Can Class Analysis Be Salvaged

Can Class Analysis Be Salvaged?
Author(s): David B. Grusky and Jesper B. Srensen

Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 103, No. 5 (March 1998), pp. 1187-1234
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Can Class Analysis Be Salvaged? 1
David B. Grusky
Stanford University
Jesper B. Srensen
University of Chicago
The ongoing retreat from class analysis can be attributed to the de-
clining appeal of aggregate representations of class coupled with the
virtual absence of any disaggregate alternatives. When local solidar-
ities are ignored, the weakness of conventional aggregate models is
easily misinterpreted as evidence of generic destructuration, and
standard postmodernist formulations are accordingly difficult to re-
sist. Although local structuration is often regarded as sociologically
trivial, the available evidence suggests that such class analytic pro-
cesses as closure, exploitation, and collective action emerge more
clearly at the level of disaggregate occupations than conventional
aggregate classes.
It has long been fashionable to claim that conventional class analysis,
Marxian or otherwise, is somehow deficient and in need of revision. In
recent years, such criticisms of the class analytic framework have esca-
lated, with many scholars now feeling sufficiently emboldened to argue
that the concept of class is ceasing to do any useful work for sociology
(Pahl 1989, p. 710). Although this retreat from class analysis was antici-
pated in the late 1950s by Nisbet (1959) and again in the 1980s by Gorz
1
This article was presented in draft form to the Association for the Historical Study of
Social Mobility (Birmingham, England), the Social Class and Politics Working Group
(Washington, D.C.), and the American Sociological Association (New York). The re-
search reported here was carried out with support from the Deans Research Fund
of Stanford University, the Presidential Young Investigator Program of the National
Science Foundation (SES-8858467), and the Stanford Center for the Study of Families,
Children, and Youth. We are most grateful for the comments of Steven Brint, Clem
Brooks, Bruce Carruthers, Terry Clark, Mariah Evans, Eliot Freidson, Mark Grano-
vetter, Robert Hauser, Jerald Herting, Paul Kingston, Seymour Lipset, Jeff Manza,
Robert Mare, Aldon Morris, Steve Rytina, Aimee-Noelle Swanson, Jan Pakulski,
Charles Ragin, Eric Rice, Arthur Stinchcombe, Robert Szafran, Szonja Szelenyi, Da-
vid Weakliem, Kim Weeden, and Nancy Weinberg. We also profited from the detailed
and often passionate critiques of our AJS reviewers. Direct all correspondence to Da-
vid B. Grusky, Department of Sociology, Stanford University, McClatchy Hall, Stan-
ford, California 94305-2047.
1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0002-9602/98/10305-0002$02.50
AJS Volume 103 Number 5 (March 1998): 11871234 1187
American Journal of Sociology
(1982) and other recanting Marxians (e.g., Offe 1985; Lukes 1984; Hobs-
bawm 1981), the present round of anticlass rhetoric is unprecedented in
its popularity, especially in Europe where class analysis has historically
enjoyed a privileged position (Pakulski and Waters 1996a, 1996b, 1996c;
Pakulski 1996; Lee and Turner 1996; Scott 1996; Clark 1996; Casey 1995;
Barnes 1995, chap. 7; Joyce 1995; Kingston 1994; Clark and Lipset 1991).
This development constitutes a striking repudiation of our disciplinary
heritage; in fact, it was not so long ago that commentators as mainstream
as Stinchcombe (1973) could allege, without generating much in the way
of controversy, that social class was the one and only independent variable
of sociological interest. In the present article, we reenter these ongoing
debates, not by providing yet another critique or defense of conventional
class analysis, but rather by attempting to rebuild it in ways that may
usefully redirect future research.
The existing literature is short on such reconstructive efforts. At pres-
ent, virtually all protagonists adopt one of three analytic positions, two
of which arguably take contemporary anticlass critiques too seriously,
whereas the third one fails, in our view, to take them seriously enough.
1. The dominant form of revisionism, at least within American sociol-
ogy, rests on the claim that long-standing cleavages of class, occupation,
and status are giving way to new cleavages generated in institutional are-
nas (e.g., schools, organizations) that have become more prominent with
the transition to postindustrialism. These new cleavages have been de-
fined in disparate ways; for example, Meyer (1994, p. 734) claims that
researchers mistakenly use terms like class or socioeconomic status when
education is the main phenomenon at issue, while Baron (1994, p. 390)
suggests that organizational affiliation is . . . becoming increasingly im-
portant, and Dunleavy (1980, p. 378) argues that the emerging cleavage
between state and public employment cannot be directly assimilated into
notions of occupational and social class (also see Saunders 1990; Brint
1984; Hodson 1978; Habermas 1975; OConnor 1973).
2. The deconstructionists have suggested, by contrast, that the prior
reformulations gloss over more fundamental declines in the effects of all
structural cleavages, with the implication thus being that new theories,
perhaps more cultural than structural, [are] in order (Davis 1982, p. 585;
also see Beck 1992; Bell 1987). This line of argumentation underlies stan-
dard forms of postmodernism that seek to represent new social move-
ments (e.g., feminism) as the vanguard force behind future change in strat-
ification systems (Larana, Johnston, and Gusfield 1994; Eyerman 1994;
Eder 1993; Inglehart 1990, 1977; Laclau and Moffe 1985; Offe 1985; Tour-
aine 1981; Melucci 1980). In all such accounts, the labor movement is
represented as a fading enterprise rooted in the old conflicts of the work-
place and industrial capitalism, whereas new social movements are as-
1188
Class Analysis
sumed to provide a more appealing call for collective action by virtue

of their emphasis on issues of lifestyle, personal identity, and normative
change.
3. The most popular response to anticlass rhetoric has been to simply
reaffirm the importance of class models, albeit sometimes with the under-
standing that such models apply in weakened form even after a good deal
of refurbishing and revamping (e.g., Wright 1997, 1996; Devine 1997;
Marshall 1997; Lee 1996; Manza and Brooks 1996; Clement and Myles
1994; Crompton 1993; Hout, Brooks, and Manza 1993; Goldthorpe and
Marshall 1992; Miliband 1989). This revisionist impulse remains alive and
well; indeed, new proposals for reaggregating and remapping occupations
appear on the contemporary academic scene with great regularity (e.g.,
Esping-Andersen 1993; Rytina 1992), thereby leaving the contemporary
researcher with an embarras du choix among occupational classifications
and boundary-mapping schemata (Marshall et al. 1988, p. 5).
In the analysis that follows, we suggest that the class analytic frame-
work deserves more respect than is accorded by positions 1 and 2, yet
also requires more substantial revision than has so far been entertained
under the fallback alternative of position 3. If the class analytic tradition
is therefore on the defensive, this is largely because it has offered us a
menu of models that is hardly inspiring. The sociological consumer is typi-
cally instructed that a fundamental analytic choice must be made between
gradational models of stratification that map disaggregated occupations
onto vertical scales and categorical models of class that represent the
structure of inequality in terms of highly aggregate groupings. In a repre-
sentative discussion, Kohn and Slomczynski (1990, p. 31) equate social
stratification with the hierarchical ordering of society in terms of power,
privilege, and prestige, while they identify social classes as distinct
groups [that are] internally heterogeneous, each encompassing a wide
spectrum of occupations. As their discussion unfolds, we further learn
that models of class speak to the political and economic organization of
society and are therefore more fundamental, whereas models of strati-
fication only merit the consolation prize of affording a more fine-grained
basis of differentiation (Kohn and Slomczynski 1990, p. 31; cf. Kingston
1994, pp. 45; Crompton 1993, pp. 1314; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992,
pp. 2847; Jackman and Jackman 1983, p. 4; Wright 1979, pp. 58). The
unstated premise in all such conventional treatments is that disaggregate
occupations must necessarily be understood in nominal and gradational
terms. This assumption is represented in table 1, where we show that most
class models rest on some form of aggregation and that the few alternatives
available at the disaggregate level are invariably gradational in character.
As table 1 further suggests, one of the many legacies of Marxian class
models is the presumption that real class structuration can only be found
1189
TABLE 1
Typology of Class Models
Realist Nominalist*
Gradational Categorical Gradational Categorical
Aggregated ..................... Reputational models (e.g., Marxian and neo-Marxian Hollingshead occupational Weberian and neo-
Warner, Meeker, and models (e.g., Wright classification (Hollings- Weberian models (e.g.,
Eells 1949) 1985) head and Redlich 1958) Edwards 1943; Erikson
and Goldthorpe 1992)
Disaggregated ................ Strong form (Grusky and Prestige and socioeconomic Weak form (Grusky and
Srensen, this discussion) scales (e.g., Treiman Srensen, this discussion)
1977; Duncan 1961)
* We include under this designation class analytic formulations that treat class awareness, identification, and action as historically contingent and probabilistic.
The Erikson-Goldthorpe classification scheme clearly has some realist features to it. However, insofar as it is intended to capture indirectly the structure of market and
work conditions, one might argue that its nominalist tendencies are dominant. In this context, it does not much matter whether the work conditions of interest are construed
broadly (Goldthorpe 1987, p. 40) or narrowly (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992, pp. 3547), since in either case the constituent categories are viewed as proxies for more
fundamental class attributes. The class analysis proffered by Goldthorpe is, therefore, more limited than that of Marxian provenance, since it neither assumes exploitative
relations between classes nor a gemeinschaftlich model of working-class action based on the local solidarities of workplace or community (Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992,
p. 384).

Class Analysis
at highly aggregate levels of analysis, whereas the residue of structuration

at lower analytic levels is regarded as less fundamental and hence reduc-
ible to mere differentiation (e.g., Wright 1980, pp. 19293). We shall show,
to the contrary, that class models become more plausible when major oc-
cupational categories are disaggregated to the unit occupational level.
This argument might be pursued in a weak or strong form, with either
sufficing for the purpose of demonstrating that a disaggregate specification
of class is to be preferred over the aggregate alternative. The weak form
rests on the nominalist claim that detailed occupations are convenient
signals of more fundamental properties (e.g., working conditions, life
chances), while the strong form rests on the realist claim that occupations
are often gemeinschaftlich communities as well as positional sources of
exploitation and inequality. We will focus below on establishing the more
ambitious strong form variant, since the weaker nominalist position falls
out directly as a corollary. As Holton and Turner (1989, p. 175) have
noted, strong form interpretations of class structure have by now been
largely abandoned, with the typical fallback position being a reconceptu-
alization of class around non-organic gesellschaftlich relations or a histor-
icization of class analysis around the few contingent moments when eco-
nomic class has seemed to correspond to social class (also see Holton
1996; Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992, pp. 38385; cf. Srensen 1996). We
will accordingly suggest that realist models have been discarded prema-
turely; in fact, when analyses are appropriately ratcheted down to the
level of detailed occupations, the strong class idiom can be shown to have
considerable merit.
This position is not entirely without precedent. Indeed, whenever soci-
ologists have turned their attention to the professions (e.g., Abbott 1988),
the long-standing tendency has been to emphasize the great heterogeneity
and sectional divisiveness within this (putative) new class. The recent
commentary of Freidson (1986, p. 57) is illustrative here: The range of
education, income, and prestige of the professional occupations in ques-
tion . . . [makes] it hard to imagine them sharing a common culture of
any significance, a common set of material interests, or a common inclina-
tion to act politically in the same fashion and direction (also see Freidson
1994, pp. 11314; Brint 1994; Abbott 1988, pp. 17475; cf. Ehrenreich
and Ehrenreich 1979). This critique is surely of interest, yet it falls short
of our own position insofar as it pertains only to the professional sector
and fails to engage more broadly with contemporary anticlass critiques
(cf. Krause 1971, pp. 84105; Turner and Hodge 1970). In similar fashion,
stratification scholars are currently quite interested in unpacking con-
ventional class categories (Marshall et al. 1988), yet the ultimate objective
has invariably been to argue for some new and preferred form of reaggre-
gation (e.g., Kalmijn 1994; Breiger 1981).
1191
We would be hard-pressed, then, to locate a direct line of intellectual

