Repositioning Class: Social Inequality in Industrial Societies

by Gordon Marshall

In recent years the death of social class has been regularly reported - such pronouncements have been as exaggerated as they were untimely. Social class is as important to the understanding of late twentieth-century industrial societies as it was to their early twentieth-century counterparts. This book aims to explain why class has persisted as such a potent social force. In Repositioning Class Gordon Marshall uses the comparative study of British experiences in relation to those of the United States, Scandinavia and the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. Also examined are cases where Britain provides the exclusive focus for discussion either about class itself, or about how sociologists might most useful

256 pages, Paperback

First published July 11, 1997

About the author

Gordon Marshall CBE FBA is a sociologist and former Director of the Leverhulme Trust in England.

He was the chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from 2000 to 2002 and vice-chancellor of the University of Reading from 2003 to 2011.

Marshall has made important contributions to interdisciplinary and cross-national comparative work in the social sciences. His main fields of research include social exclusion, equality of opportunity, distributive justice and the culture of economic enterprise, and he has written widely on these topics. His early research was focused on Max Weber and the origins of modern economies.