This book re-evaluates New Left and Marxist texts from the 1980s, in order to explore problems facing the study of ¿class¿ which have emerged within Australian and international theories. The author contrasts the popular ideas of Connell, Bourdieu and the ¿Death of Class¿ thesis, with those of lesser known texts, concluding that no single definition can account for the various historical meanings of class. Instead, loosely following Castoriadis, the concept of class can best be understood as creatively imagined and institutionalised. Paternoster proposes that class is best studied through historical phenomenology, which can be used to link political economy, cultural sociology and anthropological ethnographies. This approach