Social Class and inequality

• Subjective class -

This generally consists of the vague notions upper, middle and working class and most people would identify themselves as belonging to one of these groups.

• Objective class -

This refers to our occupations, education, possessions and our wealth. It can be measured in the data put out by the Office of Population, Censuses and Surveys such as mortality lists.

Occupation and class

Traditionally this has been one of the main measures used for a number of reasons 1. Sociologists and the government have easy access to this data/information 2. Occupation is often linked to or a good predictor a persons lifestyle 3. Occupations correlate with life chance issues such as health/death/family size 4. People themselves often link their class identity to their job We must be aware that although its commonly used it is not in any way a perfect measure of class

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The registrar general scale

Professional Intermediate Skilled non-manual Skilled manual Unskilled manuel

Office of National statistics

A new system created in 2001 census based on the type of work contract a person has and their occupational group NS-SEC

Two other factors are also seen as important

• The market situation (Status ie employee employed manager and the amount of money you get • The Work situation (Degree of authority the person has) • Which theory does this remind you of ??

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Office of national statistics

Higher managers and professionals Lower managers and professionals Intermediate eg secretary Small employers and self employed 5supervisory craft related Semi routine eg hairdresser cook Routine eg binman waiter Long term unemployed

Will Hutton (1995)

• One of the most recent attempts to define the class system in a new and radical way was by Will Hutton (1995). Hutton is a critic of the New Right. He argues that social inequality, in the form of low wages, low skill and high unemployment, has resulted in a clearly divided and economically unstable society. Hutton has put forward the

30-30-40 thesis

to show the three-way split in contemporary British class relations. He says our society can now be seen to consist of: 30% unemployed, low paid, insecure work; 30% with some job security and quality of life; 40% - privileged workers in secure and regular employment.

Fat Cats !!

• Recent work by Adonis and Pollard (1998) stresses the significance of the upper class in modern British society and they consider that there is an emerging 'superclass' that consist of an elite of extremely high paid managers and professionals. According to Adonis and Pollard, this new superclass is linked financially to the City of London, a male and upper class world that has many links with the traditions and heritage of public school and Oxbridge elites of the past. Any criticisms ?

Guys in the middle !

• C Wright Mills (1956) and others have seen the middle classes as divided into two groups. The higher professions have the potential for high earnings and who are self-employed or employed by large corporations. These are people such as judges, accountants, lawyers, dentists, doctors. These people tend to control entry into their occupations. The lower professions are often, though not exclusively, feminised and work in the public sector. They have limited access to high earnings and include teachers, nurses, and social workers.

• The lower middle classes have become more like the working class according to the Marxist, Braverman (1974) who points out that many of the professions, such as architects, have become vulnerable to redundancies.

The Workers !

• Working class work may require high levels of skill and effort: however, because it is manual work, it is not generally well paid and often is of relatively low status. In addition, although years of on-the-job training may be involved in such work, people will not have been to university or college. Hairdressing, for example, is one of the worst paid occupations on average. Unskilled work is very low value, low status work and there are few openings for people who have no educational qualifications.

Social mobility

• It is useful to look at

intergenerational mobility

• We are interested in how fixed the boundaries are in a culture and mainly in Britain over the last 50years • Comparisons are made using samples from different times and measuring mobility. (mainly they use jobs to do this)

Check Key Terms

• Subjective class • Objective class • NS-SEC • 30-30-40 Thesis • Social mobility • Intergenerational mobility studies

Iser study for the institute of social and economic research Ermisch and Francesconi 2002

• Inter generational mobility • Studied 2400 men sons • 2300 women daughters • Found those with parents in high occupational careers were more likely to also be in a high earning occupation and to marry someone in one. They say cultural capital plays a big part. • They also found that downward drift from the top was far more unlikely than upward mobility from the bottom • They claim that the middle classes descended from the working classes during the grammar school era are blocking the way for working class children holding on to their places (possibly through helicopter parenting) • Give some examples of the ways they may do this

Evaluation

• There are problems when trying to do this because there are changes in the classifications of jobs/occupations and this makes valid comparison difficult • Also parents and children changing their jobs make it hard to classify people and families • Housewives and the long term unemployed are very hard to classify

• Problems aside it is concluded by researchers from the Nuffield study that class origins play a key role in determining achievement / class destination • Peter Saunders 96 disagrees with such conclusions claiming that britain is very close to a true meritocracy but in the sociological world he is a minority. • Indeed in recent times it seems that the gap between the very rich and the very poor is bigger than its ever been

Growing Middle Classes?

• In the 197Os, it was commonly believed by many commentators that the working class were becoming more middle class as their incomes were higher than previously earned by the working class. This theory was known as the

affluent worker thesis

or

embourgeoisement

and was supported by Galbraith

Evaluation

• This theory was disproved by Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechofer and Platt (1968) who conducted detailed research on car workers in Dagenham. They found that that the workers worked longer hours and had different attitudes to work from middle class management.

The Underclass • New Left

• In the early 1970s, the term was used sympathetically by Giddens and other members of the developing New Left (1973) to describe those who faced massive deprivation and social inequality with working conditions and income levels below even those of the working class.

The Underclass • The New Right

• At the same time, other social commentators from the New Right were using the term underclass negatively to describe a class of people who have little self-sufficiency but rely on social security benefits to survive. The term 'dole scrounger' was widely used in the press to describe those who lived on benefit.

Check understanding so far

• Answer question 1-8 in your booklets

Changes in Social Class

• Marx predicted an increasing class consciousness amongst working classes that would eventually serve to overthrow capitalism – This hasn’t happened but other changes have taken place instead.

• Proletarianisation

– is the process through which middle classes increasingly identify themselves as working class.

Neo-Marxists Wright and Braverman

• They argue that de-skilling amongst traditionally middle-class jobs has lead to proletarianisation of white-collar occupations.

• Wright cites examples of university lecturers as once very middle-class and autonomous in their work are now subject to greater scrutiny about how they spend their time (no different to factory workers).

Evaluation

• Rosemary Crompton states females are particularly prone to proletarianisation in the workplace.

• Marshall et al argue that research shows skills and autonomy amongst white-collar workers had not diminished but where they had workers were mostly female.

• How could we apply a marxist or Weberian view to call-centre workers?

What do Post-Modernists say?

• They see class as being an out-dated concept and focus instead on how identity is gained through consumption via the media.

• They see identities as fragmented and fluid. • How does Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital fit into this idea ?

• How does a Weberian view compare?

Check understanding

• Complete questions 23 to end in booklets.