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This paper explores the construction and contestation of moral distinctions as a dimension of contemporary structural inequality through a focus on the subjectivities constructed by young people who have experienced homelessness. Empirical material from two research projects shows that in young people's narratives of homelessness, material insecurity intertwines with the moral economies at work in neoliberal capitalist societies to construct homelessness as a state of moral disgrace, in which an ungovernable experience is experienced as a moral failure. When young people gain access to secure housing, the increasing stability and security of their lives is narrated in terms of a moral adherence to personal responsibility and disciplined conduct. Overall the paper describes an economy of worth organized around distinctions between order and chaos, self-governance and unruliness, morality and disgrace, which structures the experience of homelessness. As young people's position in relation to these moral ideals reflects the material conditions of their lives, their experiences demonstrate the way that moral hierarchies contribute to the existence and experience of structural inequalities in neoliberal capitalist societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how charitable giving offers an example of lay morality, reflecting people's capacity for fellow-feeling, moral sentiments, personal reflexivity, ethical dispositions, moral norms and moral discourses. Lay morality refers to how people should treat others and be treated by them, matters that are important for their subjective and objective well-being. It is a first person evaluative relation to the world (about things that matter to people). While the paper is sympathetic to the 'moral boundaries' approach, which seeks to address the neglect of moral evaluations in sociology, it reveals this approach to have some shortcomings. The paper argues that although morality is always mediated by cultural discourses and shaped by structural factors, it also has a universalizing character because people have fellow-feelings, shared human conditions, and have reason to value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the role of privileged research objects (‘model systems') in producing patterns in transnational knowledge production. In its approach it follows Bourdieu's call to focus on contexts of production and forces internal to disciplines as well as his insistence on practice. Learning from work in science and technology studies it also considers material objects of knowledge and spaces of knowledge-production. It discusses the case of sociology and argues that conventions surrounding privileged research objects matter relatively independently of authors’ national origin or field-position. Examining model systems, I argue, can contribute to our understanding of how some well-established inequalities are produced and reproduced. This focus adds specific stakes to the debates about global knowledge production: we can discuss the problem of neglected cases in ways that are not always included in current reflections that draw on general political – rather than specifically knowledge-political – categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses criticisms of a number of papers (Vogler and Pahl, 1993, 1994; Vogler, 1994) in which we attempted to explore the relationships between money, power and inequality within marriage. Subsequent criticisms have mainly centred around the concept of power that we used in those papers. It has been suggested that we either lacked a theory of power (Rottman, 1996) or that our conceptualisation of power as control over decision making was too limited (Shove, 1993). I would argue however, that while it was not made explicit in our original papers our findings point towards a more general theory of power in the household, namely to a modified version of Lukes' three dimensional model of power. While we initially conceptualised power as control over decision making (Lukes' first dimension of power) our findings also show the importance of ideological and cultural factors (Lukes' third dimension of power) as both a cause and a consequence of the allocative systems couples use to organise money within the household. More theoretically, I also suggest that discourses about money within the household may be part of, and operate in a similar way to discourses of decision making at the broader political level. It may therefore be possible to conceptualise the different ways of managing money within the household as mini political systems akin to different sorts of democracy at the broader political level, and with similar consequences for gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to explore the links between patterns of allocation of money within marriage and more general patterns of inequality. Goldthorpe suggested, in the passage quoted above, that while money confers power, power tends to lead to the acquisition of money: can anything be said about the relative importance of these two processes? If we take only relationships within marriage it is by no means clear which way the lines of causality flow. Do patterns of allocation of money reflect differences in 'power', however that is defined, between husband and wife? Or is it more accurate to see differences in 'power' as determining allocative patterns? Or should the relationship rather be seen in terres of complicated social processes in which the two elements interact with each other and with other variables such as economic activity and levels of income? In order to answer these questions we need hot only to draw on work done in the past on marital power and decision making, but also to consider new ways of defining such power in the context of the control and allocation of resources.
