Class and Stratification

Rosemary Crompton

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780745699035
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Diskriminierung & Rassenbeziehungen

Inequality in its many forms is becoming an ever greater problem in modern society. The revised edition of this popular book explains why it is so important to understand class and stratification, and how the tools used to analyse these divisions can help us to understand and confront problems of inequality.

This third edition of Class and Stratification has been extensively revised, expanded and updated, incorporating discussions of contemporary economic and social change. It includes discussions of political and economic neoliberalism and its impacts as well as developments in social theory, such as the emphasis on 'individualization' and the 'cultural turn'. New to this edition is a chapter focusing on 'cultural' approaches to class analysis, which together with established approaches are used to explore new developments in social mobility, educational opportunity, and social polarization.

The book will be essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students in the social sciences seeking to understand the changing face of social inequality. By highlighting the damage increasing inequality is causing to the social fabric, the book reveals the important part class continues to play in our lives today.

1
SETTING THE SCENE

Over the decade since the publication of the second edition of this book, political, economic and social change has continued apace. Not surprisingly, these changes have been reflected in debates and discussions within sociology and indeed, within the social sciences more generally. One of this book’s objectives is to recognize the very real changes that have taken place, whilst simultaneously retaining our awareness of underlying societal continuities. It will be argued that largely on account of these continuities, the intertwined topics of class and stratification remain central to the sociological enterprise. This approach means that an historical perspective is essential – not only in relation to the events of the recent past, but also in relation to dominant ways (or ‘theories’) of thinking about them. As we shall see, many ideas, perspectives and sociological theories that are presented as ‘new’ or contemporary have their roots in much older debates. It will be argued that to recognize these origins will, at the very least, give us a better understanding of current discourses, and at best enable us to identify those which are most likely to carry our discussions forward.

The first part of this introductory chapter, therefore, will briefly review some of the relevant changes that have taken place over the last decade. The example of Association Football in Britain will be employed as a metaphor in order to illustrate the changes that have taken place in ‘class’ relations, as well as the social and economic consequences of the unleashing of ‘market forces’ as a consequence of the encouragement and application of ‘neo-liberal’ principles of economic and social organization. The second part of this introductory chapter summarizes the rest of this book.

Individualization, neo-liberalism and ‘extreme capitalism’

The election of a ‘New Labour’ government in Britain in 1997, after eighteen years of Conservative rule, seemed to offer new possibilities for change and improvement, particularly for those concerned with addressing inequalities. However, although equality-directed New Labour policies (such as reducing child poverty) have been introduced, the New Labourite ‘third way’ (see p. 136) has to a large extent retained the neo-liberal economic policies developed under Thatcherism.

In brief, contemporary neo-liberalism builds on the foundations of nineteenth-century economic liberalism (that is, economic laissez-faire), and indeed, the majority of its principles are very similar to this older doctrine.¹ Neo-liberalism claims that society as a whole is best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state. Thus the role of government should be limited to security, the defence of the realm and the protection of private property, together with the creation and maintenance of markets. Other functions, including the provision of essential services (such as transport, water, energy and even health and education), are best carried out by private enterprise. The profit motive will ensure rationality in decision-making and thus the ‘best’ outcome for society as a whole, whilst individual citizens remain free from the oppressive demands of the state.

In Britain (and the United States) the decades after the Second World War had been characterized by social and economic policies (often described as ‘Keynesian’²) that had sought directly to restrain the impact of ‘market forces’. These policies had included restraints on borrowing and lending and the use of taxation, interest rates, etc. to control demand, as well as the regulation of prices and incomes. These policies were redistributive (indeed, up until the 1970s, the extent of material inequalities declined). However, Keynesian policies were increasingly criticized, by neo-liberals, as contributing to economic decline. In Britain, the election of the Conservative government in 1979 marked a decisive shift to neo-liberal policies, and ‘the market’ was reintroduced as the preferred mechanism of economic and social organization. As documented in the chapters that follow (see chapter 5 in particular), state-owned assets (e.g. gas, electricity, transport, telecommunications) were privatized, wage controls and other labour market ‘restrictions’ were removed, financial services were deregulated, and ‘quasi-markets’ introduced in areas of public provision such as education and health.

