Class Analysis

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Class analysis can be conducted at either the microlevel or the macrolevel. The microlevel class analysis explores the ways in which individuals' class locations determine their well-being, beliefs, [Page 147]and behavior (e.g., voting behavior, ideology, and offspring's educational attainment). The macrolevel class analysis focuses on the effects of class structure or class relations on a variety of institutions and trajectories of history (e.g., how variations in class structure across time or space, such as the decline of the industrial working class, affect the type of state or political regime).

Although class analysis has figured prominently in a great deal of social science research, the word class, which is pivotal in any class analysis, is one of the most contested concepts in the social sciences. There are varieties of class analysis; and these varieties are grounded in different understandings of what class is and contesting approaches to how best one can identify and/or measure different classes. The main distinction is between the gradational and relational notions of class.

In the gradational notion, class is used to describe a set of layers or strata in a hierarchy. These strata are generally distinguished on the basis of inequalities in material conditions such as income or wealth, as in the terms of upper class, middle class, and lower class. But they do not stand in any systematic social relationship to each other. Thus the gradational class concept does not entail any notion of systematic relations among defined classes. Social science research that is primarily interested in the statistical correlation of income and wealth with various social outcomes mostly uses a gradational definition of class.

In the relational conception of class, classes are defined in relationship to other classes. Given classes are internally related; that is, they are defined on the basis of the social relations that connect them to each other. The interests of a particular class are a function of the relations that bind it to other classes. The relational approach to class is interested in the causal mechanisms that produce socioeconomic inequalities as well as class as a collective actor that pursues its interests.

Application

There are, however, different traditions of class analysis that adopt a relational notion of class. The two most influential are the Marxian and Weberian traditions. Karl Marx was the first to develop a systematic theory of class, and his theory greatly influenced how the concept of class analysis has been developed and used. According to Marxist scholars, production relations (who produces what, how, and for whom) are the most important of all social relations. The relations of production form the material basis of classes. Individuals who occupy similar positions in the production relations objectively belong to the same class. Classes are defined by the relationships of exploitation. Therefore, class relations are inherently contradictory and antagonistic, not only in terms of income or wealth distribution but also and more importantly in terms of production relations.

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