Grand’ theories of globalization – those that treat globalization as a social and cultural as well as an economic process – regularly feature claims that fundamental changes are involved in the nature of class inequalities in modern (or ‘post-modern’) societies, in the form of the class structure itself, and in the relationship between class and politics. The theoretical and empirical bases of such claims are critically examined and are found to be inadequate. Some wider implications of the critique are brought out both for globalization theorists’ notions of ‘epochal change’ and for their views of the kind of social science that the ‘global age’ requires.
