ABSTRACT: This study maps latent forms of political consciousness in the contemporary working class, moving beyond a narrow focus on far-right leanings among workers. Based on in-depth interviews with German manual workers, we reconstruct how workers criticize injustices of redistribution, recognition, and representation. We show that rather than any systematic political ideology, what dominates workers’ accounts is the moral scandalization of broken promises and violated expectations. The political consciousness of workers is defined by a reactive sense of injustice centered on violations of an implicit social contract. Building on Axel Honneth and Klaus Dörre, we interpret this as symptomatic of the political horizon of “demobilized class societies”. These are societies that continue to be structured by class relations but in which class-based identities and political representation channels have fragmented. Lacking a sense of collective agency, workers retreat to a defensive position centered on warding off the transgressions of groups above (the rich, bosses, and politicians) and below (‘takers’, intruders, and cheats). Politically, the moral grammar of the demobilized working class is ambivalent and contains openings for both right- and left-wing mobilization.

Der Beitrag kartiert, wie Klimakonflikte mit Formen sozialer Ungleichheit verwoben sind. In Erweiterung von Dörre et al.s Arbeiten zu betrieblichen Transformationskonflikten werden vier Formen gesamtgesellschaftlicher Ungleichheit herausgearbeitet, die in Auseinandersetzungen um das Klima virulent werden: die ungleiche Verursachung von Klimaschäden, ungleiche Betroffenheiten, ungleiche Transformationslasten und ungleiche ökologische Distinktionsgewinne. Auf der Basis empirischer Forschung aus dem „Triggerpunkte“-Projekt zeigen wir, dass diese Ungleichheiten und ihre politische (Nicht-)Bearbeitung entscheidend dafür sind, wie Bürger:innen verschiedener Klassen über die Klimapolitik streiten. Durch die Brille der Sozialstruktur betrachtet, so unser Befund, lassen sich auch die Blockaden der gegenwärtigen Klimapolitik besser verstehen. Der ökologische Umbau von Wirtschaft und Lebensweise wird nur dann gesellschaftlich tragfähig sein, wenn klassenbezogene Ungleichheiten, Interessenslagerungen und Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen sowie Fragen der kollektiven Handlungsfähigkeit systematisch mitbedacht werden.

This paper develops a cultural sociological perspective on political cleavage formation by integrating cleavage theory with the sociology of boundary-making. Compared to the structural and institutional dimensions of cleavage formation, the way in which political divides are embedded in the lives and identities of social groups has remained undertheorized and understudied. To help fill this gap, I conceptualize the group element of cleavage formation and how it should be studied. Against the shortcomings of a range of existing approaches (which I call tribalist, dispositional and attitudinal accounts), I develop a relational approach centered on the study of symbolic boundaries and cultural repertoires. By linking everyday classification processes with macro-level social change, the boundary perspective offers a nuanced understanding of how structural and political realignments interact with social group divides. The article concludes by calling for an interdisciplinary agenda of cultural cleavage research linking political science and cultural sociology.

In this paper, we develop a framework for studying the role of group identities in contemporary cleavage formation. Identities, we suggest, hold the key to a central conundrum of current political sociology: the fact that today’s electoral realignments appear to be rooted in the social structure of post-industrial societies, while the decline of mass organizations has dissolved traditional links between politics and social structure. Bringing cleavage theory into dialog with the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, we theorize how group identities may play an important role in stabilizing a new universalism-particularism cleavage emerging in Western Europe today. We identify two key processes of cleavage identity formation: bottom-up processes of “social closure” and top-down “classification struggles” waged by political entrepreneurs. For both processes, we review empirical findings and formulate an agenda for further research.

This study explores how the ideological divide between the radical right and liberal left is anchored in the common sense reasoning of ordinary citizens. Across Western Europe, cleavage research has documented a divide in attitudes towards immigration and cultural liberalization which some view as a new cleavage of ‘universalism’ versus ‘particularism’. Yet it is unclear how this squares with the fact that most citizens are non-ideologues with only moderate political interest and knowledge. Building on Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, and recent research into the politics of group identities, we theorize how even in the absence of fully worked-out political ideologies, citizens mobilize forms of common sense reasoning based on group distinctions and moral intuitions. We apply this approach in a rare qualitative comparison of political reasoning on both sides of the new divide, analyzing narrative interviews (N=64) with groups positioned on its opposing sides: workers or small owners voting for the radical right; and sociocultural professionals voting for the liberal left. We show how ‘common sense particularism’ and ‘common sense universalism’ draw on distinct intuitions regarding the worthy self, the scope of solidarity, and the normative status of community. These intuitions resonate with class-specific social experiences and group referents.

