ABSTRACT
Class, culture, ethnicity and nationality studies are presented as alternative analytic frameworks to racial analysis and have gained considerable currency in the social sciences. In the US, sociologist William J. Wilson's argument that social class has overtaken race as the key variable affecting the lives of African Americans has been greeted with both controversy and wide acclaim. While many mainstream sociologists uncritically embraced the declining-significance thesis, critical sociologists of various backgrounds have continued to highlight numerous flaws in Wilson's main theses. The British sociologist John Solomos is currently a central figure in ethnic and racial studies, specifically as a neo-Marxist analyst of racialization and racial categorization who problematizes 'racial relations' research and the use of 'race' as an explanatory concept. Rather, class, culture, ethnicity, and nationality approaches ought to be viewed as investigations into the societal formations that have accompanied and/or are interlaced with the racialized developments and structures of the modern world.
