social capital
in his Foundations of Social Theory (1990). While
Coleman’s and Bourdieu’s definitions of social
capital are similar at the most general level –
they both believe that social capital exists in the
relations between actors and that these relation-
ships facilitate the achievement of ends that
would be otherwise unattainable – they focus on
very different aspects of these relations. Instead of
viewing social capital as a resource, Coleman’s
model views social capital in terms of social struc-
ture. It is primarily concerned with analyzing the
relationships between social capital and the posi-
tive outcomes that result from dense family and
community networks. The key innovation of the
Coleman model is the role of social trust in these
relationships. Coleman emphasized the important
role that social capital plays in the creation of
human capital – investments, such as education,
training, and other forms of skills and knowledge,
that increase the productive potential of individ-
uals. Coleman argues that social capital within
the family (for example, strong relations between
children and parents that provide children access
to the parents’ human capital), and within the
community (for example, parents’ relationship
with the institutions of the community), are crit-
ical types of social capital resources.
Two distinct lines of empirical research have
grown out of Coleman’s model of social capital.
Both examine close-knit groups or communities
and their outcomes. The first of these approaches
emphasizes the value of intrafamilial social capi-
tal for children. This type of social capital mani-
fests itself in the development of human capital
mentioned above. Specifically, the more of their
own human capital that parents invest in their
children through the time and attention they
give them, the better the development of human
capital (that is, educational attainment and per-
sonality advancement) in their children. A series
of studies in this area has demonstrated, for exam-
ple, that the outcomes for children of families
with higher amounts of this type of social capital
(two-parent households, parents who spend a
lot of time with their children, and families with
fewer children) tend to do better in terms of,
among other things, success at school, avoiding
teenage pregnancy, and emotional adjustment.
A second strand of research that has grown out
of Coleman’s conception of social capital empha-
sizes the value of dense social networks outside
the family. These networks produce relationships
of trust and reciprocity among their members
that, especially in smaller networks, enmesh
members in mutual and mutually beneficial
social change
obligations and provide a powerful form of infor-
mal social control. High degrees of this type of
social capital, for example, foster contexts of trust
in which children are felt to be safe when they are
not with their parents, or valuable goods can be
exchanged without expensive security measures.
Coleman and later analysts used such explan-
ations to account for why children in Catholic
schools tend to outperform their state school
peers in the United States.
Subsequent research in the Coleman tradition,
most notably that of Robert Putnam, has genera-
lized the concept of social capital to large commu-
nities, regions, and even nations. Putnam sees
social capital as a public good which is not zero-
sum (one person’s use does not diminish an-
other’s). Like other public goods, such as national
defense, water supply, and public education, that
benefit the entire community, social capital con-
tributes to overall well-being. According to Put-
nam, participation in community groups and
civic associations enhances collective norms and
trust and this in turn has positive effects on demo-
cratic participation and collective well-being.
Using large-scale survey data on individuals’ feel-
ings of trust and participation in groups and other
public activities (such as voluntary associations
and, most famously, bowling leagues), Putnam
argues that the reserve of social capital in the
United States has become depleted in recent years.
This argument has been applied widely to explain
such phenomena as declining political participa-
tion, neighborhood involvement, and parental
participation in schools, as well as falling church
attendance. Some later analysts have been critical
of this popular treatment of social capital, argu-
ing, for example, that Putnam conflates key con-
cepts such as trust, association membership, and
social networks, and that his explanation is often
tautological and provides a weak account of how
social capital is generated. Putnam’s perspective
has nonetheless been a lively source of research
and debate about the broader impacts of social
capital. JEFF MANZA
social change
All societies recognize social change. Three ques-
tions arise: is this change natural and normal?;
what is its source?; and what is its tempo?
Premodern societies regard change as external
and problematic. The way things have been done
in the past is a powerful indicator as to how they
should be done in the present, and this sense of
continuity is understandable. To venerate others
in the contemporary world, one needs to venerate
559
social change
their ancestors, since each of us is a product of the
past – our parents and grandparents, and so on,
physically and culturally produced us – and there-
fore disrespect to them is also disrespect for their
progeny.
Such a position, despite its valid and valuable
features, runs the risk of idealizing the past, and it
leads to a paralyzing relativism (whatever happened
in the past was good) and an authoritarian absolut-
ism (the past reflected a timeless truth that con-
temporary society foolishly disregards). It is
important not to take these attitudes at face value,
for veneration of the past is linked to the needs of
the present, and traditionalists may distort the
past in order to justify present practices. Change
is seen as either the tragic disintegration of a
golden age or at best a cyclical process. “There is
nothing new under the sun” and new social forms
replace one another in merry-go-round fashion.
