Ebook: The Class Matrix: Social Theory After the Cultural Turn

An influential sociologist revives materialist explanations of class, while accommodating the best of rival cultural theory.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, analysis of class and other basic structures of capitalism was sidelined by theorists who argued that social and economic life is reducible to culture―that our choices reflect interpretations of the world around us rather than the limitations imposed by basic material facts. Today, capitalism is back on the agenda, as gross inequalities in wealth and power have pushed scholars to reopen materialist lines of inquiry. But it would be a mistake to pretend that the cultural turn never happened. Vivek Chibber instead engages cultural theory seriously, proposing a fusion of materialism and the most useful insights of its rival.

Chibber shows that it is possible to accommodate the main arguments from the cultural turn within a robust materialist framework: one can agree that the making of meaning plays an important role in social agency, while still recognizing the fundamental power of class structure and class formation. Chibber vindicates classical materialism by demonstrating that it in fact accounts for phenomena cultural theorists thought it was powerless to explain. But he also shows that aspects of class are indeed centrally affected by cultural factors.

The Class Matrix does not seek to displace culture from the analysis of modern capitalism. Rather, in prose of exemplary clarity, Chibber gives culture its due alongside what Marx called “the dull compulsion of economic relations.”

“The Class Matrix is an important theoretical contribution to a wide and lively discussion in the humanities and social sciences about structural and cultural explanation. Chibber’s profound reassessment of the Marxist theory of class in the light of the new culturalist arguments shows in a sophisticated and convincing way that the capitalist economic system and its class structure of capital and wage labor have a special force in constraining the choices of action open to capitalists and wage-workers.”―Goran Therborn, University of Cambridge

“Vivek Chibber’s magnificent new book carves a path forward for structuralist and materialist analysis in a post–cultural turn academic era. Chibber reformulates Marxist theory to recognize the fundamental role of class structure in shaping human well-being while allowing a place for contingency in the generation of collective action. He adroitly uses this framework to shed light on the trajectory of modern capitalism and class formation in the twenty-first century. The Class Matrix is the response to the cultural turn that structuralists like me have been waiting for, and the book does not disappoint.”―James Mahoney, Northwestern University

“Along with a materialist critique of the cultural turn, Chibber restores the centrality of class. Lucid theory from a brilliant mind. Sure to generate vigorous debate.”―Michael Burawoy, author of The Politics of Production

Vivek Chibber is Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital and Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India. He is a contributor to the Socialist Register, American Journal of Sociology, Boston Review, and New Left Review.