ABSTRACT
In this book we have adopted a realist approach to the study of social class. This realist approach distinguishes the causal powers of certain abstract social entities from the contingent conditions under which these causal powers may be realised in actual social life. Applied to the study of social class we have argued that assets specifying relations of exploitation can be seen as causal entities, but that it is not possible to ‘read off social classes as actual social collectivities from these causal powers alone, without taking into account a range of contingent factors. The general advantage of this perspective, we would maintain, is that it allows us to recognise the complexity of processes of middle-class formation without collapsing into empiricist description. Furthermore, it allows us to develop a ‘dynamic’ approach to class analysis in which class assets can have varying effects as they are drawn upon in different contexts, and they can also be translated into other assets. These class assets define the terrain on which class collectivities form, rather than specify the nature of social class perse. How actual classes form as distinct social groups will depend on context, and salient social-class divisions in one area may not be apparent in another. The concept of social class, in our terms, is not a totalising one.
