ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for a widening of the definition of stratification (and therefore, by implication, of mobility) to incorporate ‘all aspects of structured inequality’ (Blackburn, 1980) rather than the much narrower definition used by Lockwood (1986) which limits stratification to a concern with traditional class analysis.1 There is nothing very new in making this argument: Newby (1982 p. 18), in his report on the state of research into social stratification, endorses both Townsend and Pahl in suggesting the need to incorporate into stratification research alternative ‘resource systems’, such as household economies, and to examine the extent to which the costs of the 1979/81 recession were borne by different ‘minority groups’. This is not to deny the importance of class analysis but to argue that, by following Pahl in taking the household as a social and economic unit, it becomes possible to widen the area of analysis to incorporate all members of society and to examine levels of resources and the system of distribution (both within and between households), as well as that of production. Pahl (1988 p. 253) goes on to suggest that ‘This emphasis on the household as the salient social and economic unit, rather than the individual, has important implications for contemporary social structure’, leading to a move away from the hierarchically structured pyramid based on individual jobs.
