Is social class an identity or a form of social polarity?

This session is articulated around the debate on how we think about social class and, more specifically, whether or not class is an identity. One position maintains that, as class has been considered an identity, it has been treated primarily as a merely cultural phenomenon. This has led to a reduced capacity for analysing it as a social phenomenon—a form of social relationship—that accounts for a large part of the formation of the cultural, economic and social phenomena of our contemporary world. Another position is that today the social totality can no longer be understood from the working-class perspective: its operational meaning has disappeared. It is one thing for class to continue to have an explanatory function and another for it to function as an axis of identity, as an anchoring point for political mobilization. Class cannot be a preconceived concept with which to account for all antagonism.

With Xavier Domènech and Antonio Gómez Villar