ABSTRACT
A cursory examination of other studies of workplaces in Britain suggests the possibility that occupational communities vary in other respects which appear relevant to the investigation of the connections between occupation and social stratification. With the possible exception of road transport, the industries in which occupational communities have been observed were established in something like their present form during the nineteenth century, and in the case of printing, appreciably earlier. Indeed, much of the information relating to occupational communities can be more readily construed as evidence of occupational solidarity and trade union consciousness. The development of pronounced solidarities within occupational communities could conceivably inhibit the emergence of class solidarities. Sociological interpretations of whatever descriptions of social life happen to be designated as images and models of society may themselves depend upon the images and models of social life which sociologists construct, among them occupational communities, social classes and industrial society.