heritage. If forced to identify a partial and approximate one, the principal
inspiration would have to be such scholars as Durkheim ([1893] 1933),
Bourdieu (1984), and their intellectural descendants (e.g., Lamont 1992;
Freidson 1994; Van Maanen and Barley 1984). Under the Durkheimian
developmental model, occupational associations serve as important inter-
mediaries between the modern state and individual, yet they play a largely
integrative role and thus disavow such characteristically classlike behav-
ior as maintaining or increasing privileges and monopolies (Durkheim
1933, p. 10). Likewise, Bourdieu (1984, pp. xii, 244) has argued that sociol-
ogists should rethink Webers long-standing opposition between class
and Stand, but his recent empirical work emphasizes the cultural rather
than economic implications of occupational closure. This recent work is
nonetheless distinguished by its relatively detailed analyses; that is, Bour-
dieu resorts to disaggregate data in characterizing the habitus and the
lifestyles it generates, since the conditions of existence of conventional
aggregate classes are assumed to be unacceptably heterogeneous.2 In our
own analyses, we shall similarly insist on extreme disaggregation, yet we
regard the resulting occupations as economic and cultural groupings that
constitute precisely that unification of class and Stand that Bourdieu
(1984) so ambitiously sought.
The remainder of our article is organized in straightforward fashion.
In the following section, we establish that the so-called technical division
of labor is misleadingly labeled, given that the dividing lines between oc-
cupations reflect the outcome of jurisdictional conflicts as well as exclu-
sively technical considerations. The concept of a technical division of la-
bor is thus rooted in a simplistic Smithian logic (Smith 1976, pp. 725)
that Marxian commentators conveniently seized upon in seeking to privi-
lege class models over those rooted in occupational structure. We next
turn to the core of the article by laying out the realist case for disaggrega-
tion and then asking whether this case is becoming less defensible as occu-
pational boundaries putatively blur and give way to organizational ones
(Baron 1994, p. 389; Abbott 1989).
HOW IS LABOR DIVIDED?

The consensus view of the 1960s and 1970s was that the occupational
structure was the backbone of the reward structure (Parkin 1971, p. 18)
2
As argued by Bourdieu (1984, p. 101), occupations are only approximate indicators
of underlying class boundaries, since even highly detailed classifications may not per-
fectly identify sets of agents who are placed in homogeneous conditions of existence.
1192
Class Analysis
and hence the best single indicator of class (Blau and Duncan 1967, p.
6; also see Parsons 1954; Sorokin 1927). This claim was seen as sufficiently
self-evident to make more detailed explication unnecessary; in fact, when
Wright (1979, p. 12) completed his comprehensive review of competing
models of class, he properly concluded that there are relatively few sus-
tained theoretical reflections on the logic of linking class to positions
within the technical division of labor. The absence of a credible defense
of this default model rendered it especially susceptible to the antioccupa-
tion critiques that took off in the 1980s and continue today. In the neo-
Marxian variant of such critiques, occupations are assumed to be merely
technical in character, whereas real classes capture the social relations
of production (Wright 1980, p. 177). By contrast, the radical deconstructi-
onist accounts of Conk (1978) and others (e.g., Casey 1995) represent occu-
pational classifications as statistical conveniences that reflect, in large
part, the interests and assumptions of the classifiers themselves (i.e., statis-
ticians) rather than the operation of more fundamental technical or social
boundaries. The neo-Marxian and deconstructionist accounts proceed,
then, from strikingly different premises, yet they coincide insofar as both
represent conventional occupational categories in largely nominal terms.
The purpose of the present section is to reconsider the logic of these ac-
counts and thereby provide a more sustained defense of the sociological
(i.e., occupation-based) model of class than has heretofore been available.
We might begin by asking why neo-Marxians so frequently characterize
the division of labor as purely technical (see, esp., Wright 1980). As best
we can determine, the intention here is to imply that functional groupings
in the division of labor are nominal in character and are unlikely, there-
fore, to become social groupings that constitute meaningful bases of social
action and identification. This viewpoint is aptly summarized in the ral-
lying cry that technical features do not entail social features (Abercrom-
bie and Urrie 1983, p. 109). If one were to take the concept of a technical
division of labor seriously, it would further suggest (a) that the configura-
tion of technical tasks mechanically determines the boundaries between
occupations, (b) that the rise and fall of occupations can likewise be attrib-
uted to the forces of technological advance and obsolescence, and (c) that
the incumbents of occupations form purely nominal unions held together
by virtue of shared task demands. Under such a formulation, the relation-
ship between occupational structure and function becomes quite unprob-
lematic, with the former being effectively determined by the latter (see
Abbott 1988, pp. 3558; Turner and Hodge 1970). We suspect that as-
sumptions of this sort inform at least some of the more celebrated critiques
of the sociological model of class. At the same time, we are reluctant to
push our characterization too far, since it perforce rests on rather sketchy
1193
discussions of the neo-Marxian position on the technical division of labor

(e.g., Wright 1979, pp. 318; cf. Abercrombie and Urrie 1983; Wright
1980; also see Crompton 1993, p. 51).3
Insofar as the above characterization is on the mark, it is not easily
reconciled with modern sociological understandings of the division of la-
bor, most notably those emerging out of the work of Abbott (1988), Parkin
(1979), and others (e.g., Freidson 1994; Brint 1994; Granovetter and Tilly
1988; Galenson 1986; Jackson 1984; Bourdieu 1984, pp. 24445; Starr
1982; Collins 1979; Larson 1977; Hughes 1971). Although there is hardly
consensus on such matters, the contemporary tendency has been to treat
the division of labor as the outcome of a dynamic matching process be-
tween occupational groupings on one hand and task niches on the other.
This matching process should be understood as a competitive (but often
latent) struggle in which occupational groupings vie with one another for
jurisdiction over functional niches in the division of labor. As Granovetter
and Tilly (1988, p. 190) note, Our encrusted and reified sense that one
task is for orderlies, another for nurses, and another only for doctors . . .
is the result of legal, political, and economic struggles, just as are the
names of the professions themselves. These jurisdictional struggles can
be found in all sectors of the occupational structure. The craft unions, for
example, have traditionally operated by staking out a particular area of
work and claiming what amounts to a property right in it, which they
are then willing to defend with whatever weapons are available to them
(Galenson 1986, p. 48; also see Jackson 1984). The professions have none-
theless been especially successful in controlling task niches, if only because
the state readily grants them monopolies over certification and licensing,
whereas the (formally identical) jurisdictional efforts of craft workers are
often regarded as a breach of industrial morality that should be curbed
rather than sanctified by law (Parkin 1979, p. 57). The picture that
emerges, then, is one of many occupations actively defending or extending
their jurisdictional claims, albeit with variable strategies and correspond-
ingly variable chances of success.4
3
For all its neo-Marxist credentials, this characterization of the division of labor would
nonetheless be unappealing to Marx (1963), since he rejected all efforts to interpret
labor arrangements as the outcome of some simple technical imperative. The alterna-
tive account favored by Marx is itself partial and problematic. Indeed, whereas Marx
(1963) emphasized the role of capitalists in fashioning the division of labor, we shall
suggest that occupational associations are equally involved in jurisdictional struggles
over functional niches.
4
This approach implies that jurisdictional settlements may well differ by country. At
the same time, there are obvious limits to such variability, not merely because the
usual forces of cross-national diffusion are at work, but also because the technical
structure of tasks renders certain jurisdictional solutions more likely than others.
1194
Class Analysis
When viewed in this manner, the division of labor can no longer be

understood as a simple one-to-one mapping between structure and func-
tion, and the nominalist imagery favored by some neo-Marxians becomes
accordingly problematic. Indeed, insofar as the division of labor is repre-
sented as the outcome of interoccupational conflict and competition, the
resulting occupations must perforce be taken as sociologically meaningful
rather than nominal. As Ossowski (1963, p. 133) puts it, At the moment
when we begin to treat an occupational group . . . as a component in the
system of basic groups in a social structure, this occupational group be-
comes a class. This conclusion is, of course, predicated on a relatively
weak definition of class, one which ignores such conventional class ana-
lytic considerations as exploitation, social closure, and class identification.
It is nonetheless useful to set the stage for our more comprehensive analy-
sis of class by first casting doubt on the time-honored mantra that techni-
cal features do not entail social features (Abercrombie and Urry 1983,
p. 109). As we argued above, the latter formulation is misleading not
merely because the technical division of labor is itself socially constructed,
but also because these jurisdictional struggles over functional niches have
the effect of transforming nominal task-based groupings into more nearly
social ones. If, then, the deconstructionists are correct in recognizing that
occupational categories are social constructions that reflect more than
purely technical exigencies, they are nonetheless mistaken in suggesting
that academics rather than workers are principally responsible for con-
structing these categories.
The preceding discussion implies that realist occupations are formed
when jurisdictional settlements are institutionalized and nominal task-
based groupings become social collectivities with a shared culture and set
of interests. The technical division of labor can of course become occupa-
tionalized (Casey 1995) to varying degrees. In some sectors of the class
structure, the division of labor remains socially disorganized because of
rapid technical change or other impediments (see Marsden 1986, chap.
8), and government statisticians are accordingly reduced to constructing
nominal classification schemes without much in the way of empirical guid-
ance. It is here that simple deconstructionist stories (e.g., Conk 1978) are
most sensible. At the other extreme, the autonomy of academic and gov-
ernment classifiers is far less than the deconstructionists would have it,
since the social boundaries between task niches are deeply and firmly in-
stitutionalized. This is not to suggest that classification exercises are ever
completely routine. Indeed, even in sectors of the class structure where
occupations are well formed (e.g., the professions), one typically finds com-
plex webs of nested and overlapping boundaries that are not easily reduc-
ible to an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive occupations. It follows that
sociologists do violence to the data by assuming that each worker must be
1195
mapped into one and only one class. However, insofar as such simplifying
assumptions continue to be relied upon, our approach requires class ana-
lysts to identify the dominant jurisdictional settlements at the disaggregate
level.
SOCIOPOLITICAL ACCOUNTS
We next consider the realist claim that disaggregate classes are closed
and self-aware sociopolitical groupings that act collectively and imply a
specific style of life. When scholars seek to market a particular class model,
they typically proceed by first representing certain analytic criteria as es-
pecially crucial (e.g., social closure) and then showing that these criteria,
if so privileged, lead inevitably to the preferred mapping. The wide range
of class models on offer can therefore be understood as reflecting corre-
spondingly wide differences of opinion as to which trait of class society
is regarded as primary or most important from the viewpoint of causal
dependence (Ossowski 1963, p. 138; see also Grusky 1994, p. 6). In the
present context, we can afford to be more inclusive than usual in selecting
the criteria of interest, if only because the case for disaggregation can be
made quite broadly. We shall thus proceed by examining the full comple-
ment of criteria that are conventionally considered in advancing sociopo-
litical models of class (i.e., identification, awareness, closure, collective ac-
tion, lifestyles).
Identification
It is natural to begin by considering the subjective domain of class sys-
tems. For all their differences, Marx and Durkheim both saw the future
of capitalism (or industrialism) in subjectively realist terms, with Marx
assuming that individuals would become aware of and identify with ag-
gregate classes, while Durkheim assumed much the same with respect to
disaggregate occupations. Moreover, both Marx and Durkheim antici-
pated a great clearing operation in which competing sources of solidarity
(e.g., regional, ethnic) would gradually wither away, thus allowing
production-based identities to become central and all-encompassing
(Marx 1964, pp. 48081; Durkheim 1933, pp. 1518, 2429). The question
that naturally arises is whether either of these realist stories might plausi-
bly be maintained in light of contemporary theory and evidence on iden-
tity formation.
In surveying the extensive and conflicting literature on such matters,
one is immediately reminded that sociological data leave ample room for
predispositions to affect conclusions, no matter how value free the analyst
attempts or purports to be. Although one can find, then, a great many
1196
Class Analysis
sociologists who remain convinced that contemporary identities are