This chapter reviews the sociocultural approach to populism, its emergence and international diffusion, as well as new avenues of research. The sociocultural approach understands populism as a distinctive style of doing politics, of making appeals, and of establishing relations between citizens and representatives. This style is marked by a) a revaluation of the ‘low’ pole of cultural stratification, that is, popular but devalued cultural forms; b) by localist appeals to the “from here”; and c) by personalistic modes of political representation. The chapter presents key conceptual tools for understanding the populist style and reviews examples of a growing transnational field of empirical studies in the sociocultural tradition of populism research. Finally, we suggest that populism scholarship can profit from a deepened engagement with neo-Bourdieusian cultural class analysis. Populism’s ‘plebeian grammar’ and its vindication of the ‘low’, it is suggested, thrive in the context of relations of social devaluation and relative political exclusion characteristic of contemporary demobilized class societies.

Der Beitrag nimmt eine Kartierung der alltäglichen Gesellschaftskritik vor, die deutsche ProduktionsarbeiterInnen in informellen Interviewsettings äußern. Er rekonstruiert sieben typische Repertoires der Arbeiterkritik entlang der Gerechtigkeitsdimensionen ökonomischer Umverteilung, symbolischer Anerkennung und politischer Repräsentation. Die Alltagskritik der ArbeiterInnen veranschaulicht zentrale Charakteristika jenes politischen Bewusstseins, das dominierte Gruppen unter den Bedingungen einer demobilisierten Klassengesellschaft entwickeln. Damit ist ein Zustand gemeint, in dem Klassenverhältnisse zwar für objektive Lagen und Alltagserleben prägend bleiben, kulturelle Ausdrucksformen kollektiver Klassenidentität und politische Repräsentationskanäle aber brüchig geworden sind oder gänzlich fehlen. Wie der Artikel in Anknüpfung an Überlegungen Axel Honneths empirisch zeigt, liegt der Kern der Arbeiterkritik unter diesen Umständen in einem Unrechtsbewusstsein, das negativ durch den Bezug auf Übertretungen impliziter Erwartungen und Moralökonomien bestimmt ist. Dieser Zugang ermöglicht ein umfangreicheres und nuancierteres Verständnis der politischen Orientierungen von ArbeiterInnen, als es öffentliche Diskurse um einen vermeintlichen politischen Rechtsdrift der Arbeiterschaft nahelegen.

This contribution links the study of populism as a stylistic repertoire with Bourdieusian class analysis. The starting point is Ostiguy and Moffitt’s observation that the populist repertoire draws on symbols of the ‘sociocultural low’ and ‘the popular’ produced in non-political fields like food and leisure. Borrowing from Lévi-Strauss and Bourdieu, the article proposes to view these elements as metaphors for positions in vertical and horizontal class relations. Metaphorical signification rests on homologies between the symbolic sphere (‘culture’) and politics grounded in the divisions of social space (‘the class structure’). This perspective allows us to situate the populist repertoire in social structure and analyze its entanglement in struggles over the classification of groups, or symbolic class struggles.

Stefan Hirschauers Konzept des undoing gender erhebt den Anspruch, durch den systematischen Einbezug der Inaktivierung von Geschlecht die Annahmen der ethnomethodologischen Geschlechtersoziologie zu komplementieren und zu radikalisieren. Der Artikel rekonstruiert diesen Ansatz im Licht der soziologischen Praxeologie und konfrontiert ihn mit empirischen Befunden. Hirschauers Überlegungen liefern interessante Impulse für eine praxeologische Geschlechtersoziologie und eignen sich zur Analyse widersprüchlicher Dynamiken interaktiver Vergeschlechtlichungspraktiken. Seine Annahmen zu institutioneller Einbettung, Wandel und Politik der Geschlechter hingegen erweisen sich als theoretisch und empirisch weniger tragfähig.

