Dealignment: Class in Britain and Class in British Sociology Since 1945

Abstract

This paper sets changes in Britain’s class structure since 1945 alongside the parallel sociological controversies about class. Since the 1970s, the class scheme developed by John Goldthorpe and colleagues for initial use in their study of social mobility in Britain has become sociology’s standard template for thinking about and researching class. Versions have been adopted by the UK government and the European Union as their official socio-economic classifications. This paper does not dispute that the Goldthorpe scheme is still the best available for classifying by occupation, or that occupation remains our best single indicator of class, or that a constant class scheme must be used if the purpose is to measure trends over time in rates of relative inter-generational mobility. Despite these merits, it is argued that the sociological gaze has been weakened by failing to represent changes over time in the class structure itself and, therefore, how class is experienced in lay people’s lives. There has been a relative neglect of absolute social mobility flows (which have changed over time), and a pre-occupation with the inter-generational and a relative neglect of intra-career mobilities and immobilities.