Chapter 1 : Stratification, class and inequality

Stratification, class and inequality

Introduction

• Human societies have long dreamed of an egalitarian society, but all human societies from the simplest to the most complex have some form of social inequality.
• Power and prestige are unequally distributed, and many societies have marked differences in the distribution of wealth.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Lansley (2006): Argued that those with real power constitute less than half the full membership of the 'super-class' — a 'hyper-class', an elite within an elite.
• "There is certainly a powerful business elite in Britain today, just as there always has been." (Lansley, 2006)

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Social inequality and social stratification

• Social inequality simply refers to the existence of socially created inequalities.
• Social stratification is a particular form of social inequality referring to the presence of distinct social groups ranked one above the other in terms of prestige and wealth.
• Members of a stratum share common interests, a common identity, and a similar lifestyle.
• The Hindu caste system in India is an example of social stratification:
  • Traditional Hindu society was divided into five main strata: four varnas (castes) and a fifth group, the outcaste (untouchables).
  • Castes were subdivided into thousands of jatis (subcastes), which were occupational groups (e.g., carpenter jatis, goldsmith jatis, potter jatis).
  • Ranked by ritual purity: Brahmins (priests) personified purity, sanctity, and holiness. Untouchables were defined as unclean, base, and impure, performing degrading tasks like the disposal of dead animals, and were segregated on the outskirts of villages.
  • Hierarchy of power mirrored prestige: Brahmins were custodians of the law and tended to be the largest landowners.
  • Though illegal in modern India, the caste system still exercises influence, particularly in rural areas.
• Social inequality can exist without social strata. Some sociologists argue class systems have broken down in Western societies (explored further in the discussion of postmodernism), yet great differences in wealth, power, and status remain.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• 5 main strata in traditional Hindu society: 4 varnas + untouchables.

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Stratification systems

• Members of each stratum tend to develop their own subculture (distinctive norms, attitudes, and values) because they experience similar circumstances and problems (explored further in later discussions on class subcultures).
• Recent work inspired by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has revitalised interest in the relationship between class and culture.
• Social mobility is the movement from one stratum to another (upward or downward).

Life chances

• A person's position affects their life chances (chances of obtaining desirable things and avoiding undesirable things).
• Gerth and Mills (1944) state that life chances in Western society include:
  • "Everything from the chance to stay alive during the first year after birth to the chance to view fine arts"
  • "the chance to remain healthy and grow tall, and if sick to get well again quickly"
  • "the chance to avoid becoming a juvenile delinquent"
  • "crucially, the chance to complete an intermediary or higher educational grade"
• Non-manual workers enjoy advantages: job security, shorter hours, longer holidays, fringe benefits, promotion prospects, better health, longer life, lower crime conviction rates, higher home ownership (explored further in the health and educational inequalities chapters).

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Pierre Bourdieu: Revitalised interest in the relationship between class and culture.
• Gerth and Mills (1944): Defined life chances as including health, avoiding delinquency, and completing higher education.

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Social stratification - a functionalist perspective

• Functionalists assume society has basic needs (functional prerequisites) and examine how stratification meets these needs to maintain order and stability.

Talcott Parsons - stratification and values

• Value consensus: Parsons believed order and stability are based on general agreement concerning what is good and worthwhile.
• Stratification derives from common values → individuals are evaluated and ranked → successful performers receive high rewards (at minimum, high prestige).
• Example: Sioux Indians in North America: Valued bravery and generosity. A warrior who successfully raided the Crow and Pawnee Indians → captured horses and distributed them → received rewards (seat on tribal council, women sang of exploits, appointment as war chief). Excellence in values = power and prestige.
• Example: American society: Values individual achievement and efficiency (productive activity). Successful business executives who run efficient businesses receive high rewards.
• Parsons argued stratification is inevitable and generally believed to be just, right, and proper.
• Conflict between haves and have-nots exists (arrogance of winners, "sour grapes" of losers) but is kept in check by the common value system.

Organisation and planning

• Complex industrial societies require a specialised division of labour based on reciprocity (mutual give and take).
  • Middle class plans/organises → Working class executes directives.
  • This inevitably leads to inequality in power and prestige because coordination requires centralisation and authority.

Power

• Inequalities of power are based on shared values. Power is legitimate authority because it is used to pursue collective goals (e.g., American executive furthering productivity).

Summary and evaluation

• Stratification is inevitable (derives from shared values) and functional (integrates groups, coordinates division of labour, furthers collective goals).

Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore - role allocation and performance

• Davis and Moore (1945) published "Some principles of stratification".
• They argued stratification is a universal necessity to meet the functional prerequisite of effective role allocation and performance.

• Mechanism to ensure this: Social stratification (attaching unequal rewards to different positions).
• People differ in innate ability; positions differ in functional importance.
• Logic chain: Important positions require special skills → limited number of talented people → training requires sacrifices (loss of income) → high rewards are needed as an incentive to motivate talented people to undergo training and perform diligently → stratification ensures the most important positions are conscientiously filled by the most qualified persons.

Functional importance

• Measuring functional importance (2 ways):

Melvin M. Tumin - a critique of Davis and Moore

• Tumin (1953) provided a comprehensive critique of Davis and Moore across 7 areas:
  1. Functional importance: Questioned the measurement. Unskilled workmen are as indispensable to a factory as engineers. Measuring importance is subjective (matter of opinion).
  2. Power and rewards: Ignored the influence of power. Pay differences may be due to power, not functional importance.
  3. The pool of talent: Questioned the assumption of limited talent. (a) No effective method to measure innate talent exists (explored further in the education chapter). (b) The pool of talent is likely much larger than assumed, so unequal rewards aren't needed to harness it.
  4. Training: Rejected training as a "sacrifice". Students enjoy leisure, freedom, and self-development. Loss of earnings is made up in the first 10 years of work; continuing high pay is unjustified.
  5. Motivation: Stratification acts as a barrier to motivation. Hurdles discourage the lower strata (e.g., working-class children leave education earlier). Also, highly rewarded groups erect barriers to restrict access (e.g., American Medical Association deliberately restricted entry to ensure a shortage of doctors and maintain high wages).
  6. Inequality of opportunity: Stratification is inherently antagonistic to equal opportunity. Differential rewards are only functional if there is genuinely equal access to recruitment and training.
  7. Social divisions: Stratification is a divisive force, encouraging hostility, suspicion, and distrust, rather than integrating society.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Talcott Parsons (1964): Argued stratification derives from value consensus and is functional for coordinating the division of labour.
• Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore (1945): Wrote "Some principles of stratification"; argued stratification is a device to ensure the most important positions are filled by the most qualified persons.
• Melvin M. Tumin (1953): Critiqued Davis and Moore, arguing stratification acts as a barrier to talent and is a divisive force.
• "certain tendencies to arrogance on the part of some winners and to resentment and to a 'sour grapes' attitude on the part of some losers" (Parsons)
• "Organization on an ever increasing scale is a fundamental feature of such a system... those who take responsibility for coordinating the actions of many others must have a different status in important respects from those who are essentially in the role of carrying out specifications laid down by others." (Parsons, 1964)
• "device by which societies ensure that the most important positions are conscientiously filled by the most qualified persons" (Davis and Moore, 1945)
• "some labour force of unskilled workmen is as important and as indispensable to the factory as some labour force of engineers" (Tumin)
• "It is only when there is a genuinely equal access to recruitment and training for all potentially talented persons that differential rewards can conceivably be justified as functional. And stratification systems are apparently inherently antagonistic to the development of such full equality of opportunity." (Tumin, 1953)

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Social stratification - a neoliberal perspective

• Influential from the 1980s (New Right: Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush).
• Key thinkers: Milton Friedman (1962), Friedrich Hayek (1944), Peter Saunders, David Marsland (explored further in the poverty chapter).
• Based on 19th-century liberalism: Free market encourages competition, innovation, efficiency, and individual liberty.
• Opposes state intervention/redistribution because it: undermines economic efficiency, removes motivation to work hard, creates injustice (taking from deserving, giving to undeserving), and suppresses individual freedom. Strongly opposed to Marxism and socialism.

Peter Saunders - stratification and freedom

• Saunders (1990) is sympathetic to Davis and Moore. Accepts all societies are stratified.
• Argues a society with equal rewards would require physical force/coercion (jail, supervised colonies, execution) to make people work, because lack of economic penalties would undermine commitment.
• Predicts state coercion will decline in China and the former Soviet Union as they move to market economies.

Equality and justice

• Saunders distinguishes 3 types of equality:

• Saunders accepts types 1 and 2, but rejects type 3 (Equality of outcome).
• Following Hayek, Saunders argues pursuing equality of outcome undermines opportunity and legal equality because it requires treating people differently (e.g., affirmative action/positive discrimination discriminates against white males).
• Robert Nozick (1974) example: If students agree to all get 50% in an exam, it removes fear of failure but is unjust to those who earned 80% through effort.
• Entitlement: Social justice is served when people keep what they legally earned through work or "uncoerced exchanges".
• Flaw acknowledged by Saunders: Not all wealthy are entitled (e.g., descendants of Norman warlords who helped William the Conqueror, like the Duke of Westminster or the Queen). However, taking their wealth would undermine property ownership.
• Economic growth justification (Hayek/Saunders): Inequality is justified because it promotes growth. Entrepreneurs bear the costs of failure; if they succeed, they accumulate a fortune but add to society's productive power. Competition lowers prices and raises living standards (e.g., cars, air travel, colour TVs, computers, central heating).

Opportunity and inequality

• Saunders (1996) argues Britain is close to a meritocracy (explored further in later detailed discussions). Apparent class inequality is due to unequal distribution of genetic ability and effort (middle-class children have greater inherited ability and work harder).
• Capitalism creates more well-paid, white-collar jobs, increasing absolute chances of success for everyone.

A critique of the neoliberal perspective

• Neoliberals play down the harmful effects of stratification on social cohesion.
• Free markets and freedom do not inevitably go hand-in-hand:
  1. Early capitalism used slave labour.
  2. South Africa combined a free market with apartheid.
  3. Chile under General Pinochet (1970s) followed free market policies but was highly repressive (executed thousands in the national football stadium after overthrowing socialist President Allende).

