Book contents
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Chapter Two - Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2022
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
The way in which this chapter attempts to bring ‘Marx in the Field’ is through the exploration of how some key questions, central to all empirical research, can be addressed in ways informed by Marxian categories, methods and approaches. These key questions are what do we want to know? Why? How can we find out? In engaging with these questions, the chapter will address the tasks of ‘problematisation’ and the purpose of empirical investigation, that is, to generate new knowledge (versus ‘verification’). In this process there are necessary protocols of what constitutes empirical evidence and assessing the quality/validity of evidence. Research inspired by Marx's ideas has to be disciplined by such protocols. The chapter will also explore the particular challenges posed by Marx's notion of what is ‘visible’ (observable, hence empirically researchable) and what is necessarily ‘invisible’ in capitalism (e.g. surplus value – or value more generally) – issues of essence and appearance. Notably, ‘appearance’ is no less ‘real’ than essence, and they are fundamentally connected as in Marx's conception of commodity fetishism; still their distinction should be acknowledged in empirical investigations. Finally, the chapter will conclude with observations on researching class, which is to say the ensembles of objective and subjective conditions encapsulated (and differentiated) as class (1) relations, (2) dynamics, (3) experiences, (4) beliefs and (5) practices. This follows Balibar's thesis that in a capitalist world, class relations are ‘one determining structure, covering all social practices, without being the only one’.
Introduction
There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. (Marx 1976: 104) Where things and their mutual relations are conceived not as fixed but rather as changing, their mental images, too, i.e. concepts, are also subject to change and reformulation; that they are not be encapsulated in rigid definitions, but rather developed in their process of historical or logical formation. (Engels, ‘Preface’ to Capital, Volume III, in Marx [1894] 1981: 103) [For Marx] The concrete results of an investigation could not be predicted with a set of abstractions […]
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- Marx in the Field , pp. 17 - 30Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021