Back to Class and Status: Or Why a Sociological View of Social Inequality Should Be Reasserted

Of late, issues of social inequality have assumed a new political centrality in many western societies. However, in much discussion of these issues, sociological approaches to the analysis of social inequality have been disregarded, especially in the work of economists and epidemiologists. The main features of the sociological approach are the emphasis given to inequality in a relational rather than a merely attributional sense, and the distinction between social class and social status as two qualitatively different forms of social stratification. Two cases serve to illustrate the limitations and dangers that result from neglecting the conceptual and empirical work undertaken by sociologists: the study of intergenerational social mobility by economists and the study of the consequences of social inequality for health and related social problems by epidemiologists.