Two good readings: Approaches to class analysis (2005) by Erik Olin Wright and Why Marx was right, chapter seven (2011) by Terry Eagleaton.

As often in sociology, it is thought that there are two competing "schools"; in the case of social class: Weberian and Marxian (cf. the volume edited by Wright). Among the most recent contributions, I personally prefer Bourdieu. The approach by Erikson, Goldthorpe & Portocarrero has also been influential in the past decades. If you are interested in social structure in Germany, I recommend authors such as Vester, Schulze, and Hradil, and Geißler's introduction (Die Sozialstruktur Deutschlands). As to the question of measurement, I don't consider self-assessment (at least in its simplest form: "What social class do you think you belong to?") a valid and reliable approach. Depending on one's theoretical approach, objective social status is measured as the volume of capital (economic and cultural resources - following Bourdieu), as the type of occupation, one's status in hierarchies in the workplace, or professional prestige, and on the basis of indicators of lifestyles. Of course, these indicators are also based on self-assessment, if you will.

Dear Benjamin, this was a a very helpful answer. I am interested in social class in Bulgaria. As I understand social class belonging is country-specific and there are competing theoretical approaches. I thought that the only way to check which theory applies best to the specific country is to ask people. Indeed the question asked in ISSP, which I want to use, is that simple and straightforward. My statistical analyses shows that education is by far most significant determinant of self-evaluated class belonging. Income and managerial position are nevertheless significant, but much less important, while property ownership (and its price) plays no role at all. One can argue that Bulgaria is very specific case in terms of social class formation due to its communist past and the fact that more than 90% of the households are homeowners. How can I be more objective in my measurement?

The most fundamental approach to social structure in a country would be to enumerate all the resources and status inequalities that one can imagine to be consequential in that specific social formation (i.e., those that make persons prestigeous, that give them access to political descisions, make them attractive as partners, influential and authoritative in interactions, etc., and that in general confer them power over others) and that are generally considered valuable within a given culture. For example: different types of economic wealth, education, proximity to a ruling party and its ideology, cultural goods and competences, social relationships, status in the workplace, religion, ethnic background, etc.. Among all these properties, self-classification is a small but important part, in particular if a person's self-acribed status is recognized by others (i.e., the symbolic power to have one's status recognized). The next stept would then be to rank these inequalities as to their influence (intuitively or by empirical analysis if possible): What are the most important differences--those that explain and determine a wide variety of social facts, of personal behavior, chances in life, social judgments, etc.? Those main elements of social status will be correlated most of the time: education partly determines success on the labor market; in some circumstances, political power is related to wealth; health care services are more accessible in urban areas, etc. Based on these correlations, it is then possible to identify the fundamental dimensions of inequality (for example, in Bourdieu's model, the overall volume of capital and the prepoderance of cultural vs. economic capital--at least, these two dimensions explain many elements of lifestyles that are correlated among each other). Finally, one may attempt some kind of classification of persons as to their relative position in that multi-dimensional social space. Those social classes could be based on discontinuities, typologies, clusters, etc. in the social space, and to a certain degree also on self-classification and classification by others.

A social researcher should not get satisfied with what empirical evidence says. They should go beyond and explore intricate things not measured by the numbers.

In addition to Benjamin's response above check out intersectionality theory. It looks at inequality beyond race and gender. It expands to include religion, migration status, age, class etc. intersectionality theory is both a theory and a framework. You can check my thesis for free from La Trobe University or google Crenshaw 1990.

Very interesting discussion about social class.

I would like only to add that there is a very practical way of "measuring" social class for biomedical studies to analyse how social class is influencing health inequalities.

(Please see:Krieger N, Williams DR, Moss NE. Measuring social class in US public health research: concepts, methodologies, and guidelines. Annu Rev Public Health. 1997;18:341–78.)

Using the occupational social class it is possible to create different social class strata, for example: (1) managers/professional (legislators and senior officials and managers, professionals, technicians, and associate professionals); (2) clerks/service/shop workers (clerks, service workers, and shop and market sales workers); and (3) manual workers (unskilled agricultural and fishery workers, craft and related trades workers, plant and machine operators and assemblers, elementary occupations).

This operationalization of the occupation into these three categories of occupational social class was based on the five categories of the Registrar-General’s Social Classes classification (RGSCs): I: professionals; II: managers, III non-manual: skilled non-manual; III: manual: skilled manual; IV: semi-skilled manual; V: unskilled manual. The RGSC classification is based on occupational skill and has been widely used in previous reports and studies focusing on social class

(please see: Bartley M. Measuring socio-economic position. In: Bartley M, editor. Health inequality: an introduction to theories, concepts and methods. Cambridge: Polity Press; 2004. p. 22–34)

Read also Manu Smrthi and Rahul Skanrthyan's OLGA To Ganaga that describes how class and social status emerged in the ancient India. Many critics in the modern period have confronted the existing inequalities and have questioned the social and gender inequalities. The list is very vast.