01 / Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Who this book is for
For students studying stratification who want to compare descriptive class categories with an account of class as a social relationship. Umney develops a Marxist argument through modern workplaces and political debates. Read it as a position in a contested field, alongside approaches that emphasise status, culture, mobility or other forms of inequality.
Prerequisites
Introductory sociology or political economy is helpful. Review the distinction between income, occupation and relations of production. Some acquaintance with Marx assists close reading, but the book introduces its central analytical questions.
What it covers
The chapters discuss public claims about an economy for everyone, Marxist class concepts, changes in Britain’s class structure, managerial control and the organisation of work. Service jobs, offices and contemporary labour practices extend the discussion beyond nineteenth-century industrial imagery. Pay, insecurity and routine become questions about power and production rather than merely attributes used to sort people into groups.
How to use it
Choose one workplace example and identify who controls tasks, access to income and the distribution of risk. Compare how an occupational classification and a relational class analysis would describe it. Explain what each approach reveals and what it cannot establish. Use one empirical claim about inequality to trace the steps from observation to the author’s explanation. Then formulate a counterargument and identify additional evidence needed to assess it. Avoid treating a person’s consumption style as sufficient evidence of their relation to production.
Edition and sources
Pluto published the book in May 2018; the selected identifier belongs to its PDF edition. The publisher’s open-access programme and complete JSTOR book supply legal free reading. Check chapter-specific noncommercial and reuse notices rather than assuming an unrestricted licence. British employment institutions and examples should be dated carefully when comparing them with another country or period. Official complete reading route.
