[方法]補遺

p14 (emphases added)

One must be particularly alert to the level of abstraction. Most analyses fail to specify whether a concept is meant to be abstract or concrete, whether, that is, it is intended to capture certain restricted aspects of people or to summarise a range of important properties. Talking at cross-purposes is a staple of debates on social structuring. Some use the term , for example, to describe the way the political economy is structured by , an abstract or minimalist category. Other are more interested in ; this is a more concrete and comprehensive, but taxonomic, conception.Unfortunately, many people, usually practising sociologists, want class to perform functions: to cut through social complexity and to provide a map to concrete differences among individuals. The social taxonomists wish to assign each and every person to a class or class trajectory, a task comparable in futility to describing the fall of a particular tree on the basis of Einstein's theory of universal gravitation. Worse, in overstretching the concept of class, without recognising the myriad intervening forces at work, they end up casting doubt on the analytic and political usefulness of the concept itself.