The concept of social class: The contribution of Everett Hughes

Abstract

In French Canada in Transition (1943) and a set of related essays written between 1933 and 1941, Everett Hughes, a key figure in the “Second Chicago School” of sociology developed a novel and noteworthy conceptualization of social class. This contribution, which was not recognized outside of French‐language sociology in Quebec, was an integral element of Hughes's “interpretive institutional ecology” theoretical frame of reference. It combined elements of the classical ecological theory of class (human ecology, functionalism, Simmel), aspects of a Weber‐inspired analysis of class, status, and political power, and elements of a proto‐dependency analysis of Quebec's industrialization in the 1930s. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.