ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at what sociologists mean by the term ‘class’, and how this helps us understand differences in people’s economic and financial circumstances and the experiences they have of ‘making it’ or ‘missing out’ and ‘doing without’. It explores the ways in which sociologists have used the term ‘class’. The chapter also looks at contemporary theoretical approaches to class, briefly discusses debates about the relationship between gender and class, and then considers how Australian researchers have addressed these ideas. It extracts some of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s key ideas from one of the works that first made him famous in English, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. The chapter looks at topics that are informed by class analysis and that give some indications about the current state of contemporary Australian research. The persistence of class-based social inequality suggests that class analysis will continue to be important for some time to come.
