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Erik Olin Wright

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"Erik Wright" redirects here. For other people with similar names, seeEric Wright.

Erik Olin Wright
Wright lecturing atKyiv Universityin 2013
Born(1947-02-09)February 9, 1947
Berkeley,California,US
DiedJanuary 23, 2019(2019-01-23)(aged 71)
Milwaukee,Wisconsin,US
Spouse
Marcia Kahn Wright
​
​
(m.1971)​
Academic background
Alma mater
ThesisClass Structure and Income Inequality[2](1976)
Doctoral advisorArthur Stinchcombe[3]
Other advisorsMichael Reich[3]
Influences
Academic work
DisciplineSociology
School or traditionAnalytical Marxism
InstitutionsUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison(1976–2019)
Doctoral students
Notable students
Main interestsMarxist class analysis
Notable ideas
Websitessc.wisc.edu/~wrightEdit this at Wikidata

Erik Olin Wright(February 9, 1947 – January 23, 2019) was an Americananalytical Marxistsociologistat theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison,specializing insocial stratificationand in egalitarian alternative futures tocapitalism.He was known for diverging fromclassical Marxismin his breakdown of the working class into subgroups of diversely held power and therefore varying degrees ofclass consciousness.Wright introduced novel concepts to adapt to this change of perspective including deep democracy andinterstitial revolution.[8]

Early life and education

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Born on February 9, 1947, inBerkeley,California,Wright was raised inLawrence,Kansas.His parents, M. Erik Wright and Beatrice Ann (Posner) Wright, were both psychology professors at theUniversity of Kansas.[9][10]He received twoBachelor of Artsdegrees, the first with a social studies major atHarvard Collegein 1968 and the second with a history major atBalliol College,University of Oxford,in 1970. Wright completed aPh.D.in sociology at theUniversity of California, Berkeleyin 1976[11]and joined the Department of Sociology at University of Wisconsin–Madison[1]the same year.[12]

Career

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Wright began making contributions to the intellectual community in the mid-1970s, along with a whole generation of young academics who were radicalized by theVietnam Warand thecivil rights movement.[13]

At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wright supervised the dissertations of numerous young scholars who proceeded to become notable sociologists and politicians, among whom are includedWilmot James,César Rodríguez Garavito,andVivek Chibber.[4]Wright also served on the dissertation committees of scholars who go on to make considerable contributions to the fields ofsocial stratification,social policy, and inequality includingGøsta Esping-Andersen,former American Sociological Association presidentEduardo Bonilla-Silva,and the lateDevah Pager.

Throughout Wright's career, he was solicited by other universities to join their sociology faculty.[4]One notable such recruitment attempt occurred atHarvard Universityin 1981. Among Wright's supporters wereHarrison White,who respected Wright's work despite opposition to Wright'sMarxistpolitical commitments. Wright's opponents at Harvard includedDaniel BellandGeorge Homans,as well as university presidentDerek Bokwho purportedly blocked the department's attempt to recruit Wright.[14]Harvard's attempt to recruit Wright coincided with its decision to deny tenure in 1981 toTheda Skocpol,a decision that was later reversed following controversy over accusations of gender discrimination.[15]

In 2012, Wright was elected President of theAmerican Sociological Association.[16]

Personal life

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Wright was also an avidfiddleplayer, often encouraging guests tosquare danceat parties.[17]

Wright died on January 23, 2019, fromacute myeloid leukemiaat a hospital inMilwaukee,Wisconsin,aged 71.[4][18][9]

Thought

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Social classes

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Wright has been described as an "influentialnew lefttheorist ".[19]His work was concerned mainly with the study ofsocial classes,and in particular with the task of providing an update to and elaboration of the Marxist concept of class, in order to enable Marxist and non-Marxist researchers alike to use "class" to explain and predict people's material interests, lived experiences, living conditions, incomes, organizational capacities and willingness to engage incollective action,political leanings, and so on. In addition, he attempted to develop class categories that would allow researchers to compare and contrast the class structures and dynamics of differentadvanced capitalistand "post-capitalist"societies.

Wright has stressed the importance of:

  1. control over and exclusion from access to economic/productive resources;
  2. location within production relations;
  3. market capacity in exchange relations;
  4. differential control over income derived from the use of productive resources; and,
  5. differential control over labor effort in defining "class", while at the same time trying to account for the situation of expert, skilled, manager, and supervisory employees, taking inspiration fromWeberianaccounts of class and class analysis.

According to Wright, employees with sought-after and reward-inelastically supplied skills (due to natural scarcities or socially constructed and imposed restrictions on supply, such as licensing, barriers to entry into training programs, etc.) are in a "privileged [surplus] appropriation location within exploitation relations" because, while they are not capitalists, they are able to obtain more privileges through their relation to the owner of the means of production than less skilled workers and harder to monitor and evaluate in terms of labor effort. The owner(s) of the means of production or their employer in general therefore has to pay them a "scarcity" or "skill/credential" rent (thus raising their compensation above the actual cost of producing and reproducing theirlabor power) and tries to "buy" their loyalty by giving them ownership stakes, endowing them with delegated authority over their fellow workers and/or allowing them to more or less be autonomous in determining the pace and direction of their work. Thus, experts, managers of experts, and executive managers tend to be closer to the interests of the employers than to other workers.

Wright's books includeClass Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis(Cambridge, 1997), which uses data collected in various industrialized countries, including the United States, Canada, Norway, and Sweden. He was a professor of sociology at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madisonuntil his death.

