Capital accumulation regimes, social divisions and inequality in globalised capitalism

The research proposal builds upon earlier research done by the author for his MPhil dissertation, which shows that class analysis (CA) is a research programme (RP) founded on the assumption that classification systems, based on the distribution of individual resources, are key to explain individual and collective action and subjectivity. However, lacking theoretical frameworks to account for the production and appropriation of that resources, those approaches cannot account for the reproduction and changes in social inequality and divisions.

Thus, we propose to advance an alternative RP overcomingthe flaws of CA based on the following argument. Beneath the unequal distribution of resources (inequality) and the emergence of social divisions, (classes) operates the exclusion of large shares of population from key resources (nature or the commons, economic assets, rights, etc.) that are decisive to capital accumulation.

Hence, the research takes a Marxist perspective -informed by Jessop, Standing, Sassen, and Peruvian sociologist Guillermo Rochabrún- to explain the constitution of key social divisions from the processes of capital accumulation. While recognizing that social divisions must not be reduced to the capital and wage-labour contradiction, the research focuses the variegated responses of people to the process of capital accumulation to account for their exclusion of economy and society, and thus conditioning their life chances and collective representations.