Social class and education (original) (raw)
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In this paper we describe the history of official and sociological approaches to social classifications in the UK and how they came together in the ESRC Review of Government Social Classifications undertaken between 1994 and 2000. In doing so, we first review the strengths and weaknesses of the former official social classifications, Social Class based on Occupation (formerly Registrar General's Social Class) and Socioeconomic Groups along with the alternative academic schemas and scales considered by the Review. Secondly, the conceptual basis and construction of the new classification, the National Statistics Socioeconomic Classification (NS-SEC), is described in detail. Finally, the approach taken in the new classification is compared with other European national classifications in the context of the development of a harmonised socioeconomic classification for the European Union.
How to Measure Class from Occupation
Expressions like 'upper and lower classes,' 'social promotion,' 'N.N. is a climber,' 'his social position is very high,' 'they are very near socially,'…and so on, are quite commonly used in conversation, as well as in economic, political, and sociological works. All these expressions indicate that there is something which could be styled 'social space.' And yet there are very few attempts to define social space and to deal with corresponding conceptions systematically (Sorokin, 1927, 3, our italics) Without a clear conception of 'social space' it is impossible to talk about social 'mobility' in a meaningful way, let alone measure how much of it there might be. It is now eighty years since Sorokin began his celebrated and pioneering study with the words above, but in our view, a lack of conceptual clarity continues to characterise historical approaches to the study of stratification and mobility. In this paper we propose a solution to this problem by describing how to build a stratification scheme which is conceptually robust yet sensitive enough to be generally applicable across time and space. There are good reasons why historians have been reluctant to address the issue of defining social space with conviction. The most important is probably the nature of their source material-most often occupation, or more accurately occupational titles-which is necessarily partial, and usually laconic or ambivalent into the bargain. There is thus a feeling that to attempt to conceptualise, and theorise from, historical indicators is to place more weight on fragile data than they can bear. This leads in turn to the conclusion that it is necessary to be flexible and 'pragmatic' when designing social classification schemes to accommodate such data. This tendency towards empiricism has been bolstered by recent trends in intellectual fashion. The advent of 'post-structuralism' has called into question the whole domain of the 'social' and in particular the idea that 'class' can be anything more than one competing narrative in an ongoing process of (re-) constructed and relative social reality. In terms of the relationship between data and classification, this position lends itself to a preference for inductive over deductive approaches to the generation of social schemes, in other words, for letting the data 'speak for themselves'. To our way of thinking, such influences and approaches create more problems than they resolve because they risk obscuring and at worst misrepresenting the processes they claim to be addressing. At issue is the centrality of 'occupation', not only as the primary historical (and indeed sociological) source used in studies of stratification and mobility, but as a 'real' and key indicator of social position in the nineteenth century. And in order to understand how (and how far) occupation provides such a measure, we would maintain that it in needs explicit consideration in class terms.
Sociology, 2014
This paper responds to the critical reception of the arguments made about social class in Savage et al (2013). It emphasises the need to disentangle different strands of debate so as not to conflate four separate issues, (a) the value of the seven class model proposed; (b) the potential of the large web survey -the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) for future research; (c) the value of Bourdieusian perspectives for re-energising class analysis, and (d) the academic and public reception to the GBCS itself. We argue that in order to do justice to its full potential, we need a concept of class which does not reduce it to a technical measure of a single variable and which recognises how multiple axes of inequality can crystallise as social classes. Whilst recognising the limitations of what we are able to claim on the basis of the GfK/GBCS, we argue that the seven classes defined in Savage et al have sociological resonance in pointing to the need to move away from a focus on class boundaries at the middle reaches of the class structure towards an analysis of the power of elite formation.
A new model of social class: findings from the BBC's Great British Class Survey Experiment
BDJ, 2013
The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world. The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK's National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status. This principally distinguishes between people working in routine or semi-routine occupations employed on a 'labour contract' on the one hand, and those working in professional or managerial occupations employed on a 'service contract' on the other. However, this occupationally based class schema does not effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions. We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC's 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes. We demonstrate the existence of an 'elite', whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of 'new affluent' workers. We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a 'precariat' characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.
