The Death of Class Book

This provocative and stimulating book postulates the death of class as a useful means of social analysis. Traditionally class has been the key concept for understanding society, enabling analysts to interpret social conflict and predict the course of social development. Today critics see class analysis as too crude, incapable of handling the nuances of the new politics of identity, race and gender.Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters take the radical position within the current debates that class is a purely historical phenomenon. At different periods, different forms of analysis are appropriate: traditional class theory applied only to societies divided into exploitation-based class communities: contemporary class analysis applies only to societies organized at the national political level. Below and within that, a new status-conventional pattern of stratification is emerging. Postmodernization, globalization, increasing unemployment and the collapse of state socialism have exposed the limitations of class analysis.Written in a refreshing jargon-free style, the book argues that concentration on class actually diverts attention from other more central and more morally problematic inequalities. The class perspective has become a political straitjacket which obstructs an accurate understanding of contemporary social, cultural and political processes.The Death of Class will appeal to all students and lecturers in sociology and political science.Read More