Rethinking Social Inequality

David Robbins, Lesley Caldwell, Graham Day, Karen Jones, Hilary Rose

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351105064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1982, Rethinking Social Inequality is a collection of essays looking at the breadth of contemporary work in social inequality. The book focuses on inequality as a central project of sociological enquiry, and is unified by the overarching rejection of a distributional notion of inequality, in the place of a relational one. The object of the study is not the deprived social group, but the unequal social relations, which is manifested in a variety of forms. The themes addressed in this collection indicate a shift in the areas of study concerned with social inequality, rejecting class-based inequality in with that of race, gender and age.

1

Introduction: Rethinking Inequality

The study of inequality has been a central project of sociological enquiry, past and present, to the extent that it does not so much constitute an area or specialty within sociology as the very stuff of the subject itself. In British sociology this engagement with the issue of inequality has taken a particular form. The investigations of late-nineteenth century poverty by Rowntree and Booth established a research tradition whose influence has persisted until the present day (Booth, 1903; Rowntree, 1901). The periodic rediscovery of poverty and deprivation in welfare state Britain (Titmuss, 1958, 1960; Coates and Silburn, 1973; Townsend, 1979; Field, 1978, 1980) builds on the tradition of the nineteenth century pioneers.

Given that the political contexts in which the tradition emerged and developed were characterised by class conflict and compromise, it is hardly surprising that it focussed primarily on the inequalities of class and that the deprivations of the working class were its most characteristic object of study. The emphasis on class did not, however, exclude a concern with the position of other disadvantaged groups: women, children and the old (Land, 1969; Piachaud, 1979; Townsend, 1963; Wedderburn, 1968).

It was not so much its subject matter which distinguished research in this tradition as the way in which inequality was conceptualised and studied. The style of the research was characterised by certain distinctive features which must be understood in relation to its methodological orientation and the political contexts in which it developed.

In the first place the ‘British tradition’ has been predominantly concerned with particular aspects of inequality; those of income, educational achievement and, to a lesser extent, wealth. This can be partly explained in terms of a political concern to monitor the workings of a welfare state established to contain the mobilisation of radical sentiment prior to and during the Second World War. The post-war political context was predominantly social democratic, in that the redistribution of income and wealth by the welfare state was seen as the remedy for class inequality. This was consistent with a sociological tendency to define ‘classes’ as clusters of manual and nonmanual occupations distinguished primarily by the extent to which they possessed these resources. A related political emphasis saw increased social mobility through educational reform as an important means of breaking down ‘the barriers of class’ in British society (Fenwick, 1976; CCCS, 1981). In both cases there was a congruence between prevailing political concerns and the aspects of inequality highlighted by contemporary sociology.

Important as these influences were, it seems likely that the focus on income and educational achievement was also the result of the methodological orientation of mainstream British sociology. Positivist orthodoxy required that social life be described in terms of sets of variables that could be operationalised and measured empirically. The distribution of income and educational achievement fitted this methodological bill to perfection. In contrast, aspects of inequality which were not readily amenable to quantitative measurement tended to disappear from view. The perspective was, by its nature, silent on the distribution of economic and political power and on issues of cultural and legal domination and subordination.

The distinctive character of the ‘British tradition’ is not confined to its concentration on particular aspects of inequality but extends to the way in which these inequalities are conceptualised in distributional terms. The empiricist inclinations of the studies implied not only the focus on empirically measurable types of inequality but also the operational definition of the categories across which such inequality varied. Social classes disappeared behind the terminology of ‘income brackets’ and ‘quartiles’, or at best, were treated as aggregates of occupations. As a result inequality was conceptualised as the differential distribution of desirable goods (e.g. money, educational qualifications) between more or less arbitrarily defined categories. There was a tendency to lose sight of the fact that inequality is inherently relational: the deprivation and powerlessness of one group following as the necessary consequence of the endowment and power of another. Also lost was an appreciation of the extent to which these relations of inequality are the axes of continuing conflict and change.

These shortcomings are reflected even in that work in the ‘British tradition’ which recognises that inequality is the expression of a social relation as well as a pattern of distribution. Townsend’s thesis that poverty is both socially relative and objectively definable (Townsend, 1979, 1981) is instructive in this respect. He argues that the minimum requirements of normal social life are consensually defined in a society at a particular time and that the poor are those members of society who possess insufficient resources to maintain this minimum level of social commitment. Critics have questioned whether a clear-cut definition of ‘normal social life’ exists and, if it does, whether participation in it is abruptly terminated below a given level of resources (Piachaud, 1981). More fundamentally, however, Townsend’s reliance on social consensus precludes any sustained consideration of poverty and inequality as the outcome of relations between social groups: relations characterised by conflicts of interests and the unequal distribution of economic and political power. Townsend’s victims are poor in relation to ’society’s standards’ rather than in relation to powerful and privileged groups who are able to realise their interests at the expense of those of the poor.