Traditional economics, on the other hand, bas construed the household as a black box, within which the resources acquired by individuals are assumed to be shared among household members. One aim of this paper is to open up this black box, in order to investigate some of the social processes involved in the flows of money within households. Can we make the assumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unplanned, exponential economic growth has been the liberal standard for evaluating economies, societies and effectiveness of political leaders and for addressing problems of all sorts. In the later twentieth century, the American conservative movement revived market liberalism to restore growth after the long post-World War II boom ended. The neoliberal policy regime stressed the growth imperative to the exclusion of other social ends, which were alleged to undermine innovation and growth. Neoliberalism conflates growth with development, precludes sustainable growth, and trends toward plutocratic dedemocratization. This immoderate policy regime denies the reality of the commons and disregards the interdependence of nature and culture and individual and society. This paper addresses crisis tendencies, which have been exacerbated by neoliberal policies, and concludes with a departure point for an alternative. John Dewey's naturalism stressed the need to secure the commons, biotic and social, and to balance individualism with community, efficiency with social justice, and markets with planning to cultivate uncoerced cooperation and preserve democracy, in the face of crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are signs that a significant number of British people do not feel that their concerns are being addressed by the mainstream parties or the political system. This paper attends to the quality of that political dissatisfaction amongst members of 'the white working classes'. There is a need to extend typical concerns about youth disengagement to adults and to consider the role that class plays. Lower participation in formal democratic processes may not mean disengagement from all forms of politics, but could have considerable consequences for who gains power and for the tone and focus of political debates and policies. Our project contributes to exploring political dissatisfaction by engaging with low wage workers in Yorkshire and the North West, where high support for the far-right BNP and low voter turnout are signs that mainstream politics and politicians are failing to impress. We asked people about their feelings in relation to mainstream politics and their concerns. These participants feel distanced from governing elites, formal political processes and old ideologies. They are searching for ways to make sense of their struggles to live a decent life, and in doing so must contend with the dominance of racist discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on British data from the 2002 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) module on ‘Family and Changing Gender Roles’, this paper is an exploratory attempt to assess the extent to which newly emerging ‘individualised’ patterns of money management in intimate relationships, are coming to be associated with shifts towards greater equality between partners, in terms of who has the final say over large expenditure decisions, and the implications this has for overall satisfaction with the relationship and happiness with life in general. Our findings show that while in general, keeping money partly separate was associated with a relatively high level of male control, which was more visible to female respondents than male control in other systems, a minority of (sometimes) higher earning, cohabiting women with partly separate finances, were able to make autonomous decisions about spending, possibly by using their own personal spending money. However, the analysis also indicates that when either men or women made autonomous decisions about spending, both male and female respondents were less satisfied with family life, as well as with life in general, than those who made joint decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current interest in difference has arisen in part because of its importance in recent recognition claims, and in part because of a belief that as a concept it can illuminate social diversity. Debates here have stressed the importance of the symbolic in the construction of social relations and social diversity, and have highlighted the relational underpinnings of diversity. In this paper we seek to take forward aspects of such an analysis by examining some issues in the shaping of difference and inequalities in the domains of gender, class and ‘race’. It is our argument that we can gain insights in these domains by better describing and theorising the mutuality of value and material social relations. The paper argues that issues of identity and difference need to be more firmly located within relational accounts of social practice, and in the nature of claims (to recognition and resources) which emerge out of different social locations. By exploring issues of difference in debates on class, gender and ‘race’, we argue that relational accounts must be placed within a perspective that also emphasises the content and patterned nature of (highly differentiated) social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social inequality has been overwhelmingly studied from the perspective of those who are deprived and disadvantaged. The emphasis, accordingly, has been on lack of wealth, status and power. However, social inequality equally implies privilege and this has received little serious attention. Indeed, in the literature of sociology there are relatively few extended references to it.[1] With few exceptions those that exist tend to treat it unproblematically and often pejoratively. Thus the possessors of privilege are frequently cast as the villains of the piece and, even where the underdog has privileges in the sense of legal rights, these are commonly exposed as illusory or detrimental to his interests.[2] In order to contribute to the understanding of privilege in general, and thereby social inequality, this paper will consider the privileges of the professions.[3] This is because professions are examples of privilege not only in the sense of being privileged occupations, but also in the sense that the elites of professions are an integral part of the dominant elites of society.[4]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I want to outline a model for the analysis of worker advancement and political order in a state socialist society.