strongly shaped by aggregate affiliations (e.g., Marshall et al. 1988), the
prevailing post-Marxist position is that conventional classes now have a
rather weak hold over workers. For example, Emmison and Western
(1990) report that only 7% of all Australians regard their social class as a
very important identity, while other commentators (e.g., Saunders 1989)
have stressed that open-ended queries about class identification tend to
yield numerous confused responses, refusals to answer, and even explicit
denials of the very existence of classes (Evans 1995; Evans 1992; Nisbet
1959; Kahl and Davis 1955; Haer 1957; Gross 1953). This evidence has
led many sociologists to conclude that class is now a passive rather than
active identity (Bradley 1996, p. 72) and that the system of production
is not, therefore, any longer the principal locus of identity formation. As
noted by Evans (1992), some scholars emphasize the situation-specific and
contingent basis of social identities (e.g., Laclau and Mouffe 1985),
whereas others have sought to locate alternative identity-shaping forces
that arise outside the productive system (e.g., Larana et al. 1994; Aronow-
itz 1992; also, see Calhoun 1994).
These postmodernist accounts amount, as we see it, to throwing out
the baby of class analysis with the bathwater of conventional aggregate
formulations. Indeed, even if one concedes that aggregate models of Marx-
ian and Weberian provenance have been found wanting, it might well be
a mistake to beat a hasty and immediate retreat from all forms of structur-
alism. In this context, the Emmison-Western analyses are again of interest,
since they suggest that structuralist formulations can be easily rescued by
simply ratcheting them down to a lower analytic level. While Emmison
and Western (1990) were principally interested in debunking simplistic
class-based formulations, it is of greater relevance for our purposes that
one of the main identity sources for their respondents proved to be the
old sociological standby of occupation. The latter result complements a
long tradition of qualitative research that sought to understand and docu-
ment the fabric of occupational identification (Krause 1971, pp. 84105;
also see Pavalko 1971, pp. 80109; Vollmer and Mills 1966; Hughes 1958;
Becker and Carper 1956). In a representative monograph, Caplow (1954)
argued that workers are deeply bound to their occupations, so much so
that they self-consciously adopt the behaviors and personalities that are
stereotypically expected of them. This line of reasoning led Caplow (1954,
p. 134) to conclude that professors may be more absent-minded, reporters
more cynical, chefs more excitable, and policemen more brutal than an
examination of their Rorschach scores would suggest.
In the decades that followed, a large body of more systematic research
on work and occupations emerged, much of which suggests that individ-
ual identities and self-definitions are strongly affected by detailed occupa-
1197
tional affiliations (e.g., Zabusky and Barley 1996; Mortimer and Lorence
1995; Freidson 1994, pp. 8991; Epstein 1990; Van Maanen and Barley
1984; Vaught and Smith 1980; Mortimer and Simmons 1978). The forego-
ing research may be seen as bearing out the classical Durkheimian view
that occupational affiliations are sufficiently powerful to become cross-
situational identities of the essentialist variety (see Laclau and Mouffe
1985). This is not to suggest that all competing sources of identity have
cleared away as Marx and Weber anticipated. In fact, the postmodern
presumption that identities are structured by an increasingly broad range
of sources (e.g., sexual preference) may well have merit, yet we ought not
forget that detailed occupations remain fundamental sources of identity
for a great many workers, especially those in the professional, technical,
craft, and service sectors. There is no evidence here of a zero-sum game
in which the (presumed) strengthening of racial, ethnic, and related soli-
darities occurs in tandem with the decline of production-based affiliations.
The postmodernist dismissal of the productive realm accordingly falls
short when the analysis is properly located at the disaggregate level. By
way of defense, some postmodernists might nonetheless suggest that, just
as aggregate solidarities are withering away, so too are disaggregate ones
as craft occupations are deskilled, rationalized, and thereby stripped of
their totalizing and identity-bestowing features. This formula is mis-
leading on many counts but most obviously because true occupational
communities can be found in manual and nonmanual sectors alike. The
professions, for example, typically provide a worldview that is preemi-
nently craftlike in its totalizing fusion of work and leisure (see Mills 1956).
In this regard, sociologists should presumably appreciate that the much
vaunted sociological perspective is merely one of many occupationally de-
termined worldviews, all of which override naive or lay interpretations
of social reality and thus provide incumbents with a deeply felt sense of
being apart and different (Van Maanen and Barley 1984, p. 300). The
available evidence suggests that such intense identification is characteris-
tic of occupations requiring extended training, esoteric skills, or a strong
service orientation. By this account, some craft communities are no doubt
eroded by the forces of deskilling, but new communities are simulta-
neously arising as esoteric skills and related solidarity-inducing factors
surface elsewhere in the division of labor (Van Maanen and Barley 1984,
p. 302).
Awareness
When studying the subjective aspects of stratification, it is conventional
to consider not merely the social identities through which individuals un-
derstand themselves, but also the cognitive maps with which they perceive
1198
Class Analysis
and define others. The sociological literature on such matters is of course

too vast to attempt an exhaustive review here (see Grusky and Van Rom-
paey 1992; Kluegel and Smith 1986; Jackman and Jackman 1983). We
would nonetheless emphasize (a) that most workers can advance some
type of aggregate class model when they are asked to do so, (b) that these
models are not necessarily the exclusive, or even principal, means by
which workers make sense of a stratified world, and (c) that there is sub-
stantial variability (across workers) in the shape and contours of the class
model put forward. In documenting these three claims, one might begin
by noting that many centuries of debate have left academics no closer to
consensus on the basic structure of social classes, let alone the underlying
principles by which such classes are generated and maintained. This sug-
gests that the modern facts of stratification may well be inconsistent with
the aggregate formulations that sociologists have long assumed; after all,
if a consensual mapping eludes individuals who are explicitly charged
with rendering stratification data more coherent, then perhaps the task
of aggregation is itself a misconceived one.
We likewise call into question the obverse claim that overly contentious
academics have only muddled a stratificational order that is more clearly
and consistently perceived by the lay public. The available evidence sug-
gests, to the contrary, that for every academic mapping of aggregate
classes there are a great many folk mappings predicated on various and
sundry theories of inequality. The free-sorting exercise of Coxon and
Jones (1979a, pp. 1355) indicates, for example, that subjects who are
asked to aggregate detailed occupations will produce class models that
differ widely in the number of underlying categories and the occupational
makeup of those categories (also see Kraus, Schild, and Hodge 1978,
p. 904; Coxon and Jones 1979b).5 The same result obtains when respon-
dents are asked to describe in their own terms the shape and contours of
the class structure. As reported by Coleman and Rainwater (1979, p. 120),
one-third of all Americans advance a three-class solution when queried
about the number and nature of classes, while the remaining two-thirds
of the population represents the class structure in various discrepant ways
or challenges the validity of the classification exercise itself (also see Lo-
preato and Hazelrigg 1972, pp. 13834; Goldthorpe et al. 1969).6 In subse-
5
The results presented by Jackman and Jackman (1983, pp. 2231) suggest that some-
what greater consistency emerges when respondents are asked to sort detailed occupa-
tions into a preexisting aggregate classification.
6
It is often argued that scholars should search long and hard for that underlying
strain of consistency and continuity (Bott 1957, p. 17) running across this great diver-
sity of popular images (see, esp., Vanneman and Cannon 1987). Although the average
class mapping is surely of interest, we ought not forget that individual-level variability
around this average is evidently substantial.
1199
quent research, some scholars have therefore proceeded by simply assum-

ing a five-class solution and then asking, conditional on such an
assumption, whether agreement could at least be reached on the relative
sizes of these putative classes (Evans, Kelley, and Kolosi 1992). This fall-
back approach yields equally disheartening results; namely, 35%45% of
the respondents represent the working class as disproportionately large,
while another 55% describe a bulging middle class falling between
sparsely populated extremes, and the remainder of the population opts
for a top-heavy society with an enlarged upper middle class.7 The picture
that emerges thus suggests a welter of confusion (Coleman and Rain-
water 1979, p. 120) rather than a consensual mapping that is deeply in-
grained in the collective consciousness (cf. Treiman 1977, p. 1).
This is not to gainsay the equally important point that subjects are
arguably more consistent in their judgments when they are asked to rank
occupations rather than sort them. The sociological lore in this regard is
that interrater reliabilities are extremely high and that the resulting pres-
tige scores thus constitute the long-sought consensual mapping of the
modern stratification order (esp., Parsons 1954). In our view, this conven-
tional story should be tempered with rather more humility, and not merely
because the mean interrater correlations generated in occupational scaling
exercises (i.e., 0.40) are in fact quite low when judged against prevailing
standards (Nakao and Treas 1994, p. 8). The further, and more important,
point that must be emphasized is that such scaling exercises do not speak
to the salience of occupational ranking for the individuals involved. To
be sure, individuals can evidently rank with some facility when pressed
to do so, yet this does not imply that their rankings exhaust the various
ways in which occupations are cognitively mapped. It is here that the
free-sorting exercises of Coxon and Jones (1979a) are again relevant; that
is, given that only two-fifths of the Coxon-Jones subjects described their
posited groupings in gradational terms, it seems that sociologists may be
more willing than the lay public to reduce occupations to prestige scores
(cf. Kraus et al. 1978). As De Soto and Albrecht (1968, p. 538) noted long
ago, many workers stubbornly speak of society as composed of different
kinds of people rather than different ranks, and it is not to the credit of
the social scientist that he insists on transforming their grouping into a
ranking.
This disjuncture between academic and popular conceptions of class
has not gone unappreciated. The tendency among modern scholars has
nonetheless been to legitimize the disjuncture either by postulating a fu-
7
The results cited here pertain to contemporary Australia and Hungary (Evans et al.
1992, table 2).
1200
Class Analysis
ture in which popular conceptions of class are brought into alignment

