Class and employment

Abstract

Influential critics still argue that ‘class analysis’ is no longer relevant to the understandings required in ‘reflexive modernity’, while others argue for ‘new’, improved, approaches to the linked topics of class and employment. This article identifies and examines three related critical themes: continuing criticisms of employment-based class measures, the persistence of pseudo-debates (that is, ‘debates’ between authors using different definitions of ‘class’), and the adverse outcomes of the turning away from structural explanations associated with the rejection of employment-derived class. In the concluding sections, the negative consequences of the ‘individualist turn’, and the need for a continuing emphasis on structural measures such as employment class, are emphasised.