[1] Use of the model requires the application of general principles to the particular circumstances of each state socialist society in eastern Europe. I shall illustrate its use in the Polish case and leave open its potential applicability to others. Of the two components in the model, the first, and most basic, posits a connection between 'worker advancement' and political order. Of course something like this has often been suggested before. Parkin, for example, in his Class Inequality and Political Order (1971) stressed the importance of continued provision for upward social mobility in state socialist societies. He argued that in the past they had provided for more mobility than their capitalist counterparts but he was unsure that they could go on doing so and he conceded that this might well have political repercussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neoliberal settlement has been comprehensively destabilised by the 2007 financial crisis, the imposition of austerity, growing social inequalities and the emergence of populism as a social force. This article explores why institutional opposition to this settlement has principally taken a nationalist form in Britain. It does so through a history of the present by tracing the labyrinthine lines of descent and the social forces and conflicts from which the contemporary moment emerged. In particular, I show how the conditions for the emergence of these nationalist projects were produced incrementally over time and through a series of interrelated social processes. These included the caesura of the 1970s and the shift from Fordist to flexible regimes of accumulation secured by extinguishing the educated hope generated by an increasingly multi-ethnic politics and language of class; the bipartisan commitment to neoliberalism; the racialisation of class through state multiculturalism; and the long-term failure to arrest the structural decline of non-urban localities caused by the technical decomposition of class. In this explanation, the 2007 financial crash and the continuing indifference of the political elites to the deepening injuries of class and locality constituted an accelerant placed on an already emergent crisis of representation helping to engineer a transformation in the political opportunity structure by opening a space for nationalist mobilising structures to fill the political vacuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK government's Everyone In scheme, announced in March 2020, required local authorities to temporarily house all homeless individuals in their area regardless of immigration status. In providing support through safe and secure accommodation, Everyone In also provided a crucial moment of visibility for migrants experiencing homelessness. Yet, just as it provided life-changing opportunities for some, the scheme was not straightforwardly a celebratory moment for migrants. It remained embedded within a wider context of immigration governance and social inequality in the UK, which has both invisibilised migrant homelessness as a crisis and hypervisibilised migrants as undeserving, suspicious or 'illegal' subjects. In this article, we explore life-story narratives co-produced with migrants across three urban contexts that capture their experiences of homelessness before and during the pandemic. In doing so, we introduce the notion of cultivated invisibility, referring to a habitual, deeply-ingrained mode of practice through which migrants respond to and navigate their experiences of being read as 'Other', in racialised or classed terms. It is developed through conditions of material scarcity and in the course of multiple engagements with racial capitalism's various 'faces of the state' in an increasingly hostile environment for migrants. Cultivated invisibility involves staying on the move and blending into the crowd or avoiding it altogether but it also includes the experience of being unseen despite having come forward for help. Importantly, we demonstrate that cultivated invisibility becomes a cause of illegalisation, just as much as a response to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars using the concept of 'social generation' are committed to understanding the relationship between social change and social inequality. However, in this article we raise a variety of concerns about the empirical and theoretical foundations of the social generation approach. Complementing and advancing critical scholarship on social change, our concern is to advocate for a theoretically robust sociology of youth that can properly tackle questions pertaining to contemporary intergenerational relations and tensions, and issues of power and inequality. We argue that, in relation to social generation approaches, (1) the concept of generational habitus is incoherent and moreover, redundant given the triple historicization already built into Bourdieu's conceptual apparatus; (2) the notion of generational units cannot attend to inequality and, indeed, is absent, and potentially unworkable, in the research by its main advocates; and (3) that the idea of 'global generation' relies too heavily on research from the Global North and, thus, is at odds with the experience of the majority of the world's youth population located in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does the diversity of social movements and food initiatives tell us about processes of social change? I argue that they offer a productive analytical lens to observe social change because they identify injustices and dynamics of inequalities in the food system and are actively engaged in transforming these. Alternative local food initiatives react to the environmental impacts of globalized food relations; food sovereignty movements highlight class inequalities and power asymmetries in the food system that affect people's rights to culturally appropriate foodways; food justice movements denounce institutional racism; feminist movements fight persistent gender inequalities from food production to consumption; vegan movements defend animal rights. These are often mapped onto different world regions, with food justice movements more present in the US; food sovereignty movements louder in the Global South; feminist food movements more active in Latin America; and local food movements commonly in the Global North. This article brings together diverse strands of activism and research on social inequalities related to food under the conceptual umbrella of food inequalities. In addition to concept building, it contributes to a sociology of food studies by mapping the geopolitics of knowledge about social change behind the growing mobilization around food issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conceptual confusions characteristic of the practice of equal opportunities policies at the workplace. The differences between 'liberal' and 'radical' approaches to policy making are identified and described. It is argued that, while these are conceptually distinct from one another, in practice they are routinely confused and conflated. In particular the preferred procedures of the liberal approach are widely assumed to result in the preferred outcomes of the radical approach. It is suggested that these confusions are not merely the product of intellectual error but arise from misunderstandings and deceptions generated in the struggle for power between participants in the work process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural consumption and production are both characterised by multiple dimensions of inequality. Research in cultural stratification has highlighted the links between the exclusivity of cultural production, the type of cultural works created, and the audiences and public receptions for culture. We contribute to this agenda by examining a hitherto unexplored area: the cultural values and political