Toward Social Classless Inequality in Europe?

Contemporary societies, characterized by high complexity and weakness in social formations, show how nowadays inequality dimensions rely much more on multiple, hybrid and cross-cutting generators rather then on traditional class stratification structures (Pakulsky & Waters, 1996; Wright E. O., 2007). Consequently, the theorization of “classless” inequality shines a different light on the debate on the limited heuristic relevance of “class” as a “paper” concept (Bourdieu, 1987). Nevertheless, social system still produces “structural effects” reflecting typical class advantages or disadvantages between individuals (Sørensen, 1996). Apparently different, these approaches result as complimentary and lead to a necessary and renewed methodological attention in the choice of proper tools for the analytical observation of inequality. On this basis, the paper explores inequality in a multidimensional weberian approach (i.e., in terms of “class, status and power”) through the application of the Theil index (1967, 1971). The aforesaid model, considering inequality basically in terms of allocation of scarce resources (material, as well nonmaterial) along alternative ends or strata, proposes, through a probabilistic approach derived from information theory, an alternative formulation of the share of the total quantity of each resource which is to be allocated to each end or strata. In this way, the elaboration of Theil’s algorithms will be applied to explore how much contemporary (and heterogeneous) contexts of Europeans countries show tendency toward forms of “classless” inequality.