There have been several moving obituaries following Michael Burawoy’s sad death in a hit-and-run accident early this year, many charting his contribution to sociological research and Marxist theorizing from the early 1970s onwards. This piece has a narrower focus. It concentrates on the ethnographic research Burawoy conducted for his Ph.D., and the resulting case-study monograph, Manufacturing Consent , which established his reputation as a radical sociologist of the workplace and as a Marxist theorist of both the consolidation and vulnerabilities of modern capitalism. The article examines the key features of Burawoy’s case-study analysis of the manufacture of consent and summarizes some of the strengths and weaknesses identified in both enthusiastic and critical responses to his influential work. It then discusses some of the leading themes that emerged from this debate, and especially from Burawoy’s auto-critique, which he pursued over the decades. His death has robbed us of a voice that would have continued to illuminate significant changes in the organization of work and the social relations of production across the globe. It falls to us to draw on the critical insights and analytical resources that Burawoy bequeathed to do justice to his intellectual legacy.
Tony Elger (Mon,) studied this question.