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This ar ticle argues that in an age of knowing capitalism, sociologists have not adequately thought about the challenges posed to their expertise by the proliferation of `social' transactional data which are now routinely collected, processed and analysed by a wide variety of private and public institutions. Drawing on British examples, we argue that whereas over the past 40 years sociologists championed innovative methodological resources, notably the sample survey and the in-depth interviews, which reasonably allowed them to claim distinctive expertise to access the `social' in powerful ways, such claims are now much less secure. We argue that both the sample survey and the in-depth interview are increasingly dated research methods, which are unlikely to provide a robust base for the jurisdiction of empirical sociologists in coming decades. We conclude by speculating how sociology might respond to this coming crisis through taking up new interests in the `politics of method'.

This paper considers the changing nature of class analysis in Britain, focusing on three generations, and with a particular interest in the reasons for the revival of class analysis in the past fifteen years. I show how the \"heroic\" approach to class in Britain, which was very strong between 1950 and 1975, depended on emphasising the role of the working class as agents of progressive social change. Whilst this was a powerful force during this period, it locked class analysis into a historical moment which was fast being eclipsed given the scale of de-industrialisation in Britain during this period. During 1975-2000 class analysis faded in Britain because the white, male, industrial working class seemed much less significant in shaping British society. The most recent period since 2000 has seen the remarkable revival of \"cultural class analysis\", strongly associated with the influence of Pierre Bourdieu, and I sketch out its appeal, and its potential to enhance the study of class more broadly in the final part of this paper.

The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world. The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK's National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status. This principally distinguishes between people working in routine or semi-routine occupations employed on a 'labour contract' on the one hand, and those working in professional or managerial occupations employed on a 'service contract' on the other. However, this occupationally based class schema does not effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions. We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC's 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes. We demonstrate the existence of an 'elite', whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of 'new affluent' workers. We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a 'precariat' characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.

Recent years have seen persistent tension between proponents of big data analytics, using new forms of digital data to make computational and statistical claims about ‘the social’, and many sociologists sceptical about the value of big data, its associated methods and claims to knowledge. We seek to move beyond this, taking inspiration from a mode of argumentation pursued by Piketty, Putnam and Wilkinson and Pickett that we label ‘symphonic social science’. This bears both striking similarities and significant differences to the big data paradigm and – as such – offers the potential to do big data analytics differently. This offers value to those already working with big data – for whom the difficulties of making useful and sustainable claims about the social are increasingly apparent – and to sociologists, offering a mode of practice that might shape big data analytics for the future.

Background The inner retinal complex is a well-defined layer in spectral-domain OCT scans of the retina. The central edge of this layer at the fovea provides anatomical landmarks that can be observed in serial OCT scans of developing full-thickness macular holes (FTMH). Measurement of the movement of these points may clarify the mechanism of FTMH formation. Method This is a retrospective study of primary FTMH that had a sequence of two OCT scans showing progression of the hole. Measurements were made of the dimensions of the hole, including measurements using the central edge of the inner retinal complex (CEIRC) as markers. The inner retinal separation (distance between the CEIRC across the centre of the fovea) and the Height-IRS (average height of CEIRC above the retinal pigment epithelium) were measured. Results Eighteen cases were identified in 17 patients. The average increase in the base diameter (368 microns) and the average increase in minimum linear dimension (187 microns) were much larger than the average increase in the inner retinal separation (73 microns). The average increase in Height-IRS was 103 microns. Conclusion The tangential separation of the outer retina to produce the macular hole is much larger than the tangential separation of the inner retinal layers. A model based on the histology of the Muller cells at the fovea is proposed to explain the findings of this study.

This paper reflects on the impact of the Great British Class Survey, hosted by the BBC from 2011 to 2013. I argue that its intense appeal lay in the ability to crystallize three separate trends in one piece of research. These are (i) the problems of relying on a single variable definition of class, such as one based on employment and occupation; (ii) the growing significance of wealth and property as a central driver of 21st century class relations; and (iii) the inherent intersectionality of class with multiple other divides, notably around race and gender. The Great British Class Survey both undercut occupationally based models of class analysis that had become hegemonic during the late 20th century, and offered a template for a new multidimensional approach to class analysis. I consider how these multidimensional perspectives on class are being strengthened through the important shift towards centering wealth and property as the 21st century bedrock of class relations.

Global economic divisions have become so stark in the past decade that they have transformed the research agenda. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard Univ. Press, 2014) has had a profound influence, with more than 1.5 million copies sold. Piketty showed that in many rich nations, the balance of accumulated wealth compared with the national income is returning to disparities that were last seen more than 100 years ago. He argues that we are seeing the revival of a 'patrimonial class'

In this paper, we use a powerful empirical resource to address what the popular politics of disadvantage might entail in contemporary Britain. We take advantage of the unusually rich qualitative data from the British National Child Development Study, a cohort of Britons born in 1 week in 1958, to focus specifically on the accounts of those who are particularly disadvantaged. By concentrating on these a small number of qualitative accounts, which have been rigorously selected from the wider nationally representative sample on the basis of their relatively small amounts of economic and cultural capital, we will explore in detail the accounts and identities of these disadvantaged Britons with a view to explicating their political frameworks, their social identities and more broadly their orientations towards mobilisation.

This paper explores methodological issues regarding the revisiting of \"classic\" qualitative studies. Classic studies pose particular issues for secondary analysis. By virtue of being \"classic\", the findings and arguments of such studies define a subsequent \"canon\" of theoretical and methodological scholarship, and hence shape the thinking of subsequent researchers conducting secondary analysis. Secondary re-analysis therefore should be not only of the archived data itself, but of the published work itself, but this raises a host of complex methodological and ethical issues. Using my own reanalysis of Elizabeth BOTT's \"Family and Social Network' archive, and John GOLDTHORPE and David LOCKWOOD's \"Affluent Worker collection\", I examine possible analytical strategies for re-analysis, including \"debunking\", the alternative of \"sacralisation\", and ways in which original data can be read \"against the grain\". URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0501312