2007
Introduction and research questions 1.1 Introduction 1.2 The lingering importance of social class 1.3 A research program of class analysis 1.4 Changes in the employment and class structures 1.5 The need to revise the EGP class schema 1.6 New classes within the service class 1.7 Reclassifying service class: Social and cultural specialists versus technocrats 1.8 Research questions 1.8.1 Question related to criterion validity 1.8.2 Questions related to construct validity 1.9 Outline of this study Chapter 2 Classifying and validating the subdivision of the service class: The Netherlands and Britain 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The EGP Class Schema 2.3 The criteria for reclassifying the service class 2.4 Experts allocate occupations 2.5 Criteria validation of the adjusted EGP class schema 2.5.1 Forms of control and social services 2.5.2 Data and operationalisation 2.5.3 Results 2.5.3.1 Control systems for social and cultural specialists and technocrats 37 2.5.3.2 Controllability of social and cultural specialists and technocrats 2.5.3.3 Empathy and contact in jobs of social and cultural specialists 2.6 Conclusions and discussion Chapter 3 Patterns of intergenerational mobility of the social and cultural specialists and the technocrats in the Netherlands 1970-2004 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Theory and hypotheses 3.2.1 Mobility patterns of the newly distinguished classes 3.2.2 Homogeneity of the newly distinguished classes 3.2.3 Inheritance of class position over time 3.3 Data and method 3.3.1 Data 3.3.2 Method 3.4 Results 3.4.1 Baseline models and class inheritance 3.4.2 External homogeneity of the newly distinguished classes 3.4.3 Internal plus external homogeneity of the newly distinguished classes 3.4.4 Inheritance of class position over time 3.5 Conclusions and discussion Chapter 4 Intragenerational class (im)mobility of the social and cultural specialists and the technocrats in the Netherlands 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Theory and hypotheses 4.3 Data, operationalisation and method 4.4 Results 4.4.1 Absolute mobility for men and women 4.4.2 Loglinear models for men 4.4.3 Career class immobility over time 4.5 Conclusions and discussion Chapter 5 Social-political, cultural and economic preferences and behaviour of technocrats and social and cultural specialists. Social class or education? 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Theory and hypotheses 5.2.1 Social class and social-political, cultural and economic preferences and behaviour 5.2.2 Social class and education 5.3 Data and operationalisation 5.3.1 Independent variables 5.3.2 Dependent variables 5.4 Results 5.4.1 Social-political preferences and behaviour 5.4.2 Cultural preferences and behaviour 5.4.3 Economic preferences and behaviour 5.5 Conclusions and discussion Chapter 6 The rise of 'new' social classes within the service class in the Netherlands and Britain Political orientation of the social and cultural specialists and the technocrats 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Theory and hypotheses 6.2.1 Political cleavages within the service class 6.2.2 Political orientation of the social and cultural specialists and the technocrats 6.3 Data and operationalisation 6.3.1 Dutch data and operationalisation 6.3.2 British data and operationalisation 6.4 Analysis and results 6.4.1 Comparing the standard and adjusted EGP class schemata 6.4.1.1 The Netherlands 6.4.1.2 Britain 6.4.2 Leftist-rightist party identification in the Netherlands and Britain 6.4.3 New-left and old-left party identification in the Netherlands 6.5 Conclusions and discussion Chapter 7 Summary and discussion 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Answers to question related to criterion validity 7.3 Answers to questions related to construct validity 7.4 Discussion Appendices Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch) References Curriculum Vitae ICS Dissertation Series for my father Niyazi Güveli always open for a conversation or advice. My special thanks go to Wout Ultee for supporting me in difficult times. Wout Ultee has been an inspiration for me from the very beginning and his brilliant ideas opened the horizon of this study. Wout helped me to make this little but great country my homeland, one that I definitely will miss in the future. I thank Anthony Heath for being such a wonderful host during my visit at Nuffield College, University of Oxford in 2004. I am also grateful for him for making the time in his busy schedule to share his expertise with me and guide me through British literature and datasets. This study has benefited from the contributions of others as well. I owe much to Jeroen Smits. I will always be grateful for his methodological comments on one of my papers and for the inspiring discussions during the RC 28 Tokyo meeting and thereafter. I also thank Ruud Luijkx for his statistical support and for his valuable comments on our paper. Most of the data I used in this study were harmonised by Harry Ganzeboom. I was delighted with his ideas on publication of surveys. He generously shared his datasets and I appreciated his inspiring and encouraging discussions about our paper, socio-political issues and especially about Deventer. I thank Colin Mills for being my supervisor during my traineeship at Nuffield College and for our stimulating discussions. I particularly want to thank Duncan Gallie for the use of his dataset and for the guidance he offered during my stay at Nuffield College. My colleagues at the ICS/Department of Sociology in Nijmegen have made my time productive and enjoyable. I learnt a great deal from our sociology seminars and discussions. I thank everyone who contributed to this learning. Paul de Graaf and Marcel Lubbers deserve special thanks for their contributions to my dissertation. I hope that Marcel and I will collaborate again in the future. I also want to mention my dearest colleagues and friends Vivian Meertens and Eva Jaspers for being with me through my ups and downs. I also want to thank everyone who gave me useful comments during the ICS Forum Days. I especially want to thank Ineke Maas for her brilliant comments on my research proposal in the very beginning of this study. I was the only one in my year group after two months in Nijmegen but I still enjoyed all of the ICS courses with my colleagues Gijs van Houten, Ingrid Doorten, Willem-Jan Verhoeven and Ruud van der Meulen. They all have my thanks for the exciting sociological and philosophical discussions. Gijs Weijters, Wouter van Gils and Stijn Ruiter were my undergraduate and graduate classmates in Nijmegen. I was honored to have them as my colleagues during this study as well. I hope to keep in touch and work together with them
Understanding Class in the Post-Industrial Era - Thoughts on Modes of Investigation
Frontiers in Sociology, 2020
The essential character of social science is that is founded around an interaction between theoretical framings and empirical investigation. Class is one of the most salient framing concepts of the discipline, always central even if somewhat pushed into the background in an era when identities not founded in economic relations seemed to take priority. Recently in an era of austerity and economic crisis class is very much back front and center. The issue addressed in this article is how can and should we investigate class in the societies in which classes emerged from industrial systems when those societies are now not only post-industrial but also to an increasing degree post-welfare in consequence of the retreat of a coherent class based politics. Traditionally there has been a distinction between studies which used primarily qualitative styles-ethnographic and at the interface of history and sociology-on the one hand and quantitative studies based on the analyses of large data sets on the other. It has to be said that many of the latter used linear modeling approaches which were of questionable value, particularly when the only dynamic element in them was the exploration of just two time points in the life course in relation to social mobility. What will be proposed here is the value not only of studies which deploy ethnographic/historical and related qualitative modes but also of quantitative work, including in particular quantitative histories, which break with the linear model and deploy dynamic modes of investigation across a range of social scales from the individual life course to the whole global social order. One central proposition in the article is that in order to grasp the nature and potential of class after industry we have to engage in meta-interpretation-that is scholarly, we might say hermeneutic, reflection on multiple studies conducted in all appropriate modes of social investigation.