Thinking about Class

Abstract

Social classes are changing as people move around the world more often, moving more frequently between different class systems, holding different positions in different places, and changing the meanings of class, and social classes are also changing as rising economic insecurity reduces established certainties. The continued worldwide emancipation of women and rising income and wealth inequalities all change how we see ourselves and treat others. We are also changing how we wish to be grouped and seen. The BBC class survey (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973) and the article published simultaneously in Sociology (Savage et al., 2013) have generated considerable public discussion in the media but that debate is still largely parochially British. A public debate was initiated over how class is defined and about the relevance of social class in the contemporary world. Contributors ranging, in occupational class terms, from celebrity comics to the elite of the intellectual commentariat began to re-engage with the importance of social class as an explanatory concept. But if class matters as much as we now think it does we need to know how it is changing and how we can help change it for the better.