The modern age takes a much less hostile view of
change. Change is seen as natural and necessary –
something that is positive rather than negative.
Each generation faces new and different chal-
lenges to those of the previous one, so that it
seems implausible to imagine that continuity
with the past is all-important. With the European
Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, liberals
begin to postulate a doctrine of progress – change
is celebrated and admired. This doctrine of pro-
gress is contradicted by perfectionism, which
ascribes animating change to a timeless creator,
so that inevitably at some point in the future the
perfect society will arrive. Some conservatives
reject the notion of progress itself as though the
idea is an inherently perfectionist one. It is im-
portant to subject the argument about progress
to an internal critique: it is not that the notion of
progress is problematic, but rather the idea
that this progress has a beginning and an end –
concepts which undermine the dynamism of
change.
The conservative condemns change as a bad
thing, the radical sees it as good, but each position
betrays a numbing one-sidedness. Change to be
meaningful must be expressed through continu-
ity with the past so that newness can be critically
appraised. Change must be tied to absolute as
well as relative standpoints – do new ideas and
practices help us to govern our own lives in a
more satisfactory fashion? The concepts of self-
government and autonomy express a longstan-
ding aspiration – inherent in all systems of mora-
lity – and they enable us to decide whether change
is positive and developmental, or negative and
self-destructive.
560
social change
It is also important to tackle the question of the
source of change. Why do societies change? It is
perfectly true that people develop new ideas and
attitudes – but why? The idealists treat ideas as
autonomous agents with an origin in mystical
genius – either of the outstanding individual or
of a supernatural creator. Materialists rightly
insist that change derives from forces outside the
consciousness of people – that is, change occurs
whether people like it or not. But the problem
with this position is that it is sometimes inter-
preted as an idealism turned inside out. Ideas,
from being the source of change, become irrele-
vant – change is rooted in technology or physi-
ology. It is clear that cultural and political
institutions are themselves important agents of
change, but it is also true that what we think is
happening is never identical to what is going on.
Ideas and institutions express this change, but we
should never assume that what the creators of
change intend is the same as the actual outcome.
This is as true as regards changes in the law (see
law and society) as it is for changes in technology
and the forces of production.
But, flexibly and concretely used, the materia-
list argument is a powerful one, for it seeks to
locate change in circumstances that operate struc-
turally, that is, in collective “forces” that people
can never wholly control. Thus, the demand by
women for social as well as political equality arises
not simply because greater equality is a “good
idea.” More and more women work outside the
home and undertake occupations of a nontradi-
tional kind. This breaks down patriarchal stereo-
types, although it also provokes fundamentalist
backlashes. The point is that, although the change
is expressed in debate and argument, these new
ideas (and new language) cannot simply be under-
stood on their own terms. They seem plausible
because they correspond to changing realities in
society itself.
What of the tempo of change? Changes are
always incremental in the sense that society is
always evolving. In modern societies this change
is built into structures so that it is seen as natural
and normal: new ideas; new institutions; new
practices. Is this change revolutionary or gradual
in character? This is in a dualism that we need to
overcome, for change is both. Each change is in a
particular area, and affects the operation of soci-
ety as a whole. The development of the internet in
contemporary society has enormous implications
for other institutions and ideas – it affects psych-
ology, ideology, the political system, industry,
education, and the media. It is a revolutionary
social class
force, but it builds upon previous developments so
that it is both gradual and insurrectionary. It is a
mistake to identify revolutions with transform-
ations of the state – although these occur as well.
Social change is apparently accidental in pre-
modern societies, but it is seen as normal in
modern orders. The notion that this change is
governed by higher powers (which are timeless)
is contradictory and seeks to impose limits on
change. Change occurs at every level in society
and those who create change never see the full
implications of the process they instigate. Change
is neither simply evolutionary nor revolutionary:
it is always both. JOHN HOFFMAN
social class
All complex societies are characterized by some
kind of structured social inequality (or stratifica-
tion system). The totality of social stratification
will be made up of a number of different elements
that will vary in their importance between diffe-
rent societies – for example, old age is accorded
more respect in some societies than others. Class
makes a significant contribution to structured
social inequality in contemporary societies. How-
ever, it is a multifaceted concept with a variety of
different meanings. There is no correct definition
of the concept, nor any single correct way of meas-
uring it. Nevertheless, questions of both definition
and measurement have been endlessly contested
over the years. Broadly, three dimensions of class
may be identified. These are the economic, the
cultural, and the political. The economic dimen-
sion has a focus on patterns and explanations of
material inequality; the cultural dimension a
focus on lifestyle, social behavior, and hierarchies
of prestige; and the political dimension addresses
the role of classes, and class action, in political,
social, and economic change. Common to all
sociological conceptions of class is the argument
that social and economic inequalities are not nat-
ural or divinely ordained, but rather emerge as a
consequence of human behaviors.
