The 1451 Review (Volume 1) 2021

avoids the ‘pseudo-debates’ of identifying ‘real classes’ by instead focusing on
observable mechanisms, of which class can be conceived as the theoretical link
(Crompton 2008: 7). This approach has been developed through the analysis of
specific historical cases. A historical approach to class can reveal the contingent
aspects that shape the formation of class groups. In particular, the ways in which
formations of class, race, and gender are mutually constituted.
In the final section of this essay, three specific mechanisms that this approach
to class analysis can unveil have been briefly analysed. Firstly, processes of
opportunity hoarding, whereby class-based formations frequently organise to capture
some opportunity or resource for their members. Secondly, the related mechanism of
exploitation, whereby conditions exist which allow for a broadly constituted owningclass
to control and expropriate value from the labour of other classes. From this
discussion of exploitation as a relation between classes, an analysis of the symbolic
legitimacy of this relationship has been performed, with reference to the ways in which
judgements about language are used to symbolically legitimise processes of
opportunity hoarding and exploitation. As such, when deployed in the analysis of
specific sociological questions, class can be a useful, and indeed necessary, category of
analysis.
Bibliography
Baert, P. (2005). Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Towards Pragmatism.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of The Judgement of Taste.
London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. (1987). What Makes a Social Class? On the Theoretical and Practical
Existence of Groups, Berkeley Journal of Sociology. 32, 1-17.
Braudel, F. (2009). History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée. Review:
Fernand Braudel Centre 32 (2), 171-203.
Chakrabarty, D. (1989). Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Crompton, R. (2008). Class and Stratification, 3 rd edn. Cambridge: Polity Press
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1921). The Class Struggle. The Crisis, August 1921, 22 (4).
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1998). Black reconstruction in America. New York: Free Press.
Fryer, P. (2010). Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. New edn,
London: Pluto Press
Goldthorpe, J. (2000). Rent, Class Conflict, and Class Structure: A Commentary on
Sørensen’, American Journal of Sociology. 105 (6), 1572-1582.
Hartmann, H. I. (1979). The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards
a more Progressive Union. Capital & Class, 3 (2), 1–33.
Inikori, J.E. (1987). Slavery and The Development of Industrial Capitalism in
England, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 118 (4).
Merton, R.K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure, ‘Enlarged Edition’. New
York, NY: Free Press
Mills, C. (2014a). The Great British Class Fiasco: A Comment on Savage et al.
Sociology, 48 (3), 437- 444.
170 171