Social class structures and social mobility: The background context

Class analysis is concerned with how patterns of advantage (and disadvantage) are transmitted and reproduced over time. However, the passage of time (such as the life-course transitions associated with ageing, cohort changes from one generation to the next, and longer-term socio-economic changes) makes the question of how class inequalities endure a complicated one. This chapter examines how change over time requires us to rethink the nature of class inequalities, by taking a closer look at the relationship between ‘class’ and culture, lifestyle and taste. It considers how social change in post-industrial societies has created a challenge for how we think about ‘class’, and led some to claim that ‘class is dead’. It then explores the counter-reaction by theorists who argue that ‘class’ today has a changed and increasingly cultural dynamic, with class inequalities reproduced through affluence and consumption practices and existing within processes of individualisation.