Gordon Marshall and Adam Swift - social class and social justice

• Gordon Marshall and Adam Swift (1993) critique Saunders:
  • Formal equality and equality of opportunity often clash (e.g., a millionaire bequeathing money to an "untalented layabout" violates meritocracy but is protected by legal entitlement).
  • Market forces reward luck as much as merit.
  • Using data from Marshall, Newby, Rose and Vogler (1988) (explored further in later detailed discussions), they show capitalist societies are not genuinely meritocratic: working-class people had less chance of reaching top classes than higher-class people even when they had the exact same educational qualifications. This undermines Saunders's genetic differences claim.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Milton Friedman (1962) & Friedrich Hayek (1944): Key neoliberal economists advocating free markets.
• Peter Saunders (1990, 1996): Argued inequality is necessary to avoid state coercion, rejected equality of outcome, and claimed Britain is close to a meritocracy based on genetic ability and effort.
• Robert Nozick (1974): Used the 50% exam mark analogy to show equality of outcome leads to injustice.
• Gordon Marshall and Adam Swift (1993): Critiqued Saunders, arguing class background affects mobility independent of education.
• "In the absence of economic rewards and penalties, the only sanctions available would be those involving the threat or use of physical force. Such people, in other words, would have to be jailed, or forcibly set to work in supervised colonies, or even executed as an example to others." (Saunders, 1990)
• "If a meritocracy is like a race where everybody lines up together at the start, a fully-fledged egalitarian society would be like a perfectly handicapped race where everyone passes the finishing tape at the same time no matter how hard and fast they have tried to run." (Saunders, 1990)
• "Capitalism is dynamic because it is unequal, and any attempt to equalise wealth and income will succeed only at the expense of stifling initiative, innovation and social and economic development." (Saunders, 1990)
• "If a millionaire chooses to bequeath his money to an untalented layabout then justice as entitlement demands that he be permitted to do so, and forbids taxation of the inheritance despite the fact that any normal conception of justice as desert or merit is here clearly violated." (Marshall and Swift, 1993)
• "If people find their place in the occupational order according to meritocratic principles, then the impact of class background should not be apparent in class destinations, except as this is mediated by educational achievements." (Marshall and Swift, 1993)

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Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett - The Spirit Level

Inequality and society

• Wilkinson and Pickett (2010) published The Spirit Level, showing that neoliberal policies lead to greater inequality, and arguing that greater inequality is harmful.

Inequality and well-being

• Measurement: Compared income of the richest 20% with the poorest 20% (household income after taxes/benefits adjusted for household size).
  • Japan: Least unequal (richest get <4x the poorest).
  • Singapore: Most unequal (richest get nearly 10x the poorest).
  • USA, Portugal, UK: Next most unequal after Singapore.
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• Index of health and social problems: Included mental illness, infant mortality, life expectancy, obesity, teenage births, homicide rates, imprisonment rates, educational performance, drug/alcohol addiction, and social mobility.
  • Strong relationship found: High income inequality = high health/social problems (e.g., Portugal/UK highest; Japan lowest). Loading image… *
  • No relationship found between average national income (GDP per capita) and social problems (e.g., Japan and Australia have similar GDP, but Australia has much higher social problems).
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  • Similar patterns found across all 50 US states.

How inequality affects health and social problems

• "Inequality gets under the skin" by creating stress related to relative income and social status (explored further in the health chapter).
  • Low status creates a sense of shame, which can lead to violence. James Gilligan (2001) found triggers for violent offences involved threats to pride/shame (e.g., neighbour walking on lawn, being called a faggot, being fired, woman leaving, someone looking at you 'funny').
  • Jo Blanden et al. (2007): Greater income inequality = lower social mobility. USA had lowest mobility; UK also low; West Germany middle; Sweden, Norway, Canada much higher.

Dysfunctional societies

• Inequality harms everyone, including the better-off. Unequal societies have lower trust and undermine friendship (which is based on reciprocity, mutuality, sharing, cooperation).

Conclusion

• Solutions: Wilkinson and Pickett do not argue for total equality, but avoiding extremes. Two methods:
  1. Discourage big wage differentials (e.g., Japan).
  2. High taxation and welfare redistribution (e.g., Norway, Sweden, Finland).

Evaluation

• Christopher Snowdon (2010) critiqued them for selective country choice (excluding South Korea, Slovenia, Hong Kong), claiming low income (not inequality) causes poor health, and over-focusing on imprisonment rather than crime rates.
• Wilkinson & Pickett rebuffed this: data availability dictated country choice; they did examine violent crime; and they admit not all problems (e.g., alcoholism) relate to inequality.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2010): Wrote The Spirit Level, showing high income inequality correlates strongly with high health and social problems.
• James Gilligan (2001): Linked low social status and feelings of shame directly to outbursts of violence and homicide.
• Jo Blanden et al. (2007): Found that greater income inequality correlates with lower rates of social mobility across eight rich countries.
• Christopher Snowdon (2010): Critiqued The Spirit Level for selective data and confusing low income with inequality.
• "hard to disregard social status because it comes so close to defining our worth and how much we are valued... Higher status almost always carries connotations of being better, superior, more successful and more able." (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010)
• "Time after time, when talking to men who had committed violent offences, [Gilligan] discovered that the triggers to violence had involved threats — or perceived threats — to pride, acts that instigated feelings of humiliation or shame. Sometimes the incidents that led to violence seemed incredibly trivial, but they evoked shame. A young neighbour walking disrespectfully across your immaculate lawn... the popular kid in school harassing you and calling you a faggot... being fired from your job... your woman leaving you for another man... someone looking at you 'funny'..." (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010)
• "Social status stratification, like ranking systems or pecking orders among animals, are fundamentally orderings based upon power and coercion, on privileged access to resources, regardless of others' needs. In its most naked and animal form, might is right and the weakest eat last." (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010)

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Social stratification - a Marxist perspective

• Marxists see stratification as a divisive mechanism of exploitation, focusing on social strata rather than general inequality.

A Marxist view of the class system

Classes

• 6 key Marxist principles:
  1. Two major groups: ruling class and subject class.
  2. Ruling class power comes from ownership/control of the means of production (land, capital, labour power, buildings, machinery).
  3. Ruling class exploits and oppresses the subject class.
  4. Basic conflict exists between the two.
  5. Institutions (legal/political) are instruments of ruling-class domination.
  6. Classes will disappear only when means of production are communally owned.
• Class definition: A social group whose members share the same relationship to the means of production.
  • Feudal era: Feudal nobility (own land) vs landless serfs (work land).
  • Capitalist era: Bourgeoisie (capitalist class, own means) vs proletariat (working class, own only their labour).

Classes and historical epochs

• Classes emerge when agriculture creates surplus wealth, leading to private property and a split between non-producers (owners) and producers (workers). Early agricultural villages saw specialisation: producers of pottery, clothing, and agricultural implements.

Dependency and conflict

• The bourgeoisie and proletariat are mutually dependent (workers need wages; capitalists need labour), but the relationship is an asymmetrical exploitation.

The capitalist economy and exploitation

• The capitalist economy:
  1. Capital: Money used to finance production of commodities for private gain.
  2. Goods, labour, raw materials, machinery have monetary value.
  3. Capitalists invest capital.
  4. Capital is accumulated by selling goods at a value greater than cost.
• Surplus value: The difference between the value of wages paid to workers and the value of the commodities they produce. Capitalists appropriate this as profit, exploiting the proletariat.

Power and the superstructure

• Economic infrastructure shapes the superstructure (institutions, values, beliefs). Political/legal systems reflect ruling-class interests.
• Ruling-class ideology: Dominant concepts that justify domination and project a distorted reality (e.g., 'the free market', 'free democratic societies', and 'the free world' disguise wage slavery). This produces false class consciousness (accepting the status quo as normal).

Class and social change

Class struggle

• The driving force of social change. Capitalism emerged from the struggle between feudal aristocracy and the emerging capitalist class. The final struggle will be bourgeoisie vs proletariat (minority vs majority), replacing private property with communal property.

Class consciousness

• 2 contradictions leading to a 'class for itself':
  1. Inherent instability and unresolvable conflict of interest (exploitation).
  2. Contradiction between social production (large factories) and individual ownership.

Polarisation of the classes

• The gap between classes widens due to 3 factors:
  1. Increasing use of machinery obliterates differences in labour, creating a homogeneous working class.
  2. Pauperisation: Working class becomes poorer in relation to the bourgeoisie as capital accumulates.
  3. Competition depresses intermediate strata (petty bourgeoisie / small businesses) into the proletariat, concentrating capital in fewer hands.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Karl Marx: Developed the theory of historical materialism, surplus value, and class struggle leading to communism.
• "the existing relations of production between individuals must necessarily express themselves also as political and legal relations" (Marx)
• "the history of all societies up to the present is the history of the class struggle" (Marx)
• "machinery obliterates the differences in labour" (Marx)
• "society as a whole is more and more splitting into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat" (Marx)

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Social stratification - a Weberian perspective

• Max Weber (1864-1920) argued stratification results from a struggle for scarce resources (economic, prestige, political power).

Market situation

• Weber defined class in economic terms. A class is a group sharing a similar position in a market economy, receiving similar economic rewards and sharing similar life chances.
• Weber agreed with Marx that the major division is property owners vs non-owners, but saw important differences within the propertyless based on the market value of skills (e.g., managers/professionals get high salaries).

• 4 disagreements with Marx:
  1. Factors other than property ownership (i.e., market value of skills) are significant in forming classes.
  2. Rejected polarisation. The petty bourgeoisie enter white-collar trades, and the white-collar middle class expands due to the need for rational bureaucratic administration.
  3. Rejected the inevitability of proletarian revolution. A common market situation is only a possible basis for collective action (workers might grumble, sabotage, or strike instead of revolting).
  4. Rejected that political power necessarily derives from economic power.

Status situation

• Groups form based on unequal distribution of 'social honour' (prestige). A status group shares a similar lifestyle, identity, and places restrictions on outsiders.
  • Example: Hindu caste system.

Social closure

• The exclusion of some people from membership of a status group.
  • Extreme example: Caste system (marriage prohibitions).
  • Example: Apartheid in South Africa (1940s-1992) separated whites, Asians, black Africans, and 'coloured' people (segregated toilets, neighbourhoods, marriage bans).
  • Example: UK public schools (elite self-recruitment into civil service) (explored further in the discussion of elites).

