Warum Klasse zählt

What are social classes? What characterizes them, how do they arise, and how do they affect people's lives? American sociologist Erik Olin Wright has spent his entire life grappling with these questions and has presented the most significant social science reformulation of class theory. His classic essay "Understanding Class," along with a detailed interview with Wright about why class matters, is now available for the first time in German translation in this volume. Class theory recognizes three major traditions: stratification approaches define class based on individual characteristics and living conditions, Weberian approaches based on mechanisms of opportunity accumulation, and Marxist approaches based on mechanisms of exploitation and domination. For Wright, the central task is to understand these mechanisms in order to unite them in an explanatory model that connects the micro-level of class effects, which manifest in individual characteristics, with the macro-level effects generated by the nature of structural positions in the market and economic production. A milestone in class theory!.