Modern ideas of class are inextricably associated
with the development of capitalist industrialism
(or industrial society). The development of capit-
alism was accompanied by the emergence of the
“two great classes” identified by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels (The Communist Manifesto, 1848
[trans. 1968]) as the bourgeoisie (the owners and
controllers of capital or the means of production)
and the industrial working class or proletariat
(those without capital or access to productive re-
sources who were forced to sell their labor in
order to survive). This does not mean that indus-
social class
trial capitalism was ever a two-class society, as
many other groupings, distinguished by a variety
of relationships to both production and the
market, have always existed in capitalist societies.
For example, in the Eighteenth Brumaire (1852
[trans. 1934]), Marx identifies (in addition to the
proletariat) finance, landholding, and industrial
capital (different fractions of the capitalist class),
as well as the peasantry, the petite bourgeoisie
(shopkeepers and small owner of private capital),
and the lumpenproletariat. Thus Marx defined
class in economic and political terms, and cultures
and ideologies were held to be largely determined
by class processes.
A key issue relating to class (deriving largely,
but not entirely, from the work of Marx) is that
of class identity or consciousness. Marx argued
that, as different classes had conflicting interests,
deriving from their position in relation to produc-
tion and markets, these interests would find their
expression in political action. Indeed, Marx saw
class conflict as the major driving force of social
change. In preindustrial (feudal) societies, the
dominant class was the feudal aristocracy, whose
power and authority was challenged by the rise of
the industrial bourgeoisie. The conflict between
these classes resulted in the emergence of capita-
lism. In capitalist society, Marx argued, the prole-
tariat (or working class) assumed the role of the
revolutionary class. He argued that the bour-
geoisie exploited the proletariat via the extraction
of the surplus value created by their labor. Marx
predicted that the conflict brought about by
growth of class consciousness and action amongst
the proletariat (its becoming a “class for itself ”),
together with the weaknesses engendered by suc-
cessive crises of capitalism, would eventually lead
to the victory of the proletariat and their allies
and transformative social change. These changes
would usher in first communism, then socialism.
The work of Max Weber has also been influen-
tial (Class, Status and Party [trans. 1940]). Like Marx,
Weber emphasized the economic dimension of
class. However, besides property ownership (Marx’s
major axis of class differentiation), Weber also em-
phasized the significance of market situations.
These included individual skills and qualifications,
the possession of which will result in enhanced life
chances as compared with those groups possess-
ing neither property nor skills. Weber’s account of
class, however, was radically different from that of
Marx in that it was not linked to any theory of
history and, although Weber recognized the likeli-
hood and persistence of class conflict, he did not
see such conflicts as necessarily leading to radical
561
social class
social change. Weber also identified the independ-
ent significance of social status (social honor or
prestige), that is, hierarchical systems of cultural
differentiation that identify particular persons,
behaviors, and lifestyles as superior or inferior,
more or less worthy. Weber identified class and
social status as different bases for claims to ma-
terial resources. Subsequently, many sociologists
have insisted on the analytical separation of the
two concepts. The class concept, it is argued, de-
scribes the relationships giving rise to inequa-
lities; it is a relational concept. Hierarchies of
prestige or status, on the other hand, only de-
scribe the outcomes of underlying class processes,
as described in gradational class schemes. How-
ever, as we shall see, although, analytically, class
and status are distinct concepts, there are difficul-
ties in separating them empirically.
From the nineteenth century onwards, different
class interests, reflecting ownership and market
position, were increasingly represented by a range
of different bodies including the political parties
of left and right, as well as trade unions and em-
ployers’ organizations. Thus, there were good
reasons to argue that the interest groupings rep-
resenting different classes could be broadly
mapped onto the material groupings identified
by the classic theorists of class – owners and non-
owners of the means of different elements of pro-
duction, as well as occupational groupings. By the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
(albeit to varying degrees), the greater majority
of the population in industrial capitalist societies
had come to rely on paid employment of some
kind. Official statisticians (as well as social investi-
gators) sought to classify these populations in
some kind of meaningful fashion. Increasingly,
the occupational order began to emerge as a
useful axis of classification that gave a summary
indication of standard of life as well as life
chances. In all such schemes, managerial and pro-
fessional employees are located at the apex, and
unskilled workers in the lower-level groupings.
Thus the convention developed of describing
the different occupational groupings created by
the application of classificatory schemes as social
classes (for example, the Registrar-General’s six-
fold social-class classification in Britain). Such clas-
sifications were often criticized as atheoretical.
