HOW CLASS WORKS — 2008 A Conference at SUNY Stony Brook June 5-7, 2008

The Center for Study of Working Class Life is pleased to announce the How Class Works – 2008 Conference, to be held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, June 5 - 7, 2008.

Purpose and orientation : The conference seeks to explore ways in which an explicit recognition of class helps to understand the social world in which we live, and ways in which analysis of society can deepen our understanding of class as a social relationship. Presentations should take as their point of reference the lived experience of class; proposed theoretical contributions should be rooted in and illuminate social realities.

Conference themes : The conference welcomes proposals for presentations that advance our understanding of any of the following themes:

The mosaic of class, race, and gender. To explore how class shapes racial, gender, and ethnic experience and how different racial, gender, and ethnic experiences within various classes shape the meaning of class. Special focus: the legacy of Theodore W. Allen's work on the invention of the white race and its implications in the new racial and ethnic mix of 21 st century U.S. society.

Class, power, and social structure. To explore the social content of working, middle, and capitalist classes in terms of various aspects of power; to explore ways in which class and structures of power interact, at the workplace and in the broader society. Class and community. To explore ways in which class operates outside the workplace in the communities where people of various classes live.

Class in a global economy. To explore how class identity and class dynamics are influenced by globalization, including experience of cross-border organizing, capitalist class dynamics, international labor standards.

Middle class? Working class? What's the difference and why does it matter? To explore the claim that the U.S. is a middle class society and contrast it with the notion that the working class is the majority; to explore the relationships between the middle class and the working class, and between the middle class and the capitalist class.

Class, public policy, and electoral politics. To explore how class affects public policy, with special attention to health care, the criminal justice system, labor law, poverty, tax and other economic policy, housing, and education; to explore the place of electoral politics in the arrangement of class forces on policy matters. Special focus: class, health, and health care.

Class and culture: To explore ways in which culture transmits and transforms class dynamics. Pedagogy of class. To explore techniques and materials useful for teaching about class, at K-12 levels, in college and university courses, and in labor studies and adult education courses.

Conference registration and housing reservations is be possible after February 15, 2008. Details and updates will be posted at http://www.workingclass.sunysb.edu

Conference coordinator :

Michael Zweig Director, Center for Study of Working Class Life Department of Economics State University of New York Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384 631.632.7536 michael.zweig@stonybrook.edu

http://www.sunysb.edu/workingclass/conference/2008/cfp.shtml