and determining their relative importance. Subsequently, Goldthorpe joined forces with Tak-Wing Chan in elaborating the Weberian distinction between social class and social status and showing its importance in studies of cultural participation. Their theoretical position and research has led to much controversy with followers of Pierre Bourdieu, who reject the distinction between class and status, but whose work Goldthorpe and Chan regard as being technically weak as regards both data collection and analysis and as failing to produce arguments clear enough to be open to empirical test. For the last ten years Goldthorpe has returned to research in educational inequalities and social mobility in the context of projects directed by Erzsébet Bukodi. A series of both British and comparative analyses are brought together in their book, Social Mobility and Education in Britain: Research, Politics and Policy. A central theme of the book is the ‘disconnect’ that exists between the findings of sociological research and the discussion of social mobility and education in political and policy circles. In particular, the idea that educational expansion and reform can play a key role in increasing social mobility is questioned, and the hypothesis is advanced that in all societies with a capitalist market economy, a nuclear family system and a liberal-democratic polity, a limit exists to the extent to which relative chances of social mobility can be equalised. Research aimed at elaborating and testing this hypothesis continues. Goldthorpe has also set out his views on the direction in which he believes that sociology is, appropriately, developing in his book Sociology as a Population Science, and to this he has then added a ‘prequel’, Pioneers of Sociological Science: Statistical Foundations and the Theory of Action. Goldthorpe is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a Member of the Academia Europaea, an Honorary Fellow of the European Academy of Sociology, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. Major works 1968 The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1968 The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1969 The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1974 The Social Grading of Occupations: A New Approach and Scale. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1980 Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press (2nd revised and enlarged edition, 1987). 1992 The Constant Flux: A Study of Class