement that spanned the world.
Bio:
Michael Burawoy has been an ethnographer of industrial workplaces in four countries: Zambia, United States, Hungary and Russia. In his different projects he has tried to illuminate — from the standpoint of the working class — postcolonialism, the organization of consent to capitalism, the peculiar forms of class consciousness and work organization in state socialism, and the dilemmas of transition from socialism to capitalism. No longer able to work in factories, he turned to the study of his own workplace – the university – to consider the way sociology itself is produced and then disseminated to diverse publics. Throughout his sociological career he has engaged with Marxism, pursuing its reconstruction in the light of his research and, more broadly, in the light of the historical challenges of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Most recently he has been studying the life and work of W.E.B. Du Bois for its significance both for sociology and for Marxism.