This work demonstrates that social class is as important now to the understanding of twentieth century industrial societies as it was in the first years of the century. Gordon Marshall's argument is informed by issues pertaining to the relationship between social stratification and social order. Specific issues include: the debate about the unit of class composition; the question of meritocracy; the relationship between class and gender; cross-national similarities and differences in mobility regimes; proletarianization, distributional struggles, collective identities, and the nature of the 'underclass' in advanced societies. The British experience is examined in relation to that of the United states, the former communist countries of eastern Europe and Scandinavia, and used to make more general points about class itself and how sociologists might most useful pursue class analysis in the future. Suspicious of grand theory and sceptical of the historicism of the left and right, the author matches testable propositions to appropriate empirical data.
Introduction Class and Class Analysis in the 1990s PART ONE: SOCIAL THEORY Distributional Struggle and Moral Order in a Market Society The Promising Future of Class Analysis A Response to Recent Critiques PART TWO: METHOD AND MEASUREMENT Classes in Britain Marxist and Official Social Class and Underclass in Britain and the USA Class, Gender and the Asymmetry Hypothesis PART THREE: SOCIAL MOBILITY Proletarianization in the British Class Structure? Intergenerational Social Mobility in Communist Russia Intergenerational Class Processes and the Asymmetry Hypothesis PART FOUR: SOCIAL JUSTICE Social Class and Social Justice Was Communism Good for Social Justice? A Comparative Analysis of the Two Germanies
`The volume provides an exceptionally useful presentation of the contributions of the Nuffield approach to macro-sociological research and Gordon Marshall's particular contributions. The essays are very well written, the methodology superb, and the arguments cogent and well justified in theory and evidence. They cover a wide range of topics. Specific issues include a treatment of the debate about the unit of class analysis, an issue that has important implications for the treatment of gender in class analysis. It covers cross-national similarities in mobility regimes, comparing Britain to the United States, Scandinavia, and the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union. There are analyses of the impact of class on voting and on the development of the particular attitudes that have been identified with the underclass. Finally, Marshall provides a lucid discussion of meritocracy and social justice' - The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science `Marshall is to be congratulated on a sustained case for the retention of social class (however defined) as an independent analytic variable which is central to the understanding of contemporary industrial capitalist societies' - British Journal of Sociology `It captures homogenous categories according to living conditions....Marshall's essays provide abundant evidence for the scheme's empirical usefulness and the important insights into the social structures of industrialized societies' - The American Academy of Political and Social Science
