Watching Trading Places as a Christmas comfort film, it is hard not to see a ready-made sociological case study. The Dukes’ “experiment” looks like a simple nature-versus-nurture wager, but the life swap really turns on class, race and access to capital. This article uses Bourdieu’s framework to show how the film exposes—and then neatly smooths over—the myth of meritocracy.
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Marx wrote about factories and nineteenth-century class conflict, not delivery apps or algorithmic ratings. So how far can his ideas take us today? This article introduces Marx’s core concepts and tests them against platform capitalism and the gig economy, showing what still works, what does not, and where later theorists extend his framework.
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Is the self-made success story a reality or a myth? This article explores the sociological debate around meritocracy, examining both the arguments for and against the self-made narrative, and the structural barriers that shape social mobility.
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Karl Marx is one of the most polarising thinkers in modern history. Depending on whom you ask, he is either
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