Citation

Savage M. Br. J. Sociol. 2020; 71(1): 19-27.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, London School of Economics and Political Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1468-4446.12713

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper responds to Nick Gane's ?Against a descriptive turn?. I argue that descriptive research strategies are more open and inclusive than those which purport to be causal  where explanatory adequacy is assessed by expert insiders. I also show how open descriptive strategies can assist a wider explanatory purpose when these are conceived in non-positivist ways. I argue that epochalist sociology lacks an adequate temporal ontology because it collapses descriptive specificity back into overarching epoch descriptions. Finally, I argue that if the entire range of publications associated with the Great British Class Survey are considered, that it has demonstrated  a productive way of recognising  the significance of class which has facilitated major research advances in its wake.

Keywords

class; description; epochalism