This special issue revisits the political significance of class in contemporary “demobilized class societies,” where class remains a key axis of inequality yet is muted in discourse and political organization. Building on a conference at Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, contributors analyze how class identities, attitudes, and conflicts persist and reconfigure amidst societal transformations such as deindustrialization, cultural pluralization, and weakened labor institutions. The articles explore both manifest and latent forms of “classed politics,” including fragmented working-class consciousness, cultural mediations of inequality, and novel mobilizations in precarious labor sectors. Methodologically diverse, the studies span rich European democracies and engage with theorists like Pierre Bourdieu, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth. Collectively, they trace the intersections of class with migration, welfare, political demobilization, and environmental struggles, offering a pragmatic, empirically grounded renewal of class analysis. Rather than assuming class primacy, the issue highlights its complex entanglement with other dimensions of social conflict and its evolving role in shaping political worldviews.

Our study provides new findings on a classic, but recently rather neglected topic of political sociology, namely the relationship between class consciousness and political orientation. We distinguish between class identity, class interest and subjective status as three dimensions of class consciousness. All three are specific ways of translating shared objective situations into shared subjective self-understandings. For each form of consciousness we examine how widespread they are in different classes and to what extent they are linked to particular voting patterns. Based on original survey data from Germany, our analysis shows first that forms of class consciousness are widespread in post-industrial German society and remain clearly anchored in the objective class structure. People who work in low to medium-skilled jobs show a significantly stronger identification with the working class and its interests. Second, the main focus of our analysis then lies on the political significance of identification with the working class and its interests. Picking up on recent political science research we trace the effects of class consciousness on voting for three political camps: centre-left (SPD, Greens, Die Linke), centre-right (CDU, FDP) and radical right (AfD). We show that the social strongholds of the three camps each lie in different classes: the cultural middle class (centre-left), the economic middle class (centre-right) and the working class (far right). In addition, our analysis provides evidence of the continuing relevance of class consciousness for voting behaviour. Working class identity and a sense of low social status are linked to a stronger likelihood of voting AfD. An awareness of antagonistic class interests, by contrast, is associated with a clear preference for centre-left parties. This is as true for the population as a whole as it is for workers: workers who position themselves in solidarity with the employees’ side in top-bottom conflicts between trade unions and employers are much more likely to vote for left-wing parties. But the AfD also seems to offer a political home at least to some of those who identify with the working class. We interpret this as indicating that a working class identity can be politicised in a variety of ways: as an inclusive, solidarity-based vertical demarcation from the rich, bosses and owners; or as an exclusionary demarcation from other groups of wage earners (such as migrants, social benefit recipients or social outsiders). The right can colonise the working class based on a distinction between hard-working (and native) »makers« and alleged »takers« living parasitically at the expense of other people. This has important strategic consequences for left-wing parties who do not want to leave working-class voters to the radical right.

In dieser Studie untersuchen wir den Zusammenhang von Klassenbewusstsein und Wahlverhalten in Deutschland. Ausgangspunkt ist die Beobachtung, dass sich politische Lager zunehmend entkoppeln von traditionellen Klassenbindungen – insbesondere in der Arbeiterklasse. Anhand einer repräsentativen Umfrage analysieren wir drei Dimensionen des Klassenbewusstseins: Klassenidentität, Klasseninteresse und das subjektive Gefühl sozialer Unterlegenheit („Untenbewusstsein“). Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen: Während ein ausgeprägtes Klasseninteresse mit einer höheren Zustimmung zu Parteien der linken Mitte einhergeht, korrelieren Klassenidentität und Unten-Bewusstsein häufig mit einer Wahl der radikalen Rechten oder Nichtwahl. Besonders auffällig ist, dass sich auch innerhalb der Arbeiterklasse unterschiedliche Bewusstseinsformen politisch sehr verschieden auswirken. Wir plädieren daher für eine differenzierte politische Analyse, die nicht allein auf objektive Klassenlagen blickt, sondern subjektive Wahrnehmungen und politische Deutungsmuster einbezieht. Für linke Parteien ergibt sich die strategische Schlussfolgerung, in ihrer politische Ansprache stärker auf Interessenantagonismen zwischen dem gesellschaftlichen Unten und Oben zu zentrieren.