The Registrar-General’s classification, which was
at its inception a scale of social standing, was
held to be a commonsense status scale rather
than a measure of class relations. However, it
proved to be remarkably robust in policy-oriented
research and in the mapping and investigation of
562
social class
inequalities of various kinds (for example, in
health).
Thus, for many investigators, the occupational
order became synonymous with the class struc-
ture. This assumption did not go unchallenged
and alternative bases of classification were pro-
posed. John Rex and R. Moore (Race, Community
and Conflict, 1967), for example, developed the
notion of housing classes deriving from variations
in house ownership and tenure, giving rise to
conflicting (housing) class interests. This approach
to class was taken up by a number of urban soci-
ologists (for example, P. Saunders in Social Theory
and the Urban Question, 1986).
Despite the sociological insistence on the ana-
lytical separation of class and status, material
differences and cultural and social distinctions
are, invariably, intertwined (P. Bourdieu, Distinc-
tion, 1979 [trans. 1984]). This has been recognized
in a number of classic case studies focusing on
particular localities (for example, M. Stacey, Tradi-
tion and Change, 1960), and in the “ affluent
worker” series, an influential British study carried
out in the 1960s (John Goldthorpe, David Lock-
wood, F. Bechhofer, and J. Platt, The Affluent Worker
in the Class Structure, 1969). The affluent-worker
thesis had argued that, with rising prosperity in
the years after World War II, the wages of
“working-class” employees were now at the same
levels of those of the middle classes (that is, those
around the middle of the occupational structure),
thus a process of embourgeoisement (or “the
worker turning middle class) was held to be
underway. Goldthorpe and his colleagues identi-
fied three dimensions of class, the economic, the
normative, and the relational. They demonstrated
that, although manual workers might have
achieved incomes equal to those of some middle-
class occupations, this was achieved by working
longer hours. Furthermore, patterns of associa-
tion and aspirations (for promotion) continued
to differentiate middle-class and working-class
employees; thus their research rejected the
embourgeoisement thesis.
From the 1970s, class theory and research were
affected by a number of different, and sometimes
contradictory, influences. In particular, debates in
class theory became increasingly characterized by
a separation between economic and culturalist
approaches. Theoretical discussions also became
distanced from empirical research, which from
the 1970s was dominated by quantitative class
analysis focusing on occupational aggregates (or
classes) as revealed in large datasets. This employ-
ment aggregate approach was dominated by two
social class
major crossnational projects, the CASMIN (Com-
parative Analysis of Social Mobility in Industrial
Societies) project, led by Robert Erikson and Gold-
thorpe, and the Comparative Project on Class
Structure and Class Consciousness, coordinated
by Erik Olin Wright.
The revival of interest in Marxism in the 1960s
and 1970s generated highly abstract theoretical
debates, often with a focus on the contested
middle class. For writers influenced by Marx’s
work (N. Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capit-
alism, 1975), a key issue lay in the identification of
the actual interests (or location within the class
structure) of the middle classes. As propertyless
employees, they had features in common with
the proletariat, but their labor did not directly
create a surplus (so how could they be exploited?),
and both their levels of material reward, and the
power and authority associated with their employ-
ment situation, served to differentiate them from
the working class. Did their interests, therefore,
lie with the bourgeoisie or with the proletariat?
One reason why this question appeared, to some,
to be crucial was the manifest failure of a unitary
proletarian or working-class consciousness to ma-
terialize in any sustained form in western indus-
trial societies. Some writers (often influenced by
the upsurge of political activism in France in 1968)
identified elements of the middle classes (for
example, scientific and technical workers) as a
new working class that might assume the revolu-
tionary vanguard. Others argued that both the
interests and politics of the middle classes lay
closer to those of the employers. Rather than
being in the middle, this class was described as
the service class, rewarded for faithful service to
employers by career progression and material
benefits.
The identification of class with employment
and property relationships emphasizes the eco-
nomic dimension of the class concept. However,
throughout much of the twentieth century, ex-
plorations of the economic and the cultural di-
mensions of class were linked via a continuing
interest in class consciousness or identity. In the
nineteenth century, Engels had identified the
presence in Britain of an aristocracy of labor,
that is, the better-paid elements of the (skilled)
working class who were thereby induced to dis-
identify with the proletariat. In a similar vein, the
failure of a unitary working-class consciousness to
emerge as capitalism developed was widely attri-
buted to the fragmentation of class identities de-
pendent on diverse community and employment
experiences or cultures (Lockwood, “Sources of
social class
Variation in Working-Class Images of Society,”
1966, Sociological Review). For example, the rela-
tional proximity of some employees (such as agri-
cultural workers) to their employers was held to
generate a “deferential” class identity, whereas
the employment and community experiences of,
say, miners were more likely to generate a “trad-
itional proletarian” consciousness. The protagon-
ists in these debates were not necessarily Marxists,
but in respect of consciousness, these kinds of
arguments implicitly employ a structure → con-
sciousness → action model of social behavior, in
which structure (that is, material circumstance) is
assumed to be causally dominant.
