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The debate over class dealignment is in part a debate about the meaning of class, which cannot be separated from the issue of the relationship between class and voting. Neither the simplified two-class model that has often been used nor the more sophisticated Goldthorpe class schema are adequate either at the conceptual or the empirical level. Both fail to deal coherently with the intermediate positions in the class structure. The argument that 'social class' is of continuing significance for the analysis of voting behaviour and of party identification is correct, but only if the nature of the stratification order is properly understood. The Cambridge Scale, a measure of general hierarchical, material and social advantage, based on patterns of social interaction, is shown to be comparable to the Goldthorpe schema in terms of statistical prediction. It is argued that it is preferable in the sense that it most clearly captures the single most important aspect of 'class', which is hierarchical position. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

Reverses the traditional approach of defining classes or status groups before investigating patterns of social interaction by using patterns of interaction between more basic units such as occupational groups to determine the nature of stratification order. Outlines the theoretical basis and compares this to other methods before giving examples of applications.

There is a danger that the Cambridge Scale, which is based on data collected thirty years ago, is becoming out of date. This article considers an alternative basis for a social interaction-based social distance scale, that of marriage (or cohabitation) rather than friendship. This has considerable advantages in terms of the ready, low-cost availability of large-scale, representative data (usually from a census). It also makes easily possible the construction of comparable scales for many other countries. The article discusses the theoretical background to the approach and the justification for expecting that marriage and friendship would reflect equivalent structures of stratification arrangements. In order to provide direct comparability, a new scale was constructed, based on 1971 census data and using more satisfactory statistical techniques. Empirical analyses using this measure fully support the argument that this alternative method of deriving a scale leads to essentially the same results as the original. The way is therefore open for an updating of the scale and its extension to a number of other countries, under the generic heading of CAMSIS.

There have been calls from several sources recently for a renewal of class analysis that would encompass social and cultural, as well as economic elements. This paper explores a tradition in stratification that is founded on this idea: relational or social distance approaches to mapping hierarchy and inequality which theorize stratification as a social space. The idea of 'social space' is not treated as a metaphor of hierarchy nor is the nature of the structure determined a priori. Rather, the space is identified by mapping social interactions. Exploring the nature of social space involves mapping the network of social interaction patterns of friendship, partnership and cultural similarity - which gives rise to relations of social closeness and distance. Differential association has long been seen as the basis of hierarchy, but the usual approach is first to define a structure composed of a set of groups and then to investigate social interaction between them. Social distance approaches reverse this, using patterns of interaction to determine the nature of the structure. Differential association can be seen as a way of defining proximity within a social space, from the distances between social groups, or between social groups and social objects (such as lifestyle items). The paper demonstrates how the very different starting point of social distance approaches also leads to strikingly different theoretical conclusions about the nature of stratification and inequality.

This paper examines the hierarchy amongst female occupations in Britain in the nineteenth century, using information on marriage and family patterns to generate a measure of distance within a social space. This social interaction approach to stratification uses the patterning of close relationships, in this case between women and men, to build up a picture of the social ordering within which such relationships take place. The method presented here starts, not with the assumption of a set of broad social groups that may interact to a greater or lesser extent, but from the opposite direction, from the patterns of social interaction among detailed occupational groupings. Instead of reading off social hierarchy from the labour market, we use relations of social closeness and similarity (here marriage) to build a picture of the occupational ordering from patterns of relative social distance. Such an approach is possible because of the way in which social relations are constrained by (and constrain) hierarchy.

This article presents some preliminary results from a historical study of social mobility in Britain and Ireland, from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The study is marked by a unique combination of features: (1) it follows families for up to five generations, through both maternal and paternal lines; (2) it uses a continuous measure of social position, rather than class categories; (3) this measure is derived from data on social interaction - correspondence analyses of cross-tabulations of the occupations for marriages taking place in the periods 1777-1866 and 1867-1913; (4) each individual's social position is summarised by a work-life trajectory, represented by his social location at ages 20 and 50. The analyses are based on twelve ten-year birth cohorts from 1790-99 to 1900-09. The results indicate a remarkable degree of stability of social processes of reproduction throughout this period, although there is an extremely slow shift towards a weakening of family influence. This process appears to have accelerated for those born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a period of both educational reform and major change in Britain's industrial organisation.

This paper discusses long term trends in patterns of intergenerational social mobility in Britain. We argue that there is convincing empirical evidence of a small but steady linear trend towards increasing social mobility throughout the period 1800-2004. Our conclusions are based upon the construction and analysis of an extended micro-social dataset, which combines records from an historical genealogical study, with responses from 31 sample surveys conducted over the period 1963-2004. There has been much previous study of trends in social mobility, and little consensus on their nature. We argue that this dissension partly results from the very slow pace of change in mobility rates, which makes the time-frame of any comparison crucial, and raises important methodological questions about how long-term change in mobility is best measured. We highlight three methodological difficulties which arise when trying to draw conclusions over mobility trends - concerning the extent of controls for life course effects; the quality of data resources; and the measurement of stratification positions. After constructing a longitudinal dataset which attempts to confront these difficulties, our analyses provide robust evidence which challenges hitherto more popular, politicised claims of declining or unchanging mobility. By contrast, our findings suggest that Britain has moved, and continues to move, steadily towards increasing equality in the relationship between occupational attainment and parental background.

PurposeThis paper aims to present reasons why social classifications which use occupations should seek to adopt "specific" approaches which are tailored to the country, time period and gender of the subjects under study.Design/methodology/approachThe relative motivations for adopting a specific approach to social classifications are discussed and theoretical perspectives on specificity and empirical evidence on the contribution of specific approaches are reviewed. Also the practical costs of implementing specific social classifications are evaluated, and the authors' development of the "GEODE" data service (grid‐enabled occupational data environment), which seeks to assist this process, is discussed.FindingsSpecific approaches make a non‐trivial difference to the conclusions drawn from analyses of occupation‐based social classifications. It is argued that the GEODE service has reduced the practical challenges of implementing specific measures.Research limitations/implicationsThere remain conceptual and pragmatic challenges in working with specific occupation‐based social classifications. Non‐specific ("universal") measures are adequate for many purposes.Practical implicationsThe paper argues that there are few excuses for ignoring specific occupation‐based social classifications.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates that recent technological developments have shifted the balance in the long‐standing debate between universal and specific approaches to occupation‐based social classifications.