Understanding Social Classes

Understanding Social Classes: Concepts and Classifications

• Social class is a complex and contested concept that can be understood in different ways.
• Class can be seen as prestige, status, culture, or lifestyle, based on consumption patterns and other factors.
• Class can also be understood as access to economic and power resources, which is unequally structured in capitalist societies.
• Gradational accounts of class inequality describe differences in education, income, and other factors, while relational accounts seek to explain the structural factors that contribute to class inequality.
• Classes can also be seen as social and political actors, with their own consciousness and actions.
• Resources such as income from labor and capital are central to class theories and classifications.
• Theoretical class schemes, such as those proposed by Goldthorpe and Wright, focus on access to power and class relations.
• There is a conflict between the orthodox consensus, which justifies inequality as necessary for society, and conflict theorists, who view class relations as a source of conflict.
• Income groups or classes can be measured on a categorical or continuous scale using median, equivalised household disposable income.
• Poverty can be absolute, based on a lack of resources to secure basic life necessities, or relative, based on a lack of resources to meet societal norms.
• An employment-aggregated approach to social class is dominant in sociological research and reflects multiple dimensions of economic and power resources.
• However, job titles alone do not explain social relations or non-class factors that influence class processes.

Think you understand social classes? Test your knowledge with our quiz on Understanding Social Classes: Concepts and Classifications. From the different ways class can be understood, to theoretical class schemes, to poverty and social relations, this quiz covers all the essential topics. Challenge yourself and see how much you really know about this complex and contested concept. Keywords: social class, prestige, power resources, inequality, poverty, theoretical class schemes.