This broadly materialist approach to class and
the generation of identities was buttressed by
H. Braverman’s influential Labor and Monopoly
Capital (1974). Although Braverman was explicit
that he was describing a class in itself rather
than a class for itself, nevertheless, his account
of the inexorable deskilling of work in the circum-
stances of monopoly (large-scale) capitalism appar-
ently seemed to resolve a number of issues for
materialist, Marxist-influenced approaches, which
were enthusiastically taken up by a number of
authors (R. Crompton and G. Jones, White-Collar
Proletariat, 1984). The processes of deskilling were
seen to be leading to the potential homogeniza-
tion of proletarian employment, thus removing
the barriers to working-class unity. Moreover,
the deskilling of clerical (conventionally assigned
to “middle” occupational categories) employ-
ment would increase the ranks of the proletariat
itself. Nevertheless, the question of actually
existing class consciousness remained problem-
atic. Some writers (notably social historians; see
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working
Class, 1963) had never subscribed to the distinction
between classes in and for themselves. For these
authors, classes were called into being by the gen-
eration of consciousness itself, rather than any
deterministic structural factors. Besides the ap-
parent failure of consciousness to materialize,
however, during the 1970s wider social changes
were calling into question the utility of the class
concept in sociology.
The origins of many critiques of class as an ana-
lytical tool lay in the global economic and political
transformations that followed successive economic
crises from the 1960s onwards. C. Crouch (Social
Change in Western Europe, 1999) has described the
period after the end of World War II as the “mid
[twentieth] century social compromise.” This was in
a broad sense a class “compromise.” Governments
of left and right supported social protections and
563
social class
increasing welfare, and left-wing (“working-class”)
parties and their representatives did not seek to
destabilize existing social arrangement in any rad-
ical way. An important argument that captures the
prevailing mood of these times is expressed in
Thomas H. Marshall’s (Citizenship and Social Class
and Other Essays, 1950) identification of the rise of
“social citizenship,” that is, those rights which
enable the citizen “to share to the full in the social
heritage and to live the life of a civilized being
according to the standards prevailing in the soci-
ety.” In an oft-quoted phrase, Marshall described
the ideals of citizenship as being at war with the
class system.
These arrangements may be described as char-
acteristic of Fordism, a term that has been widely
employed to describe the industrial and social
order that emerged in many advanced capitalist
societies after World War II. Fordism was charac-
terized by mass production, full employment (at
least as far as men were concerned), the develop-
ment of state welfare, and rising standards of
consumption. However, no sooner had it been
identified than western Fordism began to unravel.
Rising prices (in particular for oil) and inflation in
the West were accompanied by rapid industrial-
ization in South East Asia and an influx of cheaper
goods to the West. Pressures on government re-
venues as well as a sharp increase in unemployment
(associated with deindustrialization) put consider-
able strains on welfare spending. In the West, the
election of Ronald Reagan’s administration (1981–9)
and Margaret Thatcher’s government (1979–90)
signaled a turn to economic neoliberalism, while,
in the eastern bloc, state socialist regimes began to
collapse from the end of the 1980s.
These political developments were accompan-
ied by the shift of academic Marxism in a more
culturalist direction. Post-Marxists E. Laclau and
C. Mouffe (Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 1985), for
example, rejected the notion of objective (that is,
structurally determined) class interests and em-
phasized the variable and discursive construction
of such interests. Indeed, this turn to culture was
reflected in sociology more generally. In any case,
the utility of class for the analysis of postmodern
societies (in which, it was argued, consumption
had assumed greater significance than produc-
tion) had already been challenged. Following
from the identification of housing classes in the
1970s, a developing strand of argument took
the position that consumption had become a
more useful axis than class via which to explore
group cleavages and patterns of identity in con-
temporary societies. J. Pakulski and M. Walters
564
social class
(The Death of Class, 1996), for example, argue that
culture and its consumption constitute the major
axis of stratification in postmodern societies. Indi-
vidual wants and desires, it is suggested, are in the
process of replacing past collective solidarities.
The current emphasis on individualism and its
consequences for class theory and analysis is an
issue to which I will return later, but first the
implications for class analysis of changes in the
occupational structure will be examined.
