Critical Sociology

In the period 2002–12, the Peruvian economy almost doubled in size. This growth was mainly the consequence of the commodity boom in these years. The importance of the mining sector for the Peruvian Treasury is politically translated in the immense difficulties Peruvian Governments have in closing the doors to transnational mining corporations. The government of Ollanta Humala actually inserted the fiscal contribution of extractive industries into the cornerstone of its social policies. In Peru, a growing body of literature is emerging regarding mining issues. However, it lacks an analysis of the development of the mining sector in relation to the general workings of capitalism. In this article we analyze the development of mining in Peru from a critical political economy perspective as this enables us to identify the forces that are advancing the capitalist development process as well as the forces of resistance to this development.

This article examines processes of state formation in Chiapas, Mexico, from the time of the Revolution (1910–17) to the present. The purpose of the article is threefold. First it demonstrates how differing modes of production attempt to alter the production of space, yet at the same time, how pre-capitalist spaces and social relations, as well as movements of resistance, both alter the topography of capitalism as it unfolds. Second it explores ‘everyday’ processes of state formation linked to localized class cultures. In doing so, it makes claims to originality by providing a spatially sensitive account of Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, and indeed breaks new ground by demonstrating a sub-national articulation of passive revolution as a means of constructing state space. Finally, it considers the importance of counter-spaces formed in opposition to the state and what the response has been in turn to these ‘spaces of resistance’.

This article situates the past decade’s boom in Brazil’s prison population in the context of the country’s enduring system of racial domination. Prison demographics are analyzed in relation to the role that race and gender play in configuring both the ‘regime of legality’ and contemporary urban war against particular territories and bodies in Brazil. The article also pays close attention to gendered captivities of disenfranchised black women trapped as ‘mules’ in the underground drug economy. Ethnographic fieldwork in a São Paulo women’s prison provides the basis for a critique of the regime of punishment that structures black lives in the neoliberal city.

Contemporary sociology seems to have extreme reservations about the significance of vote-motivated responsiveness – ordinary people’s reputed influence on policy in democratic settings – both in general and especially when it comes to the masses’ role in endorsing policies with repressive outcomes. Those texts that do acknowledge the masses’ role in policymaking deal almost exclusively with the struggle of the lower-classes for emancipation/equalization, and rarely delve into broad social groups’ contribution to repressive policies. The repressive-responsiveness hypothesis suggested here is used to reexamine the case of internal Jewish ethnic politics in Mandatory Palestine. I argue that ethnic politics of this period can only be thoroughly understood once responsiveness to the majoritarian Ashkenazi workers’ interests is incorporated, thus suggesting that the use of democratic procedures was central to Mizrahi marginalization in that period.

Survey research shows that foreign-born Latinos in the USA are among the least likely to participate in political activism. Yet during the spring of 2006, up to five million (mostly Latino) immigrants and their allies took part in a historic national protest wave. This article examines how nativist legislation can spark immigrant large-scale collective action in an unexpected location. The case of Fort Myers, FL illustrates the cognitive mechanisms that help explain why and how external threats can transform a latent sense of group membership among unconventional protest organizers (e.g. immigrant soccer league members and ethnic small business owners) into a willingness to take action and utilize pre-existing community resources for the purpose of mass mobilization. These findings have important implications for Latino politics, immigration, and social movement scholars.

Bringing together Karl Marx’s key intellectual contributions and the best of contemporary anti-racist (critical race) queer feminism is a promising direction for critical social theory. Important studies exist that use this approach. However, its theoretical foundations have not been adequately clarified or elucidated; this article attempts to do so. The proposed anti-racist queer feminist historical materialism rethinks Marx’s materialist conception of history and theory of the capitalist mode of production through the more expansive conceptions of social reality offered by anti-racist queer feminism while simultaneously reworking the latter contributions through Marx’s critical materialism and particular attention to historical specificity and social form.

The sociological study of popular cinema provides an analytic entry point for exploring how economic realities are given meaning through cultural products. In this paper, I compare how two Hollywood movies about bike messengers, Quicksilver and Premium Rush, position their main characters in relationship to the new economy. Both films provide commentaries on work and social class, but, as products of unique socio-historical periods, I argue that their commentaries differ significantly. Produced in the 1980s, Quicksilver uses messengering as a form of middle-class redemption, allowing the protagonist to return to the world of capitalist finance. By contrast, as a product of the Great Recession, Premium Rush offers a utopian vision of self-determination for low-wage service workers at the same time that it reifies the uncertainty, unpredictability, and riskiness that increasingly characterize American labor. I also show that both films converge in their portrayal of women and working-class blacks.