Category: Social Class

In today’s Russia, write Nick J Fox and Tatiana Gavrilyuk, almost four in five workers under 30 earn less than 400 US$ a month, and a third no more than 270 US$ (Gavrilyuk, 2019).  These figures reflect the emergence of an unequal society (Credit Suisse, 2018).  Those in managerial jobs fare best, with the wherewithal… Continue reading Class and materiality in contemporary Russia

Ever since 1845 it’s been known that material circumstances such as poor housing and sanitation and over-crowding make life not only hard, but also unhealthy.  That was when sociologist Friedrich Engels uncovered the shocking conditions of daily life for working class people in English cities like Manchester, notes Nick J Fox. Many studies since then… Continue reading Inequality matters: how the non-human stuff in our lives produces dis/advantage and ill-health

Once upon a time it meant something when we talked about social class, suggests Nick J Fox.  The concept was useful in describing social inequalities, or predicting outcomes such as illness and premature death.  But the turn towards cultural and symbolic approaches to class in recent sociology has made ‘social class’ increasingly meaningless and empirically… Continue reading Sociologists should stop talking about social class