Fundamental Ontology Versus Esse est percipi: Theorizing (Working Class) Being and Liberation

Abstract

This article is of particular relevance to ethnographers and theorists of the working class and the concern to articulate a sociology of liberation. The article addresses the ontology of class and the central Western problematic of historicising reason, being and liberation/redemption first signalled in the twelfth century. From the standpoint of the author's ethnographic engagement with working class dasein in Scotland, the article emerges from an analysis of an exchange between two authors engaged in very different strategies of representing and understanding the reality of class. The article seeks to uncover some of the issues faced by social theorists who engage with the long dure task of modelling an ethnography of being and giving a sociological account of a radically emancipatory exercise of situated freedom from within class-based civilisation and societies.