with academic ones (Jackman 1994, pp. 2933) or by simply conceding
that contemporary class models are permanently nominal in character
(e.g., Wrong 1959). These legitimizing devices are a peculiarly modern
phenomenon (Burke 1992). In characterizing stratification systems of the
past, sociologists have typically relied on aggregate categories (e.g., estates,
castes) that are embedded in the very fabric of society (i.e., institutional-
ized), thereby rendering them sensible and meaningful not merely to intel-
lectuals but to the lay public as well. The class analytic fallacy amounts,
then, to insisting on aggregate models even when the underlying categories
are no longer so deeply institutionalized. By contrast, a disaggregate map-
ping preserves the correspondence between lay and scholarly understand-
ings, since occupational forms of structuration are prominent in popular
representations of inequality.
We would thus argue that occupational categories are embedded in the
institutions of advanced industrialism, whereas aggregate concepts of
class are academic constructs that are relatively peripheral to contempo-
rary social systems. The modern labor market is especially revealing in
this regard, since its constituent institutions depend intimately on occupa-
tional categories and classifications. As Treiman (1977) notes, workers in-
variably represent their career aspirations in occupational terms, while
professional and vocational schools train workers for occupationally de-
fined skills, and employers construct and advertise jobs in terms of corre-
sponding occupational designations. This language of occupation
(Coxon and Jones 1979a) is further sanctioned by the modern state; indeed,
just as the estates of nobility, clergy, and bourgeoisie were formally recog-
nized categories in feudal society, so too are the manifold occupations in
advanced industrial society. The modern state collects detailed occupa-
tional information when marriages, births, or deaths occur, when state
benefits are requested and taxes collected, when censuses and labor force
surveys are administered, and when immigrants, citizens, and jurors are
admitted or selected. In similar fashion, private firms routinely request
occupational information from clients and customers, and individuals pro-
ceed likewise when making acquaintances at parties, business meetings,
and other social gatherings. It is hardly controversial, then, to suggest
that the disaggregate language of occupation is well developed and highly
institutionalized, whereas the aggregate language of class is spoken almost
exclusively in academic institutions. The moral to this story is therefore
clear; namely, much as class analysts typically prefer to uncover latent or
subterranean structures that are concealed from ordinary view, there is
nonetheless something to be said for constructing class models that make
sense to workers of the present day (see Scase 1992, pp. 34).
1201
Social Closure
The foregoing subjectivist models were once dominant in sociology (e.g.,
Warner et al. 1949) but have now been largely superseded by class analytic
approaches that rest on such concepts as exclusion, social closure, and
positional property (Brint 1994; Freidson 1994, pp. 8084; Manza 1992;
Murphy 1988; Collins 1979; Stinchcombe 1979; Parkin 1979; Giddens
1973; Lopreato and Hazelrigg 1972; Weber [1922] 1968). In models of this
sort, the emphasis shifts not only to the closure rules by which class incum-
bents protect their privileges, but also to the countervailing actions of
excluded parties that challenge these rules and the inequality that they
legitimate. The two exclusionary devices that closure theorists (esp. Parkin
1979) conventionally emphasize are those of private property and creden-
tialism: the former operates by preventing general access to the means
of production and its fruits, whereas the latter operates by controlling
and monitoring entry to key positions in the division of labor (Parkin
1979, p. 48). While closure theory provides, therefore, a new sociological
language for understanding interclass relations, the actual class mappings
posited by closure theorists ultimately prove to be standard aggregate fare.
For example, Parkin (1979, p. 58) proposes a two-class solution for modern
capitalism, with the exclusionary class comprising those who control pro-
ductive capital and professional services and the subordinate class com-
prising all those who are excluded from these positions of control (also,
Giddens 1973, pp. 10712; Weber 1968, pp. 3027). This formulation can-
not be easily reconciled with the post-Marxist rhetoric that Parkin (1979)
has elsewhere deployed. As Manza (1992, p. 289) notes, Parkin has taken
great pleasure in critiquing Marxian class models that ignore intraclass
fragmentation, yet in the end his own representation of classes is equally
vulnerable to such criticism. If there is indeed any inconsistency here, it
only serves to underline our more general point that aggregate formula-
tions are so dominant in sociology that even their critics cannot help but
deploy them.8
The question that emerges here is whether an aggregate formulation is
a necessary feature of closure theory or merely a superfluous adjunct. The
latter interpretation is arguably more plausible; that is, if closure theory
could somehow be reinvented without the coloration of class analytic con-
vention, its authors would likely emphasize that the real working institu-
tions of closure (i.e., professional associations, craft unions) represent the
interests of occupational incumbents and thus impose barriers to occupa-
8
This characterization of Parkin (1979, pp. 11213) ought not be pushed too hard,
since at some points in the text he emphasizes that intra-class relations [should] be
treated as conflict phenomena of the same general order as inter-class relations, and
not as mere disturbances or complications within a pure class model.
1202
Class Analysis
tional entry. These local associations also establish and enforce jurisdic-
tional settlements that create task monopolies by preventing other occupa-
tions from providing competing services. By contrast, there are no
analogous organizations that advocate on behalf of an aggregate exclu-
sionary class, nor are there jurisdictional settlements or institutionalized
barriers to entry that are truly aggregate in scope. The closure rules of ad-
vanced capitalism are not, therefore, defined broadly but are rather im-
posed by particularistic associations representing the credential-holders
themselves (Murphy 1988, p. 174).
The long-standing attempt to identify an aggregate exclusionary bour-
geoisie (Parkin 1979) is accordingly misleading. After all, such conceptual
efforts not only misrepresent the analytic level at which exclusionary bar-
riers are drawn, but they also ignore the many pockets of exclusionary
closure that are found within craft, service, and other subordinate occupa-
tions. The unfortunate tendency within closure theory has thus been to
ignore craft unions altogether or to treat them as weak and inconsequen-
tial sources of closure. In justifying this practice, Parkin (1979, p. 57) has
stressed that professional closure is based on state-guaranteed monopolies
of the kind that craft occupations only rarely secure, while Murphy (1988,
p. 188) has further emphasized that unions seek to redress disadvantage
rather than extend or elaborate it. These points of distinction may render
unions a less objectionable form of closure, but from our standpoint what
is most relevant is the social fact of closure itself rather than its standing
relative to some moral compass.
This line of reasoning suggests that closure theorists ought not focus so
exclusively on the relatively rare case of monopolistic guilds. As noted by
Gouldner (1979), the union shop can also be an effective exclusionary tool,
and so too can various forms of expert closure in which control over hiring
and firing is ceded to occupational representatives or incumbents. The
latter form of control is ubiquitous; for example, the professional associa-
tions of the knowledge trades cannot legally prevent academic employ-
ers from hiring uncredentialed academics, but in practice hiring decisions
are controlled by occupational representatives who ensure that employees
have the appropriate training and credentials (Freidson 1994, p. 116).
There is great variability, then, in the methods by which closure is secured
and in the effectiveness of these methods. As is well known, some occupa-
tions have clearly failed to realize their exclusionary objectives (e.g.,
nurses), while others have neither pursued nor even articulated such ob-
jectives. Although many occupations are quite unformed, we would none-
theless emphasize that, insofar as formal rules of closure have been estab-
lished, they are typically implemented at the level of occupations.
This revised version of closure theory is inconsistent with the conven-
tional practice of carrying out aggregate analyses of class mobility. The
1203
results from these analyses have been variously interpreted, but it is be-
coming increasingly fashionable to characterize modern exchange as so
fluid, permeable, and inchoate that exclusionary institutions do not seem
to be designed first and foremost to solve the problem of class reproduc-
tion (Parkin 1979, p. 62). In our view, conclusions of the latter sort should
be regarded as premature, since they are based on data that are highly
aggregate and hence likely to conceal exclusionary practices operating at
the occupational level. There are at least two ways in which occupation-
specific credentials protect incumbents from the hazards of the market-
place: they provide tenure by guaranteeing the competence of credential
holders for the duration of their careers, and they require training (e.g.,
advanced schooling) that is so arduous that only workers at the beginning
of their careers will likely undertake the necessary investment. The re-
sulting barriers to inflow and outflow are clearly occupational in nature
and are thereby concealed in mobility analyses pitched exclusively at the
aggregate level. When conventional mobility tables are disaggregated, one
indeed finds that the holding power of many detailed occupations (e.g.,
doctor, lawyer, carpenter) is quite strong, whereas that of aggregate classes
is invariably weak (Srensen and Grusky 1996a; cf. Evans and Laumann
1983).9 If, then, the amount of intragenerational closure revealed in con-
ventional research falls short of what reproduction theorists promised
(e.g., Bourdieu and Passeron 1977), this is not because modern forms of
closure are altogether unreliable but rather because modern analyses mis-
specify the analytic level at which closure is secured.
The case for disaggregation is perhaps less persuasive when the focus
shifts to intergenerational closure and the more complex institutional
forces that underly it. As Parkin (1979, pp. 6066) rightly emphasizes, the
closure rules of credentialing organizations may protect current incum-
bents from the ravages of the market, but they are not so obviously per-
fected for the purpose of transferring privilege from one generation to the
next. The offspring of professional parents, for example, cannot them-
selves become professionals without passing through the same arduous
credentialing regimen that is required of the general population, with all
the uncertainty and potential for failure that this implies. We would obvi-
ously not suggest that parents are powerless in the face of such demand-
side universalism; however, insofar as they can facilitate intergenerational
9
Although the main barriers to mobility are thus found at the disaggregate level,
these barriers might still be insufficiently developed to produce strong individual
commitment to the long-term interests of a profession (Evans and Laumann 1983,
p. 25). In this regard, the forces for closure may well work principally at the disaggre-
gate level, but the resulting restrictions on mobility flows cannot be expected to assume
castelike proportions.
1204
Class Analysis
reproduction, they must do so principally by influencing the supply-side

aspirations and credentials that their children bring to the market. The
unfortunate tendency within the literature has been to represent these
supply-side effects as so diffuse in character that they necessarily generate
reproduction at the level of classes rather than occupations. Although the
generic concepts of reproduction theory (e.g., cultural capital) undoubt-
edly capture some of the processes at work, it is well to bear in mind that
tastes, orientations, and social capital of an occupation-specific sort are
also transmitted intergenerationally. In this context, it is perhaps unsur-
prising that the intergenerational holding power of detailed occupations
proves to be quite strong, whereas that of aggregate classes is correspond-
ingly weak (Srensen and Grusky 1996b; Stier and Grusky 1990; also,
Rytina 1992, 1993). This result suggests that parents transfer occupation-
specific capital as well as more diffuse tastes and capacities for critical
discourse (Gouldner 1979), elaborated speech (Bernstein 1971), and other
classwide forms of social and cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron
1977).
Collective Action
In recent years, the aggregate classes identified by Marxian theory have
shown a decided reluctance to act collectively on behalf of their (pre-
sumed) interests, thus leading to considerable neo-Marxian hand-
wringing as well as more constructive neo-Marxian efforts to salvage
class-based models of collective action. The principal scholarly responses
have been (1) to redraw the lines of cleavage along which classes for
themselves will likely form (e.g., Poulantzas 1974), (2) to conceptualize
the relationship between class structure and action as highly probabilistic
and contingent (e.g., Wright 1985, pp. 12324), (3) to emphasize the role
of political movements and parties in activating these contingent interests
(e.g., Korpi 1983), and (4) to discard the class analytic enterprise altogether
by locating the main locus of interest formation outside the realm of pro-
duction (see, e.g., Larana et al. 1994). The recent history of class analytic
scholarship might thus be represented as a series of increasingly overt
challenges to the Marxian orthodoxy on collective action. The minor revi-
sionism of position 1 has in fact been largely abandoned by now, whereas
the more substantial revisionism of positions 2 and 3 continues to claim
adherents (e.g., Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992), and the explicit post-
Marxism of position 4 is obviously in ascendancy.
Unfashionable though it may be, we suggest that position 1 ought not
be rejected outright, nor should it be weakened with escape clauses that
render class action merely contingent or probabilistic. In adopting the for-
mulations of the other three positions, stratification scholars have appar-
1205
ently overlooked the simple fact that much collective action flows quite
unproblematically out of structurally defined groupings, albeit only if such
groupings are understood in less aggregate terms than is conventionally
the case. The three principal types of collective action at the level of unit
occupations are downwardly directed closure strategies designed to re-
strict access to occupational positions, lateral competitive struggles be-
tween occupational associations over functional niches in the division of
labor, and upwardly directed collective action oriented toward securing
occupation-specific benefits (e.g., monopoly protection) from the state and
from employers. We have already discussed downward and lateral forms
of collective action in some detail. As for upward forms, the main point
that should be stressed is that interoccupational struggle is clearly the
norm among professionals, so much so that only rarely have their associa-
tions supported one another in efforts to secure state-granted prerogatives
of licensing or credentialing. In fact, Abbott (1988, p. 175) was hard-
pressed to locate a single example of a professional association publicly
defending the licensing efforts of another profession, whereas he found a
great many examples of negative testimony coming from immediately
competing professions. The case for sectionalism is somewhat weaker
within the manual sector; nonetheless, many unions in the United States
are organized at the level of detailed occupations, while cross-occupa-
tional combinations of craft unions (e.g., the American Federation of La-
bor) have been too weak to undertake much in the way of meaningful
classwide action.10 These considerations led Krause (1971, p. 87) to con-
clude long ago that there has historically been more occupation-specific
consciousness and action than cross-occupational combination (also see
Freidson 1994, pp. 7591; Van Maanen and Barley 1984, pp. 33133).
The division of labor is rife, then, with collective action that occurs so
predictably as to eliminate any need to deploy the rhetoric of contingency.
To be sure, much work remains in understanding the conditions under
which occupations engage in collective action, but at least the discipline
can be assured of having sufficient such behavior to explain. We must
concede, of course, that occupation-based approaches lack the tidy closure
of orthodox Marxian models in which all parties to conflict are themselves
classes or their direct representatives. Although collective action of the
lateral variety may approximate closure of this sort, the remaining forms
10
The unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) were originally orga-
nized as aggregates of many occupations. In the end, the rise of CIO unions only
turned inward (Dunlop 1956) the long-standing struggle between occupational and
industrial forms of organization, with sectional interests ultimately reemerging in the
form of skilled trade committees that represented particular occupations within each
CIO union (Weber 1969).
1206
Class Analysis
of occupational action (i.e., upward, downward) are directed against em-

