The Reshaping And Dissolution Of Social Class In Advanced Society

The Reshaping and Dissolution of Social Class in Advanced Society
Author(s): Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 25, No. 5 (Oct., 1996), pp. 667-691
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/658079 .
Accessed: 25/02/2012 10:41
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Symposiumn class

The reshapingand dissolution of social class in advanced
society
JAN PAKULSKI and MALCOLM WATERS
University of Tasmania

In 1958 Robert Nisbet declared to a meeting of the American Sociological Association in Seattle that: "the termsocial class is by now useful in historical sociology, in comparative or folk sociology, but that it is
nearly valueless for the clarification of the data of wealth, power, and
social status in the contemporary United States and much of Western
society in general."1Why then should an argument now be mounted in
support of a similar view? The reason is that the concept has a plasticity in theface of evidence and a resilience to disconfirmation that
would be the envy of many a materials scientist.2 Indeed Nisbet's
declaration seems to have energized and expanded the "class industry"
rather than to have consigned it to the conceptual graveyard to rest
peacefully alongside "mores," "the folk-urban continuum," "functional
prerequisites," and "the unit act." The two main "enterprises" inthat
industry are multinational in character, one extending from Madison,
Wisconsin to establish branch plants in more than a dozen countries
throughout Europe, Asia, and Australasia, the other centering on
Oxford and linking with similar operations in Northern Europe, Japan,
and Australia.3 In a restless effort to accommodate increased societal
complexity, they have expanded the number ofclasses to such an extent
that whereas twenty years ago students had to decide whether there
were two or three classes, they now have to decide whether there are
seven or twelve. In our view, each of these represents an effort, however
genuine, to manufacture class where it no longer exists as a meaningful
social entity.
Adding another article to an already overflowing "classological"literature requires considerable justification. That justification lies both in
the radical nature of the claims we make, the growing interest in the
issue in the sociological community, and its political implications. We
argue that in advanced societies there has been a radical dissolution of
Theory and Society 25: 667-691, 1996.
? 1996 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.668
668
class in two senses: a decentering of economic relationships, especially
property- and production-based relationships as determinants of
membership, identity, and conflict, and a shift in patterns of group
formation and lines of sociopolitical cleavage. We are arguing not
merely for the demise of the old industrial classes and an associated
rise of new class cleavages and conflicts,but for the radical dissolution
of what might be called the "class mechanism." While this mechanism
was operational in the early and mature stages of Western capitalism, it
is now so attenuated as to be unimportant. This calls into question not
only the validity and utility of Marxist class theory and political
eschatology, but also of more general class-analytical frameworks,
including...