Milton M. Gordon

Social Class in American Sociology

Despite the rapid development of social-class analysis within the last twenty-five years in American sociology, there is no agreement on the meaning of the term as a research tool. A series of analytical questions to be used in a survey of recent class materials is proposed to aid in the discovering of common ground. These questions revolve around definition, which may be in terms of economic power, status ascription, group life, cultural attributes, political power, or their combination; ascertainment, or class placement; defferences; social mobility; and the relationship of class to ethnic stratification.

The Concept of the Sub-Culture and Its Application

of statistical methods in sociological research is much brighter. Eventually sociologists will surely become sufficiently realistic to utilize all appropriate research tools that are available and to provide adequate training in their use for social research-workers-to-be. An accompanying advance may be the focusing of sociological studies on significant areas of interest that have hitherto been slighted partly because of insufficient data. Meanwhile, the methods of statistics will themselves be subject to continuous developments, improvements, and adaptations for application to wider areas of research. For example, one of the most important statistical advances in recent years was the development during the war of the theory of sequential analysis and its application to certain types of research. So far, no applications of these newly developed statistical methods to sociological research have come to my attention, but they certainly offer a challenge to social statisticians to explore their utility. 8 In statistics, the development of new methods has sometimes been initiated in purely theoretical fields of statistics and at other times in special applied fields. Not every type of statistical method that is useful in one applied field of research is equally applicable in other fields. Nevertheless, the general field of statistical methods is unusually fortunate in that it continually grows from contributions of both theoretical statisticians and research workers in other fields who use statistics as a tool. It is probable that the body of statistical methods and techniques potentially adaptable to sociological research will continue to grow and will continue to keep ahead of sociological applications for some time to come.

Kitty Foyle and the Concept of Class as Culture

Traditional sociological studies of social class in the United States have tended to concern themselves either with economic factors or with subjective class consciousness. But social class may profitably be used as an objective cultural concept indicating cultural divisions. As part of a larger study, the novel Kitty Foyle is analysed from this point of view.