Reimagining Class in Australia

This book explores key New Left and Marxist texts in Australia during the 1980s and their relation to international contemporary and historical concepts of class. The author contracts the popular ideas of Connell, Bourdieu and the ‘Death of Class’ thesis with those of lesser known texts. Paternoster concludes that no single definition can explain all of the various meanings of the concept of class. Instead, loosely following Castoriadis, classes need to be seen as creatively imagined and institutionalised. This can be studied through historical phenomenology, which links political economy, cultural sociology, anthropological ethnography and community studies; an approach which allows the contributions of Marxist and New Left authors to be reintegrated with contemporary theories. Doing so highlights the importance of labour populism in Australia, while cautioning against the ahistorical application of texts such as Boudieu’s Distinction.

Reimagining Class in Australia will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sociology, political economy and anthropology.