Le retour des classes sociales

For many sociologists, the death of class is an obvious process: the question of classes has almost disappeared from contemporary social sciences for the last two decades, particularly in France. The aim of this paper is reassess the empirical aspects of this problem. Two different periods clearly appear. On the one hand, the period of fast growth of the post-war era saw a decline of the objective disparities between social classes. On the other one, since the end of 70s the evolution has been unclear, because of restructuring inequalities in a context where no collective consciousness seems about to organize classes. The split between the two aspects, the objective and the subjective ones, could create a phenomenon of "dyssocialization", say a double bind problem undermining the popular class identity. Objectively visible but subjectively unstructured, the future of social classes remains open.