ployers, states, or individuals instead of occupations themselves. In this
sense, a disaggregate approach allows for Marxian conflict between labor
and capital, but with the modification that workers typically enter into
conflict as members of particular occupations or industries rather than as
workers per se. Among the remaining points of distinction, the most obvi-
ous one is that a disaggregate approach emphasizes local or sectional con-
flict, whereas its aggregate counterparts are sometimes packaged as more
encompassing theories of history. While we might conclude that class
analysis at the unit occupational level is a relatively limited intellectual
project, it should again be stressed that many aggregate class analysts
have likewise abandoned all interest in comprehensive class-based theo-
ries of history (e.g., Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992, p. 385). The class ana-
lytic project has, in this sense, become a uniformly more modest one.
Lifestyles and Dispositions

The defining assumption of classical Marxism is that human history un-
folds through the conflict between classes and the revolutionary recon-
struction of society (Marx 1948, p. 9) that such conflict ultimately brings
about. As noted above, macrostructural claims of this sort have been de-
emphasized by virtually all class analysts (even neo-Marxians), and one
finds a consequent ratcheting down of analytic interest to the individual
level. The intellectual rationale for modern class analysis thus increasingly
rests on the simple empirical observation that class membership condi-
tions individual-level outcomes of all kinds (e.g., attitudes, voting behav-
ior, and consumption practices). In its more extreme forms, this approach
requires us to rethink the standard Weberian distinction between class
and status, since the presumption is that classes are inevitably trans-
formed into organic and holistic groupings with coherent lifestyles (see,
esp., Bourdieu 1984).
The resulting analyses of class effects (Grusky 1994) typically proceed
by examining either the categorical effects of aggregate classes or the gra-
dational effects of variables that are assumed to represent the many di-
mensions (e.g., substantive complexity) underlying disaggregate occupa-
tions.11 These conventional approaches are clearly inconsistent with our
strong form position. That is, class analysts (e.g., Wright 1985) fail to ap-
preciate the full extent of disaggregate structuration, while gradationalists
(e.g., Kohn and Schooler 1983) fail to appreciate that such structuration
11
The recent work of Kohn and Slomczynski (1990) can be read as combining the
foregoing approaches.
1207
is expressed through organic occupational groupings that are not reducible

to a vector of variables such as working conditions, skill requirements,
and technical constraints. In this context, we would again stress that mod-
ern closure is secured principally at the detailed occupational level, with
the resulting restriction of social interaction generating occupational sub-
cultures that are correspondingly disaggregate. The foregoing constraints
on interaction serve to preserve and elaborate occupation-specific cultures
that are initially forged through intensive socialization of the kind pro-
vided in apprenticeships, police and military academies, and graduate and
professional schools. As Caplow (1954) noted long ago, many occupations
require of their incumbents prolonged training that serves to inculcate
explicit codes of behavior, whereas aggregate classes have no comparable
influence or authority over secondary patterns of socialization. The occu-
pational habitus is further shaped by self-selective matching processes
whereby workers opt for occupations that are receptive to their preex-
isting values and orientations. These forces of social closure, formal train-
ing, and self-selection thus combine to generate an occupational code
of ethics and ideology comprehending not merely the work situation but
extending beyond this to define a status and style of life ( Jackson 1970,
p. 6). The great failing, then, of conventional analyses of lifestyles, disposi-
tions, and attitudes is that occupations are regarded as nominal categories
and are therefore blithely aggregated or dimensionalized (Mortimer and
Lorence 1995, pp. 49899; Watson 1995, pp. 22932; Freidson 1994; Bour-
dieu 1984; Van Maanen and Barley 1984; Haas 1977; Salaman 1974;
Hughes 1958; Goode 1957).
It bears emphasizing that gemeinschaftlich communities emerge in only
some sectors of the division of labor. By contrast, the aggregate models
of conventional class analysis are typically represented in either nomi-
nalist or realist terms, and the fundamentally hybrid character of modern
class systems has therefore gone largely unappreciated. We would further
suggest that such local structuration is produced under various and sun-
dry conditions; indeed, while craft occupations may well be paradigmatic
in their fusing of work and lifestyle (Mills 1956, p. 223), one can nonethe-
less find strong occupation-based lifestyles elsewhere in the class structure.
The available evidence indicates that coherent lifestyles emerge when
training is harsh or lengthy (e.g., apprenticeships, police academies, gradu-
ate school), when workers are stigmatized or otherwise isolated due to
geography or constant travel (e.g., sanitation workers, loggers, carnival
people), and when recruitment is self-selective by virtue of social net-
works, economic barriers to entry, or the unusual tastes and skills that
an occupation requires (e.g., actors, farmers, morticians). The content of
these local cultures is of course intricately woven and cannot be satisfacto-
rily understood by reducing occupations to such dimensions as autonomy,
1208
Class Analysis
prestige, or complexity. If one wishes, then, to map the underlying struc-

ture of class cultures and lifestyles, the methods of anthropology as well
as quantitative sociology should be of some interest (Bourdieu 1984).
The limitations of conventional analysis are best revealed by turning
to the familiar case of sociology. In seeking, for example, to account for
the humanist, antimaterialist, and otherwise left-leaning culture and life-
style of sociologists (Lipset 1994), our approach would emphasize (a) the
left-leaning reputation of sociology and the consequent self-selection of
left-leaning recruits, (b) the liberalizing effects of lengthy professional
training and socialization, and (c) the reinforcing effects of social interac-
tion with like-minded colleagues. This simple case cannot be so readily
explained with conventional formulations; that is, the left-leaning culture
of sociology cannot be understood by referring to the substantive complex-
ity of sociological work (or other similarly reductive dimensions), nor by
invoking the imagery of a generically liberal professional-managerial
class, nor even by subdividing this class into supraoccupational sectors
of various kinds (e.g., Brint, Cunningham, and Li 1996; Brint 1994; Brint
and Kelley 1993; Brint 1984; Bourdieu 1984; Gouldner 1979; Ladd 1979).
In the absence of highly disaggregate analyses, the strength of occupation-
specific cultures is of course unknown, yet there is good reason to suspect
that such structuration is substantial (see Aschaffenburg [1995] for rele-
vant work).12 The intellectual payoff to exploring this structuration is
likely, at the very least, to be greater than that secured by positing yet
another reductive dimension or class analytic aggregation.
STRUCTURAL ACCOUNTS
The preceding discussion suggests that disaggregate occupations can be
meaningful sociopolitical communities of precisely the sort that class ana-
lysts once sought. However, given that contemporary scholarship has in-
variably defaulted to the aggregate level, such gemeinschaftlich concep-
tions of class have by now been largely abandoned (Holton and Turner
1989), and neo-Marxians of the present day thus adopt the more limited
objective of mapping out structural locations that have the potential to
become sociopolitical communities in the future (see also Holton 1996).
Under this formulation, much attention is conventionally focused on iden-
tifying the underlying axes of exploitation, since these are assumed to con-
stitute the objective bases of antagonistic interests (see Wright 1989) that
12
While some political sociologists (e.g., Nieuwbeerta and De Graaf, n.d.) have sought
to disaggregate conventional classifications, the resulting categories remain extremely
heterogeneous and cannot, therefore, be represented as occupations of a meaningful
sort (also, see Nieuwbeerta 1995).
1209
will ultimately come to be recognized and defended. We shall explore in

the present section whether aggregate conceptualizations of class are any
more plausible when this alternative approach is adopted.
There are of course a great many structural theories of inequality that
rest on the concept of exploitation (e.g., Srensen 1996, 1994; Wright 1989,
1985; Roemer 1982). Indeed, while this concept may seem outmoded to
some, it has so far weathered challenges on many fronts and has been
successfully refurbished for modern purposes. The principal impetus for
such refurbishing was the demise of the labor theory of value and the
consequent difficulties that neo-Marxians faced in arguing that capitalist
profit is merely the appropriated product of labor.13 As Srensen (1994,
p. 234) puts it, the labor theory of value has great appeal as a claim of
injustice, but no appeal as an economic theory (also Roemer 1982). The
ongoing decomposition of labor (Dahrendorf 1959, pp. 4857) posed re-
lated problems of an empirical sort; namely, much of the inequality in
contemporary economies is now generated within the labor market, yet
the orthodox concept of exploitation ignores such inequality by focusing
exclusively on transfers of surplus value from wage earners to capitalists.
Although the foregoing problems have been addressed in various ways
(see, e.g., Scase 1992), the approach that is currently most popular involves
relaxing the assumption of homogeneous labor and accounting for skill-
based inequalities in terms of exploitative forms of closure. In effect,
Wright (1985) and others (e.g., Srensen 1994) have equated exploitation
with the extraction of rent, where the latter refers to the returns to skill
that are secured by limiting opportunities for training and thus artificially
restricting the supply of qualified labor (see, also, Roemer 1988, 1982).14
The inequality so generated is sometimes regarded as distinctively socio-
logical because it derives from the characteristics of positions rather than
persons (Srensen 1996, 1994).
If an approach of this sort is adopted, one can then test for exploitation
by calculating whether the cumulated lifetime earnings of skilled labor
exceeds that of unskilled labor by an amount larger than the implied train-
ing costs (e.g., school tuition, forgone earnings).15 In a perfectly competitive
market, labor will perforce flow to the most rewarding occupations,
13
The labor theory of value is not without its defenders, but it no longer has litmus-
test status in determining whether a scholar self-identifies as neo-Marxian.
14
The concept of rent has been defined in various ways, but for our purposes these
differences can be safely glossed over. In the discussion that follows, the complicating
effects of organizational exploitation (Wright 1985) will be ignored since we accept
the view of Srensen (1994) that managerial positions are not rent generating and
cannot, therefore, be represented as exploitative.
15
This test should of course be based on the present value of cumulated lifetime earn-
ings.
1210
Class Analysis
thereby equalizing the lifetime earnings of workers and eliminating ex-

