Marshall ThomasH.

Marshall ThomasH.

(1893-1981) British sociologist who trained first as a historian, and whose discussion of citizenship and CITIZEN RIGHTS, Citizenship and Class (1950), remains the starting point of most modern discussions of the subject (see also CITIZEN). Marshall was interested in exploring the implications of an expansion of citizenship rights and welfare rights for class relations, and likewise, the implications of a continuation of class divisions and a capitalist economy for citizenship: a clash between democracy and egalitarianism in the civil and political realm and non-democracy and inequality in the economic realm. Commentators have sometimes regarded Marshall as over-sanguine in his judgement of the benefits flowing from the expansion of citizenship in modern Western societies. More recently, especially with the advent of THATCHERISM, his emphasis on the importance of citizen and welfare rights in establishing social fairness and in contributing to the maintenance of political legitimacy in these societies has increasingly been regarded as sound. His many essays on these topics and on the importance of an historical perspective in the understanding of modern society are collected together in Sociology at the Crossroads (1963).