6 - Class consciousness and social stratification

Summary

R. S. Neale has suggested ‘a fivefold classification of historians according to their approach to class’. His classification ranges from ‘those historians who assume that class and its related concept class consciousness are wholly understood by their readers’, and who unquestioningly divide society into three classes (aristocracy, middle class, working class), to those who have used or adapted Marxian or other sociological models in which class consciousness is a central concept. In practice, Neale thought that most historians unconsciously ranged over several of the approaches included in his classification. Neale was very concerned to distinguish between class consciousness in Marxian terms, where the objective of action is more than sectional self-interest, and class perception, where there is merely evidence of various social or occupational groups uniting to further their own position or engaging in social interaction with one another indiscriminately. Thus, in Neale's view, Foster's research on political action, neighbouring and intermarriage in Oldham proved the existence of class perception, but not of class consciousness.

I should make clear at the outset, therefore, that where I employ the term ‘class consciousness’ I mean what Foster meant by it, not what Neale claimed the term ought to mean. I also admit that for most of this book ‘class’ has been used in the loose sense that Neale found so objectionable. My defence is that this usage reflects the ways in which nineteenth-century writers used the term, and the ways in which urban historical geographers have employed it more recently.