ARE SOCIAL CLASSES DYING?

Abstract

New forms of social stratification are emerging. Much of our thinking about stratification - from Marx, Weber, and others - must be recast to capture these new developments. Social class was the key theme of past stratification work. Yet class is an increasingly outmoded concept. Class stratification implies that people can be differentiated hierarchically on one or more criteria into distinct layers, classes. Class analysis has grown increasingly inadequate in recent decades as traditional hierarchies have declined and new social differences have emerged. The cumulative impact of these changes is fundamentally altering the nature of social stratification - placing past theories in need of substantial modification. This paper outlines first some general propositions about the sources of class stratification and its decline. The decline of hierarchy, and its spread across situses, is emphasised. The general propositions are applied to political parties and ideological cleavages, the economy, the family, and social mobility. These developments appear most clearly in North America and Western Europe, but our propositions also help interpret some of the tensions and factors driving change in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and other societies.