Occupational Sociology, Yes: Class Analysis, No: Comment on Grusky and Weeden's Research Agenda

An initial question is that of why G&W should think that class analysis is in need of reconstruction, at all events of the very radical kind that they propose. Their reading of the present situation would appear to go something like this (cf. Grusky & Sorensen 1998). With the failure of the 'Marxist project', politically as well as intellectually, class analysts have 'discarded comprehensive class-based theories of history' (Grusky and Weeden 2001:205) and have indeed so scaled down their ambitions that their work now amounts to 'little more than describing the micro-level association between class membership and life chances of various kinds' (p. 212). In particular, issues of class formation or, as G&W would rather say, of 'structuration', are avoided. Consequently, it becomes difficult to mount any strong resistance to claims of the 'death of class' or to oppose the postmodernist 'retreat from the productive sphere' (p. 214). If class analysis is to be salvaged, G&W then contend, it will have to be 'ratcheted down' to a level where there is a better chance of 'structuration' being observed. And most promising here, in their view, is the occupational level, where it is possible for 'real social groupings' to form 'around functional niches in the division of labour' (p. 203). I have two comments to make on this account. First, there appears to be no place in it for a tradition of class analysis within which many European sociologists would see themselves as working. This tradition developed long before the collapse of Marxism, and in fact has stood as a major alternative to, and basis for criticism of, Marxism including at times when Marxism has been in high academic fashion. Thus, I for one have not 'discarded' Marxist or marxisant theories of class for the simple reason that I never adhered to them, and indeed have consistently opposed them (e.g. Goldthorpe 1972, 1990). This non-Marxist tradition of class analysis with which American sociologists have never easily engaged is, I would maintain, alive and well, not in need of radical reconstruction but developing according to its own dynamic.' This brings me to my second comment. Within the non-Marxist tradition, an interest in class formation, broadly understood, has always been present. However, not only is the historical inevitability of class formation rejected but so too in effect is the idea that class formation in G&W's more limited sense of structuration has to be empirically demonstrated before class analysis can take on any significant intellectual interest or socio-political relevance. In other words, the existence of this tradition serves as a basis for questioning G&W's assumption that structuration i.e. the process through which economic categories become 'real social groupings' (cf. Giddens, 1973:107-112) is the sine .2 qua non of class analysis. It is true that, as G&W remark, for sociologists working in the non-Marxist tradi-