This document provides an overview of key concepts related to social class identities. It discusses both objective and subjective definitions and measurements of social class, noting debates around using scales versus self-identification. It also briefly outlines the functionalist perspective of social class, particularly the consensus view that social stratification helps society function smoothly by rewarding those who conform to shared social values.
87. A crusty old black-and-white number, bought as a novelty item shortly after John Logie Baird invented it. (15)
88. One in the sitting room, one in our bedroom, and one for the au pair. Milo keeps nagging us to get one for his room but he'll have to wait until he's 16 - screens do play havoc with a child's reading development. (10)
89. Er, how many rooms have we got, 'Chelle? Is it ten or 11? Eleven then. Unless you count the new ones we've had put into the back of our car seats, so the kids can stay happy on car journeys. (5)
104. Damned fine at retrieving fallen grouse, almost as good as the last one you unfortunately had to shoot because it was worrying sheep on the estate. (15)
105. A Staffy called Tyson, and I shouldn't get any closer mate. He'll 'ave your arm off. (5)
109. That rather presumptuous Riesling we picked up in Waitrose last week, with a zingy apple nose and the faint notes of tar, yam and slightly overripe lychee. (10)
143. First on the estate in Scotland; then at the house we always take in Rock: the boys do so love the surfing in Polzeath, and Rick Stein's is just a ferry ride across the estuary. (15)
144. Magaluf; Benidorm; San Antonio in Ibiza - anywhere they do proper fish 'n' chips and English lager. (5)
145. Well they do say Croatia's on the up-and-up, though I do worry there might not be enough art galleries for Jonquil and Tarquin. (10)
146. Your idea of a perfect evening's family entertainment is:
150. 130 to 170 - You are lower-middle class. You dream of higher things but you're trying too hard. Maybe you think fish knives are smart (they're not) and you probably pronounce the letter aitch as 'haitch'. Give up now.
151. 175 to 235 - You are desperately upper-middle class. You fret far too much about everything (global warming, your children's manners, how to cook perfect polenta). You are doomed to be sneered at as a poncey imbecile by the lower orders and despised as an incorrigible bourgeois by your social superiors.
152. 250 to 300 - You live in a damp, unheated house. You live like a savage. You are quite possibly the victim of centuries of inbreeding. You are upper class and the perfect match for Wills and Harry.
159. Do the different ways of determining social class provide you with the same answer i.e. reliability?
160.
161. Society is a meritocracy (i.e. the most able people rise to the top)
162. Fundamental is the strong belief that the class system enables each individual to find their right place and role in society (i.e. in the division of labour)
163. The most important positions in society must be filled by the brightest and most able people.
164. According to functionalism, the people who do well in terms of the common values of society will be at the top of the stratification system.
165. High status, power and high income are rewards for conforming to society's values.
166.
167. All societies as have a value consensus i.e. a general agreement about what is desirable and valuable (or undesirable and valueless). Whatever these values, individuals will be ranked in accordance with them.
169. He argued that stratification systems evaluate individuals in terms of common social values – high status is a reward for conforming to society’s values
170. In complex industrial societies, planning and organization require some individuals to have more authority than others.
171.
172.
173. Many low-paid and even unskilled jobs are just as vital as higher-paid or more skilled jobs
174. There is a greater pool of talent than Davis & Moore assume
175. Training is a pleasant experience and does not require extra rewards to persuade people to undertake it
180. In Marx's theories, stratification is a key aspect of the capitalist system. All stratified societies have two major classes: a ruling class and a subject class (i.e. master/slave dialectic)
181. The ruling class owns the means of production (land, capital, machinery etc.) and the subject class does not. The ruling class exploits the subject class.
182. The ruling class uses the superstructure (for example, legal and political systems) to legitimate (justify) its position and prevent protests by the subject class.
183. In capitalist societies the main classes are the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class that owns the main means of production: capital) and the proletariat (the working class that has to sell its labour to survive).
184. The bourgeoisie exploits the working class through the system of wage labour. Capitalists pay wages to workers, but make a (surplus value) because they pay workers less than the value of what they produce.
185. Capitalism is the newest type of class society but it will also be the last. Eventually it will be replaced by a communist society in which the means of production (land, capital, factories, machinery etc.) will be communally owned.
186.
187. Workers will become concentrated in large factories, making it easier to communicate with one another and organize resistance.
188. Workers' wages will decline in relation to the growing wealth of capitalists, in order to maintain profits. There will be a polarization of classes, with the rich getting richer and the poor poorer, making inequalities more obvious.
189. Skill divisions between workers will be reduced as new technology is introduced, resulting in a more homogeneous and united working class.
190. The petty bourgeoisie (small capitalists such as shopkeepers) will be unable to compete and will sink into the proletariat.
191. Capitalist economies are unstable, and economic crises and periods of high unemployment will cause growing resentment.
192.
