John Goldthorpe: Consensus And Controversy

Jon Clark

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781850005490
• eBook ISBN: 9781134077090
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume forms part of a series on contemporary sociologists. The work of each scholar chosen is internationally recognized and relates to the core of sociology in the 1990s. This text covers the main themes of John Goldthorpe's work, and includes his replies to criticisms of his ideas.

Part One: IntroductionI. EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

1. John H. Goldthorpe: Consensus and Controversy

JON CLARK, CELIA MODGIL AND SOHAN MODGIL

THE ORIGIN AND RATIONALE OF THE SERIES

The origins of this volume on the work of John H. Goldthorpe can be traced directly, if somewhat paradoxically, to the publication in 1986–87 of a series of books on the work of leading contemporary psychologists: Lawrence Kohlberg, Hans Eysenck, Noam Chomsky, Arthur Jensen and B. F. Skinner. The success of these five volumes, edited by Sohan and Celia Modgil, persuaded the publisher, Malcolm Clarkson of Falmer Press, to initiate a parallel series of books on leading contemporary sociologists. In the autumn of 1986 Jon Clark was appointed principal editor of the new series.

The first major task was to choose the international contemporary sociologists who would be the subject of the first five volumes in the series. The choice was guided by a number of criteria. First and foremost the editors shared a fundamental belief in the distinctive intellectual interest in concentrating on the work of individuals as opposed to subject areas (education, religion, domestic life, work, mobility, health), concepts (class, power, structure, agency, gender) or ‘schools’ and approaches (‘neo-functionalism’, ‘rational choice’, Marxism, hermeneutics, positivism). The reader will have to judge whether this belief was justified or not. It was also agreed by the editors that the work of each scholar chosen had to be internationally recognized in the discipline; still relevant to the core of the discipline in the 1990s; extensive in thematic coverage; and at one and the same time consensus-generating and controversial. Finally, the aim was to choose a group whose work covered a range of fields of sociological interest and countries of origin. The outcome was the choice of Robert K. Merton, Daniel Bell, Anthony Giddens, John H. Goldthorpe and Ralf Dahrendorf. For a variety of reasons the volumes on Daniel Bell and Ralf Dahrendorf did not materialize. Nevertheless, we believe that the three remaining volumes demonstrate the breadth, richness and creativity of the discipline of sociology in the post-war period.

THE FORMAT OF THE SERIES

The format of the Sociology Series is broadly similar to that of the Psychology Series. In each case the subject of the volume was invited to participate in its design so as to reflect the consensus and controversy which have surrounded their work. At the outset themes were chosen which covered the major areas of knowledge represented in their research and publications, and pairs of distinguished academics were then invited to write papers taking either a ‘predominantly positive’ or ‘predominantly negative’ view of each major area. The paired contributions were then exchanged through the editors to provide an opportunity for both parties to make a short comment on the heart of the opposing paper. When the manuscript was complete, it was sent to the subject of the volume for a concluding comment.

The aim of the debate format and the interchange of chapters is to highlight points of consensus and controversy. It should be emphasized, though, that the terms ‘predominantly positive’ and ‘predominantly negative’ imply no more than that the writer of the relevant contribution agrees or disagrees in the main with, say, Goldthorpe’s approach to class analysis—it does not imply complete agreement or disagreement, and allows contributors some degree of latitude to provide their own often more rounded view of the subject. Also, although the generic topics to be debated were determined by the editors, the contributors were given the freedom to focus on those aspects of the theme which were closest to their own research interests.

THE CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

The book, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. Part I provides a general introduction to Goldthorpe’s work. In Chapter 2 Jon Clark outlines the main stages in Goldthorpe’s intellectual biography, situating his various research projects and publications in the context of British and international developments in the discipline of sociology. He also gives a personal view of Goldthorpe’s distinctive ‘style’ of sociology. In Chapter 3 Duncan Gallie reviews Goldthorpe’s critique of liberal theories of industrialism. He suggests that much of Goldthorpe’s work can be seen as a prolonged debate both with the general ‘historicist’ arguments of liberal theories and with their more specific predictions about social structural change.