identities of workers in the creative industries and cultural sector. Analysis of the British Social Attitudes (2010–2015) surveys and British Election Study Internet Panel (2016–2017) surveys demonstrates that creative and cultural workers have distinct cultural values. They are among the most left-wing, liberal and pro-welfare of any occupations and industries. This sets them apart from the average respondent who is relatively more right-wing, authoritarian and more in favour of welfare control. When examining their non-electoral participation, we also find they are highly civically engaged in terms of contacting elected representatives and government officials, signing petitions, political volunteering, political donations, participating in demonstrations, ethical consumption and boycotts, and industrial action. Moreover, they are more likely to report that they supported Remain in the 2016 EU 'Brexit' Referendum, to report unhappiness with the Leave result, and to identify with Remain voters. We conclude that distinct occupational cultures are particularly significant in the case of the cultural and creative sector, given creative workers' role in representing society and the civic realm via the products of their work. We also argue that occupational cultures constitute an important, under-recognised source of social and cultural division. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry. This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu's class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class positions, nor the role of unsecured credit in facilitating consumption. This article contributes to this area by examining how unsecured credit and problem debt influences consumption and class position amongst individuals with modest incomes. Drawing on 21 interviews with individuals managing problem debt, this article details how class inequality emerges through affective states that include anxiety and feelings of deficit. It also shows how these experiences motivate participants to rely on unsecured credit to consume cultural goods and engage in activities in a struggle against their class position, with the intention of enhancing how they are perceived and classified by others. The findings indicate that cultural class analyses may have overlooked the symbolic importance of mundane consumption and goods in social differentiation. This article further details how these processes entangle individuals into complex liens of debt – which lead to over-indebtedness, default, dispossession and financial expropriation – illustrating how investigations of credit-debt can better inform understandings of class inequality, exploitation and struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trend towards desegregated women's and men's toilets, including installing Gender Neutral Toilets (GNTs), and the implications of revisions to the Gender Recognition Act for women-only spaces, have brought into focus the pre-existing lack of female toilet provision in the UK. Looking at the problem from a town planning perspective, I argue that austerity-driven cuts are coming together with GNT provision to reshape the public toilet landscape in ways that continue to be detrimental to women. Typically women are only provided with half as many facilities as men, resulting in queues for the Ladies, and GNT provision based on relabelling rather than redesigned or additional provision can, in fact, increase competition for the cubicles in the Ladies. The historical, legislative and cultural reasons for this inequality are explored, along with the different types of public toilet and the different requirements of male and female users. The article draws on previous research project findings, many of which foreshadow the problems currently coming to the fore as a result of toilet desegregation. In conclusion, recommendations are made as to how to deal with the conundrum of providing adequate facilities for all women and men, whilst providing all sorts of individuals with choice and privacy to create inclusive, accessible cities for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stigma is not a self-evident phenomenon but like all concepts has a history. The conceptual understanding of stigma which underpins most sociological research has its roots in the groundbreaking account penned by Erving Goffman in his best-selling book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963). In the 50 years since its publication, Goffman's account of stigma has proved a productive concept, in terms of furthering research on social stigma and its effects, on widening public understandings of stigma, and in the development of anti-stigma campaigns. However, this introductory article argues that the conceptual understanding of stigma inherited from Goffman, along with the use of micro-sociological and/or psychological research methods in stigma research, often side-lines questions about where stigma is produced, by whom and for what purposes. As Simon Parker and Robert Aggleton argue, what is frequently missing is social and political questions, such as 'how stigma is used by individuals, communities and the state to produce and reproduce social inequality'. This article expands on Parker and Aggleton's critique of the limitations of existing conceptual understandings of stigma, through an examination of the anti-stigma campaign Heads Together. This high-profile campaign launched in 2016 seeks to 'end the stigma around mental health' and is fronted by members of the British Royal Family. By thinking critically with and about this campaign, this article seeks to both delineate the limitations of existing conceptual understandings of stigma and to begin to develop a supplementary account of how stigma functions as a form of power. We argue that in order to grasp the role and function of stigma in society, scholarship must develop a richer and fuller understanding of stigma as a cultural and political economy. The final part of this introduction details the articles to follow, and the contribution they collectively make to the project of rethinking the sociology of stigma. This collection has been specifically motivated by: (1) how reconceptualising stigma might assist in developing better understandings of pressing contemporary problems of social decomposition, inequality and injustice; (2) a concern to decolonise the discipline of sociology by interrogating its major theorists and concepts; and (3) a desire to put class struggle and racism at the centre of understandings of stigma as a classificatory form of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although temporal processes are fundamental to the ‘spatialization of class’, they remain understudied. This article thus provides empirical evidence of residential pathways in the Oslo region over the life course; it does so by using population-wide data in a 24-year panel, while focusing on residency in affluent and deprived areas. By utilizing sequencing and clustering techniques, the analysis shows that exposure to dense poverty and affluence is reproduced and intensified within individual biographies; this is indicative of vastly limited life experiences from late adolescence into adulthood. Accordingly, the relationship between