In summary, we suggest that the characteristic features of the ‘British tradition’, both substantive and conceptual, can be understood in relation to an empiricist methodology and a concern with an essentially social democratic politics of redistribution. This is not to deny the continuing vitality of work in this tradition or the potentially radical implications of its findings. The conclusions of any genuinely empirical study are not predetermined by the theoretical foundations upon which it is constructed. This accounts for the apparently paradoxical consequences of this research, which, through its ‘rediscovery’ of poverty and the exposure of continuing inequalities in educational achievement, has been crucial in undermining Fabian political strategy and social democratic theorising.

This brief characterisation of an influential tradition of research has been offered in order to provide a background against which the contributions to this volume may be usefully appraised. Their diversity indicates that sociologists are studying new aspects of inequality in new ways. The established tradition is being challenged by new approaches which reflect the changes that sociology has undergone in the last fifteen years - the abandonment of the hegemony of functionalist theory and positivist methodology in favour of a proliferation of ‘perspectives’ and, crucially, a closer engagement with the continental tradition of Marxist analysis. The work on inequality in this volume also reflects the appearance on the political scene of new and non-class based political movements.

Conceptually, the most obvious theme that unites the papers is the rejection of a distributional notion of inequality in favour of a relational one. The paradigmatic object of study is not the deprived social group but the unequal social relation, manifested in a variety of forms.

The range of subject matter covered by the papers indicates the way in which a long-standing concern with class-based inequality is being complemented by a renewed emphasis on inequalities associated with race, gender and age. This emphasis is represented by Amos, Gilroy and Lawrence’s critique of the sociology of race relations, by Purcell’s investigation of women workers and by Fitz and Hood-Williams’ analysis of the subordination of wives and minors within the family. For all these authors the deter minations of class remain crucially important. Given that most of the contributions to this volume reflect, directly or indirectly, the revival of interest in Marxist analysis, it could hardly be otherwise. What does characterise the above contributions, however, is a sensitivity to the way in which the determinations of class are cross-cut, in a complex way, by those of race, age and gender. Indeed these authors are explicitly critical of those accounts in which the determinations of race, age and gender are simply reduced to those of class and, as a result, vanish from sight. This criticism cnn be levelled against recent empirical studies of educational achievement, occupation and social mobility (Halsey, Ridge and Heath, 1980; Goldthorpe, 1980) in which ‘methodological’ constraints appear to have dictated the exclusion of any consideration of women. As Amos, Gilroy and Lawrence note, this criticism can also be extended to much work in the Marxist tradition in which an overriding concern with class causes the specificity of racial, sexual and familial subordination to be ignored.

This sensitivity to the inequalities associated with race, gender and age reflects political developments in the 1970s. This is exemplified by Amos, Gilroy and Lawrence’s critique of the substantial body of sociological literature concerned with the issues of ‘integration’ and the ‘race relations problem’ (Zubaida, 1970). One of the consequences of accelerating economic decline has been the precipitation of a crisis of policing in the inner cities. The rhetoric of ‘integration’ has been replaced by that of ‘law and order’ as the state has sought to maintain its control over black communities. Out of the escalating confrontation between police and blacks emerged a distinctive politics of black resistance and it is from this perspective that the authors mount their attack on the theoretical and methodological assumptions that underpin much sociological research on race relations. The need for a relational approach to racial inequality is forcefully argued. They insist that the problems of black communities should not be explained in terms of the peculiarities of black cultures and family structures but in terms of the complex of social relations that locks those communities into a position of subordination in capitalist societies characterised by institutionalised racism.

The influence of contemporary political developments is also reflected in the increasing sociological concern with inequalities related to gender. The resurgence of feminism in the 1970s entailed a critique of established forms of both social democratic and socialist politics. Not only had social democratic reform exhausted its repertoire without substantially affecting the continued subordination of women but, it was felt, the politics of the socialist left was organised in such a way as to marginalise the issue and to deny the specificity of women’s experience (Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright, 1979). Consequently there emerged an independent sexual politics which not only subjected social democratic and socialist politics to critical scrutiny but also extended its critique to the academic discourses that underpinned them. Given sociology’s extended silence on questions of gender, its sexism was quickly exposed and influentially criticised (Rowbotham, 1973; Jones, 1973). The result was the initiation of work, often by feminists themselves, which sought to write women and gender relations back into the theory and practice of the discipline (Roberts, 1981).