‘New Labour’, despite its long period in office, has not substantially reversed these neo-liberal policies. Thus the labour market in Britain remains largely deregulated (although a minimum wage has been established) and the government continues to adopt a ‘hands-off’ policy as far as business interests, and market forces more generally, are concerned. Indeed, neo-liberal economic policies would seem to be gaining in influence worldwide and are particularly entrenched in the US (Harvey 2005). There has been no real change, therefore, in the broad structuring of economic class inequalities.

Nevertheless, other profound changes have taken place. In most ‘Western’ countries, the structure of employment is in a process of constant transformation. The proportion of those engaged in ‘professional and managerial’ employment continues to rise (although at a slower rate), and in England and Wales, nearly a third of the adult population were so classified in the 2001 Census. There has been a corresponding decline in the proportion of jobs requiring physical strength and a modicum of intelligence – that is, the ‘good’ working-class jobs (in mining, car assembly and steelworking, for example) once held by men. Technological change means that this kind of labour has increasingly been replaced by machines (or computers). However, many of these kinds of jobs have been ‘exported’ to countries such as China and India, and in Britain, immigrant labour is increasingly recruited to carry out the jobs at the lower levels of the employment structure. In addition, the nature of jobs is constantly changing – in the 1990s, for example, call centres were considered as a ‘new’ form of employment; today, they are outsourced overseas.

In all ‘Western’ countries, women increasingly expect to be in employment for most of their adult lives, even when they have small children. Indeed, in Britain, the greatest growth in employment from the last decade of the twentieth century onwards has been amongst women with children under school age. Women who are well educated and in good jobs tend to enter into partnerships with similar men, and (besides the loss of ‘good’ working-class jobs and increasing wage disparities) this ‘assortative mating’ is another factor contributing to social polarization, as the gap widens between two-earner households and households in which no adult works at all (Gregg and Wadsworth 2001).

Despite this process of constant change, however, a number of underlying processes remain the same. Capitalism (and the capitalist state) continues to generate a diverse range of differentially rewarded jobs. Profitability remains a major concern for the capitalist enterprise. Great concentrations of wealth persist – and indeed, are on the increase. At the individual level, people still want to do the best they can for themselves and their families. Thus parents still work around the educational system as far as they can, and ‘market’-inspired changes in the education system have increased opportunities for middle-class parents to ensure that their children are placed in academically successful schools (in Britain, social mobility is actually in decline). People still constantly compare themselves to others, and economic and social hierarchies are enduring.

It still makes sense, therefore, to describe Britain and other, similar societies as ‘class’ societies. What, however, of the explanatory value of the ‘class’ concept? As we shall see in the chapters that follow, there is no straightforward answer to this question, not least because of the variety of ways in which ‘class’ has been defined. In terms of ‘class’ relations, and perceptions of class, however, there is one important change (or rather, set of changes) that it would be best to acknowledge from the outset.

This is the fact that, although class divisions are persistent, the idea of ‘class’ has lost its importance as a central discourse, or political organizing principle, in contemporary societies. This is a consequence of changes in jobs, in employment and in localities, as well as quite deliberate and conscious changes in discursive frameworks. In respect of the latter, for example, in Britain, the Labour Party, for most of the twentieth century, defined itself as the party of the ‘working class’. However, ‘New Labour’ has consciously distanced itself from ‘class’ connotations of any kind. Poverty is seen as a problem of ‘social exclusion’ rather than as an outcome of class processes. Thus government policies tend to be directed at equipping the individual with the capacities for inclusion (training, parenting classes, new skills) rather than at systematic structural or contextual changes that might reduce inequalities (increases in taxation, or employment regulation that would generate ‘better’ jobs, for example). An emphasis on the individual, of course, is one of the defining features of neo-liberalism.

