The hegemony of common sense

The Hegemony of Common Sense: Wisdom and Mystification in Everyday Life is a path-breaking synthesis, a unique contribution to the study of class and consciousness. Dean Wolfe Manders revisits a question posed by Sombart a century ago: �Why is there no socialism in the United States of America?� To probe this question, he initiates a multi-method study of capital and class as cultural realities. Class, he contends, is insinuated in the fabric of �everyday-historical� experience, which people process via often contradictory �common sense� categories. Artfully adapting themes from Gramsci, Marx, James, and Mead, Manders explores these categories from several angles. Particularly trenchant is his incisive inquiry into paroemiology, the study of popular sayings.