The Relevance of the Concept of Class to the Study of Modern Greek Society

Abstract

In the light of the general theoretical debate on the nature of capitalist underdevelopment discussed in the previous chapter, here I will try to narrow the focus of analysis and examine the sociological literature on modern Greece — more specifically, the way in which the concept of class is used in the study of Greek development/underdevelopment. Within this limited perspective, there will be no attempt to provide an exhaustive or even systematic account of all sociological writings on modern Greece; neither shall I try to give an overall view of various Marxist and non-Marxist theories of class and the complicated problems they engender.¹ Rather, the emphasis will be on the underlying conceptual frameworks, paradigms or metatheories² that are discernible in representative studies of the Greek social structure and its development. In identifying and comparing such conceptual frameworks, their sociological adequacy and utility for the future development of Greek sociology will be assessed. Finally, although a study of the sociology of Greek sociology could be extremely useful, this paper does not attempt to do this — i.e. to find out how and why a certain sociological paradigm has been widely accepted by most Greek sociologists; the only goal it has set itself is to point out the limitations of the dominant paradigm and the need for an alternative or rather a complementary one.