Articulating Class In "Post-Fordist" France

Abstract

In recent yean, there has been a growing interest in analyzing the political and economic changes that have occurred under late capitalism Anthropologists and sociologists alike have suggested that one of the key changes that has taken place in the international organization of capitalism has been the shift from a mass "Fordut" system of industrial organization to globalized or "Post-Fordist" regimes of flexible accumulation. It has been argued that shift has not only reshaped the material realities of peoples' everyday lives but they have also altered the ways in which people constitute themselves as collective subjects. Universalist forms of identification such as class, so it is argued have given way to a series of new forms of affiliation involving national ties, regionalism, ties of ethnic affinity and detemtorialized forms of solidarity While the appearance of new forms of affiliation have undoubtedly surfaced along with the large scale transformations of late capitalism, the extent to which they have overridden old forms of identity is the subject of much debate. In this paper. I will argue it may be premature to jettison the notion of class in any attempt to understand the dynamics of contemporary social world. Rather what is needed are attempts to problematize class identity and, indeed class relations in their complex relationship to emergent particularistic forms of affiliation. Drawing on research amongst the family farmers in rural Languedoc, who often engaged in militant forms of regional activism. Otis paper then argues, that class, especially in its complex relations to region, remains core in structuring collective identities in the context of late capitalism