class origins and class destinations that is often reported in studies of class mobility is likely to be reinforced due to prolonged experiences in advantaged or disadvantaged surroundings over time. Rather than being ‘stuck in place’, however, the disadvantaged are more geographically mobile and less spatially isolated than their affluent counterparts. The socio-spatial patterns suggest that the affluent employ strategies of spatial withdrawal that may be enabled by a dual process of closure consisting of the extensive marketization of housing and classed sentiments of belonging. The article argues that revealing the way in which spatially mediated contexts unfold throughout the life course seems to hint at spatialized processes of class structuration, thereby shedding light on contemporary inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sharing economy is fertile sociological ground for studying important themes like labor, exchange, consumption, and inequality, as well as larger political-economic trends that are reflective of this post-recession era. The multifaceted research agenda of the sharing economy can provide lessons around many themes relevant to sociologists, but what does the sharing economy teach to those who participate in it? What is learned from the sharing economy and how do participants learn it? In this article, the author explores the pedagogic elements of one case study within the sharing economy: open learning. Drawing from 51 interviews with 34 participants and roughly 300 hours of participant observation, the study uses Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse to ask how open learners learn to share. The author argues that an ethos of communalism and cooperativism dominated moral discourse for learners and regulated social order. Entrepreneurialism was learned through a flexible sociality, where participants contributed to each other’s learning as a means of validating and legitimizing that learning. The need to contribute or give back was taken for granted by participants, who felt compelled to give their own expertise or labor to the commons after taking something from it. This study depicts a tension between a neoliberal entrepreneurial frame and a communalist, cooperativist frame that is also present within the larger sharing economy. The author suggests that a similar pedagogic approach that asks how participants learn to share could be developed in the larger sharing economy in order to better understand learning and economic relations as two sides of the same coin in contemporary capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Introduction to the volume, the authors argue that the time is over for thinking reductively of the anthropology of Britain as simply ‘anthropology at home’. The authors also argue for the importance of creating space to promote fresh intellectual dialogue between anthropology and sociology. Both sociologists and anthropologists working on aspects of British social life are equally engaged, now more than ever, in the critical investigation of a common set of major issues such as the increase in cultural and ethnic nationalisms, economic austerity and its manifold impact on communities and individuals, and growing social and economic inequalities. Recognising disciplinary contributions to areas of mutual scholarly interest offers not only sources of intellectual inspiration for anthropologists and sociologists alike but also opens up possible avenues for forging institutional alliances and solidarities in the current political and economic climate of uncertainty for both disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present findings from a study of sex workers recruited in indoor licensed premises in Victoria. While the study addressed regulation, enforcement and working conditions, we focus on the value of flexible well-paid work for two particular groups of female workers (parents and students). We link this issue of flexibility to broader gendered employment conditions in Australia, arguing the lack of comparable employment is crucial to understanding worker decisions about sex work. Debates and regulation focus on gendered inequalities related to heterosexuality much more than they recognize gendered inequalities related to labour market conditions. The focus on criminalization, harm, exploitation and stigma obscures the centrality of work flexibility and conditions to women's decision-making. A more direct focus on the broader employment context may produce better recognition of why women do sex work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researching ‘hidden’ forms of social inequality such as gender often poses particular challenges. Not least of these is how to uncover such dimensions of social life whilst preserving the perspectives of research participants, who may not consider such matters relevant to their lives, particularly if other forms of identity or oppression are more prominent for them. Here, I reflect on these issues in the context of researching user involvement in mental health services from a feminist perspective. I show how ‘uncovering’ gender and other forms of social inequality in the field was aided through adopting a wide analytical lens focusing on power, along with reflexivity and openness in discussing my own political analysis and commitments in relation to the study area with the researched. I also describe how I attempted to resolve the epistemological-ethical issues involved through conceptualising these in terms of ‘situatedness’ and gender salience and adopting a feminist standpoint which emphasised what researchers can, and indeed should, bring to the research enterprise. Related issues of power and empowerment in the research process are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research suggests that women have more limited career opportunities than men. Using Swedish longitudinal data, covering the period between 1979 and 2000, more light is shed on the association between hierarchical levels and differences between men's and women's career opportunities in terms of occupational transitions. The analyses indicate that women face the greatest hindrance to advancement at lower hierarchical levels and that these disadvantages attenuate with higher hierarchical levels. These results contradict the common idea of a glass ceiling, ie that problems for women accrue with increasing hierarchical levels. The findings point to the need for focusing more on gender inequalities at low hierarchical positions although the glass ceiling hypothesis cannot be dismissed altogether. Moreover, the results do not support the view that the gender penalty in careers is larger in the private sector as compared to the public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on conspiratorial thinking as pathological effect of dissolution of social recognition and politics of conspiracy theory. Topics discussed include ideological critique of social inequality as emblematic of form of totalitarian paranoia, science fiction film "The Matrix" which show how theories of absolute difference may inadvertently create an atmosphere for conspiratorial thinking and absolute openness to others inverts towards absolute closure of claustrophobic solipsism.