Deindustrialization in the West was associated
with a dramatic decline in what had been viewed
as unambiguously working-class occupations – in
steel-working, manufacturing, mining, and so
on. Lower-level jobs in the service sector (for
example, in retail, fast food, and caring occupa-
tions) have expanded, but so have the number of
professional and managerial occupations – by
convention, service-class occupations. The nu-
merical decline in the working class was also
associated with the erosion of locality and com-
munity structures that had been argued to gen-
erate the collective proletarian identities of the
structure → consciousness → action model. More
importantly, the expansion of women’s employ-
ment raised important questions as to how
women, as employees, should be located within
the occupational (class) structure.
Both the CASMIN and Comparative Class Struc-
ture projects had devised alternative, sociologic-
ally informed class schemes for the analyses of
their data (large-scale, random-sample surveys
conducted in a number of different countries).
Both of these occupational classifications are
argued to reflect patterns of economic class rela-
tions, and both sets of authors distinguish their
classifications from commonsense status scales
such as those of the Registrar-General. Erikson
and Goldthorpe’s scheme (CASMIN) has been
described as “neo-Weberian,” although this is per-
haps a somewhat misleading description, as Gold-
thorpe’s (On Sociology, 2000) post-hoc account of the
theoretical underpinnings of his class scheme,
grounded in employment relations, can be seen
as drawing insights from both Weber and Marx.
However, Wright’s occupational class classifica-
tion (Comparative Class Structure) was unambigu-
ously Marxist in its inspiration. There are two
versions of Wright’s class scheme. The first version
is structured around ownership, as well as author-
ity and control in employment. The second ver-
sion of the scheme, deriving from game-theoretic
Marxism, is based on relations of exploitation de-
riving from the possession of different assets, in-
cluding capital, organization assets, and skill or
social class
credential assets. As many critics have noted, this
second version of Wright’s scheme has many par-
allels with Weber’s account of class.
The major objective of the CASMIN project was
the investigation of social mobility. In the United
States, Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan’s
research (The American Occupational Structure, 1967)
had apparently demonstrated that educational
background and early work experiences were
more important than social origin (class) in deter-
mining mobility chances. These findings con-
firmed the positive industrial-society thesis (C.
Kerr et al., Industrialism and Industrial Man, 1960).
This thesis argued that industrial development
would be associated with rising living standards,
middle-class expansion, and the triumph of
achievement over ascription. All of these factors,
it was argued, would lead to a less polarized class
structure and a decline in class conflict. However,
Goldthorpe and his colleagues (R. Erikson and J.
Goldthorpe, The Constant Flux, 1992) demonstrated
that, although rates of absolute social mobility
had increased, this was largely due to changes in
the occupational structure, as the expansion of
professional and managerial occupations (to-
gether with the decline in working-class occupa-
tions) will mean that an increasing proportion of
higher-level jobs will have to be filled from below.
However, relative rates of social mobility, that is,
the relative chances of achieving a service-class
occupation depending on class of origin, had
remained remarkably stable. Thus, despite out-
ward appearances, the class structure of industrial
societies had not become more open.
Wright’s original research objectives differed
considerably from those of Goldthorpe and his col-
leagues. One of the major issues explored was the
characteristics of and variations in the class struc-
ture itself (Goldthorpe and his colleagues took the
occupational structure as largely given, and the
statistical techniques employed controlled for
structural variations between countries). Inspired
by Marx’s analysis, Wright examined the question
of whether the class structure was, in fact, becom-
ing increasingly proletarian. In fact, Wright found
that, in the United States, the working class
was actually declining as a proportion of the
labor force, apparently confirming aspects of
the industrial-society thesis. However, the compos-
ition of the working class has changed in that
women, and members of ethnic minorities, are
now in the majority. Wright also investigated the
interaction between sex and class, as well as the
question of class consciousness, which showed con-
siderable variation across different societies
social class
(Wright, Class Counts, 1997). In general, this expli-
citly Marxist class project has not served to dem-
onstrate the robustness of Marx’s predictions, but
Wright nevertheless continues to argue that
Marx’s analytical framework provides the theoret-
ically most coherent account of capitalism.
It might be suggested that both the CASMIN
project and Wright’s Comparative Project were
from the beginning relatively limited in what
they were able to achieve given their chosen
methods, for there are problems with the opera-
tionalization of class via an occupational measure.
Most obviously, occupation gives no indication
of wealth holdings; thus the owners of capital
are lost to sight. The occupational structure is
also stratified by gender, race and ethnicity, and
age; that is, the occupational structure is shaped
by status as well as class. Indeed, the same occupa-
tion may be associated with different life chances
depending on whether the employee is male or
female, old or young, black or white. There will be
an inescapable arbitrariness in the allocation of
groups to particular categories – for example, the
owner of an enterprise with fewer than twenty-six
employees would be placed in a different class to
the owner of a firm with twenty-six or more in
Goldthorpe’s scheme. A further problem lies in
the class allocation of individuals without an
occupation – for example, the long-term un-
employed, or women carrying out domestic work
in the home. It must be stressed that these kinds
of difficulties do not invalidate the employment-
aggregate approach to class analysis, but they
impose limitations on its scope.