It could be argued – and indeed, many social theorists have done so (Giddens 1991; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002) – that an increasingly individualistic emphasis within society at large is an outcome of the kinds of structural economic and social changes that have been briefly reviewed above, rather than just a shift in ideas and dominant ‘ways of thinking’. The decline – indeed disappearance – of traditional working-class communities has removed an important mechanism of socialization within which collectivist ideas and attitudes were once generated. Although, for most people, work as employment remains of central importance, changes in the nature of work itself, the employment relationship and management styles have all contributed to increasing individualism. In Western countries, increasing affluence has resulted in a greater emphasis on consumption and leisure. Moreover, opportunities to consume have been massively widened (cheap holidays overseas, for example), and information on these opportunities is widely available both in the media and in more recent developments such as the Internet.

In Britain, the example of Association Football may be used as a metaphor through which to illustrate some of the many different strands contributing to the growth of individualism and the decline of collectivism. Football was once the ‘people’s game’ (Walvin 2001, although this did not usually include women). The majority of today’s leading clubs began as an extension of their local community, linked to a workplace (Arsenal and West Ham), a working men’s social club (Manchester United), a church (Everton) or educational institution (Tottenham Hotspur), and both supporters and players tended to be ‘locals’. In a similar vein, financial support for these early ventures was drawn from the local community, and the major shareholders were local employers and businessmen. As with boxing, professional football was (and still is) a way in which working-class youths could achieve upward mobility and economic security – to a point.

Until the 1960s, the wages of football players were regulated at a level that certainly provided a good income, but not excessive riches. The major market in football was in the transfer (of players), and promising young players in the lower divisions were almost invariably sold on to the more successful clubs. Nevertheless, Association Football in Britain, even at the higher levels, retained strong local links until well into the second half of the twentieth century. This rootedness in local working-class communities meant that ‘football’s politics, such as they are, have tended to loiter on the left wing’ (Ronay 2007). Even in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s major figures in football, such as Bill Shankly and Brian Clough, identified themselves as socialists, and traced their beliefs back to childhoods spent in areas dominated by heavy industry and trade union influence.

The regulation of footballers’ wages ended in the 1960s. Wages increased, but not dramatically, and were still restricted by the ability of clubs to pay. However, the nature of football in Britain was changing, as the more successful clubs opened up their shareholdings via stock market flotations. The erosion of the ‘traditional’ working-class fan base and football’s growing attraction for the middle classes meant that the successful clubs became increasingly attractive in financial terms, grounds were improved, and ticket prices rose dramatically. The really big change, however, came in 1992 when the sale of television rights, at a stroke, massively increased the money available to the clubs, particularly the more successful clubs. The introduction of the Premiership (an elite ‘super league’, replacing the old First Division) hugely increased the financial polarization between the top and bottom clubs. The leading teams have become global brands, and local links have to a large extent disappeared. The clubs themselves are now up for grabs, either as the playthings of the international super-rich, or as sound commercial investments. Footballers’ wages now average £12,300 a week and the top players have become multimillionaires. The international trade in the top players means that national, as well as local, links have been attenuated. Local heroes have been replaced by international celebrities.

As a recent commentary has argued (Ronay 2007):

in its own way modern British football is a deeply political affair. Just take a look at the Premiership to find out what 15 years of hot-housed free-market capitalism looks like . . . The players have come to represent an acme of consumption, a brutally linear expression of a certain way of living. In our footballers we see a funfair mirror reflection of the same forces working on the people watching them from the stands. We don’t admire them, so much as aspire to their lifestyle . . . The top tier of British football stands as an extreme expression of a certain kind of politics, rampant capitalism with the volume turned up to 11.

This brief excursion into the recent history of British football has been made not in order to sentimentalize the past, or as a yearning for the ‘good old days’, but as a (hopefully) accessible illustration of the many different factors that have fed into the generation of an increasingly individualistic perspective in Britain and other countries. The erosion of local communities, the deregulation of the labour market, the growth of commercialism and the impact of the media have polarized the game and created in Britain a global leisure industry marked by a highly individualistic...