Social Class in a French Village

The concept of social class is central to the discussion of the structure of any modern European community, for it concerns the differentiation of its members in terms of superiority and inferiority, the ties of reciprocity between them and the bond of solidarity based upon equality. Yet there is little agreement as to the status or proper usage of the term among social scientists and where there is it tends to lie in the acceptance of a set of simple assumptions regarding stratification which nevertheless remain highly questionable in certain social contexts. Most writers today appear to prefer as the criteria by which they define social classes or strata the standards of differentiation of the