However, one negative outcome of the domin-
ance of quantitative class analysis during the
1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s was that debates
within this strand became increasingly focused on
measurement issues. As Mike Savage argues, “The
‘point’ of class analysis was rarely discussed,
rather attention focused on how best to define
class in occupational terms” (Class Analysis and
Social Transformation, 2000). In fact, occupational
measures of class (including status scales) inter-
correlate quite highly and, for the individual re-
searcher, the best measure may be a pragmatic
rather than a theoretical choice. One point that
should be emphasized, however, is that, despite
the many criticisms that have been directed at
occupational class schemes, they remain one
of the most effective tools available for the map-
ping and exploration of social and economic
inequalities.
Debates within employment-aggregate class
analysis tended to be rather self-contained (and
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social class
self-referential), although they ran parallel with
broader arguments as to the significance of class
in contemporary societies (see Rosemary Cromp-
ton, Class and Stratification, 1998). The general
tenor of these wider debates (for example, C. Clark
and S. M. Lipset, “Are Social Classes Dying?” 1991,
and Ulrich Beck and E. Beck-Gernsheim, Individual-
ization, 2002) has been to argue that, although the
class concept might have had some value as far as
the analysis of earlier phases of capitalist develop-
ment was concerned, it had lost its cutting edge in
relation to the understanding of postmodern, late
modern, or postindustrial societies. These argu-
ments might be summarized as follows: first, class
no longer serves as a basis for the organization of
politics or social protest more generally; rather,
social movements with a focus on particular
issues (ecology and the environment, antiwar,
antinuclear, and antiglobalization) had taken
their place. Second, it was argued that class no
longer made a significant contribution to the con-
struction of collective and individual identities.
Rather, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity (and age)
have become more important in defining the indi-
vidual as well as in providing a focus for collective
belonging. Finally, it is argued that class is no
longer relevant as societies have become increa-
singly “individualized.” Thus Beck states that: “In-
dividualization is a concept which describes a
structural, sociological transformation of social
institutions and the relationship of the individual
to society . . . Individualization liberates people
from traditional roles and constraints . . . individ-
uals are removed from status-based classes . . .
Social classes have been detraditionalized.”
It might seem paradoxical that social theorists
were arguing for the redundancy of the class
concept at precisely the same moment as mater-
ial and social inequalities were expanding very
rapidly, in part as a consequence of the adoption
of neoliberal economic and social policies by
national governments and international institu-
tions. The erosion of the “mid [twentieth] century
social compromise” was accompanied by increas-
ing pressures on welfare benefits. Indeed, neolib-
eral commentators (C. Murray, Losing Ground,
1984) argued that the collective welfare provi-
sions developed during the period after World
War II had contributed to the undermining of
individual capacities and thus the emergence
of a welfare-dependent “underclass.” Welfare
reforms, it was argued, had taken away the incen-
tive to work, giving rise to marginal groupings
(lone mothers, the long-term unemployed, and
people living off fraud and crime) who lived in a
566
social class
different world from that of mainstream society.
Trapped in poverty and with no incentive to
work, the attitudes and behavior of these group-
ings simply serve to reproduce disadvantage
across the generations.
Right-wing commentators, therefore, have em-
phasized the moral and cultural deficiencies of
underclass groupings, which are seen as having
been brought into being by the excessive genero-
sity of postwar welfare states. Critics of the under-
class thesis, however, have emphasized the
structural developments that have served to in-
crease the numbers of those in poverty, as well
as being highly critical of the underclass concept
itself. In the United States (where the “underclass”
is overwhelmingly black), W. J. Wilson (The Truly
Disadvantaged, 1987) argued that economic restruc-
turing and the decline in manufacturing employ-
ment had a particularly significant effect on the
inner city. Lacking in job opportunities, inner
cities in the United States became black ghettoes,
deprived of a resident ethnic middle class which,
taking advantage of the opportunities offered by
equal opportunity and affirmative action pro-
grams, had moved out to the suburbs. More ge-
nerally, the underclass concept has been criticized
for its overemphasis on the moral deficiencies of
the very poor. This reflects the political differences
between the protagonists in the underclass
debate. It is often argued controversially that an
important justification for persisting inequality is
that the more successful and better-rewarded are
actually intrinsically and individually superior to
the less successful, and thus deserving of their
good fortune. However, critics of the underclass
thesis argue that the identification of a (morally
deficient) underclass effectively does no more
than blame the victims. In fact, survey evidence
has demonstrated that people without employ-
ment are no less committed to the idea of work,
and no more fatalistic in their attitudes, than
those in employment.
