Repositioning Class

Social Inequality in Industrial Societies

`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