Class and status groups

• Often linked (property becomes a status qualification), but not always. The nouveaux riches may be excluded for vulgarity. Status groups can cut across classes (e.g., homosexuals from different classes in Gay Pride). This weakens class solidarity.

Parties

• Groups concerned with influencing policies and acquiring social power (e.g., mass political parties, professional associations, trade unions, Automobile Association, Greenpeace, RSPCA).
  • Parties can represent class interests, status interests, both (e.g., Nation of Islam represents a status group and working-class interests), or neither.
• Weber provides a complex, diversified picture of stratification compared to Marx's reductionist two-class model.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Max Weber (1864-1920): Expanded stratification beyond economics to include status (social honour) and party (power), and rejected Marxist polarisation.
• "property as such is not always recognised as a status qualification, but in the long run it is, and with extraordinary regularity" (Weber)
• "Parties may represent interests determined through 'class situation' or 'status situation'... In most cases they are partly class parties and partly status parties, but sometimes they are neither" (Weber)

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Modern theories of stratification

• Contemporary studies are often neo-Marxist or neo-Weberian.

W.G. Runciman - the class structure, roles and power

• Runciman (1990) combined Marxist (means of production) and Weberian (marketability) concepts.

Roles and classes

• Class structure consists of sets of roles. Unemployed are assigned roles based on economic power. Spouses share the class of the highest-ranking role. Class is determined by a career trajectory, not just current position.

Classes and power

• Classes are sets of roles located by economic power.

• Example: 3 engineers (A: employee earning £40k [control]; B: small business owner making £10k profit [ownership]; C: freelance earning £10k-£40k [marketability]) are all in the same class because they have similar total economic power.

The seven classes

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Evaluation of Runciman

• Difficult to operationalise in research (requires vast data on income, capital, household position). Unclear dividing lines. Controversial refusal to make self-employed a separate class.
• Rosemary Crompton (1993) praises Runciman for capturing post-WWII changes: blurring of manual/non-manual boundary, diversity of middle class, identification of underclass, and persisting concentration of power in a tiny upper class.

John Goldthorpe and the NS-SEC scheme

John Goldthorpe's class scheme

• Goldthorpe (1980) adopted a neo-Weberian viewpoint based on market situation (scarcity of skills) and work situation (job security, control, supervision).
• Created a 7-class scale, often simplified to 3 classes:
  1. Service class: Professionals, large employers, managers.
  2. Intermediate class: Routine white-collar (clerks, secretaries), small employers, supervisors.
  3. Working class: Manual workers.
• Limitations: Failed to identify a wealthy ruling class or an underclass, applied better to men than women (criticised by Marxists and feminists).

The NS-SEC classes

• NS-SEC (1998): Goldthorpe's scheme was adapted as the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification in the UK.
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• Ken Roberts (2011): NS-SEC is useful for its theoretical rationale (market + work situation), but fails to identify an upper/ruling class because they are too small for survey detection.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• W.G. Runciman (1990): Created a 7-class model based on ownership, control, and marketability.
• Rosemary Crompton (1993): Praised Runciman's scheme for capturing post-WWII shifts like the expansion of the service sector and the identification of an underclass.
• John Goldthorpe (1980): Developed a neo-Weberian 7-class schema based on market and work situation, simplified into Service, Intermediate, and Working classes.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Noted NS-SEC is theoretically sound but misses the tiny ruling class.
• "a move away from the conventionally established 'class' boundary between manual and non-manual work following the expansion of the service sector and the routinization and feminization of much lower-level white-collar employment; an emphasis on the diversity of middle-class locations, and the identification of the poorest and most deprived as an 'underclass' - this identification being linked, to varying degrees, with the condition of state dependency. A major element of continuity, however, lies in the persisting concentration of economic, organizational and political power within an 'upper' class which comprises only a small minority of the population." (Crompton, 1993)

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Changes in the British stratification system

• Class systems constantly change. Marx and Weber both emphasized material inequalities (wealth/property), but Weber emphasized divisions within the propertyless based on market situation.

Key Terms

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Changes in the occupational structure

Scales of social class

• Manual workers are traditionally working-class; non-manual are middle-class.
• Registrar General's scale: Divided manual (unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled) and non-manual (routine, intermediate, professional/managerial). Replaced by NS-SEC in 2001.

The shift to non-manual employment

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• Manual jobs declined from 79% (1911) to 44% (2000) (Routh, 1980; General Household Survey). Table 1.2 shows specific data points (e.g., 4.84, 6.72, 6.97, 10.68, 13.90, 5.48, 5.40, 5.53, 6.35, 6.38, 3.30, 9.90, 10.34, 20.41, 27.00, 2.62, 3.87, 175, 191, 20082286, 9.63, 14.17, 3500, 2523, 2020).
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• NS-SEC data (2001 to 2010) shows continuing shift to managerial/professional and decline in routine occupations.
• However, UKCES (2011) notes administrative/secretarial jobs declined from 15.4% (1990) to 12.1% (2010). Growth occurred in care, leisure, sales, and customer service.
• Causes of shift:
  1. Decline of manufacturing: Over half of 1970s manufacturing jobs are gone. Coalmining fell from 750,000 to 218,000 (1981) to 8,500 (1994) (Roberts, 2011). Other declining heavy industries include steel manufacture, shipbuilding, and dock work. Caused by new technology (productivity) and global competition (lower-wage economies). The "new working class" is in shops, supermarkets, hypermarkets, restaurants, hotels, leisure, sport, tourism, security, cleaning, catering.
  2. Growth of service sector: Public sector grew 1940s-1970s. Financial/business grew 1960s-1980s (then hit by computers/2008 recession, with financial services being badly affected initially). Recent growth is in consumer services (leisure, hotels, retail). Service sector includes manual jobs (porters, cleaners).

Women and the occupational structure

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• Women are concentrated in lower-paid/status jobs but professional women increased (13.2% in 1990 to 19.7% in 2010). Admin/secretarial women declined (27.8% to 20.5%). Men dominate skilled trades (19.1% vs 3.1% for women in 2010).
• Employment rates (16-64): Men 90% (1971) → 75.5% (2012). Women <60% (1971) → 65.3% (2012).
• Part-time (2012): 2.07 million men, 5.86 million women.

Flexible working, self-employment and geographical dispersal

• Shift to part-time and self-employment (driven partly by unemployment/necessity, cheap home computing, and subcontracting). Workforce is geographically dispersed (home/mobile working), reducing large workplaces and class solidarity.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Guy Routh (1980): Documented the historical decline of manual jobs from 79% in 1911.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Noted the collapse of traditional manufacturing (e.g., coalmining dropping to 8,500 by 1994) and the rise of a "new working class" in services.
• "Over half of the manufacturing jobs that existed in the 1970s have gone. In some industries the workforces really have collapsed." (Roberts, 2011)
• "The old working class was employed in coalmines, shipyards, steel plants and engineering workshops; the new working class is employed in supermarkets, security firms, contract cleaners, fast food and other catering establishments, and suchlike." (Roberts, 2011)

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The changing distribution of income

The importance of income

• Income affects life chances (home ownership, life expectancy).

The measurement of income distribution

The effects of taxation and benefits

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• Richest 20% original income: £81,500 (16x the poorest).
• Poorest 20% original income: £5,100.
• Final income (after taxes/benefits): Richest £61,400 vs Poorest £15,200 (ratio drops to 4:1).
• Top two quintiles pay more in tax than they receive in benefits. Poorer groups pay a higher proportion of income in indirect taxes.
• Stats caution: 70% response rate to Family Expenditure Survey; high earners hide income.

Sources of income

• Sources of income (2006-9): Wages/salaries 64%, self-employment 9%, state pension 6%, other pensions 7%, benefits 7%, investments 3%, tax credits 2%, other 2%. (Varies by ethnicity: Pakistani/Bangladeshi 10% from self-employment vs Black Caribbean 5%).

Trends in income distribution 1949-79

• Royal Commission found slight redistribution from top 10% (lost 3.7%) and bottom 30% (lost 2.5%) towards middle-income groups.

Changes in taxation

• 1979-1997 Conservative: Reversed redistribution. Cut progressive income tax (basic 33%→23%, top 80%→40%). Raised regressive indirect taxes (VAT 8%/12.5% → 17.5% in 1991) and National Insurance (6.5%→10%).
• 1997-2010 Labour: Introduced Working Families Tax Credit, Children's Tax Credit (merged into Integrated Child Credit 2003), Employment Tax Credit. Cut basic rate to 20%. Raised NI by 1%. Introduced 50% top rate (2010). Slowed inequality growth but didn't reduce it.
• 2010+ Coalition: Cut top rate 50%→45%, raised personal allowance, cut corporation tax, cut tax credits, raised VAT 17.5%→20%.

Recent changes in the distribution of income

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• 1979-97: Richest quintile grew 2.5%/year; poorest grew 0.8%/year.
• 1997-2010: All quintiles grew 1.5%-1.8%/year.
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• Gini coefficient: 0.25 (1979) → 0.35 (2000-01) → 0.36 (2010). UK had 7th highest inequality out of 24 countries (Hills Commission, 2010).
• Gini fell to 0.34 in 2010-11, but Cribb et al. (2012) argue this was a distortion caused by high earners shifting income to avoid the new 50% tax rate, and Coalition policies will hit the poorest 40% hardest.
• Goodman, Johnson and Webb (1997): 1980s/90s inequality rose due to male pay inequality, male unemployment in zero-earner households, tech/policy reducing demand for unskilled labour, and self-employment (which concentrates at the very top and bottom).

