Approaches to Class Analysis

Cambridge University Press (Cambridge). Approaches to Class Analysis. Wright, Erik Olin. Cita: Wright, Erik Olin (2005). Approaches to Class Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dirección estable: https://www.aacademica.org/erik.olin.wright/47 Acta Académica es un proyecto académico sin fines de lucro enmarcado en la iniciativa de acceso abierto. Acta Académica fue creado para facilitar a investigadores de todo el mundo el compartir su producción académica. Para crear un perfil gratuitamente o acceder a otros trabajos visite: http://www.aacademica.org. Approaches to Class Analysis Few themes have been as central to sociology as “class” and yet class remains a perpetually contested idea. Sociologists disagree not only on how best to define the concept of class but on its general role in social theory and indeed on its continued relevance to the sociological analysis of contemporary society. Some people believe that classes have largely dissolved in contemporary societies; others believe class remains one of the fundamental forms of social inequality and social power. Some see class as a narrow economic phenomenon whilst others adopt an expan- sive conception that includes cultural dimensions as well as economic conditions. This book explores the theoretical foundations of six major perspectives of class with each chapter written by an expert in the field. It concludes with a conceptual map of these alternative approaches by posing the question “If ‘class’ is the answer, what is the question?” is Vilas Distinguished Professor at the Depart- ment of Sociology, University of Wisconsin. His recent books include Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (2003) and Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Anal- ysis (Cambridge, 1997). Approaches to Class Analysis Edited by Erik Olin Wright Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge ,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridg e.org /9780521843041 © Cambridge University Press 2005 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2005 - ---- eBook (MyiLibrary) - --- eBook (MyiLibrary) - ---- hardback - --- hardback - ---- paperback - --- paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. To the Memory of Aage B. Sørensen 1941–2001 Contents List of figures page viii List of tables ix List of contributors x Introduction 1 1Foundations of a neo-Marxist class analysis 4 2Foundations of a neo-Weberian class analysis 31 3Foundations of a neo-Durkheimian class analysis 51 4Foundations of Pierre Bourdieu’s class analysis 82 . 5Foundations of a rent-based class analysis 119 . 6Foundations of a post-class analysis 152 Conclusion: If “class” is the answer, what is the question? 180 References 193 Index 207 vii Figures 1.1 Three models of class analysis page 26 2.1 Dimensions of work as sources of contractual hazard, forms of employment contract, and location of employee classes of the schema (from Goldthorpe 2000: 223, figure 10.2) 40 6.1 Configurations of inequality–atypology 172 viii Tables 2.1 Possible aggregations of the Goldthorpe class schema page 41 3.1 Countries classified by type and amount of class structuration 64 3.2 Models of social organization at the site of production 77 7.1 Six primary questions of class analysis 182 7.2 The life chances question in Marx, Weber, and Bourdieu 186 ix Contributors is Official Fellow in Sociology at Nuffield College, Oxford University is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University is Professor of Sociology and Dean of Arts at the University of Tasmania . ø†, formerly Professor of Sociology at Harvard University . is Assistant Professor of Sociology, State University of New York-Brockport is Vilas Distinguished Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison x Introduction Erik Olin Wright In March 2001, on the BBC Radio 4 Today program, a report was presented discussing a new seven-category class scheme being used in the British Census. Listeners were invited to the BBC website to see what class they were in. Within a few days there were over 50,000 hits on the site, a record for this sort of thing. At least for the segment of the British population that listens to the BBC morning news, class remains a salient issue. In the broadcast a number of people were interviewed. One police inspector responded to being told that he was now classified in class I along with doctors, lawyers, and chief executives of corporations, by saying, “Does it mean now I have to wear tennis whites when I go out to do my gardening?. I don’t see myself socially or economically in the same class as them.” In a subsequent “live chat” program with Professor David Rose of Essex University, the principal designer of the new Census categories, many people called up complaining about the coding scheme. Atruck driver objected to being in class VII on the grounds that his job was quite skilled and he had to use new information technologies and computers in his work. David Rose explained that the classification was meant to capture differences in the nature of the employment contract and conditions of work, not the skill level of jobs, and truck drivers typically had quite insecure conditions of employment. Another person asked, “How can you have a sense of solidarity and consciousness when you’re ‘Five’ or ‘Seven’? Can you imagine the Communist Manifesto written by the University of Essex? ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of little internecine wars between class groups 1 and 2 and class groups 3 to 7?’ Doesn’t have the same ring does it?” These comments by listeners on the BBC reflect the general ambiguity of the term “class” in the popular imagination. To some people it con- notes lifestyle and tastes, the wearing of tennis whites while gardening. To others it is mainly about social status, esteem and respect: to be reclas- sified “down” the class hierarchy is seen as demeaning. Some see classes as social categories engaged in collective forms of conflict, shaping the 1 2 Erik Olin Wright destiny of society. Politicians call for “middle-class tax cuts” by which they simply mean “tax cuts for people in the middle range of the income distribution.” And many people, like David Rose, see class as identifying the basic determinants of a person’s economic prospects. These ambiguities in popular usages are also present in more aca- demic discussions of class. The word class is deployed in a wide range of descriptive and explanatory contexts in sociology, just as it is in popular discourse, and of course, depending upon the context, different concepts of class may be needed. Given this diversity of the explanatory and descriptive tasks within which the word class appears, it is easy to see why debates over class are often confusing. Sometimes, of course, there is a genuine debate: alternative proposals for what concepts are needed to answer the same question are in dispute. Other times, however, the debate simply reflects different agendas. Some sociologists proclaim that class is disappearing, by which they mean that people are less likely to form stable identities in class terms and thus less likely to orient their political behavior on the basis of class, while others proclaim that class remains an enduring feature of contemporary society, by which they mean that a person’s economic prospects in life continue to depend significantly on their relationship to economically valuable assets of various sorts. The central objective of this book is to clarify the complex array of alternative conceptualizations of class rooted in different theoretical traditions of class analysis. Each of the authors in the book has written extensively on problems of class and inequality within different traditions of class analysis. Each has been given the assignment of writing a kind of theoretical manifesto for a particular kind of class analysis. The goal is to clarify the theoretical foundations of their preferred approach: lay out the underlying assumptions, systematically define each conceptual element, demarcate the explanatory ambitions of the concept and, where possible, differentiate their approach from others. While to a greater or lesser extent most of the approaches have their roots in an intellectual tradition linked to some classical social theorist – Marx, Weber, Durkheim – the chapters are not primarily discussions of the concept of class within the texts of these founding figures. Nor are they meant to be authoritative canonical statements about what counts as genuine “Marxist” or “Weber- ian” or any other kind of class analysis. Each of these traditions has con- siderable internal variation and, accordingly, the concept of class will be elaborated in different ways by different scholars all claiming to be working within the same broad current of thought. The authors were also instructed not to present the kind of extended “reviews of the lit- erature” one might find in a sociological textbook on social class. What each chapter attempts to do is elaborate the analytical foundations of the Introduction 3 conceptualization of class within each author’s body of work, and by doing so, clarify the broader terrain of variation within class analysis. Six different perspectives are presented. Chapter 1,byErik Olin Wright, explores an approach to class analysis within the Marxist tradition. Here the central idea is defining the concept of class in terms of processes of exploitation and linking the concept to alternative systems of economic relations.

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