Erik Olin Wright was an American sociologist and a leading figure in analytical Marxism who devoted his career to developing a rigorous, empirically testable framework for class analysis. He argued that many people occupy contradictory class locations, positions such as managers and supervisors that combine elements of both the capitalist and working classes rather than fitting cleanly into a single traditional Marxist category, and he built large comparative survey projects to measure class structure across countries on this basis. In his later work, especially Envisioning Real Utopias (2010), Wright turned from class analysis toward the systematic study of institutional alternatives to capitalism, evaluating real-world experiments such as cooperatives, participatory budgeting, and unconditional basic income for their potential to expand social empowerment over economic life.
Facts
BirthplaceBerkeley, California, U.S. 1 Death PlaceMilwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. 1 Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionIntroduced the concepts of deep democracy and interstitial revolution within analytical Marxist class analysis 1 Notable WorkEnvisioning Real Utopias (2010) 1 Connections
Associated With
Source Erik Olin Wright (Wikipedia)
Source Erik Olin Wright (Wikipedia)
Source Erik Olin Wright (Wikipedia)
Practices Studied
Wright neo-Marxist class analysis introduced contradictory class locations to describe positions, such as managers, that hold simultaneous exploiter and exploited relations within stratification.
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Nationality
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Source Erik Olin Wright (Wikipedia)Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia articleQuote, Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia article
Erik Olin Wright (February 9, 1947 – January 23, 2019) was an American analytical Marxist sociologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, specializing in social stratification and in egalitarian alternative futures to capitalism.
Sources
1. Erik Olin Wright (Wikipedia)
Wikipediainfobox, Born field
February 9, 1947, Berkeley, California, U.S.
infobox, Died field
January 23, 2019 (aged 71), Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
lead sentence
Erik Olin Wright (February 9, 1947 - January 23, 2019) was an American analytical Marxist sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in social stratification and in egalitarian alternative futures to capitalism.
article body, Envisioning Real Utopias sentence
In his 2010 book Envisioning Real Utopias, Wright wrote an extensive case study about Wikipedia as an example of a social economy activity.
article body, deep-democracy sentence
Wright introduced novel concepts to adapt to this change of perspective including deep democracy and interstitial revolution.
Associated With: University of California, Berkeley, Article text
in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976 and joined the Department of Sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison the same year.
Associated With: Harvard University, Article text
He received two Bachelor of Arts degrees, the first with a social studies major at Harvard College in 1968 and the second with a history major at Balliol College, University of Oxford, in 1970.
Associated With: University of Oxford, Article text
He received two Bachelor of Arts degrees, the first with a social studies major at Harvard College in 1968 and the second with a history major at Balliol College, University of Oxford, in 1970.
View the Source Wikidata: Erik Olin Wright
Wikidata Q928571, class allow-list match, case-insensitive label variant (w-bbfill-smallsix2-0926/resolve_ci.ps1)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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