Envisioning Real Utopias

Date
-
Event Sponsor
The Munro Lectureship Fund and The Lane Center
Speaker

Erik Olin Wright, Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison

 

 

Biography

Erik Olin Wright is a professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin - Madison. His extensive writings on class analysis provide a perspective that seems more useful for structural class analysis in North America. He   incorporates analysis of recent developments in capitalism in this class analysis. Wright's work is within the Marxian and critical tradition, is theoretical, historical and quantitative, builds on earlier Marxian approaches to the study of social class, and also introduces ideas and approaches reminiscent of Max Weber and other writers. Wright's analysis is not only theoretical but is also heavily empirical - examining organization of jobs and enterprises along with views and characteristics of individuals in the labour force.  The work of Wright is contained in Class, Crisis and the State (1978), Class Structure and Income Determination (1979), and Classes (1985), and Class Counts (1997).