Bio: (1950-) Polish-Australian sociologist. Jan Pakulski completed his Ph.D. at Australian National University and now teaches sociology at the University of Tasmania and Stanford University. Pakulski studies various topics in the field of political sociology: social movements, the role of leaders in democracies, the relationship between violence and the state, globalization, and the post-socialist transition in Eastern Europe.

In his book, Postmodernization (1992), Pakulski, Malcolm Waters, and Stephen Crook explore the process of postmodernization. During modernization, culture went through processes of differentiation, rationalization, and commodification. In postmodernization, the processes of hypercomodification, hyperrationalization, and hyperdifferentiation take place. Thus, a "postculture" is created in which cultural styles and personal tastes are fragmented and mixed, and the distinction between high and popular culture is increasingly erased. In the sphere of politics, traditional political structures and relations were dying out, which were based on class politics and in which the state, representatives of employers, and trade unions played the most important role. Postmodern politics is characterized by increasingly significant extinctions of class identification and class voting, as well as the increasing importance of lifestyles and environmental issues in politics. The power of the state and traditional elites is weakening, while the importance and power of new social movements are growing.

Pakulski is best known for his neo-Weberian approach to the problem of classes, which he presented in his book The Death of Class (1996), which was also co-authored with Malcolm Waters. The authors believe that modern societies are transformed too much, in relation to the earlier ones, that they can no longer be considered class societies. The key processes that have led to such changes are: globalization, changes in the economy, new technologies, and political changes. Globalization has led to a new international division of labor, which has led to the disappearance of many traditional workers' occupations. The decline in manual labor, especially in the mining and steel industries, the growth of the service sector, and the emergence of flexible and fragmented labor markets are leading to a decline in the importance of the working class. Globalization has also reduced the ability of states to make political and economic decisions independently. In addition, unlike earlier periods, the increase in geographical mobility has now led to a decline in the importance of family and family background as the main source of class reproduction.

In such circumstances, the political, social, and economic importance of the class declines. In modern societies, "status conventionalism" prevails instead of class. With this phrase, the authors want to denote the newly created situation, that is, the situation in which inequalities in modern society are the product of the existence of different status groups, which differ from each other, primarily in prestige and different spending styles. Classes are no longer the main basis of the social identity of individuals, and therefore no longer the basis of their political and social behavior. Today's society is primarily a consumer society dominated by "status consumption". Dominant differences between status groups are in the domain of spending, and what distinguishes the "subclass", and what separates it most from other groups, is the inability to participate in status spending. It is the differences in status spending, and the prestige it brings, that are the sources of the main form of social stratification in the new age - status stratification.

Main works

Elite Recruitment in Australia (1980); 

Social Movements (1991);

Postmodernization (1992); 

The Death of Class (1996); 

Postcommunist Elites and Democracy in Eastern Europe (1998); 

Globalizing Inequalities (2004);

Toward Leader Democracy (2012); 

Violence and the State (2014);

Political Leadership in Decline: Careers of Australian Parliamentarians (2015).