The very richest

• Stewart Lansley (2011): Top 1% share was 12.6% (1937) → 4.2% (1978) → >10% (2000). Millionaires increased 800% (1996-2006). Top 100 CEOs pay grew 11%/year; by 2006 they earned 100x average employee pay (up from 25x in 1980s). Driven by finance/bonuses.
• High Pay Commission (2011): Top 0.1% share rose from 1.3% (1979) to 6.5% (2007) — a 500% increase. No link to performance. 2011: 4 biggest banks paid 32 executives £103m despite state bailouts.
• Roberts (2011): Directors sit on each other's remuneration committees and fix pay.
• Lansley (2012): Deregulation allowed speculative investment/takeovers generating short-term profit but no real economic growth.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth (1979): Found slight redistribution to middle-income groups between 1949 and 1979.
• Cribb et al. (2012): Showed Gini coefficient rose from 0.25 (1979) to 0.36 (2010), and argued the 2010-11 drop was a tax-avoidance distortion.
• Goodman, Johnson and Webb (1997): Identified causes of 1980s/90s inequality (unemployment, deskilling, self-employment extremes).
• Stewart Lansley (2011, 2012): Documented the explosion of top 1% wealth and CEO pay (100x average worker), blaming financial deregulation and speculative banking.
• High Pay Commission (2011): Found top 0.1% share grew 500% (1.3% to 6.5%) since 1979 with no link to performance.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Explained high CEO pay by noting directors sit on each other's remuneration committees.
• "Excessive economic inequality not only drove the economy over the cliff in 2008, but is now blocking recovery. The last thirty years are the story of a flawed model of capitalism that has heavily penalized the majority, while allowing a tiny elite to enrich themselves, not by creating new wealth but by grabbing a bigger share of it for themselves." (Lansley, 2012)

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The changing distribution of wealth

• Wealth (especially means of production/shares) is crucial to Marxists (power) and Weberians.
• Measurement: No wealth tax on the living; historically measured via estates at death (flawed due to pre-death transfers and age bias). Survey research is flawed (rich refuse or under-report). Wealth and Assets Survey (2006+) is the most comprehensive current data.

Defining wealth

• Marxists care about wealth used for production (shares); consumption wealth indicates lifestyle/life chances.

Trends in wealth distribution

• Westergaard and Resler (1976): Inequality reduced 1911-1960. Top 1% owned 69% (1911) → 42% (1960). Top 10% owned 92% → 83%. Redistribution was mostly within the wealthiest groups (avoiding death duties).
• Trend reversed in 1990s. Top 1% marketable wealth: 21% (1976) → 17% (1991) → 23% (2002). Top 25% owned 71% (2002).
• Hills et al. (2010): 2006-8 data. 2.4% of households had zero/negative wealth. Top 1% owned >£1.5 million average. Wealth is more unequal than income (Top 1% has 5x median income, but 13x median wealth).
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• Table 1.6 shows median wealth by NS-SEC: Higher managerial (£532,500) vs Routine (£74,000) vs Never worked (£15,000).
• Housing is the most important personal wealth, followed by pensions/life assurance, then bank deposits. Property wealth fell 3.7% between 2006/8 and 2008/10.

The super-wealthy

• The top 1% surge is driven by City bonuses, global corporate profits, and tax avoidance.

Tax avoidance

• UK government estimated 2009-10 loss: £4b unpaid, £5b legal avoidance, £26b illegal evasion = £35 billion.
• Tax Research UK (2012): Estimates £123 billion lost.
• UK Uncut (2012): Estimates £96 billion avoided.
• Prieg (2012) / Tax Justice Network: $11.5 trillion hidden in offshore tax havens globally.

Share ownership

• Individuals owning shares rose from 7% (1970) to 16% (1995-6) due to Conservative privatisations (BT, British Gas) and demutualisations (Halifax, Norwich Union).
• However, individual equity ownership declined from 54% (1963) to 11.5% (2010).
• Foreign ownership rose from 7% (1963) to 41.2% (2010).

Taxation and wealth

• Estate duty (pre-1974) was easily avoided. Current inheritance tax has high allowances (£325k individual, £650k couple in 2012) and 7-year trust loopholes.
• Stewart Lansley (2006): The rich enjoy advantageous tax arrangements.
• C. Larkin (2004): Since 1985, top 20% pay lower tax proportion (35%) than bottom 20% (38%).
• Tax havens: Cayman Islands (35k population, 48k corporations/trusts). Richard Branson's Virgin Group uses offshore registration. Philip Green (Arcadia/BHS) paid £1.2b dividend to his Monaco-resident wife, avoiding £300m UK tax. Rupert Murdoch's News International paid hardly any UK tax since late 1980s despite £1.4b profits.
• Politicians (Blair, Osborne) argue high taxes drive wealth away.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Westergaard and Resler (1976): Documented the reduction of wealth inequality between 1911 and 1960, noting it was mostly redistribution within the top 10% to avoid death duties.
• John Hills et al. (2010): Showed wealth is vastly more unequal than income (top 1% has 13x median wealth vs 5x median income).
• Stewart Lansley (2006): Highlighted how the super-rich and corporations use offshore havens and loopholes to avoid tax.
• C. Larkin (2004): Found the richest 20% pay a lower proportion of income in tax (35%) than the poorest 20% (38%).
• "The great majority of individuals pay their dues, while the very rich individuals and also the large corporations increasingly choose and have the power to opt out of their tax obligations." (Lansley, 2006)

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Classes in capitalist societies

• Examines the changing position of the upper, middle, and working classes using British and American data, influenced by Marxist and Weberian perspectives.

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The upper class

John Westergaard and Henrietta Resler - a Marxist view of the ruling class

Class divisions

• Westergaard and Resler (1975/1976): Private ownership of capital explains class divisions. The major division is capital vs labour.

Distribution of wealth

• Wealth is concentrated in the richest 5%.

Ruling-class power

• The favoured group enjoys effective power even without active steps because the system works in their favour (governments assume national well-being depends on private industry prosperity).

Composition of the ruling class

• The ruling class is 5-10% of the population (major owners, company directors, top managers, higher professionals, senior civil servants).

Peter Saunders - a neoliberal (New Right) view of higher classes

An influential economic elite

• Saunders (1990): Rejects the Marxist ruling class; calls them an "influential economic elite".
• A few thousand individuals shape British industry/banking, but they are not a capitalist class because they don't own the wealth. <25% of top 250 companies are run by managers owning >5% shares.
• Capitalist class has fragmented into millions of pieces (pension funds, unit trusts, privatisation).

The spread of power

• The elite lacks power to control government, media, or education, and frequently fails to get its way.

Ken Roberts - the upper class

• Roberts (2011): Weberian perspective. Rejects Saunders. A small, powerful upper class (<1%) exists and its power has strengthened.
• Work/Market situation: Work situation involves employing others (often indirectly via shares). Market situation depends on returns on capital investments, not selling labour.
• Old vs New: 19th-century aristocracy (land) merged with industrialists (manufacturing/mining).
• Entry/Closure: Highly closed. Requires right schools, universities, connections, lifestyle. Inheritance is the main route. Minor routes: career (growing a business/top management) or pure luck (lottery).

Acting as a class

• Increased power via technology (monitoring), globalisation (moving capital to escape tax), and funding political parties. Coordinated via the "establishment" / "old-boy network" (London clubs, Institute of Directors, CBI, Lord Mayor's Banquet, elite sports like Royal Ascot/Derby, conferences, pheasant shooting, Oxford-Cambridge boat race, Chelsea Flower Show). Integrated via elite schools (Eton, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge) and inter-marriage, fostering links with state positions (cabinet ministers, judges, senior civil servants, high-ranking military officers).

The upper class, wealth and power

• Rejects the managerial revolution thesis (that managers, not owners, control corporations). Owners with <10% shares (e.g., Rupert Murdoch) exercise control. Managers must act for profitability/shareholders anyway.
• John Scott (1997): Core upper class is <0.1% (43,500 people) connected via interlocking directorships.

Contemporary capitalism

• Complex finance (hedge funds, private equity) obscures ownership, but private individuals still own the wealth.
• Leslie Sklair (1995, 2000, 2001): Identifies a global capitalist class operating beyond national governments, comprising 4 groups:

Power and the upper class

• Upper class controls media, ignores government scolding (e.g., banks paying bonuses after 2008 bailouts), while government targets the working class (the unemployed, petty offenders, and single parents).

Conclusion and evaluation

• Roberts sees the upper class as necessary for capitalism (providing enterprise) but offensive to meritocratic values.

Other views

• Elite theories: Power is concentrated, but derives from top jobs, not wealth (see Ch. 9).
• Pluralists: Power is dispersed; liberal democracies are ruled by the wishes of the people, not an upper class (see Ch. 9).
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• Table 1.7 The Sunday Times Rich List, 2012: 1. Lakshmi Mittal (£12.7b), 2. Alisher Usmanov (£12.3b), 3. Roman Abramovich (£9.5b), 4. Sri & Gopi Hinduja (£8.6b), 5. Leonard Blavatnik (£7.58b), 6. Ernesto & Kirsty Bertarelli (£7.4b), 7. Duke of Westminster (£7.35b), 8. David & Simon Reuben (£7.08b), 9. John Fredriksen (£6.6b), 10. Galen & George Weston (£5.9b).

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• John Westergaard and Henrietta Resler (1975/76): Marxist view that a united ruling class (top 5-10%) dominates Britain through private ownership of capital.
• Peter Saunders (1990): Neoliberal who rejected the ruling class concept, calling them an "influential economic elite" with fragmented wealth and limited power.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Weberian who argued a powerful upper class (<1%) exists, coordinates via old-boy networks, and dominates globally.
• John Scott (1997): Identified a core upper class of <0.1% connected by interlocking directorships.
• Leslie Sklair (1995, 2000, 2001): Identified 4 groups making up the global capitalist class.
• "The favoured group enjoyed effective power, even when its members took no active steps to exercise power. They do not need to do so - for much of the time at least - simply because things work that way in any case." (Westergaard and Resler, 1976)
• "a few thousand individuals at most are today responsible for taking the bulk of the key financial and administrative decisions which shape the future development of British industry and banking" (Saunders, 1990)
• "Studies of business decision-making have shown who takes decisions can be irrelevant. Salaried managers may decide which new machines to install, which products to develop, and which staff to hire and fire but they do so in a context where they know they will be judged by the implications for profitability and the market value of a company's shares. In this sense, decisions are already made before managers work out the technical details and put them into effect." (Roberts, 2011)
• "Let's be clear. Capitalism requires a capitalist class... It is plausible to argue that capitalism has proved to be the best of all known economic systems for all classes of people in terms of the standards of living that it delivers, and the utility of life, measured by that most sensitive of all indicators - how long people live." (Roberts, 2011)

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The middle class

Marx and the middle class

• Middle class usually defined as non-manual workers (intellectual element).
• Marx predicted a two-class polarization, but recognized intermediate classes (petty bourgeoisie). In Capital Vol 3, he noted the growth of "commercial wage-workers" (office staff) due to enterprise size.

Life chances

• Non-manual workers enjoy advantages: job security, shorter hours, longer holidays, fringe benefits, promotion prospects, better health, longer life, lower crime conviction rates, higher home ownership.

