Decomposition Without Death: A Research Agenda for a New Class Analysis

Abstract

It has become fashionable to argue that stratification is taking on an increasingly ‘postmodern' form, as participation in lifestyles or communities becomes a function of individual taste, choice, and commitment rather than a direct reflection of class membership. Although postmodernism of this sort has become popular in some circles, relevant empirical analyses are few and far between and have inevitably been carried out at a highly aggregate level, thereby muting or obscuring the local subcultures that are generated at the more detailed occupational level. The great failing, then, of conventional quantitative analyses of ‘class effects' is that gemeinschaftlich occupations are regarded as nominal categories and are therefore blithely aggregated or dimensionalized. If analyses are instead ratcheted down to the disaggregate level of detailed occupations, the effects of class may become sufficiently strong to cast doubt on the postmodernist retreat from production-based groupings. The purpose of this paper is to lay out the research agenda that this line of reasoning implies. We review new lines of research on such core sociological topics as (a) the underlying structure of social classes, (b) the reproduction of inequality across generations and over the lifecourse, (c) the social processes by which income streams are attached to occupations, and (d) the consequences of class membership for lifestyles, attitudes, and consumption practices.