The Dictionary of Human Geography

Comp. by: LElumalai Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_C Date:31/3/09
Time:21:45:54 Filepath://ppdys1108/BlackwellCup/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-
9781405132879/appln/3B2/revises/9781405132879_4_C.3d

generalization of a polemic by British

Orientalist Bernard Lewis on ‘The roots of

Muslim rage’ and had the same destination

(seeorientalism). ‘The overwhelming major-

ity of fault-line conflicts,’ Huntington con-

cluded, ‘have taken place along the boundary

looping across Eurasia and Africa that separ-

ates Muslims from non-Muslims’. Huntington

attributed this to what he called, with offensive

disregard, ‘the Muslim propensity toward vio-

lent conflict’, and argued that since the Iranian

revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979, a

‘quasi-war’ had been in progress between

Islam and the West. Huntington’s ideas gained

a new lease of life following 9/11 (Salter,

2002), but they have been sharply criticized

both for their conceptual crudity – in particu-

lar, Huntington’s unsophisticated rendition of

cultural interaction and identity formation

(Said, 2000; Sen, 2006) – and for their unre-

flective demonization of Islam, or

Islamophobia. dg

Suggested reading

Kreutzmann (1998); Robertson (2006).

class In The communist manifesto (2002

[1848]), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

asserted that ‘[t]he history of all hitherto exist-

ing society is the history of class struggles’.

This declaration marks the foundations of

class analysis. Although the concept of class

has since come into wide usage, it remains

contested. There is disagreement on how best

to define it, on its general role insocial the-

oryand on whether it remains relevant to the

analysis of contemporary societies. For some,

classes have become largely redundant in

today’s societies; for others, class persists as

one of the fundamental forms of social

inequality andpower. Some view class as a

narrow economic phenomenon, while others

embrace a more elastic conception that spans

cultural dimensions and economic conditions.

In its most persistent popular sense, class

refers to a social division or system of rank

order, evident in the phrase ‘upper, middle

and lower classes’, that is associated with

position, privilege and hereditary advantage

(or the lack thereof). Class is also construed

as distinctive bodily practices, such as attire,

carriage, speech, diet, habitation and forms

of lifestyle consumption – all linked to under-

lying unequal structures of material resources.

Uses of the term ‘class’ are always

evaluative, whether positive or pejorative.

Hence, the upper classes are sometimes

the ‘aristocracy’ – endowed with a natural

authority and disposition to rule – or else the

‘leisured class’ – parasitic on society’s sur-

pluses and given to ostentatious consumption.

Correspondingly, the middle classes are

sometimes the ‘enterprising’ classes, who

embody individual initiative, toil and pru-

dence, and form the mainstay of civil society.

Alternatively, they are the bourgeoisie –

merchants, traders, entrepreneurs and profes-

sionals, committed to defending the inequal-

ities and privileges of private property and to

organizing the exploitation of the working

classes. The lower classes are sometimes the

‘working classes’ or the ‘working poor’ – sim-

ple, hard-working and law-abiding people,

who can claim no inherited privileges – or,

alternatively, the ‘lower orders’ – uncivilized

and unruly (and in some renderings, criminal

and sexually promiscuous), who court idleness

and are a drag on economic progress.

The eventful ‘discovery’ of anunderclassby

US-based conservative academics and com-

mentators in the 1980s added a gendered

and racial twist to these negative portraits.

In this ‘culture of poverty’ discourse, which

significantly influenced the 1990s policy shift

in the US from welfare to workfare, the under-

class came to signify a disaffected layer of

work-shy, feckless, criminal, undeserving and

semi-detached poor people, typically black

and from disorganized households headed by

single mothers, who had grown accustomed to

surviving on excessively generous handouts

from government-run welfare programmes.

From an academic standpoint, the analysis

of class has taken two dominant forms, sorted

by historical lineage. The first set of approaches,

deriving from Karl Marx, pivots around the

concepts ofclass relationsandclass structure

(see marxist economics). Other adjectival

uses of the term class – class location, class

conflict, class interests, class formation and

class-consciousness – obtain their meanings

from their link to class relations and class

structure. Sociologist Erik Olin Wright con-

tends that class relations should be viewed,

sensu stricto, as a specific form of prevailing

social relations of production(Wright, 2005).

These, he says, designate the different kinds

of rights and powers of persons in society who

participate in production. When the rights and

powers of people over productiveresources

are unequally distributed – when some people

in a society have greaterrightsand powers

with respect to certain productive resources

than do others – these relations can be

described asclass relations(seecapitalism).

It is important to note that the rights and

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 88 31.3.2009 9:45pm

CLASS