Conflicting perspectives on the middle class

• Weberians see the middle class as distinguished by superior market situation and life chances.

The upper middle class

• Includes professionals, senior managers, administrators, successful small business people.
• Petty bourgeoisie (self-employed/shopkeepers): Employers declined 763k (1911) to 621k (1971) (Routh, 1980). Marx predicted they would be squeezed into the proletariat. However, self-employed rose from 1.9m (1971) to 4.1m (2011).

The professions

• Professions grew from 4% (1911) to 11% (1971) (Routh). UKCES (2011): Male professionals 15.7% (1990) → 18.8% (2010); Female 13.2% → 19.7%.
• Reasons for growth: business complexity (accountants/lawyers), industry tech (science/engineering), welfare state (medical/teaching/social work), and attempts of more and more groups of workers to get their jobs accepted as 'professional'.

Higher and lower professionals

• Higher professional men earned 230% of average male pay in 1913-14; 159% in 1978. Lower professionals earned 109% in 1913-14; 104% in 1978.

A functionalist perspective on professions

• Bernard Barber (1963): 4 attributes of professionalism:

Criticisms of functionalism

• Questions if they serve society/community over self-interest. Functionalist explanations assume: 1. professionals make important contributions to the well-being of society as a whole, 2. they serve all members of society rather than particular groups, and 3. they are concerned with service to the community rather than with self-interest. Examples of misconduct: GP Harold Shipman (murdered 15+ patients), Victoria Climbié social workers (failed to protect), Beverley Allitt (nurse killed 13 patients), Enron accountants (shredded evidence).

The Weberian perspective on professions - market strategy

• Noel and José Parry (1976): Professionalism is a strategy to control the labour market to maximise rewards. 3 factors:

The Weberian perspective on professions - the professional project

• Keith Macdonald (1997): The continuous struggle to establish a monopoly in the market for intangible services requiring trust. 5 steps: social closure, establish jurisdiction, train members, monopolise expertise, attain respectability. (Example: Accountancy evolved from basic book-keeping to a highly paid monopoly).

Professions as servants of the powerful

• Marxists argue professionals serve capital (accountants/lawyers for companies, private doctors for the rich).
• Harry Braverman (1974): Proletarianisation / deskilling. Professional jobs (draughtsmen, technicians, engineers, accountants, nurses, teachers) are divided into routine tasks, losing autonomy and pay control due to a "reserve army" of labour.

The declining independence of the professions

• Terence Johnson (1972): Independence is limited by employers (e.g., accountants must be loyal to their company, not their profession).

Barbara and John Ehrenreich - the professional-managerial class

• Ehrenreichs (1979): Neo-Marxist view. Identified a 3rd class: the professional-managerial class ("salaried mental workers who do not own the means of production").

Origins and functions

• 4 functions for the bourgeoisie:

• Examples include teachers, social workers, psychologists, entertainers, writers of advertising copy, middle-level administrators, managers, engineers.

Interests

• Paid from working-class surplus, but conflict with ruling class because they want autonomy while the ruling class wants to restrict it.

Criticisms of the Ehrenreichs

• Erik Olin Wright (1978): Rejects a unified 3rd class. Society is polarised; intermediate groups are in contradictory class locations (sharing some interests with workers, some with capitalists) and lack coherent interests to form a class.

Weberian theories

• Weberian and neo-Weberian sociologists reject the Ehrenreichs' approach, denying classes can be defined by functions for capitalism and stressing market situation.
• Anthony Giddens (1973): Single middle class based on "recognised skills/educational qualifications" (mental labour), including lower-level white-collar workers.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Excludes lower white-collar (puts them in intermediate class). Argues professionals and managers are converging into a single service class because:
  1. Managers use professional qualifications (MBAs).
  2. Professionals take management roles (Vice Chancellors, NHS managers).
  3. Advantage comes from education/income, not just professional bodies.
  4. MBAs make managers mobile across organisations.

The lower middle class

• Routine white-collar workers (clerks, secretaries, shop assistants). Debate: Proletarianised, middle-class, or intermediate?

Proletarianisation

• Marxists argue they are now working-class. Westergaard & Resler (1976): Male clerks earned 122% of manual wage (1913-14) → 96% (1971).

Harry Braverman - the deskilling of clerical work

• Harry Braverman (1974): Deskilling. 1870s clerks were like craft workers; now it's a mental production line. Service workers (supermarket checkout) require no skill due to computers. Mass education provides the basic literacy/numeracy needed, destroying bargaining power.

David Lockwood - a neo-Weberian perspective

• David Lockwood (1958): Neo-Weberian. Denied proletarianisation based on 3 aspects:

Evaluation

1. Stewart, Prandy and Blackburn (1980): Studied males. Found high mobility (51% promoted to management; only 19% still clerks at 30). Clerical work is a stepping stone, not proletarian.
2. Rosemary Crompton and Richard Jones (1984): Critiqued Stewart et al. for all-male sample. Found most clerks are female, only 1% reach management. 91% had no control over work (deskilled by computers). Concluded they are a white-collar proletariat.
3. Marshall, Newby, Rose and Vogler (1988): 1,770 sample. Only 4% of female and 0% of male clerks said skill declined. Supported Lockwood/Goldthorpe that clerks are an intermediate class. However, personal service workers (checkout assistants) lacked autonomy and are proletariat.
4. Ken Roberts (2011): Intermediate class. Jobs declining due to IT. Mostly female/working-class origins. Promotion to management without degrees has disappeared. They have no distinctive consciousness/politics.

Middle class, or middle classes?

Anthony Giddens - the middle class

• Anthony Giddens (1973): Single middle class based on mental labour/qualifications.

John H. Goldthorpe - the service and intermediate classes

• John Goldthorpe (1980, 1987): Split into Service class (managers/professionals) and Intermediate class (clerks/service workers). Later (1995) argued division is based on employment status/employee relationships (service class gets salary, increments, pensions, career development).

Mike Savage, James Barlow, Peter Dickens and Tony Fielding - Property, Bureaucracy and Culture

• Savage, Barlow, Dickens and Fielding (1992): Property, Bureaucracy and Culture. Middle class is divided by 3 types of assets:

Social classes

• Social classes are social collectivities rooted in particular types of exploitative relationships.

Classes and types of asset

Middle-class formation in Britain

• Class formation: Post-Fordism weakened public sector professionals and hierarchical managers. Private sector professionals (advertising/marketing) are ascending.

The culture and lifestyles of the middle classes

• Lifestyles (1988 data):

Evaluation

• Highlights important divisions but concentrates on the higher reaches of the middle class.

Derek Wynne - Leisure, Lifestyle and the New Middle Class

• Derek Wynne (1998): Leisure, Lifestyle and the New Middle Class. Case study of "The Heath" (Cheshire housing estate). Used Bourdieu's concepts.

Culture and class

• Classes actively struggle to create their own cultures and get them accepted as superior.

The new middle class

Conclusion

• Supports postmodernism; lifestyle/consumption produces class distinctions rather than just occupation.

Evaluation

• Critique: The divisions actually stem directly from objective occupational/educational paths, contradicting the "free choice" postmodern claim.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Bernard Barber (1963): Functionalist who identified 4 attributes of professionalism.
• Noel and José Parry (1976): Weberians who defined professionalism as a market strategy for social closure, contrasting doctors (successful) with teachers (unsuccessful).
• Keith Macdonald (1997): Outlined the 5-step "professional project" to establish a market monopoly.
• Harry Braverman (1974): Marxist who argued clerical and professional work has been deskilled and proletarianised.
• Barbara and John Ehrenreich (1979): Identified a professional-managerial class performing 4 functions for capitalism.
• Erik Olin Wright (1978): Critiqued the Ehrenreichs, arguing intermediate groups occupy "contradictory class locations".
• David Lockwood (1958): Denied clerical proletarianisation based on market, work, and status situations.
• Rosemary Crompton and Richard Jones (1984): Found female clerks were deskilled and formed a "white-collar proletariat".
• Mike Savage, James Barlow, Peter Dickens and Tony Fielding (1992): Divided the middle class by 3 assets (property, organisational, cultural) and 3 lifestyles (ascetic, postmodern, undistinctive).
• Derek Wynne (1998): Studied "The Heath", dividing the new middle class into "drinkers" (managers/economic capital) and "sporters" (professionals/cultural capital).
• "the employment of commercial wage-workers who make up the actual office staff" (Marx)
• "a strategy for controlling an occupation in which colleagues set up a system of self-government" (Parry and Parry, 1976)
• "monopoly in the market for services based on their expertise, and for status in the social order" (Macdonald, 1997)
• "services which cannot be seen in advance in the shop-window, as it were, but which also require the customer to trust the practitioner with their lives, their health, their money, their property and even their immortal souls" (Macdonald, 1997)
• "the army of shelf stackers, checkout clerks, meat cutters, dairymen, produce and so forth has long ago been deskilled... the supermarket which calls for truck minders, shelf stockers, checkout clerks, meat wrappers, these jobs require not any semblance of skill and none require any general knowledge of retail trade." (Braverman, 1974)
• "male clerks and shop workers are now firmly among the broad mass of ordinary labour; and indeed often well down towards the bottom of the pile" (Westergaard and Resler, 1976)
• "social collectivities rooted in particular types of exploitative relationships" (Savage et al., 1992)
• "appreciation of high cultural forms of art such as opera and classical music exists cheek by jowl with an interest in disco dancing or stock car racing... a binge in an expensive restaurant one day might be followed by a diet the next." (Savage et al., 1992)

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The working class

The market situation of manual workers

• Manual workers receive lower wages, fewer promotion opportunities, higher redundancy risk, and fewer fringe benefits than non-manual workers.

Structure, consciousness and action

• SCA approach (Structure-Consciousness-Action): Ray Pahl (1989) / Devine et al. (2005). Follows Marx's belief that shared structural position leads to shared consciousness, lifestyle, and revolutionary action.

