CHAPTER 5 Foundations of a Neo - Ricardian Class Analysis

There is an enormous literature on the concept of class that consists mostly of debates about which properties should be included in the concept. The result is a variety of class schemes and arguments that center around which class scheme is most appropriate for capturing the class structure of modern society. Dahrendorf (1959) argues that classes should be identified with authority relations. Ossowski (1963), and later Wright (1979), produces class schemes by crossclassifying property and authority or dominance relations. The class scheme identified with John Goldthorpe is based on property, employment, and authority relations (Goldthorpe 1987; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992). Parkin (1979) and Murphy (1988) emphasize relationships of closure, and Giddens (1973), the degree of “structuration.”