Summary
Summary Sociology of Class
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Notes on Class - Classical Approaches - Contemporary Approaches - Effects of Class - Contemporary Changes and Challenges - Intersectionality
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ClassDefining Class
Classical Approaches
- Marxist approach
- Class struggles drive social change, the motor of history (“this history of all hitherto society is
the history of class struggle”)
- Relation between/with capital and labour as the central class division of capitalism
- Split between capitalists and working class (owners and non-owners of capital)
- Objective class position (class in itself)
- Relationship to the means of production
- Structural condition
- Subjective class position (class for itself)
- Organised around common interests, sharing common views and beliefs on how society
should be organised
- Class consciousness —> which will eventually lead to social revolution (Weber does not
believe in this)
- Weberian
- Three-component theory of stratification
- Class : economic position
- Status : prestige, social honour (e.g. poets can possess immense influence on society with
little economic worth)
- Power : ability to get their way despite the resistance of others (e.g. individuals in state
jobs)
- Believed that class position was determined by a person’s skills and education rather than
relationship to the means of production
- Stratification based on more than simply ownership of capital
- Traditionally seen to be structured along economic lines and relations
Contemporary Approaches
- Sociological definitions have conventionally been based on occupation, education and income
- Bourdieu’s theory of class distinction
- Develop theories of social stratification based on aesthetic taste
- Claims that how one chooses to present one’s social space to the world (aesthetic
dispositions, consumption habits etc) depicts one’s status and distances oneself from lower
groups —> consumption patterns correlate with a individual’s fit in society
- Children internalise these dispositions at an early age, guiding them towards their appropriate
social positions, towards the behaviours that are suitable for them whilst fostering an aversion
towards other behaviours
- Class fractions are determined by a combination of the varying degrees of social, economic
and cultural capital
- Society incorporates “symbolic goods…as the ideal weapon in strategies of distinction”
- Does not disregard the importance of social and economic capital in the formation of cultural
capital
- Great British Class Survey
- Used measures of economic, social and cultural capital
- Identified 7 broad class groups in British society, greater segmentation of the middle class —>
shift away from traditional three-model stratum (upper, lower, middle class)
- Savage
- Classes can only exist in relation to other classes and it is the structural asymmetry between
them which is central to understanding them as classes, rather than simply as groups or
categories
Effects of Class
, Class
- Class structure as having an important influence on one’s life chances (implies lack of social
mobility)
- A person’s socioeconomic class may determine the schools they are able to attend, the jobs
open to them, who they marry etc
- E.g. 81% of the British cabinet were educated in private schools whereas only 7% of all British
children are privately educated
- Education
- Upper class parents able to send their children to exclusive schools perceived to be better,
lack of good schools for all is one factor that perpetuates the class divide across
generations
- Paul Willis, 1977 —> working class schoolchildren had a developed an antipathy towards
the acquisition of knowledge as being outside their class (class consciousness) and
therefore undesirable, perpetuating their presence in the working class
- Health and nutrition
- Social class has a significant impact on their physical health, ability to receive adequate
medical care and nutrition and life expectancy
- Lower class individuals experience a wide array of health problems as a result of their
economic status, unable to afford quality healthcare (especially with increasing
marketisation of healthcare provision)
- Poor people tend to work in more hazardous conditions (e.g. manual labour), yet generally
have much less health insurance provided for them, as compared to middle and upper
class workers
- Employment
- Conditions at a person’s job vary greatly depending on class
- Those in the upper-middle class and middle class enjoy greater freedoms in their
occupations, usually more respected and are able to exhibit some authority
- Those in lower classes tend to feel more alienated and have lower work satisfaction overall
- More likely to suffer alienating, often routine, work with obvious physical health hazards,
injury and even death
Contemporary Changes and Challenges
Class is no longer a lifetime experience
- Class problems and experiences are not common across generations
- Upward and downward social mobility mean that class no longer has a definitive impact on one’s
life chances, less indicative
- Recent study revealed that around ¾ of men and women were found in different class positions
than their parents
- Intergenerationally reproduced social groups now less common
- “Class location commonly changes in the course of lifetime. Mobility is perhaps the greatest
solvent of class structuration”
- Much emphasis has been placed on education as the great social leveller and on free, equal
access to education regardless of familial background
- E.g. Singapore —> Compulsory Education Act since 2000 has made primary education
compulsory for all citizens of the state, education takes up 20% of the state budget, state
education up to tertiary level heavily subsidised by the state
- Horace Mann
- “education…is the great equaliser…the balance-wheel of social machinery”
- Placing individuals from different social classes on the same level playing field (emphasis
on meritocracy)
- Since education widely perceived to be an important factor in determining one’s future
occupation, the kind of social connections they make, their behaviour and hence thirsocial
position traditionally defined class one is born into may not necessarily determine their
eventual position in society
- Possibility of upward inter-generational mobility
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