David Lockwood - the proletarian traditionalist

• Lockwood (1966): Identified the proletarian traditionalist as typical of close-knit working-class communities (coalminers, fishermen, steelworkers, dockers, shipbuilders).
• Characteristics:
  • Isolated communities with strong solidarity, fraternity, and mutual aid.
  • Workmates are neighbours/relatives; leisure spent together in pubs/clubs.
  • Not individualistic; pursues collective goals (strong emotional loyalty to trade unions).
  • Fatalistic: "what will be will be", "take life as it comes".
  • Present-time orientation and immediate gratification (living day-to-day), contrasting with middle-class purposive, future-time orientation and deferred gratification.
  • Images of society: Hold a power model ("us and them" / bosses vs workers), contrasting with the middle-class status/prestige model (a ladder of opportunity).
  • Strongly segregated gender roles (male breadwinner/pub; female domestic/relatives) (explored further in the discussion of family and gender roles). Mostly applied to white men.

Social change and the decline of working-class consciousness

• 4 changes suggesting the working class is shrinking/losing consciousness:
  1. Deindustrialisation: Manual jobs declining (UK manufacturing fell 17.2% 1979-2010).
  2. Expansion of non-manual jobs created upward mobility, weakening class identity.
  3. Rising living standards led manual workers to aspire to middle-class lifestyles.
  4. Working class is increasingly divided.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Decline in skilled manual work; rise in unskilled/semi-skilled, insecure, part-time service work (supermarkets, hotels). This weakens the class.

Embourgeoisement

• Embourgeoisement: The 1950s/60s theory that affluent manual workers were entering the middle class.

Economic determinism

• Based on economic determinism (Clark Kerr et al., 1962: advanced industrialism requires skilled, highly paid manual workers who adopt middle-class lifestyles in suburban areas).

J. Goldthorpe, D. Lockwood, F. Bechhofer and J. Platt - The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure

• Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechhofer and Platt (1968a, 1968b, 1969):
  • Tested embourgeoisement in Luton (prosperous, expanding). Sample: 229 manual (Vauxhall, Skefko, Laporte), 54 white-collar. Manual workers were highly paid, 57% home owners.
  • Findings: Embourgeoisement was NOT occurring.

Instrumental orientation to work

• Instrumental orientation: Work was a means to an end (money), not a source of satisfaction or friends.
• Instrumental collectivism: Joined unions for self-interest (wages), lacking the emotional solidarity of traditional workers.

Friendship, lifestyle and norms

• Did not mix with middle class. Led a privatised, home-centred existence (like the lower middle class, but without middle-class aspirations).

Images of society

• Held a pecuniary/money model (a large central class based on money), not a power or prestige model.

Political attitudes

• 80% voted Labour in 1959 (instrumental support, not Conservative).

The 'new working class'

• Conclusion: They formed a new working class characterised by privatisation and instrumental collectivism.

Fiona Devine - Affluent Workers Revisited

• Fiona Devine (1992, 1994):
  • Interviewed 62 people in Luton (Vauxhall workers/wives) in 1986-87.
  • Findings: Rejected the "new working class" idea.

Geographical mobility

• Moved to Luton for job security/housing, not just affluence.

Orientation to work

• Expected only small gains. Retained solidarity: Supported unions for collective working-class interests (fair treatment, power), not just money.

Friendship, lifestyle and norms

• Lifestyle was not totally privatised (men still went to pubs), but restricted by life-cycle (young children, overtime).

Images of society

• Held a pecuniary model but retained traditional values (resented inherited wealth, wanted egalitarian redistribution).

Political attitudes

• Political disillusionment: Only 24/62 voted Labour (1979/1983) due to party failings, but still believed Labour theoretically represented them.

Conclusion

• They have aspirations as consumers, but still want a more egalitarian society.

Gordon Marshall, Howard Newby, David Rose and Carolyn Vogler - continuities in the working class

• Marshall, Newby, Rose and Vogler (1988): National sample (1,770). Found no shift to instrumentalism/privatism. 73% valued work; over half had workmate friends. 19th-century artisans were also home-centred.

Mike Savage - working-class identities reconsidered

• Mike Savage (2005): Re-analysed Goldthorpe's 1960s data. Found respondents did recognise power divisions (money linked to power/inheritance). 78% identified as working/lower class, but preferred to call themselves "ordinary" (normal people who earn a living, unlike the upper class). Savage argues working-class identity shows strong continuity.

Divisions in the working class

Marxism and the homogeneous working class

• Marx / Braverman (1974): Predicted a homogeneous, deskilled working class.

A divided working class

• Ralph Dahrendorf (1959): Technology divides the class into skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled.
• Roger Penn (1983): Rochdale study (1856-1964). Skill divisions and separate unions have always existed.
• Darren Thiel (2007): London builders. Divided by skill/status (carpenters/bricklayers vs labourers/painters) and ethnicity (Indian carpenters vs Irish labourers). Yet united by physical masculinity and mental/manual divide.
• Ivor Crewe (1983): Sectoral cleavages created a "new" working class vs "old" working class.

• Marshall et al. (1988): Rejected Crewe. Skill divisions are old; sectoral cleavages don't affect voting, except housing tenure (but most council tenants are working-class anyway).
• Warwick and Littlejohn (1992): Yorkshire mining study. Housing tenure reflects a deeper polarisation between the economically secure and the insecure (pushed into an underclass).

Class consciousness

• Ken Roberts (2001, 2011): Working class is disorganised, disempowered, and devalued.
  • Union membership declined (now higher in middle class).
  • Labour Party distanced itself from working-class interests.
  • Co-op became just another retailer.
  • Communities broken up; clubs replaced by TV/commercial leisure (Woolworths closed).
  • Devalued: Identifying as working-class is stigmatising (cites Skeggs). Media expresses "disgust".

The persistence of class consciousness

• Fiona Devine (1992, 1994): Class consciousness persists. Luton workers felt injustice against the rich, wanted egalitarianism, and experienced sharp "us and them" divides on the factory floor against managers.

Inconsistencies in class consciousness

• Blackburn and Mann (1975): Peterborough unskilled workers (951). Held inconsistent images (both left-wing proletarianism from workplace exploitation and right-wing conservatism from media/education).

Beliefs and actions

• Marshall et al. (1988): Found inconsistent answers (wanting market forces AND state intervention).

The continuing relevance of class

• Yet, 90% placed themselves in a class; 73% saw class as inevitable; half saw a dominant vs lower class power split. Widespread sense of injustice, but lacked a political party to mobilise it.
• MacKenzie et al. (2006): Welsh redundant steelworkers (125). Retained strong collective solidarity, union support, and anger at higher classes (management/banks) for destroying their industry and pensions (ASW collapse).

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• David Lockwood (1966): Identified the "proletarian traditionalist" with a power model, fatalism, and immediate gratification.
• Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechhofer and Platt (1968/69): The Affluent Worker study in Luton disproved embourgeoisement, finding a "new working class" with privatised lifestyles and instrumental collectivism.
• Fiona Devine (1992, 1994): Revisited Luton, rejecting the "new working class" thesis, finding workers retained collective solidarity and egalitarian values.
• Ivor Crewe (1983): Argued sectoral cleavages split the working class into "old" (Labour voting) and "new" (Conservative voting).
• Ken Roberts (2001, 2011): Argued the working class has become disorganised, disempowered, and devalued.
• Blackburn and Mann (1975): Found unskilled workers hold inconsistent, confused images of society (mixing proletarianism and conservatism).
• "a public and present-oriented conviviality" which "eschews individual striving 'to be different'" (Lockwood, 1966)
• "what will be will be", "take life as it comes", "make the best of it", "live for today because tomorrow may never come" (Everyday phrases of proletarian traditionalists)
• "The interviewees were not singularly instrumental in their motives for mobility or in their orientations to work. Nor did they lead exclusively privatized styles of life. Their aspirations and social perspectives were not entirely individualistic." (Devine, 1994)
• "I disagree with a silver spoon. People should work for their money, not inherit it." (Devine interviewee)
• "remain confused by the clash between conservatism and proletarianism, but touched by both" (Blackburn and Mann, 1975)
• "identifying with the working class is no longer associating oneself with a powerful group, or a way of life with features that others should envy" (Roberts, 2001)

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The lower strata

• Terms used: underclass, marginalised groups, excluded groups, reserve army of labour, housing classes, pauper class, residuum, relative stagnant population, the poor (Mann, 1992).

Marx's view of the lower strata

The lumpenproletariat

• Lumpenproletariat: Marx's term for the lowest group. He viewed them negatively as having no potential for class consciousness. Examples include decayed roués, vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel keepers, tinkers, beggars.
• Kirk Mann (1992): Notes Marx used economic, social, and psychological criteria (personal prejudice) to define them, but argues urban riots and claimants' unions show they are not inherently conservative.

Charles Murray - the underclass in America and Britain

The underclass in America

• Murray (1984): Losing Ground. Neoliberal. Argued US welfare reforms (1960s) created a growing underclass dependent on benefits, causing rising crime and illegitimacy.

The underclass in Britain

• Murray (1989): Visited Britain. Defined the underclass by behaviour/culture, not poverty. Characterised by litter, drunkenness, ill-schooled children, juvenile delinquency, illegitimacy, and refusal to work.

Evaluation of Murray

• Blames the victims. Mann calls Murray's view "criminally violent bastards who refuse to work". Ignores economic structures (explored further in the poverty and social exclusion chapter).

Anthony Giddens - the underclass and the dual labour market

The middle class, working class and underclass

• Giddens (1973): Defines underclass economically via the dual labour market:

The dual labour market

• Employers need reliable workers in key roles (primary), so they cut costs on easily replaced workers (secondary).

The nature of the underclass

• Women and minority ethnic groups (African Caribbeans/Asians in UK) are concentrated in the underclass due to prejudice and career interruptions. They are likely to be more radical than the working class.

Criticisms of Giddens

• Evaluation (Mann): No clear dividing line between primary/secondary markets. Fails to explain why sexism/racism places specific groups there.

Duncan Gallie - a heterogeneous underclass

• Gallie (1988, 1994): Rejects Murray (cultural) and Giddens (class).
• Research: Unemployed held jobs for 74 months (vs 76 for employed). 77% of unemployed wanted to work even if rich (vs 66% employed). Disproves Murray's "unwilling to work" claim.
• Underclass is too heterogeneous (varied by gender, low-pay vs unemployed, short vs long-term) and unstable ("huge flows" in and out) to form a class. They are just the most disadvantaged section of the working class.
• Tentatively suggests only the long-term unemployed might fit the stability requirement of an underclass.

W.G. Runciman - the underclass as claimants

The underclass and the class structure

• Runciman (1990): Defines underclass as those permanently reliant on state benefits, unable to participate in the labour market.

