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Repositioning Class
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Repositioning Class
Social Inequality in Industrial Societies

August 1997 | 256 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
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In recent years, the death of social class has regularly been reportedùin popular and scholarly publications alike. However, class analysis is probably now in a healthier state than at any time in its long sociological history, with social class as important to the understanding of late-twentieth century industrial societies as it was to their early-twentieth century counterparts. This book, a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary industrial societies, explains why. Gordon Marshall informs his argument with a number of common substantive themes, broadly pertaining to the relationship between social stratification and social order. Specific issues discussed include the debate about the unit of class composition; the question of meritocracy; the relationship between class and gender; crossnational similarities and differences in mobility regimes; and arguments about proletarianization, distributional struggles, collective identities, and the nature of the so-called underclass in advanced societies.
 
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

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ISBN: 9780761955580
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