Community and Class in a Neoliberal Age

• In Event: 235 - Regular Session. Community

Abstract

One of the defining features of our times is increasing social inequality. We observe it within the rich democracies of the West and in many countries of the developing world, where strata of the super-wealthy have arisen alongside small and stagnant middle classes and still large numbers of the very poor. How can we reverse the dynamics of inequality as they affect community development? Inequality poses challenges that cannot be addressed adequately within the depoliticized context of traditional community development frameworks. We argue a deeper understanding of social class is needed. In this essay we follow the Marxian tradition with its emphasis on exploitation and domination, but we broaden the understanding of class beyond the mode of production to include a range of groups that have emerged under neoliberalism to assess the implications for community development. We need to pay attention not only to how class struggles play themselves out across the spaces of community and the practice of community development, but also, to how strategies of exploitation and domination are transposed over time, as when pensions earned from past work are clawed back in the present, or when mortgage debts serve as claims on future earnings.

Authors

• Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York

• Lorraine C. Minnite, State University of New Jersey at Rutgers-Camden