Marxist methods corner

This space on our website is intended to be a place where researchers in and around the Marxist tradition can critically discuss problematic issues in methodology and research methods.

We are good in critique of dominant paradigms and misleading concepts, but how do we get beyond critique to substantive research that addresses politically relevant issues?

We may say, for example, that class, gender and race intersect but how do we show the importance of that in a particular context and how do we analyse how such intersections change?

How do we collect data on rural class structure in a way that captures dialectical change? We are concerned with processes of peasant differentiation, for example, but how do we define its dimensions and how do we measure them in ways that allow us to show change?

We know that conventional concepts are embedded in the ways that surveys and censuses collect and record information, but then how can we use such secondary sources in our research?

And how do we organize our own surveys in ways that provide answers to Marxist questions without sacrificing comparison with the results of existing research?

We hope that researchers will present here the practical answers they have found for such dilemmas in carrying out their own research.  And we hope that other researchers will query some of these methodological solutions and present alternatives.