AP:
summerwinterschool@tub.co
This seminar offers an advanced introduction to Marxist class analysis and Labor Process Theory (LPT) as central theoretical approaches within the sociology of work. Based on Karl Marx's analysis of the labor process, work in capitalism is examined as a space of social conflict in which power relations, forms of control, and practices of consent and resistance are negotiated. The labor process is the central place where capital and labor meet: this is where abstract labor power is transformed into concrete labor through organization, control, and discipline; this is also where exploitation and alienation become tangible.
The seminar focuses on the classic contributions to LPT, in particular the works of Harry Braverman and Michael Burawoy, who significantly shaped the debate of the 1970s and 1980s with their analyses of deskilling, control, and the manufacture of worker consent. In addition, an understanding of class in the Marxian tradition—based primarily on Erik Olin Wright—will be introduced, which understands exploitation as a central structural principle of social inequality. From this perspective, the analysis of the labor process provides the micro-social basis for understanding macro-structural class relations.
The seminar has two objectives: In the first part, the theoretical and historical foundations of Marxist labor and class analyses will be explored, with class being understood as a relational and dynamic process. In the second part, the applicability of these approaches to the analysis of current developments in the world of work will be critically discussed. These include platform work, digitalization and algorithmic control, new forms of subjectification and class identity, spatial strategies of capitalist power, and everyday, often unspectacular forms of resistance.
By combining classic texts with current empirical studies, the seminar provides an analytical approach to work as a central arena of social conflict and, at the same time, contributes to an understanding of the ongoing reproduction of class relations in contemporary capitalism.