These developments are reflected in Kate Purcell’s sensitive ethnographic study of the way in which female manual workers experience inequality. She relates the ‘passivity’ of these women to a culture of ‘fatalism’ which provides the medium through which their everyday experience is interpreted. Although the attitudes, beliefs and lifestyle of the women workers provide the main focus of her study, Purcell makes it clear that their ‘fatalism1 is grounded in the social relations that define the subordinate position of women in both the workplace and the family. It is not the cause of women’s subordination but a learned response to it and, as such, can be unlearned.

The impact of the women’s movement has also been reflected in a substantial and continuing revision of received sociological wisdom concerning the family. Despite Engels’ early contribution (Engels, 1884) there has, until recently, been a tendency for marxists to neglect the family and familial relations, presumably as a result of an overriding concern with class relations. (1) Noting this, Fitz and Hood-Williams echo recent feminist work (Barker and Allen, 1976; Beechey, 1979) in insisting that the subordination of wives and minors is not simply a function of the class position of the male family head but is also determined by the patriarchal relations that prevail within the family. They develop this theme through an examination of the disjunction between familial and capitalist production, as witnessed by the diverse legal forms in which property is owned and transmitted within these two spheres. Familial property relations are diachronic, occur between legally (and usually biologically) related groups of agents and are mediated through mechanisms of inheritance and settlement. In contrast, capitalist property relations are synchronic, take place between formally free and substitutable agents, through free alienation via the law of contract. The nature of familial property relations in England at different historical conjunctures is examined through a study of the legal rules of inheritance, which specify the socially approved family form. Although the rules have changed over time and in relation to capitalist development they have, until recently, specified family relations of firmly patriarchal type. The present legal equivalence of husband and wife in the rules governing diachronic transmission merely indicates the increased importance of synchronic transmission in the reproduction of patriarchal family relations, a development resulting from the imposition of death duties.

Again the relational nature of inequality is stressed. The dependency of wives and minors is the necessary consequence of the legally sanctioned dominance of the male family head. This treatment of age relations in the context of the family contrasts starkly with most existing sociological literature, which tends to categorise ‘youth’ and ‘the old’ as distinctive groups which constitute ’social problems’. The increasingly violent resistance of working class youth to social control has provoked the attention of sociologists of education, deviance and culture (Willis, 1976; Cohen, 1972; Hall and Jefferson, 1976) while ‘the old’ have by and large, remained the subject of research oriented to social policy (Townsend, 1963, 1973). Despite the increasing interest in inequalities associated with age, systematic study of age relations remains sparse.

Recent sociological work is not only distinguished by a relational conception of inequality but also by an emphasis on the cultural, ideological and political dimensions of domination and subordination. These are issues upon which the ‘British tradition’ has been largely silent, except in its tendency, criticised by Amos, Gilroy and Lawrence, to invoke the cultural peculiarities of a group to ‘explain’ its deprivation. A concern with the cultural dimensions of inequality is exhibited by a number of the contributions and must be viewed in relation to the general movement in recent British sociology towards an engagement with the issue of culture. This movement was given impetus by the writings of E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams and has been theoretically reinforced by the assimilation of continental work, notably that of Althusser, Gramsci and the Frankfurt School.

Essentially these developments entail a critique of the approach to culture adopted by much marxist analysis and by the ’sociology of knowledge’ tradition, in which the focus is upon cultural objects: typically, systems of knowledge and belief, or artistic creations of various types. The characteristics of these cultural artefacts are explained in relation to a social order constituted ‘outside’ culture, defined in terms of a particular set of economic and political relations. Recently this reductive approach has come under increasing criticism and substantial revisions have been ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Rethinking Inequality
• 2 White Sociology, Black Struggle
• 3 Female Manual Workers, Fatalism and the Reinforcement of Inequalities
• 4 The Generation Game: Playing by the Rules
• 5 Aging and Inequality: Consumer Culture and the New Middle Age
• 6 Egalitarianism and Social Inequality in Scotland
• 7 Inequality of Access to Political Television: The Case of the General Election of 1979
• 8 Classes, Class Fractions and Monetarism
• 9 Moral Economy and the Welfare State
• 10 Towards a Celebration of Difference(s): Notes for a Sociology of a Possible Everyday Future