Part II contains nine sets of paired contributions and one ‘free-standing’ chapter covering the main themes of Goldthorpe’s writings. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss Goldthorpe’s own original version of class analysis. In Chapter 4 Gordon Marshall traces the evolution of Goldthorpe’s research on class structure, outlining the main components of what has come to be known as the ‘Goldthorpe class schema’. He argues that, while there are still some difficulties surrounding the operational procedures for generating classes from occupational data as well as with the status of women, Goldthorpe’s scheme is more reliable, and makes better sense of the relevant data, than all other alternatives. In contrast Göran Ahrne suggests that Goldthorpe’s class schema, which he describes as a ‘well-made commonsensical classification of occupations’, lacks the explanatory power of more sophisticated theories of the development of class societies. He illustrates his case with a critical discussion of the concepts of ‘service class’, ‘intermediate class’ and ‘working class’, and a short discourse on the development of the petty bourgeoisie and the state in Sweden.

The next section continues this debate, concentrating more specifically on Marxist theories of class and historical development. In Chapter 6 Giorgio Gagliani defends Goldthorpe’s critique of recent Marxist theories, in particular of those which argue that there is a general trend in industrial societies towards ‘proletarianization’ and deskilling. He also provides an extended discussion of ‘shift-share analysis’, a technique used by Wright and Singelmann to analyze changes in the degree of proletarianization in the USA. In Chapter 7, however, Rosemary Crompton, while accepting certain criticisms of the ‘proletarianization’ thesis, uses recent case study evidence to cast ‘micro-sociological’ doubt on aspects of Goldthorpe’s ‘macro-sociological’ class scheme. In particular, she suggests that random sample surveys of the population at large cannot provide conclusive evidence relating to organizational structures and processes, and that micro-level qualitative and macro-level quantitative research are not alternatives, as Goldthorpe appears to suggest, but complementary explanatory strategies.

The next three sections look in more detail at particular themes within class analysis. In Chapters 8 and 9 Susan McRae and Shirley Dex discuss Goldthorpe’s writings on class and gender, work which has given rise to major controversies within the British sociological community (and beyond). McRae gives a detailed exposition of Goldthorpe’s wide-ranging contributions to the sociological study of women. She also argues that the study of sexual and class inequalities should be kept separate, not only because it is unlikely that both can be explained by one all-encompassing theory, but also because such separation ‘is the only avenue presently available’ for understanding the changes in class and sexual stratification which are likely to occur over the next decade. Dex, in contrast, challenges the ‘conventional’ separation of gender and class as supported by Goldthorpe. She suggests that a focus on the individual rather than the family as the unit of class analysis, and a longitudinal rather than cross-sectional perspective, would be more appropriate to understanding class and life-cycle variations in women’s social mobility.

In Chapters 10 and 11 Anthony Heath and Dennis Kavanagh examine Goldthorpe’s work on the relationship between class and political partisanship, a topic which—like class and gender—has aroused sustained controversy, in this case particularly between political scientists and sociologists. Heath begins by summarizing some of the main conclusions of the Affluent Worker study which impinge on questions of political attitudes and behaviour in Britain. These include the need to distinguish between the ‘solidaristic’ collectivism of traditional workers and the ‘instrumental’ collectivism of affluent workers; that affluence on its own does not lead to middle-class identity; the strong association between workers’ experience of work and their disposition to support a Labour Party espousing ‘collectivist’ policies; that actual support for Labour is contingent on a belief that it will ‘deliver the goods’ if elected. Heath then presents data on the relation between affluence, class identity and voting behaviour in the 1980s which suggest that the conclusions of the 1960s study go a long way to explaining working-class political behaviour today. In contrast, Kavanagh believes that there is conclusive evidence that social class has declined in importance as a shaper of electoral choice in Britain (the ‘class de-alignment thesis’). He argues that the fact that Labour has remained a ‘class party’ pursuing an ‘egalitarian’ strategy, as recommended by Goldthorpe (and by Heath, Jowell and Curtice, 1985, whose work is seen by Kavanagh as continuing the Goldthorpian tradition), has been one of the main reasons why it has been doing so much worse than most other centre-left parties in Western Europe. According to Kavanagh, the question of Labour’s relatively poor electoral performance in the 1980s should be a prime focus for contemporary political and sociological analysis.

