How many Classes are there in Contemporary British Society?

Abstract

If `class' is defined in terms of the economic power (or lack of it) attaching to different roles through their relation to the processes of production, distribution and exchange, then the number of classes in a society is a function of the number of dividing-lines in its social space which can be so drawn as to mark qualitative differences between sets of similarly positioned roles. These differences are defined neither by income nor by employment status as such, but by one or more of the three functionally equivalent criteria of ownership, control and marketability. From this approach, it follows that the number of classes in contemporary British society is seven; and although this schema poses (like any other) a number of practical difficulties in assigning the incumbents of particular roles to their appropriate classes, it can help to clarify, and perhaps to resolve, several problems in current stratification research.