ploitative returns (after correcting for training costs).16 However, when
opportunities are limited by enforcing jurisdictional settlements and by
capping the number of trainees, the equilibrating flow of labor is disrupted
and the potential for exploitation emerges. As we earlier discussed, social
closure of this sort occurs principally within the professional and craft
sectors; and there is consequently a close affinity between models of clo-
sure and those of exploitation. In comparing these approaches, the princi-
pal point of distinction is that neo-Marxians focus on the economic returns
and interests that exclusionary practices generate, whereas closure theo-
rists emphasize the common culture, sociocultural cohesiveness, and
shared market and life experiences that such practices may produce (see,
esp., Goldthorpe 1987; Giddens 1973; cf. Srensen 1996, 1994; Parkin
1979, p. 46). The picture of the class structure that emerges is nonetheless
much the same regardless of the conceptual framework chosen.
The latter conclusion implies that aggregate formulations cannot be sal-
vaged by simply replacing the concept of closure with that of exploitation.
As Srensen (1994) again points out, the aggregate model of Wright (1985)
is flawed not merely because it ignores the exclusionary practices of craft
labor, but also because it fails to distinguish rent-generating professions
(e.g., lawyers) from those that are in the initial stages of a closure project
(e.g., nurses). Although such problems are in principle solvable by simply
reaggregating occupations, the more fundamental matter is that all aggre-
gate categories will necessarily conceal the highly disaggregate level at
which rent is extracted and interests are thus formed. In this sense, aggre-
gate models of exploitation are inevitably nominal in character, since the
institutional sources of exploitation (e.g., associations, unions) operate at
the disaggregate level and therefore create material interests that are cor-
respondingly disaggregate in structure. This consideration ought not pre-
vent scholars from engaging in aggregation exercises; however, if the over-
all level of social welfare is truly less fundamental than the underlying
mechanisms which generate it (Wright 1989, p. 206), then class models
of an aggregate sort will be of only descriptive interest.
The obvious counterargument that might be raised here is that rent-
generating occupations are unified in the last analysis (Althusser 1969)
by their shared interest in protecting the credentialing institutions that
make rent possible. This formulation would presumably be welded to
some form of Marxisant teleology; that is, one would likely proceed by
defining classes in terms of interests that are currently in latency (Grusky
1994), with the assumption being that anticredentialing movements will
16
We are ignoring here the inequality that arises by virtue of effort, native ability,
and compensating differentials.
1211
ultimately appear on the scene and induce rent-extracting exploiters to

recognize and defend their underlying interests. It would surely not tax
the ingenuity of class analysts to elaborate a story along these lines (see
Young 1958; Wright 1989, pp. 2025). The resulting formulation does
nonetheless place considerable demands on the imagination since it im-
plies that anticredentialist movements will emerge from a contemporary
political landscape that has not yet revealed much sympathy for such
causes. The concept of rent has so far proven largely academic in its ap-
peal; to be sure, a great many anticredentialist tracts have been published
(e.g., Illich 1980; Collins 1979; Friedman 1962), yet none has so far been
translated into popular movements that challenge the legitimacy of profes-
sionalization and related forms of closure.17 If the objective, then, is to
describe the contours of the class structure in the present day, one would
have to be impressed that closure projects (e.g., professionalization) have
been far more appealing than revolutionary challenges to the institutions
of closure.
TREND IN CLASS STRUCTURATION

In the foregoing sections, we established that disaggregate structuration
has been largely overlooked by contemporary class analysts, yet we ig-
nored the possibility that such structuration, strong though it may be, is
nonetheless growing gradually weaker in ways that are consistent with a
standard poststructuralist vision. The prevailing view, especially among
European commentators, is that the site of production is indeed of dimin-
ishing relevance in understanding stratification systems. Although post-
structuralism has thus diffused so rapidly as to be taken for granted
among contemporary social and cultural analysts (Casey 1995, p. 8), it
may be premature to foreclose on all further debate regarding the princi-
pal forces of change. The poststructuralist account is, after all, merely the
latest and most fashionable offering in a long succession of stage theories
that characterize the logic underlying the transition to postindustrialism.
In constructing accounts of this sort, some sources of change are perforce
emphasized and exaggerated, while those that are inconsistent with the
postulated trajectory are typically dismissed or ignored altogether. We
shall attempt here a comprehensive cataloging of the forces for structura-
tion and destructuration without seeking to package them as a coherent
story or grand narrative underwritten by a larger logic. If such neat pack-
aging is at all possible, it is more properly achieved through research than
17
The licensing of occupations has become strictly regulated in some states, yet such
legislative reform has so far addressed the conditions under which licenses may be
obtained rather than the legitimacy of closure itself.
1212
Class Analysis
argumentation; and we shall therefore defer any conclusions until more

in the way of relevant evidence has surfaced.
The available literature can be readily simplified by classifying theories
in terms of the institutional domains that they reference. We shall thus
proceed by distinguishing between the types of technical tasks embodied
in the division of labor, the organizational settings in which these tasks
are carried out, and the associational forms that characteristically develop
at the site of production (e.g., trade unions, professional associations). As
shall be evident, the foregoing domains do not evolve in isolation from
one another, but it is nonetheless analytically useful to distinguish between
them.
Sociotechnical Change
The debates within the sociotechnical domain have in the past unfolded
in highly stylized fashion, with Marxians and neo-Marxians arguing that
industrialism promotes classwide solidarity by gradually obliterating all
distinctions of labor (Marx 1964, p. 480), while postindustrial theorists
counter that ongoing sociotechnical change only serves to further differen-
tiate the working class into diverse occupations that differ in skill, life
chances, and sociopolitical interests (Aronowitz and DiFazio 1994; Gallie
1991; DiPrete 1988; Spenner 1995, 1985, 1983; Braverman 1974; Dahren-
dorf 1959). In classical versions of postindustrial theory, the emerging cat-
egories of highly skilled labor (e.g., professional, technical, service) are
seen as resistant to deskilling because (a) the tasks generated under postin-
dustrialism are intrinsically complex and difficult to differentiate and (b)
the division of labor within these emerging sectors is occupationally orga-
nized and therefore protected from most forms of managerial rationaliza-
tion. For example, Ellul (1967, p. 162) writes that technique as a general
phenomenon always gives rise to an aristocracy of technicians, while
Bennis and Slater (1968, p. 66) refer to bands of specialists held together
by the illusion of a unique identity, and Bell (1973, p. 145) observes that
the organization of professionals will be a major feature of post-industrial
society. The resulting postindustrial story thus suggests, if only implicitly,
a Durkheimian solidarity of specialty that emerges even as classwide
forms of solidarity weaken or wither away. Against this intellectual back-
drop, the postmodernist account may be seen as simultaneously embrac-
ing the postindustrial view that classwide forms of solidarity are unviable,
while also rejecting the corollary claim that persisting local solidarities
account, at least in part, for the breakdown of such aggregate solidarities.
In this sense, postmodernists unfairly emphasize the purely destructive
effects of skill differentiation, thus making it possible to represent the
realm of production as increasingly formless and unstructured (see Za-
1213
busky and Barley 1996; Friedson 1994, pp. 99102; Van Maanen and Bar-
ley 1984).
The current fashion is to approach these long-standing debates about
task deskilling from a post-Fordist perspective (Piore and Sabel 1984). As
Amin (1994) notes, the post-Fordists suggest that early industrialism did
indeed promote much craft deskilling, yet this process is alleged to be
reversing itself as Fordist factories are gradually supplanted by small-
scale production, flexible specialization, and a rejuvenated artisanal sec-
tor, all of which serve to reintroduce those distinctions of manual labor
that Marx promised would disappear (also, see Hirst and Zeitlin 1991).
The foregoing account may be seen, then, as a freshened form of postin-
dustrialism in which the forces of upgrading and reskilling are presumed
to play out not merely in the professional, technical, and service categories
but in the craft sector as well. In this context, one might expect postmod-
ernists to view post-Fordism with some antipathy, yet in fact these two
accounts are often conflated in the literature. For example, the new times
post-Fordism of Hall (1988) and his colleagues (e.g., Hall and Jacques
1989) becomes virtually indistinguishable from conventional postmodern-
ism, since it emphasizes that sociotechnical changes weaken aggregate sol-
idarities and generate a new stratification order based on lifestyle, taste,
and culture rather than categories of social class (Hall 1988, p. 24). This
account rests on the characteristic postmodernist assumption that an in-
creasingly fragmented productive realm (Hall 1988, p. 24) necessarily
weakens all forms of solidarity within the division of labor.
While the pathbreaking work of Piore and Sabel (1984) clearly has
merit, we would necessarily take issue with these more elaborated ac-
counts that attempt to smuggle in poststructuralism under a post-Fordist
banner. If one accepts the core post-Fordist claim that flexible specializa-
tion breathes new life into artisanal production (e.g., Piore and Sabel
1984), the appropriate implication is not that all production-based solidar-
ities shall wither away but rather that such solidarities are increasingly
localistic. In any standard post-Fordist account, the new and emerging
forms of craft production are assumed to require worker solidarity and
communitarianism (Piore and Sabel 1984, p. 278), and the rejuvenated
artisanal sector therefore brings early industrial craft communities into
the 21st century on the basis of a newly decentralized production process
(Aronowitz and DiFazio 1994, p. 98). The end result, then, is a manifestly
prostructuralist account whereby modern craft workers are increasingly
bound to an often familial community [that] promotes both greater con-
trol and a sense of belonging (Aronowitz and DiFazio 1994, p. 97). We
do not wish to suggest here that a post-Fordist model should be adopted
wholesale (see, e.g., Tomaney 1994); however, insofar as this model now
1214
Class Analysis
constitutes the disciplinary wisdom on matters of sociotechnical change,

it bears emphasizing that it is partly consistent with our strong form ac-
count.18
The same conclusion holds with respect to older sociotechnical models
of differentiation (e.g., Parsons 1970; Dahrendorf 1959). When such mod-
els were initially formulated, there was little interest in elaborating a
positive theory of local structuration, since the principal objective was
merely to counter Marxian approaches by calling attention to the class-
decomposing effects of differentiation. For example, Dahrendorf (1959, p.
48) found it enough to demonstrate that the working class, far from being
a homogeneous group, is in fact a stratum differentiated by numerous
subtle and not-so-subtle distinctions, while Parsons (1970, p. 23) likewise
argued that the variegated occupational system has developed a wide
range of qualitatively different types . . . on a scale not even vaguely envi-
sioned by Marx. If a positive theory of local solidarities were attempted,
it would likely emphasize (a) that the process of differentiation generates
local collective action as emergent occupational groupings vie with one
another for jurisdiction over new functional niches and (b) that the re-
sulting occupations become meaningful communities not only because of
the mechanical solidarity spawned by functional similarities (Durkheim
1933, p. 16) but also because of the affiliative ties forged in the originating
jurisdictional struggles (see Abbott 1988).
The above considerations suggest that differentiation creates solidarit-
ies that are increasingly localistic. At the same time, one must bear in mind
that the newly differentiated occupations are, by virtue of their newness,
hampered in developing stereotypical behavioral expectations that can
then be enforced by the outside public. The subcultures of these occupa-
tions may therefore be less binding; for instance, the occupation of sys-
tems analyst may not evoke stereotypical expectations that are as well
formed as those characterizing more established occupations, such as pro-
fessor (absentminded), cook (excitable), or reporter (cynical). In his semi-
nal work, Caplow (1954, pp. 13435) makes much of this liability of new-
ness, since he regarded the public stereotype as itself the most important
agent for the conditioning of roles. The latter argument fails, however,
to appreciate that newness can itself be an asset; indeed, just as religious
cults generate solidarity by capitalizing on missionary zeal, so too one
suspects that new occupations can impose behavioral expectations on in-
18
In some versions of post-Fordism, the local communities so created are presumed
to cut across purely occupational boundaries, and the resulting account therefore be-
gins to diverge from our own. We address this discrepant variant of post-Fordism in
the following section.
1215
cumbents without these expectations being well known or appreciated by