In my concluding arguments, it may be sug-
gested that many contemporary criticisms of the
utility of class analysis may be seen as deriving,
ultimately, from the failure to establish a consist-
ent and enduring link between structure and
action, class and consciousness. The rapid increase
in inequality since the 1970s, for example, was not
accompanied by any sustained class action or re-
sistance. Survey data suggest that the majority of
the population does not consciously locate itself
in class terms. The position taken here is that,
while there may be numerous examples whereby
a link between structure and action might be
social class
demonstrated (most would want to argue that
capitalists have been remarkably effective in fur-
thering their own interests, for example), this
linkage is contingent upon circumstance, and
the absence of such a link should not be assumed
to undermine the validity of class analysis in all
of its many aspects.
The insistence on a rigid separation of class and
status or culture runs the risk of inadequately
acknowledging the role of cultural and status
hierarchies in the creation and reproduction of
class inequalities. Recent work on class has em-
phasized the intertwining of these two dimen-
sions, rather than their separation. The work of
Bourdieu has been developed to demonstrate how
cultural processes are embedded within specific
socioeconomic practices. Socioeconomic locations
are themselves accompanied by fields within
which classed agents operate, guided by habitus
(see habitus and field), that is, mental structures
and dispositions that are socially inculcated
and go largely unremarked. These practices (for
example, the middle-class consciousness of the
benefits of education and practical awareness of
the competitive system) serve to ensure the repro-
duction of class advantage (F. Devine, Class Prac-
tices, 2004). Savage has reworked the thesis of
individualization to argue that the increasing
dominance in contemporary societies of middle-
class, individualized culture lies behind the ab-
sence of collective expressions of class; that is,
class practices have themselves become indivi-
dualized. However, in emphasizing the interde-
pendence of class and social differentiation more
generally, there is a danger that class is simply
conflated with the diffuse practices of social
hierarchy.
A reemphasis on cultural class practices is in
part a reaction to the growing influence of the
cultural turn within the social sciences. However,
the turn to culture, with its emphasis on indivi-
dualized identities and the politics of recognition,
resonates positively with neoliberal defenses of
the market and the importance of individual
rights. Furthermore, a stress on the primacy of
recognition may effectively sideline issues of re-
distribution, which have always been central to
class analysis. Moreover, there are important on-
tological issues that have implications for recent
culturalist discussions of class. In particular, if
it is argued that culture and the economy cannot
be separated (or if class is conflated with hier-
archy), then how can the different elements that
contribute to structures of social inequality be
identified?
social closure
N. Fraser (“Rethinking Recognition,” 2000, New
Left Review; see also J. Scott, Stratification and Power,
1996) has recently suggested a resolution to these
problems that returns to the Weberian distinction
between class and status. Her argument rests on
the analytic separation of culture and economy.
She suggests that class and status reflect two,
analytically distinct, dimensions of social justice.
Class relates to the distribution of disposable re-
sources, status the allocation of recognition. The
cultural definition of different categories of social
actors (status groups) can result in social subor-
dination and thus a lack of full partnership in
social interaction. Fraser argued that claims for
both economic redistribution and cultural re-
cognition can be appraised against the same
evaluative standard of participatory parity, that
is, the social arrangements that permit all adult
members of society to interact with one another
as peers (it may be noted that this argument im-
plicitly resurrects Marshall’s idea of citizenship).
In conclusion, recent debates in class theory
and analysis suggest a continuing need to re-
cognize both that stratification systems are multi-
stranded and that social class is a vital component
of these systems. The way ahead for class analy-
sis is to recognize the increasing complexity of
inequalities in modern societies, without either
beating a retreat in the face of this complexity, or
attempting to resolve the issue by dissolving the
boundaries between the contributory elements.
ROSEMARY CROMPTON
social closure
The terminology of closure and the closely related
language of exclusion and monopolization ap-
pears first in Max Weber’s Economy and Society
(1922 [trans. 1968]). A relationship that is closed
against outsiders is one in which the “participa-
tion of certain persons is excluded, limited, or
subjected to conditions.” Weber noted that many
relationships, including the exclusive erotic mon-
opoly of marriage, membership of sects, personal
relations of loyalty, the caste system, exclusive
clubs, guilds, monastic orders, and various kinds
of hereditary groups which asserted rights also
used the means of closure. In the context of the
economy, the idea of closure as monopolization
is related to the concept in economics of rent-
seeking, and Weber noted that there was a ten-
dency for the economically successful to preserve
their position by closure. The concept of closure,
however, had little impact until it was revived
in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was applied and
elaborated in two different ways.
567