The fragmentation of class analysis*.

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.