outsiders. Under this formulation, rapid differentiation prevents the pub-
lic from understanding the increasingly complex mosaic of occupational
subcultures and communities, but it may not greatly weaken the hold of
these local communities over their members.
Organizational Change
As sociologists so frequently point out, the division of labor is not mechan-
ically determined by purely technical requisites, but rather it reflects the
organizational environment within which work is designed and completed
(e.g., Edwards 1979). The rise of industrialism in the 18th century can be
attributed, for example, to the spread of vertical strategies of coordination
that fragmented tasks into increasingly simple jobs and thus rendered
them amenable to purely administrative or bureaucratic oversight (Weber
1968). By contrast, preindustrial craft workers defined and organized the
production process themselves, and the division of labor was accordingly
controlled by self-regulating occupational experts rather than organiza-
tionally empowered administrators (Zabusky and Barley 1996, pp. 188
92; Barley 1995; Freidson 1994, pp. 1034; Abbott 1989). The obvious
question that then arises is whether vertical methods of control will con-
tinue to encroach on occupationally defined labor as postindustrialism
evolves.
This question cannot be as easily answered as some postmodernists
seemingly suggest. In fact, one can identify incipient organizational theo-
ries on either side of this debate, with the contemporary literature thus
encompassing both postoccupational theories describing the gradual with-
ering away of functionally defined positions and revisionist theories sug-
gesting that a new occupationally oriented logic of production is on the
rise. The former literature, which is clearly dominant, rests on the claim
that contemporary organizations are relying increasingly on teamwork,
cross-training, and multiactivity jobs that break down conventional skill-
based distinctions (Casey 1995; Baron 1994; Drucker 1993; Peters 1992,
1991; Kanter 1992, 1989; Kilman and Covin 1988; Atkinson and Meager
1986; cf. Pollert 1991).19 These new polyvalent jobs are created either by
19
In some cases, such skill fusion may ultimately serve to strengthen occupational
structuration (rather than weaken it), if only because the newly created jobs may
combine formerly distinct jobs within an existing occupation and thus eliminate in-
traoccupational divisions and conflict. This outcome is clearly more likely when occu-
pational associations are strong enough to successfully defend existing jurisdictional
settlements.
1216
Class Analysis
combining formerly distinct skills or by appending managerial and coordi-

native functions to production positions. The resulting story thus privi-
leges the forces of integration over those of differentiation; that is, whereas
industrialism dissolved occupations through task simplification, the post-
industrial organizations described by Casey (1995) putatively do so
through task fusion and complication.
The preceding account, popular though it may be, is not without its
critics, some of whom have argued that pressures for an occupational
logic of organizing may in fact be rising (Barley 1995, p. 40; Barley and
Bechky 1994; Freidson 1994, pp. 1034; Johnston and Lawrence 1988;
Piore and Sabel 1984, pp. 11520). This revisionist argument rests on the
twofold claim that the occupationally organized sectors of the labor force
(e.g., professionals) are rapidly expanding in size and that the remaining
vertically organized sectors of the labor force (e.g., management) are in-
creasingly differentiating into functional areas and therefore becoming
occupationalized (Freidson 1994). In developing these claims, Barley
(1995) suggests that the seeds of the future have been sown in the bur-
geoning technical sector, where the work process is dominated by experts
who have so far defended their occupational jurisdictions rigorously and
have accordingly resisted cross-training, job mergers, and all forms of hi-
erarchy. The resulting technicist archetype (Barley 1995) thus rests on
the collaboration of experts who control knowledge through extended
training within a community of practice. Under the latter formulation,
teams and work groups figure no less prominently than in the postoccupa-
tionalist archetype (e.g., Casey 1995), but of course the constituent experts
now control mutually exclusive bodies of knowledge, and team solidarity
is therefore of the organic rather than mechanical variety.
Although most expert teams are presently formed within the confines
of firms, one might anticipate that production will increasingly be con-
tracted out to independent workers who are brought together by managers
or brokers (e.g., Harrison and Kelley 1993; Powell 1990). The construction
industry serves as the conventional exemplar here both because of its ex-
treme occupationalism and characteristic reliance on outsourcing. In fact,
the emerging fashion among organizational theorists is to represent the
construction industry not as a historical remnant that God forgot and
the industrial revolution overlooked (Lawrence and Dyer 1983, p. 599),
but rather as a heroic survivor that will in the end supersede mass produc-
tion, thereby shaping the future of work more generally (see Winch 1994;
cf. Stinchcombe 1959). For our purposes, it suffices to stress that these
revisionist theories are grossly inconsistent with those of postoccupation-
alism (e.g., Casey 1995), and not merely because they rest explicitly on
a well-developed (and intensifying) division of labor. We would further
1217
emphasize that the concomitant growth of outsourcing and externaliza-

tion increases pressures to identify and affiliate with occupations rather
than organizations.
Associational Change
The final institutions of interest to us are the various intermediary associa-
tions (e.g., trade unions, professional associations) that characteristically
develop at the site of production. Within the Marxian framework, the
long-standing concern has been that trade union consciousness is intrinsi-
cally sectional, thus requiring intellectuals and party functionaries to carry
out supplementary ideological work that presumably cultivates more en-
compassing class-based interests (esp. Lenin 1927). This Marxian concern
appears now to have been well founded. If the history of guilds, unions,
and related production-based associations is reevaluated from the long
view, it is evident that true classwide organization emerged for only a
brief historical moment and that postmodern forms are reverting back
to localism and sectionalism. The widely documented difficulties facing
contemporary unions should be interpreted accordingly; namely, despite
an evident weakening in the encompassiveness of union movements
(Visser 1988, p. 167), there is much evidence suggesting that purely local
unions and associations have by no means lost their hold over workers
(e.g., the American Federation of Teachers). In many countries, central-
ized bargaining between national unions and employers is indeed on the
decline, yet decentralized negotiations have taken their place as instru-
mental collectivism, based on sectional self-interest, becomes the order of
the day (Marshall et al. 1988, p. 7; Hancke 1993; Hyman 1991; Crouch
1990). This interpretation, if borne out, does not speak to destructuration
per se but rather to increasing disaggregation and differentiation of associ-
ational forms.
The professional sector has given rise to organizational forms that are
yet more localistic. As Parkin (1979) points out, professionals eschew all
types of interoccupational confederation, whereas they typically seek out
sectional associations that can defend jurisdictional claims and thereby
protect against incursions by neighboring occupations. In assessing the
future of professionalization, one must consider (a) the power of the tradi-
tional professions (e.g., law, medicine) to resist state and corporate en-
croachment on their jurisdictional claims, (b) the effects of economic and
other demand-side factors on the size of the professional labor force, and
(c) the prospects for full or partial professionalization of new and emerging
technical occupations. We cannot review the massive literature on (a) in
any detail; however, it bears emphasizing that theories of deprofessionali-
zation, while currently in vogue (e.g., Krause 1996), are by no means uni-
1218
Class Analysis
versally accepted in the field (see, esp., Freidson 1994). Moreover, even if
one concedes that traditional professions are no longer powerful guilds
(Krause 1996), this development is counterbalanced by increases in the
size of the professional sector and the consequent growth in the number
of workers who find themselves in classlike groupings. Without predicting
the professionalization of everyone (see Wilensky 1964), one might also
anticipate long-term growth in the number of occupations that achieve
partial professionalization, since new closure movements can be readily
and profitably built around some of the abstract skills emerging in the
labor market. The foregoing forces imply a simple extrapolation of past
trends toward more licensing, registration, and certification of occupations
(Freidson 1994, p. 120; cf. Marsden 1986). As this process unfolds, opposi-
tional movements may possibly emerge and stall further closure projects,
yet there is relatively little in the contemporary political arena that might
now be interpreted as incipient antiprofessionalism. This conclusion
serves, then, to emphasize our larger point that contemporary commenta-
tors have often overlooked the many forces for structuration operating at
lower analytic levels.
We therefore suggest that the future of local solidarities is more ambigu-
ous than standard poststructuralist formulas allow. In modern academia,
scholars are of course rewarded for waging argument through selective
and coherent accounts, yet we have resisted here all temptation to advance
a positive revisionist argument. Instead, we have merely emphasized that,
because of the great many competing forces at work, the discipline should
withhold judgment on matters of trend until further evidence accumu-
lates. The following section outlines a new research agenda that will hope-
fully reopen the debate on empirical grounds.
CONCLUSIONS
In his much-celebrated preface to The Division of Labor in Society, Dur-
kheim (1933, p. 28) suggested that occupational associations would gradu-
ally become intercalated between the state and the individual, thus pro-
viding an organizational counterbalance to the threat of class formation
on one hand and that of state tyranny on the other. Although this line of
argumentation is frequently rehearsed by scholars of Durkheim, it has
never been treated as a credible developmental model by conventional
class analysts. This is not to suggest that the forces of occupational differ-
entiation and association have gone altogether unappreciated; however,
rather than being represented as important sources of structuration in
their own right, they are typically invoked for the negative purpose of
refuting Marxian and neo-Marxian class models (e.g., Dahrendorf 1959,
pp. 4851). In this regard, we would note that the Marxian project became
1219
so influential in the academic world that virtually all scholars found them-
selves obliged to contend with it, if only for purposes of debate or refuta-
tion (see Goldthorpe [n.d.] for related comments). As the Marxian project
falls out of favor, it is typically assumed that the discipline has no alterna-
tive but to resort to some sort of Weberianism or poststructuralism, nei-
ther of which has typically paid sufficient attention to occupation-level
structuration. The purpose of the present article has been to outline a
quasi-Durkheimian third road that might have flourished had the contem-
porary academic world not so completely embraced Marx and the various
Marxisms that he inspired. While our approach provides, then, a structur-
alist alternative to postmodernism, it nonetheless leaves open the possibil-
ity that contemporary identities are shaped by an ever-widening range of
postmodern sources (e.g., gender), some of which constitute important
bases of solidarity in their own right. It is surely worthwhile to study
these postmodern forms of structuration, but unit occupations rightly take
center stage insofar as one wishes to map structuration at the site of pro-
duction.20
In laying out this case for disaggregation, we have largely ignored cross-
national variability in local structuration, but not because we believe such
variability to be either trivial or inconsequential. To the contrary, we sus-
pect that convergence theories (e.g., Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992) may
be rather less appealing when disaggregate analyses are attempted, since
national idiosyncrasies are necessarily concealed through the abstracting
and aggregating operations of class analysis. The case of Germany, for
example, provides a revealing example of the extent to which local institu-
tional forms can support and sustain disaggregate structuration. As class
analysts have long stressed, Germany has a well-developed system of vo-
cational training and apprenticeship, both of which serve to encourage
occupation-specific investments and promote professional commitment
and craftsmanship (e.g., Blossfeld 1992; Kappelhoff and Teckenberg 1987;
Carroll and Mayer 1986; also, see Krause 1996, chap. 6). In systems of
this sort, workers must invest in a single trade early in their careers, and
the correspondingly high costs of retraining produce relatively closed oc-
cupational groupings. If the German system reveals, then, the limits of
disaggregate structuration, the case of Japan conversely reveals the extent
to which such structuration can be institutionally suppressed. The stan-
20
We have largely ignored the complicating effects of property ownership (but see the
section on collective action). In justifying this omission, we would follow the post-
Marxian convention (e.g., Parsons 1970) in suggesting that the interests and lifestyles
of the petty bourgeoisie are much affected by cross-cutting occupational ties and that
the latent function of professional associations is to weaken intraoccupational cleav-
ages stemming from differences in employment status (Durkheim 1933).
1220
Class Analysis
dard characterization of Japan emphasizes such distinguishing features

