ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on arguments about the nature of contemporary social change and the changing relationship between class and individual identities. It examines the arguments of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens in some detail in order to draw out some of the theoretical ambiguities in their formulations, and in order to show that the underpinnings for their ideas are in many ways deeply conventional and rather ‘dated’. The chapter argues that for all their sophistication they ultimately posit an a-social account of the individual. It focuses on the arguments of Bourdieu to emphasise the need for a more developed ‘relational’ recognition of the intermeshing of individual and collective identities. The chapter describes diverse recent research undertaken in the United Kingdom to examine the nature of contemporary class awareness. It shows that class as a collective identity is rather weak and appeals for class unity are therefore likely to have little impact.