Criticisms of Runciman

• Evaluation (Dean and Taylor-Gooby, 1992): Runciman ignores career history. Lone parents average only 35 months on benefits; most long-term unemployed had past jobs. They are unstable working-class, not a permanent class. Also, Runciman uses an institutional definition (state relationship) rather than a market definition.

Ken Roberts - the usefulness of the concept of the underclass

Research on the underclass

• Roberts (2011): Identification depends on criteria.
  • Low bar: Alan Buckingham (1999) found 5.4% long-term unemployed.
  • High bar: Tania Burchardt (2000) required unemployment + no voting + no emotional support + <50% mean income = only 0.3% of population.
• Roberts's 2 criteria for a class:
  1. Distinctive, sustained economic position (Yes: long-term unemployment exists and is intergenerational).
  2. Distinctive social, cultural, political characteristics (No: they want to work, have no distinct politics, no label/identity, no ideology).
• Conclusion: No underclass has formed yet, just a "semi-connected" marginal group.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Karl Marx: Described the lowest strata as the "lumpenproletariat" or "social scum".
• Charles Murray (1984, 1989): Neoliberal who defined the underclass culturally/behaviourally (illegitimacy, crime, refusal to work, benefit dependency).
• Anthony Giddens (1973): Defined the underclass structurally using dual labour market theory (secondary market).
• Duncan Gallie (1988, 1994): Found the unemployed want to work (77%) and argued the underclass is too heterogeneous and unstable to be a true class.
• W.G. Runciman (1990): Defined the underclass purely by permanent reliance on state benefits.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Argued the underclass meets the economic criterion but lacks the cultural/political identity to be a true class.
• "This scum of the depraved elements of all classes... vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel keepers, tinkers, beggars, the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society." (Marx and Engels, 1950)
• "the 'underclass' does not refer to a degree of poverty, but to a type of poverty" (Murray, 1989)
• "Their homes were littered and unkempt. The men in the family were unable to hold a job for more than a few weeks at a time. Drunkenness was common. The children grew up ill-schooled and ill-behaved and contributed a disproportionate share of the local juvenile delinquents." (Murray, 1989)
• "a visitor from a plague area come to see if the disease is spreading" (Murray, 1989)

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Class identity and culture

• SCA model (Structure-Consciousness-Action): Class structure leads to class consciousness, leading to action.
• Recent sociologists reject SCA, arguing class identities are ambivalent, weak, and created through cultural differentiation (distancing from groups with low moral worth).
• Stephanie Lawler (2005) / Owen Jones (2012): The term "chav" is used to disparage the working class as lacking taste/morals. Jones notes media contempt for the working class (e.g., Karen Matthews portrayed as a typical "chav" vs sympathetic treatment of middle-class Madeleine McCann's parents).

Pierre Bourdieu - class and culture

• Bourdieu (1984): Distinction. Analysed French class culture. Culture shapes economic mobility.

Types of capital

• Cultural capital includes:
  • (a) Legitimate culture: Dominant class taste (e.g., Brueghel, Goya).
  • (b) Middlebrow culture: Minor works of major arts (e.g., Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue).
  • (c) Popular taste: Lowest form, devoid of artistic ambition (e.g., Petula Clark, Strauss's 'Blue Danube').
  • Lifestyle/Consumption: Rich prefer light/delicate food; lower classes prefer heavy/fat/coarse; teachers prefer exotic/cheap (Italian/Chinese).
  • Embodied: Body shape, haircut, make-up, posture indicate class.
• Capitals are convertible (e.g., using economic capital to buy education/cultural capital).

Capital, class, lifestyle and the habitus

• Habitus: A structured and structuring structure; subjective ways classes perceive the world and their tastes, developed from their economic conditions of existence.
  • Working-class habitus: Based on necessity (objects must be affordable/functional).
  • Higher-class habitus: Based on aesthetic choices and "good taste".
• Cultural reproduction: Dominant groups use "symbolic violence" to impose their culture as legitimate, devaluing working-class culture and reproducing class inequality.
• Critique (Richard Jenkins, 1992):
  1. Deterministic (underplays individual choice).
  2. Neglects social institutions (welfare state).
  3. French model may not apply globally (Bennett et al. 2009 found no dominant legitimate culture in the UK).
  4. Condescending to the working class (assumes they don't care about aesthetics).

Simon Charlesworth - A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience

• Charlesworth (2000): Used Bourdieu's habitus to study Rotherham (devastated by mining/steel closures).

Life in Rotherham

• Ugly, depressing, rubbish, poor health, cheap clothes.

Nights out

• Pubs/clubs are "meat markets" where bodies are surveyed. "Existence is bought with the value of the flesh."

The working-class habitus

• Based on necessity and powerlessness. Shell suits are popular because they are cheap/comfortable. Middle-class culture is devalued. "The best we can 'ope fo' is a video and a shag, if wi lucky."

Education and speech

• Working-class speech is immediate, coarse, and euphemism-free ("Nah then shag", "Nah then yer slapper") reflecting a world of constant readiness and valuelessness. The education system stigmatises this linguistic habitus, failing working-class children.

Evaluation

• Tim Ednesor (2000) praised it, but critics say it paints too bleak a picture, ignores creativity/resistance, and treats the working class as uniformly downtrodden.

Beverley Skeggs - Formations of Class and Gender

The study

• Skeggs (1997): Ethnography of 83 working-class women on caring courses in NW England over 11 years.

Working-class women

• Working-class women lack all 4 of Bourdieu's capitals and are portrayed as dirty, dangerous, and sexually unrestrained.

Working-class disidentification

• Disidentification: They do not want to be middle-class ("hoity-toity") OR working-class (associated with "Sharons and Kevins", white stilettos). They claim to be "classless".
• They seek respectability via 2 routes:
  1. Caring courses: Proving they are responsible/caring, gaining moral superiority.
  2. Sexuality: Avoiding looking "tarty" or like a "slut" (e.g., rule: "you can't wear white stiletto shoes and mini-skirts"). They want admiration, not to be sexual objects. Marriage provides ultimate symbolic capital/legitimation.
• Conclusion: Class is fundamental because it forces them to constantly prove themselves against middle-class standards.

Evaluation

• Small sample size makes generalisation difficult, but provides deep understanding.

Mike Savage, Gaynor Bagnall and Brian Longhurst: class identities in northwest England

The study

• Savage et al. (2001): 178 interviews in Manchester (Cheadle, Wilmslow, Ramsbottom, Chorlton).

Class identities

• 71% were ambivalent about class identity. They recognised class exists ("haves and have nots") but refused to place themselves in one, preferring to be seen as "individuals" or "ordinary".

• Conclusion: People disidentify with class to claim ordinariness, but this very act acknowledges class differences exist.

Geoff Payne and Clare Grew - class ambivalence

• Payne and Grew (2005): Critiqued Savage et al. 39 interviews in rural areas.
• Argued Savage's methodology created false ambivalence (asking about a "classless society" right before asking for personal class).
• Found only 4 people rejected class. The rest used 14 complex criteria to define class, including financial inequalities, housing, aristocracy/upper-class people, educational qualifications, inter-personal attitudes expressing class superiority/inferiority, aspirations, getting on and personal achievement, lifestyle, job types, and capitalism/the class system.

Conclusion

• Class continues to exert a strong influence on people's lives.

Beverley Skeggs - the co-branding of class

Popular culture and the working class

• Skeggs (2005): Culture is commodified (selling signs/experiences).
• Working-class culture is devalued as tasteless, backward, and morally worthless.
  • Daily Mirror survey: Equated working-class traits (too much sex, big dogs) with moral inferiority vs middle-class traits (recycling, Tuscany).
  • Films (Pretty Woman, Working Girl, Up Close and Personal): Working-class women must change appearance/speech to have value.
  • Satellite dishes: Equated with working-class tastelessness.
  • Tony Blair: Used a run-down estate to symbolise white working-class "backwardness".
  • Benetton's advertising and Sex and the City show how culture is commodified and pathology is glamorised for those with cultural capital.

Working-class culture as a resource

• Middle class sometimes uses working-class culture as a "resource" (authentic/tough), but are mocked for pretentiousness (e.g., The Royle Family, Pulp's Common People).

Culture and class conflict

• Conclusion: Class struggle is now over cultural entitlement. Lacking the 'right' culture restricts economic capital.

Conclusion

• Crompton and Scott (2005) stress that culture and economy are intertwined.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Pierre Bourdieu (1984): Wrote Distinction, introducing the 4 capitals and the concept of habitus to explain cultural reproduction of class.
• Simon Charlesworth (2000): Applied Bourdieu's habitus to Rotherham, showing how working-class speech and culture are stigmatised by education.
• Beverley Skeggs (1997, 2005): Showed working-class women "disidentify" with class to seek respectability, and how working-class culture is commodified and devalued as morally worthless.
• Mike Savage et al. (2001): Found 71% of people are "ambivalent" about class, preferring to call themselves "ordinary".
• Geoff Payne and Clare Grew (2005): Critiqued Savage et al., finding people use 14 complex criteria to define class rather than being truly ambivalent.
• "a structured and structuring structure" (Bourdieu, 1984)
• "the process of social reproduction is largely secured through a process of symbolic violence, a process of cultural reproduction" (Jenkins, 1992)
• "The best we can 'ope fo' is a video and a shag, if wi lucky." (Charlesworth interviewee)
• "I just don't think class is a very useful term. I think I am probably classless. You know I'm not really one nor the other." (Skeggs interviewee)
• "I think it's just daft trying to fit people into pigeonholes. They say because you live on a council estate you must be working class... But lots of people own their own houses and just because they are on council estates it doesn't make any difference." (Skeggs interviewee)
• "People have little difficulty in talking about class 'out there', but do not like to think about class closer to home with respect to their own identity" (Savage et al., 2001)

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Social mobility

Ascription and achievement

• Industrial societies are open (low closure); status is achieved (merit, talent, hard work) rather than ascribed (birth, sex, race).
• Importance: Shows if society is a meritocracy (Roberts, 2011) and whether classes are stable demographic entities capable of forming distinct cultures. Nick Clegg (2011): "Where birth is never destiny".

Types of social mobility

The Oxford Mobility Study

• David Glass (1954): First major UK study (1949 data), but methodologically flawed.
• John Goldthorpe (1980, 1987): Oxford Mobility Study (1972 data, England/Wales). Used 7-class scheme.