193. Marxists presents an over socialized picture of society. They ignore individual freedom; people choose, they are not ideologically ‘brainwashed’. Some oppositional working class counter cultures resist but are pacified and assimilated in adulthood
194. Too much focus on conflict i.e. living standards for all have increased
195. Economic reductionist i.e. they explain all culture in relation to social class, ignoring gender, age, ethnicity etc…
196. Where is this so-called proletariat revolution that will lead us to a communist utopia i.e. Revolutions only really occurred in the east e.g. Soviet Union & China where it collapsed it the wake of a capitalist world
199. They focus more upon the cultural and the ideological rather than the economic as an explanation for the continued exploitation of the proletariat (i.e. masses) and the failed long promised revolution. This means that they focus on the superstructure rather than the infrastructure.
202. Althusser (1971): Meritocracy is a myth. The masses blame themselves for failure even though education is a bourgeois production unfairly reproducing social inequality
204. The mass media transmit capitalist ideology. Mass culture destroys community, individuality and free though but encourages acceptance of authority
205.
206. Cultural capital can take a number of forms. First, it includes educational qualifications. Second, it includes a knowledge and understanding of creative and artistic aspects of culture, such as music, drama, art and cinema. In this artistic sense of culture, Bourdieu distinguishes different levels of cultural capital.
207. The highest level is what he calls legitimate culture. This is the culture of the dominant classes in society. It involves an appreciation of works of art in fields such as music and painting, which are considered to be the height of good taste. For example, Bourdieu puts the paintings of Brueghel and Goya in this category. Legitimate culture tends to be appreciated by those with the highest educational qualifications.
208. Middlebrow culture includes 'the minor work of the major arts'. They are generally accepted as having artistic merit, but are seen as less serious or worthy than legitimate culture. They are popular in the middle classes. Bourdieu gives the example of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
209.
210.
211. Bourdieu neglects the importance of social institutions in shaping class structures. For example, he does not discuss how the development of the welfare state may have influenced class culture, particularly among professionals employed by the state.
212. Bourdieu assumes that his study of France can be generalized to class cultures in other countries. Jenkins suggests that different countries may have rather different class cultures and queries how far Bourdieu's theory is applicable to the USA and Britain.
256. 18-21: Congratulations! You have either got a lot of cultural capital or else you been cheating. Either way you know what is supposed to be good taste even if you don't really always go for it.
257. 13-17: You try hard but don't quite make it into the upper crust. Your tastes are middle-brow but not really intellectual.
258. 8-12: You are fairly proletarian in your tastes and rather unsure about what is culturally correct.
259.
260. How many of the people on the list are ‘old money’ or ‘new money’?
263. Kenway, J. (1990) 'Privileged girls, private schools, and the culture of success', in J. Kenway and S. Willis (eds) Hearts and Minds: Self Esteem and the Schooling of Girls, Falmer.
264. Mackintosh, M. and Mooney, G. (2000) 'Identity, inequality and social class', in K. Woodward (ed.) Questioning Identity: Gender, Class, Nation, Routledge.
277. Savage notes that the late twentieth century saw the movement of higher professionals and managers out of the suburbs and into the countryside or, in the case of the younger and more affluent single professionals and managers, into central urban locations in cities such as London and Manchester that have undergone `gentrification'. According to Savage, this indicates a fragmentation of middle-class lifestyles.
278. Some commentators have suggested that those professionals employed by the state, especially in education, welfare and health, and those found in creative industries, such as the media, are more likely to vote Labour than Conservative. Savage notes that `the highly educated appear to be more left-wing than the less highly educated'.
279. Sociologists have paid a great deal of attention to white-collar workers in recent years. Marxists, such as Braverman, suggest that clerical work has been subjected to deskilling and that white-collar workers no longer enjoy economic advantages over manual workers. It is suggested that a process of proletarianisation has occurred, which has undermined the middle-class identity of white-collar workers, in that the cultural outlook of such workers now is like that of the working class. The evidence for this argument is mixed. Research by Marshall (1988) found that 50% of his white-collar sample saw themselves as working class. However he also found crucial differences in lifestyle and cultural characteristics between white-collar workers and manual workers. The white-collar sample were much more individualistic in outlook, less likely to belong to a trade union and more likely to vote Conservative. Furthermore, Marshall's white-collar sample had few working-class friends and spent their money in quite different ways.
282. King, R. and Raynor, I. (1981), The Middle Class, Longman.
283. Kirby, M. (1999) Stratification and Differentiation, Macmillan.
284. Marshall, G., Rose, D., Newby, H. and Vogler, C. (1988) Social Class in Modern Britain, Unwin Hyman.
285. Newson, I. and Newson, E. (1968) Four Years Old in an Urban Community, Allen & Unwin.
286. Savage, M. (1995) `The middle classes in modern Britain', SOCIOLOGY REVIEW, Vol. 5, No. 2.
287.
288. What are the alleged effects of social class on different areas of social life?
289. What evidence is provided for these effects? Create a list of general cultural characteristics that are common to the whole middle class!
290. What changes have occurred to the middle class that have caused its fragmentation?
291. Are there opportunities for making links with their synoptic topic? (For example, are there alleged class differences in socialisation which have been used to explain levels of educational success or deviance?)
