ABSTRACT
Of all social science concepts, arguably, it is class that has been subjected to the most thoroughgoing marginalisation since the 1980s. Politicians began to talk in terms of classless societies, academics became preoccupied with the fragmentation of traditional class lines (working class/middle class/upper class) and more and more people have begun to think in terms of their individual, as opposed to class, status. This is a lure of individualism that led Crompton (1993) to conclude that the ‘retreat from class . . . is becoming the sociological equivalent of the new individualism’ (1993: 8).
