ABSTRACT

In Renewing Class Analysis, Rosemary Crompton and John Scott point out that in Britain, sociological discussion has come to be dominated by the ‘employment-aggregate’ approach in which occupations are allocated to various classes. As a result, the British literature on class tends to be ‘devoted to establishing the superiority (or otherwise) of the various occupation and employment-based classification’. Crompton and Scott (2000:4) complain that ‘the debates have become increasingly focused on methodological questions’, rather than on substantive issues of class conflict and class action.