308. retained fairly left-wing political views, but some were disillusioned with the Labour Party, and some intended to vote Conservative. Devine concluded that they were less individualistic than the affluent workers in Goldthorpe et aI's study, and she felt that they had retained significant features of traditional working-class attitudes and lifestyle. <br />Marshall et al (1988) conducted a large survey on class in Britain in the 1980s, and found evidence of some sectionalism, instrumentalism and privatism. But they argued that these characteristics were nothing new - they dated back to the nineteenth century - and they therefore denied that there had been any major change in the working class. <br />Nobody Loves the Working Class<br />____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />Dan Pritchard<br />____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />Arguments about social class today seem to veer from one extreme to another. Does class matter any more in Britain? Or are we actually more divided than ever? In this article Dan Pritchard looks at the way the working class has been portrayed in the past and more recently, and at what this implies. <br />What do ex-Tory leaders Margaret Thatcher and John Major and Labour's Tony Blair have in common? They have all had rather strange ideas about social class. Thatcher thought we were all working- class, Major thought that Britain was classless and Blair seems to think we are all middle-class. Sociologists such as Gordon Marshall have tended to agree with the journalist Barbara Ellen who, writing in the Observer on 22 April 2004, said: 'Class isn't something you escape from or return to. Class is something you ar
![Exploring Socialisation, Culture & Identity: Unit G671 <br />Social Class Identities <br />SOW<br />Key Concepts <br />Social Class <br />Identity <br />Culture <br />Upper Class <br />Middle Class <br />Traditional Working Class <br />New Working Class <br />Underclass <br />Marxism <br />Functionalism <br />Feminism <br />Postmodernism <br />Social Action Theory <br />Social Action <br />Social Structure <br />Social Mobility <br />Social Hierarchy <br />Social Stratification <br />Upward Social Mobility <br />Downward Social Mobility <br />Achieved Status<br />Ascribed Status <br />Alienation <br />Collective Consciousness<br />Mass/Popular Culture<br />Consensus <br />Conflict <br />Capital<br />Capitalism<br />Economic Capital <br />Social Capital <br />Human Capital <br />Hegemony <br />Ideology <br />Heterogeneous <br />Homogeneous <br />Labelling <br />Lads <br />Ladettes <br />Marginalisation<br />Modernity <br />Postmodernity <br />Objective <br />Subjective <br />Opium of the People <br />Oppression<br />Crisis of Masculinity <br />Poverty/Social Exclusion <br />Meritocracy <br />Conspicuous Consumption <br />White-Collar Worker <br />Blue-Collar Worker <br />Classlessness <br />Norms <br />Values <br />Roles <br />Child Centredness <br />Professionals <br />Managers <br />Entrepreneurs <br />New Technology Workers <br />Self-Employed <br />Manual Labour <br />Non-Manual Labour <br />Super Rich <br />Landed Aristocracy<br />Jet-Set Rich <br />Wealth<br />Income<br />Welfare State <br />Tax<br />Benefits <br />Old/New Labour Party<br />Conservative Party <br />Liberal Democrats <br />Trade Unions <br />Socialism<br />Comunism <br />Infrastructure <br />Superstructure <br />Ideological apparatus <br />Social Closure <br />Old/New Money<br />Instrumentalism <br />Privatised<br />Individualised <br />Community<br />What is Social Class? <br />Task: <br />What social class would you place each of the people you see below?<br />What indicators (i.e. pointers) did you use to place people in a social class?<br />Write a description of one of the people below and outline what their lives would be like!<br />Watch a Children's Guide to Growing Up: Social Class System <br />http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Children's+Guide+to+Growing+Up:+Social+Class+System&aq=f<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Definitions & Measurements of Social Class<br />Before we can fully explore social class as a form of identity, we must consider the definition and measurement of social class. There is confusion created by the use of different criteria that causes problems with consistency and comparison. <br />Objective<br />Objective social class is based upon the idea that people can be placed in a social class through the use of a scale and measurement device. The government now use the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification, which creates 8 different classes based upon type of occupation/income<br />The NS-SEC Scale <br />http://www.ons.gov.uk/about-statistics/classifications/current/soc2010/soc2010-volume-3-ns-sec--rebased-on-soc2010--user-manual/index.html<br />Eight classes?Five classes?Three classes?1. Higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations1. Higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations1. Higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations1.1 Large employers and higher managerial and administrative occupations1.2 Higher professional occupations2. Lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations3. Intermediate occupations2. Intermediate occupations2. Intermediate occupations 4. Small employers and own account workers3. Small employers and own account workers5. Lower supervisory and technical occupations4. Lower supervisory and technical occupations3. Routine and manual occupations 6. Semi-routine occupations5. Semi-routine and routine occupations7. Routine occupations8. Never worked and long-term unemployed*Never worked and long-term unemployed*Never worked and long-term unemployed<br />Task:<br />,[object Object]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/sociologyexchangecouk-shared-resource4879/85/SociologyExchange-co-uk-Shared-Resource-1-320.jpg)
