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The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in the September 1996 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. According to the author, sociologist Duncan Gallie's paper returns to a subject which has been at the center of sociologist David Lockwood's work: the extent to which there has occurred convergence in class position between lower white-collar workers and manual workers. After a brief review of work on the impact of automation on the work and class situation of workers during the 1950's and 60's, Gallie systematically addresses the claims of both the proletarianization and embourgeoisement theses in the context of a radically changed technological environment. Gallie uses data from a recent large-scale survey on the association of aspects of work and market situation with new technology to test some of the central claims of both the proletarianization and the proletarianization thesis. The paper analyses the work situation of both types of workers by assessing the following aspects: trends in skill development; control over the work task; and relations with superiors. Assessment of market situation covers the components of income, payment systems, promotion chances and job security.

In a previous paper published in "British Journal of Sociology," the author made the claim that despite decades of intensive investigation, not a single researcher had ever shown that class difference in education was indeed unfair and unjust. It was a charge that was underwritten by a simple, if technical, argument, which drew attention to what, in logic, would have to be shown if such a difference was to be regarded as an inequality, rather than as just another difference in a differentiated society. In this case, it was suggested that, other things being equal, the researcher would have to meet one of two conditions. He would have to show that the different classes were similarly disposed to education or, alternatively, if there were evidence, as in Great Britain, of considerable working-class indifference to education, he would need to demonstrate that such indifference was itself the result of structural or cultural inequality. Only then, it was argued, could the researcher be said to have reasonably shown that class difference in education was unfair; for only then could the researcher be reasonably sure that such a difference was not, after all, just another difference.

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in the September 1996 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. How can classes emerge from a system whose goal was to destroy class society and to supersede it with a superior social order? Are there elements in a state re-distributive system, which can be transformed back into a social structure, which had seemingly been obliterated? Simply posing such a question makes it clear that writer George Kolankiewicz is, perhaps, being over-ambitious if he is seeking a common theoretical approach to encompass such a wide range of conditions, from Russia and the Ukraine at one extreme where pre-Revolutionary social structures in the early years of this century were very different to those parts of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire at the other, which were split apart by the Iron Curtain after the Second World War. According to the author, Kolankiewicz has written a very stimulating paper dealing with an exceptionally difficult problem area. The real difficulty is that sociologists know so very little about the networks of the new finance capitalists. There may be parallels with the great families who built up British merchant banking based on the cousinage.

The article presents a comment on the article "The Attenuation of Class Analysis: Some Comments on G. Marshall, S. Roberts and C. Burgoyne, Social Class and the Underclass in Britain and in the USA'," by Lydia Morris and John Scott that appeared in the 1996 issue of the "British Journal of Sociology." Marshall et al's paper, Scott and Morris argue, may be located within the Nuffield programme of class analysis. They are critical of the departure of this programme from what they see as its Weberian origins. They argue that as a consequence Marshall et al fail to distinguish between individual class situations and Weberian social classes; the latter being demographically constituted collectivities that are formed through intra and inter-generational mobility, through relations of household formation and inter-marriage, and through a myriad of status-related social relations such as informal interaction and friendship. Scott and Morris conclude that, as a consequence of their failure to make this distinction, Marshall et al. do not address the really significant sociological question of whether the underclass can be said to exist as a real social class. Scott and Morris are also critical of a number of other features of the Nuffield programme, such as the seemingly arbitrary class labeling of the nominal categories of the different versions of the Goldthorpe scheme.

The article presents a comment on the article "Taking the State Back Out: Rose and Miller on Political Power," by Bruce Curtis that appeared in the 1995 issue of the "British Journal of Sociology." It is curious that one article should produce such a defensive reaction, while an entire field of related literature can be ignored without discomfort. Once again, polemic substitutes for argument in sociological discourse. Those for whom the state appears an unproblematic term in the analysis of power, who seek the intelligibility of the present through the dialectic of the forces and relations of production, or who find it productive to evaluate power relations via the one-dimensional opposition of domination and emancipation, will inevitably be disappointed by the current literature on government and governmentality. One of the principal aims of the paper, originally written some six years ago, was to draw attention to a variety of studies, which had shown the value of posing the question of political power differently. It was timely for sociologists to learn the central lesson of such studies: the constitutive role of an array of authorities, forms of knowledge, and technologies of conduct that are fundamental to the activity of politics, but which lie beyond the state.

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in the September 1996 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. According to the author, the more interesting issues raised by sociologist Andre Beteille's paper have less to do with the mismatch between class and status than with the question of how two conceptions of status, the one focusing on unequal social esteem and the other on the equal rights of citizenship should be related to each other in a general theory of social stratification since it is not unreasonable to anticipate some difficulty when the same general concept is used to describe a major aspect of inequality and also an antidote to it. The common feature of status relations in all societies is that they are exhibited fundamentally through acts of defense, acceptance and derogation. But such interactions vary according to how they are sanctioned and maintained, and the kinds of privileges and disabilities with which they are associated. No one would wish to deny that within the limits set by the rights of citizenship, inequalities of esteem, and more particularly the social networks in which they are grounded, continue to exert their influence for the reasons Beteille so well adduces.