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including relationship between economic and social inequality, implications of economic processes for material inequalities and study of social class and social stratification.

The article presents the nature of the social structure as a structure of inequality. The author examines the coherence and regularity of stratification systems, arguing that the results of many previous studies, as a consequence of their methodologies, have led to the conclusion that there is less regularity and stability than is, in fact, the case. In considering the relationship between methods and findings in some attempts to measure prestige scales, the author shall be concerned with implications, which can be drawn for the structure of stratification. He believes that previous approaches to the explanation of social stability in systems of inequality have contained too large an element of voluntarism. This has been true not only of the consensus theorists, for whom a positive moral evaluation of the system by the individuals implicated in it is necessary for its continuance, but also of some conflict theorists. One form of conflict theory outlines a situation of stability as a sort of armed neutrality where the deprived have condemned the social arrangements of their deprivation, but feel powerless to change them, at least for the time being.

The Registrar General's Decennial Supplement shows that the difference between the death rates for the different social classes has increased over the period from the early 1930s to the 1960s. The Registrar General allocates social class on the basis of the last full-time occupation of the male, Married women are classified by their husband's occupation. The death rates are generally given as crude death rates, the number of deaths per 1,000 or per 100,000 population as appropriate; or as Standardized Mortality Ratios (SMRs), which correct for differences in age structure. The Standardized Mortality Ratio is the actual number of deaths as a percentage of the number expected. Overall the SMR has decreased since 1930. However when the SMRs are considered by social class, the inequality of this improvement shows up. The overall SMRs for coronary heart disease, for lung cancer and for motor vehicle accidents increased from 1951 to 1961, whereas the overall SMR for all causes of death decreased.

The article seeks to demonstrate that there are certain fundamental flaws in the way the multidimensional approach to stratification is developed in recent years. Authors of the essay discuss the rank model on its own terms. Successive problems are raised and discussed and they then attempt to show that these damaging internal problems stem from the basic stance taken by rank theorists. The dimension of income is frequently taken as unproblematic as it fits the requirement of having a ratio scale. However, it is likely that individuals do not see income in terms of a ratio scale, but rather they create equivalence classes with respect to income. Having established that the study of rank dimensions themselves should involve study of how they enter into an individual's consciousness it would appear to follow that the same should apply to the study of status inconsistency. But it is seldom made clear whether the relationship between status inconsistency and some behavior is independent of the individual's perception of that inconsistency.

The article focuses on the fact that the working class affluence is changing the social class structure in Great Britain. It has been argued that prosperous manual--wage workers are losing their identity as a social stratum and are becoming merged into the middle class. The sociological implications of this argument would appear to be as follows: that these workers and their families are acquiring a standard of living which puts them on a level with the lower strata within the middle class; that these workers are acquiring new social perspectives and new norms of behavior which are more characteristic of middle class than of working class groups; that being essentially similar to many middle class persons in their economic position and their normative orientation, these manual workers are being accepted by the former on terms of social equality in both formal and informal social interaction. The link between `affluence' and `vote' is mediated by the social situation in which the affluent worker finds himself. The worker's present political allegiance may readily be switched if his failure to realize these expectations is associated with existing governmental policy.