The social classes in the process of globalization. A book by Anne-Catherine Wagner (Discovery, al. “Benchmarks “, October 2007, 117 p.)
The categories of classes, structures or social reproduction have become obsolete in the ideological context the current valuation of the fluidity and mobility ? How should we rethink the principles of analysis of social classes in the context of a globalized economy ? This is the main issue of this new book of the collection “Guides” written by Anne-Catherine Wagner, who offers a synthesis very challenging of the relationship between globalization and social classes.
The first chapter – “The cosmopolitanism of the upper classes to the workers ‘internationalism” – offers a quick overview of history. A-C, Wagner shows that it is necessary to guard against the illusion of a radical novelty in the movement of globalization of the social classes. As she recalls, the upper classes are always distinguished by their cosmopolitanism, constitutive of the life-style aristocrat. Let us retain the example of the ” grand tour “, invented by aristocrats and british in the Sixteenth century, a sort of a training trip that completes a good education, to learn or perfect French and Italian, to become familiar with the aesthetic criteria, standards, political and religious, the codes of sociability of the companies of course. But internationalism is also present in the working classes of european from their training at the beginning of the XIX century. In the United States and in France, the working class is built by the contribution of immigration. The international solidarities are born between the workers ‘ parties.
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