Review by Choice Review
Brown's book enters the crowded arena of Marxist theory with an attempt to found ``an authentically sociological theory'' on such noneconomic themes as the social relations of production and commodity fetishism. The book displays considerable erudition, referring to Barthes and Garfinkel along with neo-Marxist writers. Brown (Queens College and CUNY Graduate School) moves from a relatively traditional restatement of Marxist logic toward an incorporation of recent non-Marxist trends in social theory into a Marxist theory. Goffman's work is termed a description of ``a process of realizing the contradictory and therefore unrealizable commodity form of the individual.'' Ethnomethodology is presented as ``the most rigorous and promising conceptualization of consciousness as subjectivity that is consistent with the epistemological requirements of Marxian theory.'' The book suffers from a tendency to speed through a great many complex topics, offering only programmatic and abstract commentaries. It is characterized by dense prose and compacted summations that almost always lack historical examples, though history is often invoked as an analytic virtue. Despite its aim to innovate, the constricted parameters of the argument are evident from its relegation of issues of gender and race to the traditional Marxist category of ``devices for maintaining divisions among workers.'' Complete bibliography and index.-B.D. Adam, University of Windsor
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
