Maisuria, A; (2016) Obscured Inequality and Feasible Equity: An Exploratory Study of Life History, Consciousness and Practices of Social Class in Contemporary Sweden. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

For Marxist’s, when people are conscious of class relations, as existent and experienced as part of everyday life, the condition is created for the possibility for active engagement in class struggle. Consciousness and practices of class constitutes the problematic of this research. The research was carried out in Sweden, which is at present experiencing a crisis of social democratic dominant hegemony with accelerated neoliberalisation and populist Right-wing nationalism. This moment of transition frames Sweden as a critical case and a significant research context in relation to exploring the Marxist problematic. The study provides descriptive analysis of fifteen students accounts of their own life histories and perspectives of the empirical reality of class in Sweden drawing upon critical realism to develop explanatory critique of their accounts in the spirit of the Marxist problematic. This gave rise to identifying the dominant mechanisms in modern Swedish society that could be attributed to generating the dominant conditions for socio-cultural tendencies. Such tendencies are important in shaping consciousness and practices in everyday life. Focussing on exploring empirical reality and experiences, this study brings together analysis of i) the Marxist problematic concerned with class consciousness for social transformation ii) with the Swedish social democratic crisis. This exploratory study primarily contributes insights into lived class struggle in contemporary Swedish society, which finds that particular socio-cultural forms obscure inequality in Sweden. This obscuring is explained as a suppressive mechanism critically important for the practical function of the perception of feasible equity. Importantly for the Marxist research problematic, the study also finds that complete consent to the status quo is never fully secured and ambiguities prevail. The critical nuances to the dominant common sense of social democratic egalitarianism offers opportunities for theory building about the possibility of class consciousness for struggle in contemporary Sweden, and beyond.

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