Absolute mobility

• High rates of long-range mobility. 7.1% of class 7 sons reached class 1. In no class did >50% originate from that same class. More upward than downward mobility due to occupational structure changes (more non-manual jobs).

Relative mobility

• Comparative chances changed little. 45.7% of class 1 sons stayed in class 1, vs 7.1% of class 7 sons reaching class 1.
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  • 1:2:4 rule of relative hope (Kellner and Wilby, 1980): Chances of reaching the service class are 1x for working-class boys, 2x for intermediate boys, 4x for service-class boys. No significant increase in openness.

The follow-up study

• Goldthorpe and Payne (1986): Used 1983 data (recession). Found absolute mobility still increased, relative mobility stayed the same, but working class suffered higher unemployment.

Problems with the Oxford Mobility Study

• Ignored elite self-recruitment (class 1 is 10-15% of population, hiding the closed <1% elite). Ignored women.

Gender and social mobility

• Goldthorpe and Payne (1986) tested 3 ways to include women:

• Result: Method 3 showed different absolute rates (due to female job clustering), but relative intergenerational mobility rates remained identical to men. Concluded excluding women didn't distort openness findings.

Alternative views

• Michelle Stanworth (1984): Demanded women be classified by their own jobs.
• Anthony Heath (1981): Used 1972/1975 GHS data. Found:
  1. Class 1/2 women more downwardly mobile than men (clustered in class 3 routine non-manual).
  2. Higher-class women less likely to follow fathers than men.
  3. Working-class women more upwardly mobile to class 3 than men (though class 3's superiority is debated).
  • Conclusion: UK is less open than male-only studies suggest.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Agrees with Heath, but notes male/female patterns are converging in the 21st century.
• Abbott, Wallace and Tyler (2005): Male openness relies on female lack of openness (women take routine jobs, pushing men up).

The NCDS study of mobility

• Savage and Egerton (1997): Used 1958 National Child Development Survey cohort (at age 33 in 1991). Included women based on father's occupation.
• Roberts (2001) compared Oxford (1972) and NCDS (1991) using a 3-class model:
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The extent of upward mobility

• Working-class sons reaching service class rose from 16% (Oxford) to 26% (NCDS). But service-class sons staying in service class was 61%.

The origins of class members

• Service class became more diverse (40% from working-class origins in NCDS). Working class remained self-recruiting (72% from working-class origins).

Female mobility

• 39% of working-class daughters reached intermediate class (vs 19% sons). Only 45% of service-class daughters stayed in service class (vs 61% sons). Women in service class clustered in lower professions (teaching/nursing).

Conclusion

• Conclusion (Roberts): Wide inequalities remain. Middle class is diverse but will likely close up. Working class is losing its talented leaders to upward mobility.

International comparisons of social mobility

• R. Breen (2004): Compared 8 countries.
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  • Upward: Highest in Germany, Sweden, Britain. Lowest in Ireland, Poland, France.
  • Fluidity: Highest in Britain, Sweden, Hungary. Lowest in France, Ireland, Poland.
  • Meritocracy: Sweden most meritocratic; Britain least (class strongly dictates education).

Income and social mobility

• Blanden, Greg and Machin (2005): Measured income mobility (quartiles) comparing 1958 and 1970 UK cohorts. Loading image…
  • 1958 cohort: 17% of bottom quartile reached top quartile.
  • 1970 cohort: Only 11% of bottom quartile reached top quartile.
  • Conclusion: Intergenerational mobility fell; equality of opportunity declined (unlike the USA, which increased).
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  • International: UK (0.271) and USA (0.289) had the highest correlation between father/son earnings (lowest mobility). Norway/Germany/etc. were much lower (0.139-0.171).
  • Education: Richer parents monopolised post-16 education expansion.
• Sutton Trust (2007): 1970 vs 2000 cohorts (explored further in the education chapter). Inequality in degree attainment widened (1990s: 11% poor vs 40% rich got degrees; 2002: 10% poor vs 44% rich).

Evaluation and conclusion

• Blanden et al.'s study only examined boys and moved away from conventional class categories, but presents convincing evidence that inequality of opportunity is increasing.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• David Glass (1954): Conducted the first major UK social mobility study (1949 data).
• John Goldthorpe (1980): Oxford Mobility Study showed high absolute mobility but unchanged relative mobility.
• Kellner and Wilby (1980): Coined the "1:2:4 rule of relative hope" based on Goldthorpe's data.
• Anthony Heath (1981): Showed women experience more downward mobility from the top and more upward mobility from the bottom into routine non-manual jobs.
• Savage and Egerton (1997): NCDS study showed working-class sons reaching the service class rose to 26%, but service-class sons staying there was 61%.
• R. Breen (2004): Found Britain has high fluidity but is the least meritocratic of 8 European nations.
• Blanden, Greg and Machin (2005): Argued income mobility fell between the 1958 and 1970 cohorts, with Britain and the USA having the lowest mobility globally.
• "Women's upward mobility is a 'perk' rather than a 'right' ... men's upward mobility relies on women's downward mobility" (Abbott et al., 2005)

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Gender and social class

The household as the unit of class analysis

• John Goldthorpe (1983): Defends using the family as the unit of stratification, determined by the "head of household" (the member with the greatest commitment/continuity in the labour market, usually the husband).
  • Argues wives withdraw from work for childcare, making husbands the primary market attachment.
  • Dismisses "cross-class" families (where wife is non-manual and husband is manual) because female routine non-manual jobs have worse pay/security than male equivalents, so the husband's manual job is a better measure of family life chances.

Ken Roberts - the individual as the unit of stratification

• Ken Roberts (2011): Critiques Goldthorpe:
  1. Spouses don't always share living standards equally.
  2. Women are half the workforce; career breaks are shorter.
  3. Hard to decide whose attachment is "dominant".
  4. Family complexity (late marriage, divorce, widowhood) means women rely on their own education/jobs.
  • However, individual classification creates problems (e.g., a clerk married to a CEO vs a clerk married to a labourer have different life chances). Husband's job remains a better predictor of a wife's politics/identity.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• John Goldthorpe (1983): Argued the family is the unit of stratification, determined by the male head of household due to women's career breaks.
• Ken Roberts (2011): Highlighted the dilemma between household vs individual classification due to rising female employment and divorce.

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The death of class?

• Postmodernists argue class is losing significance.

Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters - postmodernism and the death of class

• Pakulski and Waters (1996): The Death of Class. Class is "passé". Society lacks "groupness".

Types of society

• 3 phases of capitalist society:

• 4 features of status-conventional society:

Reasons for the death of class

• Interventionist states/welfare, meritocracy/education, dispersed property ownership (pension funds/home ownership), consumption choices (e.g., green products), globalisation, property increasingly moving from private hands to being owned by organisations, and wealth becoming progressively more equally distributed.
• Politics is now based on gender, race, religion, environment, not class. The underclass is a culture of poverty, not an exploited class.

Criticisms of Pakulski and Waters

• Harriet Bradley (1997): Definitional sleight of hand (confusing political discourse with economic reality). Unsubstantiated generalisations (e.g., claiming patriarchy is dead due to tech).
• John Westergaard (1996a): Consumer power is money power; the poor cannot choose lifestyles.
• Gordon Marshall (1997): Misrepresents evidence (e.g., claiming height differences vanished when middle class is still 5cm taller).

Ulrich Beck - Risk Society - 'beyond status and class'

Risk society

• Beck (1992): Society is moving to a risk society.
• 3 stages of society:

The problems of risk society

• Risks include processed food/obesity, nuclear waste, invisible toxins/pollution, global warming.

Individualisation and the decline of class

• Individualisation: Risks affect everyone regardless of class (smog/radiation doesn't spare the rich). Inequality exists, but is individualised. People navigate life via education and mobility, not class culture. Politics forms temporary coalitions around specific risks. Ascribed characteristics causing conflict include race, skin colour, gender, ethnicity, age, homosexuality, physical disabilities.

Evaluation of Beck's Risk Society

• Alan Scott (2000): Exaggerates. The rich can buy protection (organic food, second homes away from pollution). Class still dictates life expectancy.
• Beck simply asserts class no longer has a significant effect on identity/lifestyle and makes unsubstantiated generalisations.

John H. Westergaard - the hardening of class inequality

• Westergaard (1995, 1996a, 1996b): Class divisions are hardening, not dying.

Evidence of the hardening of class structure

• 1980-1990 top 10% earnings rose 40%; bottom 10% stagnated. Poorest 20% household income share fell 10%→7%; richest rose 37%→44%. Top 5% wealth rose 36%→38%.
• Private business power grew (privatisation, City of London finance). A tiny elite (<1%) wields enormous power via corporate assets.

Reasons for the hardening of class inequality

• Global competition, end of the 1940s "class compromise", Conservative free-market policies, regressive taxation, economic growth has become more varied, and transnational corporations have developed faster than nationally based companies.

Class and other divisions

• Gender and ethnicity reinforce class (e.g., working-class women marry working-class men; racial minorities are placed low in the economic order).

Class 'in itself' and class 'for itself'

• Class consciousness faded because the Labour Party abandoned redistributive policies, leaving the working class without political representation, despite popular desire for "fairer shares".

Summary and conclusions

• Class inequality continues to exercise considerable influence over people's lives.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters (1996): Postmodernists who declared the "death of class", arguing society is now "status-conventional" based on consumption and lifestyle.
• Ulrich Beck (1992): Argued we live in a "risk society" (reflexive modernity) where technological hazards affect everyone equally, leading to the individualisation of inequality.
• John H. Westergaard (1995, 1996a, 1996b): Refuted the death of class, showing with statistics that economic class inequality and corporate power have hardened significantly since 1979.
• "like beads and Che Guevara berets, class is passé" (Pakulski and Waters, 1996)
• "the intellectual armoury of class theory is about as useful for the contemporary social scene as a cavalry brigade in a tank battle" (Pakulski and Waters, 1996)
• "the struggle for one's 'daily bread' has lost its urgency" (Beck, 1992)
• "Class society will pale into insignificance beside an individualized society of employees." (Beck, 1992)
• "consumer power, after all, is money power: quite simply, the rich and the comfortably off have much more of it than ordinary wage-earners" (Westergaard, 1996a)

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