Real utopias

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Main article:Real utopian sociology

Later in his career, Wright was associated with a renewed understanding of asocialistalternative, deeply rooted on socialassociative democracy.[20]The transition to this alternative, according to Wright, depends on designing and building "real utopias", the name of a research project and book of his. They'd counter prevailing institutions by advancing democratic and egalitarian principles, thereby pointing in the direction of a more just and humane world. Examples includeWikipediaand theMondragon Corporation.[20]In his 2010 bookEnvisioning Real Utopias,Wright wrote an extensive case study about Wikipedia as an example of asocial economyactivity.[21]

Bibliography

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Books

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  • Wright, Erik Olin (1973).The politics of punishment: a critical analysis of prisons in America.New York: Harper & Row.ISBN978-0-06-090318-3.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1978).Class, crisis, and the state.London: New Left Books.ISBN978-0-902308-93-0.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1979).Class structure and income determination.New York: Academic Press.ISBN978-0-12-764950-4.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1997) [1985Verso].Classes.London New York:Verso.ISBN978-1-85984-179-2.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1989).The debate on classes.London New York:Verso.ISBN978-0-86091-966-7.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1994).Interrogating Inequality: essays on class analysis, socialism, and Marxism.London: Verso.ISBN978-0860916338.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (1997).Class counts: comparative studies in class analysis.Cambridge New York Paris: Cambridge University Press Maison des Sciences de l'homme.ISBN978-0-521-55646-0.
  • Wright, Erik (2010).Envisioning real utopias.London New York:Verso.ISBN978-1-84467-617-0.
  • Wright, Erik Olin.Alternatives to Capitalism: proposals for a democratic economy with Robin Hahnel (2014) New Left Project.
  • Wright, Erik (2015).Understanding Class.London New York:Verso.ISBN978-1-78168-945-5.
  • Wright, Erik Olin (2019).How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century.Verso Books.ISBN978-1-78873-605-3.

Collected works

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  • Wright, Erik Olin;Fung, Archon(2003).Deepening democracy: institutional innovations in empowered participatory governance.London New York:Verso.ISBN978-1-85984-466-3.
    This is part of theReal Utopias Project
  • Wright, Erik (2005).Approaches to class analysis.Cambridge, UK New York: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-60381-2.
  • Wright wrote the preface for:Gornick, Janet C.; Meyers, Marcia (2009).Gender equality: transforming family divisions of labor.London New York:Verso.ISBN978-1-84467-325-4.Wright is also the book series' editor.

Selected journal articles

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See also

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References

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  1. ^abWright, Erik Olin (June 2016)."Curriculum Vitae"(PDF).University of Wisconsin, MadisonDepartment of Sociology.RetrievedJune 20,2017.
  2. ^Wright, Erik Olin (1976).Class Structure and Income Inequality(PhD thesis).University of California, Berkeley.OCLC175174677.ProQuest302818054.
  3. ^abWright 1976,p. xiv.
  4. ^abcdefSzetela, Adam (January 23, 2019)."Remembering Erik Olin Wright".Dissent Magazine.New York.RetrievedMarch 3,2020.
  5. ^Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (1993).Squatters, Politics, and State Responses: The Political Economy of Squatters in Puerto Rico, 1900–1992(PhD thesis). University of Wisconsin-Madison.OCLC30612010.ProQuest304058154.
  6. ^Esping-Andersen, Gøsta (1978).Social Class, Social Democracy AND State Policy: Parity Policy and Party Decomposition in Denmark and Sweden(PhD thesis). University of Wisconsin-Madison. p. iii.OCLC705977095.ProQuest302910232.
  7. ^Kenworthy, Lane (1995).In Search of National Economic Success: Balancing Competition and Cooperation.SAGE Publishing.p. vi.ISBN978-0-8039-7160-8.
  8. ^Wright, Erik Olin (2010).Envisioning Real Utopias.London, New York: Verso. p. 321.ISBN978-1-84467-618-7.
  9. ^abSeelye, Katharine Q. (January 30, 2019)."Erik Olin Wright, 71, Dies; Marxist Sociologist With a Pragmatic Approach".New York Times.RetrievedJune 9,2021.
  10. ^"The Pragmatic Utopian: Erik Olin Wright, 1947-2019".Social Science Space.January 28, 2019.
  11. ^"CURRICULUM VITAE"(PDF).ssc.wisc.edu.RetrievedJune 6,2021.
  12. ^"Erik Olin Wright: Challenging - and Maybe Transcending - Capitalism Through Real Utopias".Goethe Universität.
  13. ^Ritzer, George (September 15, 2007).Encyclopedia of Social Theory.London: SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. Wright, Erik Olin.ISBN978-0-7619-2611-5.
  14. ^Schumer, Fran R. (October 18, 1981)."A Question of Sex Bias at Harvard".The New York Times.New York.
  15. ^Sanger, David E. (January 8, 1985)."Harvard Reverses Tenure Decision".The New York Times.New York.
  16. ^"American Sociological Association".Archived fromthe originalon May 4, 2012.RetrievedJune 15,2012.
  17. ^"American Sociological Association".April 18, 2019.RetrievedMay 7,2019.
  18. ^"Renowned UW-Madison sociology professor Erik Olin Wright dies at 71".Madison State Journal. January 25, 2019.RetrievedJanuary 28,2019.
  19. ^Meiksins, Peter F. (1998)."A Critique of Wright's Theory of Contradictory Class Locations".In Wright, Erik Olin (ed.).The Debate on Classes.New York: Verso Books. pp. 173–183.ISBN978-1-85984-280-5.
  20. ^abWright, Erik Olin (2012)."Transforming Capitalism through Real Utopias".American Sociological Review.78(1): 1–25.doi:10.1177/0003122412468882.S2CID145566259.
  21. ^Wright, Erik Olin (2010).Envisioning Real Utopias.Verso Books. pp. 200–203.ISBN9781844676170.

Further reading

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