Vivek Chibber

Postcolonial theory has become enormously influential as a framework for understanding the Global South. It is also a school of thought popular because of its rejection of the supposedly universalising categories of the Enlightenment. In this devastating critique, mounted on behalf of the radical Enlightenment tradition, Vivek Chibber offers the most comprehensive response yet to postcolonial theory. Focusing on the...

Why is our society so unequal? Why, despite their small numbers, do the rich dominate policy and politics even in democratic countries? Why is it often difficult for working people to organise around common interests? How do we begin building a more equal and democratic society? These are the questions that are answered in Confronting Capitalism. Even though political organising...

"A quite thorough and impressive work, not only a compelling defence of materialism but also a fair-minded if highly critical engagement with cultural theory. It isn't clear how culturalists—especially the anti-Marxist ones—can effectively respond to this broadside, tightly and cogently argued as it is." - Chris Wright, CounterPunch "Chibber…has developed a sophisticated, elegant, and readable defence of the sociological significance...

An influential sociologist revives materialist explanations of class, while accommodating the best of rival cultural theory. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, analysis of class and other basic structures of capitalism was sidelined by theorists who argued that social and economic life is reducible to culture—that our choices reflect interpretations of the world around us rather than the limitations...