Contemporary articles citing Burawoy M (1985) Politics Production

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Vallas, SP. 1999. "Rethinking Post-fordism: the Meaning of Workplace Flexibility." Sociological Theory. 17:1 68-101. Link: Social scientists increasingly claim that work structures based on the mass production or ``Fordist'' paradigm have grown obsolete, giving way to a more flexible, ``post-Fordist'' structure of work. these claims have been much disputed, however, giving rise to a sharply polarized debate over the outcome of workplace restructuring. I seek to reorient the debate by subjecting the post-Fordist approach to theoretical and empirical critique. Several theoretical weaknesses internal to the post-Fordist approach are identified, including its uncertain handling of ``power'' and ``efficiency'' as factors that shape work organizations; its failure to acknowledge multiple responses to the crisis of Fordism, several of,which seem at odds with the post-Fordist paradigm; and its tendency to neglect the resurgence of economic dualism and disparity within organizations and industries. Review of the empirical literature suggests that, despite scattered support for the post-Fordist approach, important anomalies exist (such as the growing authority of ``mental'' over manual labor) that post-Fordism seems powerless to explain. In spite of its ample contributions, post-Fordist theory provides a seriously distorted guide to the nature of workplace change in the United States. Two alternative perspectives toward the restructuring of work organizations are sketched-neoinstitutionalist and ``flexible accumulation'' models-which seem likely to inspire more fruitful lines of research bn the disparate patterns currently unfolding within American work organizations.
Szelenyi, S, I Szelenyi & I Kovach. 1995. "The Making of the Hungarian Postcommunist Elite: Circulation in Politics, Reproduction in the Economy." Theory and Society. 24:5 697-722. Link
Emigh, RJ. 1998. "The Mystery of the Missing Middle-tenants: the ``negative'' Case of Fixed-term Leasing and Agricultural Investment in Fifteenth-century Tuscany." Theory and Society. 27:3 351-375. Link
Mahoney, J. 2000. "Path Dependence in Historical Sociology." Theory and Society. 29:4 507-548. Link
Krippner, GR. 2001. "The Elusive Market: Embeddedness and the Paradigm of Economic Sociology." Theory and Society. 30:6 775-810. Link
Lee, CK. 2002. "From the Specter of Mao to the Spirit of the Law: Labor Insurgency in China." Theory and Society. 31:2 189-228. Link
Block, F. 2003. "Karl Polanyi and the Writing of the Great Transformation." Theory and Society. 32:3 275-306. Link: Karl Polanyi's 1944 book, The Great Transformation, has been recognized as central for the field of economic sociology, but it has not been subject to the same theoretical scrutiny as other classic works in the field. This is a particular problem in that there are central tensions and complexities in Polanyi's argument. This article suggests that these tensions can be understood as a consequence of Polanyi's changing theoretical orientation. The basic outline of the book was developed in England in the late 1930s when Polanyi was working within a specific type of Marxist framework. However, as he was writing the book, he developed several new concepts, including fictitious commodities and the embedded economy, that led in new directions. Because circumstances did not give him the time to revise his manuscript, the book is marked by a tension between these different moments in his own theoretical development. The result is that Polanyi glimpses the concept of the always embedded market economy, but he does not name it or elaborate it.
Riain, Sean. 2006. "Time-space Intensification: Karl Polanyi, the Double Movement, and Global Informational Capitalism." Theory and Society. 35:5-6 507-528. Link: This article advances the concept of ``time-space intensification'' as an alternative to existing notions of time-space distanciation, compression and embedding that attempt to capture the restructuring of time and space in contemporary advanced capitalism. This concept suggests time and space are intensified in the contemporary period the social experience of time and space becomes more explicit and more crucial to socioeconomic actors' lives, time and space are mobilized more explicitly in individual and corporate action, and the institutionalization of time and space becomes more politicized. Drawing on Polanyi's concepts of fictitious commodities and the double movement, and developing them through an analysis of work organization and economic development in the Irish software industry, the article argues that the concept of time-space intensification can add significantly to our understanding of key features of the restructuring of the temporal and spatial basis of economic development and work organization.
Steinberg, Marc. 2010. "Marx, Formal Subsumption and the Law." Theory and Society. 39:2 173-202. Link: Recent work rethinking the place of the law in Marxian analysis of capitalist society provides us with a foundation for a renewed look at the labor process. Drawing on this literature, which emphasizes the materiality of institutions through which labor is exploited, and returning to Marx's discussion of formal subsumption in Capital, I argue that the law was central for subordinating labor. I then present three case studies from industries in Victorian England to demonstrate the diverse ways in which law was implicated in formal subsumption. The case studies focus on the ways in which capitalists used master and servant law, the key law governing the workplace, to subordinate labor. I conclude by considering how these cases provoke us to consider the materiality of the law in labor relations more broadly, and such questions might be pursued in developing capitalist economies such as China.