UNDERSTANDING CLASS: Towards an Integrated Analytical Approach

When i began writing about class in the mid-1970s, I viewed Marxist and positivist social science as foundationally distinct and incommensurable warring paradigms. I argued that Marxism had distinctive epistemological premises and methodological approaches which were fundamentally opposed to those of mainstream social science. In the intervening period I have rethought the underlying logic of my approach to class analysis a number of times. While I continue to work within the Marxist tradition, I no longer conceive of Marxism as a comprehensive paradigm that is inherently incompatible with ‘bourgeois’ sociology.