as an educational curriculum that is generalist in orientation rather than
functionally differentiated, a vocational training system that cultivates
firm-specific nenko skills (Dore 1973) through teamwork and continuous
job rotation, an organizational commitment to lifetime employment that
further strengthens firm-specific ties at the expense of more purely occupa-
tional ones, and a weakly developed system of enterprise unions that cuts
across functional specializations and hence eliminates any residual craft-
based loyalties (Ishida 1993; Cole 1979; Dore 1973).21 This conjunction of
forces thus produces a postoccupational system that some commentators
(e.g., Casey 1995) might well regard as prototypically postmodern.
Although further cross-national comparisons of the preceding sort
would surely be instructive, we think that comparative analysis becomes
especially powerful when local and aggregate forms of structuration are
considered in tandem. In the past, structuration has been treated as a
unidimensional concept, and scholars accordingly sought to characterize
countries on a simple continuum representing the extent to which their
stratification systems were well formed (cf. Giddens 1973). The two cases
discussed above suggest that such practice may not be altogether mis-
leading; after all, Japan is well known for its attenuated class structure
as well as its postoccupationalism (Nakane 1970; cf. Ishida 1993, pp. 17
22), while Germany likewise combines strong vocationalism with a deeply
class-based labor market and political system (e.g., Rutter 1986; Dahren-
dorf 1986; Kocka 1981; cf. Ardagh 1988). We would nonetheless caution
against assuming that such cross-level consistency is the norm. In fact,
low-level structuration is often assumed to undermine the development
of class-based organization, with the United States serving as the typical
case in point. The scholarly literature on American exceptionalism is obvi-
ously wide ranging, but one of the continuing themes is that class forma-
tion was inhibited in the American case not so much by simple individual-
ism as by low-level structuration in the form of craft unions and
professionalism (Lipset 1996; Parsons 1970; Dahrendorf 1959). The zero-
sum imagery underlying such analyses suggests that aggregate and disag-
gregate structuration may sometimes work at cross-purposes.
It is also worth considering the obverse case in which class-based orga-
nization flourishes in the absence of competing local structuration. This
is clearly the stuff of textbook Marxism, yet ironically it comes closest to
empirical realization within countries, such as Sweden, that opted for the
social democratic road quite early. In standard analyses of Swedish excep-
tionalism (e.g., Therborn 1988), the well-known solidarism of labor is at-
21
In its traditional form, the Japanese personnel system ties wages and promotions to
seniority (nenko-joretsu seido), thereby reducing the incentive for interfirm mobility.
1221
tributed not merely to the historical weakness of guild organization and

craft unionism, but also to party negotiating tactics that privileged
classwide collective bargaining over purely sectional wage demands (also,
Svallfors, n.d.; Pontusson 1992; Esping-Andersen 1990, 1988; Korpi 1978).
At the same time, the active labor market programs embodied in the
Rehn-Meidner model (Esping-Andersen 1988, pp. 4753) provide exten-
sive state assistance for worker retraining and relocation, thereby blurring
interoccupational boundaries and further undermining local sectionalism
and closure (also see Rehn 1985). In this context, unit-level occupations
are still defined by functional positions in the Swedish division of labor,
but the social trappings (e.g., associations, closure) that usually emerge
around such technical distinctions have been partly repressed. While Swe-
den appears, then, to be properly characterized by the neo-Marxian for-
mula that technical features do not entail social features (Abercrombie
and Urry 1983, p. 109), it is unclear whether this form of structuration
extends much beyond Sweden and Scandinavia more generally. If it is
more widespread than we suspect, then our preferred line of argumenta-
tion is admittedly weakened.
The foregoing analysis is therefore intended to open up new research
questions rather than lead immediately to stock answers. As noted above,
some of this proposed research involves cross-national analysis, but much
of it could well be carried out with simpler designs. We list below five
research questions that, in our view, are especially pressing and hence
worthy of immediate attention.
Does disaggregation greatly increase the explanatory power of class
models?Although there is good reason to believe that aggregate and
gradational measures are hardly cost free (in terms of power forgone), the
burden of proof necessarily rests with scholars who seek to improve upon
existing approaches. In addressing this issue, a new disaggregate occupa-
tional classification should of course be constructed, since existing schemes
do not adequately capture dominant jurisdictional settlements at the dis-
aggregate level.
Are social classes decomposing as postmodernists allege?Given the
popularity of such allegations, one has to be struck by the virtual absence
of substantiating trend data, especially of a quantitative sort. Moreover,
when longitudinal data are made available (e.g., Evans, n.d.), the analyses
are invariably carried out at a highly aggregate level, and real trends in
structuration are accordingly confounded with exogenous changes in the
occupational composition of classes.
Is the underlying structure of social mobility misrepresented by aggre-
gate classifications?If social closure is mainly secured at the unit occu-
pational level, then conventional analyses may underestimate the extent of
rigidity and persistence in mobility regimes (Srensen and Grusky 1996a;
1222
Class Analysis
Rytina 1993, 1992). Moreover, given that much of the cross-national vari-
ability in local structuration is concealed through aggregation, we may
find that standard convergence hypotheses (e.g., Featherman, Jones, and
Hauser 1975) are no longer sustainable once mobility data are properly
disaggregated.
Are background effects adequately controlled with conventional class or
socioeconomic measures?The merits of competing scales and aggrega-
tions are of course frequently debated (e.g., Grusky and Van Rompaey
1992); however, all such debate presumes that unit occupations are not
directly usable and must be subjected to some sort of scaling or aggrega-
tion, if only to render the analysis tractable. It is high time to put this
assumption to test by exploring whether disaggregation changes the esti-
mated returns to schooling, the effects of racial discrimination, and the
great many other sociological coefficients that likewise depend crucially
on the assumption that background effects are fully purged.
How are attitudes, lifestyles, and dispositions shaped at the site of pro-
duction?In most cases, the burgeoning literature on such matters pro-
ceeds either by aggregating or scaling occupations (e.g., Kohn and
Schooler 1983), and the local subcultures that are generated at the unit
occupational level are thereby muted and obscured. If these subcultures
are identified properly, the correspondence between objective conditions
and lifestyles may be sufficiently strengthened to cast doubt on the post-
modernist retreat from production-based groupings.
We are thus suggesting nothing short of a complete remapping of the
stratification system and its consequences. If our institutionalist account
is on the mark, such a remapping will not lead to an infinite regress in
which ever-increasing disaggregation, no matter how extreme, proves in
the end to be sociologically necessary. Instead, the returns to disaggrega-
tion will at some point likely diminish, since the inveterate splitter will
eventually disaggregate beyond the social boundaries that are institution-
alized in the labor market and defended by closure-generating associa-
tions.22 The resulting categories nonetheless take on gemeinschaftlich form
in only some sectors of the occupational structure; and, consequently, the
strong model of class holds partially and may not necessarily diffuse any
more widely in the future, the claims of Durkheim (1933) notwithstanding.
The practical task of operationalizing our approach is further complicated
22
There are any number of large-scale surveys (e.g., Current Population Survey, Occu-
pational Changes in a Generation) that might be used to assess the costs of aggregation
in terms of explanatory power forgone. Although such an approach obviously pre-
cludes disaggregating beyond the occupational detail available in conventional classi-
fications, it nonetheless allows for far more detailed analyses than have been carried
out to date.
1223
insofar as the preferred level of aggregation differs across the various ana-
lytic criteria that are conventionally used to define classes (e.g., social clo-
sure, exploitation, identification). Although we have shown that, regard-
less of the criterion invoked, aggregate class categories are difficult to
defend, we have not sought to demonstrate that all class analytic criteria
imply disaggregation of exactly the same kind or extent. Indeed, the class
analytic conceit that the same classes are operative in all contexts is
suspiciously convenient, and the field would therefore do well to examine
this premise empirically rather than take it on assumption. If a single
disaggregate classification does prove adequate to the task, this result
would be consistent with our argument, as advanced above, that social
closure is a demographic precondition for exploitation and other forms of
classlike behavior.
We are, finally, advocating class models that take contemporary pat-
terns of collective action explicitly into account. In its strong form version,
the classification exercise should involve more than simply aggregating
technically similar occupations, since proceeding as such fails to acknowl-
edge the organizational barriers and combinations (e.g., unions, associa-
tions) that serve to convert technical distinctions into more nearly social
ones. By contrast, neo-Marxians are typically content to identify the struc-
ture of classes in themselves, thus obliging them to resort to ever more
ingenious accounts of the continuous and wholesale discrepancies be-
tween class position and class behavior (Parkin 1979, p. 113). Under our
alternative approach, we acknowledge from the start that occupations are
socially constructed and define class categories accordingly, thereby cir-
cumventing the problems that are created by the neo-Marxian divorce of
structure from action. This third road provides, then, needed relief from
the extreme forms of postmodernism that are now so much in fashion, if
only for want of a plausible sociological alternative.
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Can Class Analysis Be Salvaged?

Author(s): David B. Grusky and Jesper B. Srensen

1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

AJS Volume 103 Number 5 (March 1998): 11871234 1187

sumed to provide a more appealing call for collective action by virtue

Typology of Class Models

Gradational Categorical Gradational Categorical

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

at highly aggregate levels of analysis, whereas the residue of structuration

We would be hard-pressed, then, to locate a direct line of intellectual

HOW IS LABOR DIVIDED?

discussions of the neo-Marxian position on the technical division of labor

When viewed in this manner, the division of labor can no longer be

sociologists who remain convinced that contemporary identities are

and define others. The sociological literature on such matters is of course

quent research, some scholars have therefore proceeded by simply assum-

ture in which popular conceptions of class are brought into alignment

reproduction, they must do so principally by influencing the supply-side

of occupational action (i.e., upward, downward) are directed against em-

Lifestyles and Dispositions

is expressed through organic occupational groupings that are not reducible

prestige, or complexity. If one wishes, then, to map the underlying struc-

will ultimately come to be recognized and defended. We shall explore in

thereby equalizing the lifetime earnings of workers and eliminating ex-

ultimately appear on the scene and induce rent-extracting exploiters to

TREND IN CLASS STRUCTURATION

argumentation; and we shall therefore defer any conclusions until more

constitutes the disciplinary wisdom on matters of sociotechnical change,

cumbents without these expectations being well known or appreciated by

combining formerly distinct skills or by appending managerial and coordi-

emphasize that the concomitant growth of outsourcing and externaliza-

dard characterization of Japan emphasizes such distinguishing features

tributed not merely to the historical weakness of guild organization and

Aschaffenburg, Karen E. 1995. On the Distribution of Cultural Capital. Doctoral

Growth of State Employment: Part 1, the Analysis of Production Cleavages. Politi-

73 in Unions in Transition, edited by Seymour M. Lipset. San Francisco: Institute

37 in Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective,

Pollert, Anna. 1991. Farewell to Flexibility? Oxford: Blackwell.

Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1959. Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production.

Guglielmo Carchedi, Gordon Marshall, Peter F. Meiksins, David Rose, Arthur

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