Chapters 12 and 13 turn to the question of the relation between class and industrial relations. Bill Roche suggests that ‘orthodox’ approaches to industrial relations tend to neglect what he calls the ‘pre-institutional’ foundations of the employment relationship. He argues that Goldthorpe’s writings, from the Affluent Worker study through to essays of the mid-1970s and 1980s, make a major contribution to our understanding of the influence of social class on worker attitudes and systems of control at work. In Chapter 13 William Brown provides what both Goldthorpe and Roche suggest has so far been conspicuous by its absence, a reply from within the ‘liberal-pluralist’ tradition to Goldthorpe’s critique of ‘institutional’ approaches to industrial relations. In a sense, Brown turns Goldthorpe’s argument on its head, defending the ‘problem-oriented’ approach of industrial relations orthodoxy as a strength rather than a weakness and arguing that Goldthorpe’s ‘class-oriented’ approach is a case of ‘sociological bricks without institutional straw’.

The next three chapters broaden the thematic focus by looking at questions of political economy and the state since 1945. In Chapter 14 Niamh Hardiman draws on examples from a number of Western European nations to demonstrate the explanatory power of Goldthorpe’s analysis of the post-war ‘Keynesian era’, in particular his interpretation of the problem of inflation, which he sees as the ‘monetary expression of distributional dissent’. She also uses the distinction between ‘corporatist’, ‘neo-laissez-faire’ and ‘dualist’ strategies to examine developments in different countries in the ‘post-Keynesian’ era. In Chapter 15 Josef Esser covers the same ground as Hardiman, but argues that Goldthorpe’s concepts and analysis are ultimately lacking in explanatory power because they are not grounded in a historical theory of the development of capitalism as a world system. He suggests that the concepts of ‘Fordism’ and ‘post-Fordism’ provide a more appropriate conceptual framework, illustrating his argument by a comparison of recent developments in Britain and West Germany.

In Chapter 16 political philosopher Raymond Plant also discusses questions of corporatism and neo-liberalism in Goldthorpe’s work, but his particular interest lies in how different political actors (parties, governments and citizens, but also academic social scientists) deal with the question of distributive justice in modern industrial societies. He concludes that questions of distributive justice represent a central dilemma of modern democracies, but argues that Goldthorpe’s ‘Popperian’ refusal, qua sociologist, to take on such normative questions not only prevents him from pointing a way out of the dilemma, but actually goes some way to supporting a neo-liberal view of the economy and society.

Chapters 17 to 20 are concerned with the analysis of social mobility, the theme which has dominated Goldthorpe’s research over the past twenty years. In Chapters 17 and 18 John Westergaard and Geoff Payne look at Goldthorpe’s work on social mobility in Britain. Westergaard begins with the paradox that social mobility research is to a certain extent ‘marginalized’ from mainstream sociology in Britain, yet it is of central relevance for understanding its prime concerns, namely social structure, continuity and change. He argues that it is among Goldthorpe’s signal achievements to have demonstrated and pressed home the central relevance of mapping social mobility for the discipline of sociology, and that his prime interest in the implications of changing mobility patterns for class formation and mobilization is fully justified. Payne, in contrast, believes that Goldthorpe’s concentration on class mobility leads to major weaknesses in his approach because it fails to recognize that classes do not directly control or cause social mobility. For Payne, Goldthorpe’s research also evinces a degree of blindness to questions of gender, unemployment and early career transitions, and makes no empirical links to education. All in all, Payne concludes that Goldthorpe’s influence has been to narrow rather than expand contemporary ideas of mobility.

These and other issues are also discussed in the next section, which looks at the state of research into comparative social mobility. In Chapter 19 Walter Müller suggests that John Goldthorpe has played a pivotal role in bringing comparative social mobility research to its present state of maturity. He argues that this is for three main reasons: Goldthorpe has made the study of mobility into a central element of the class analysis of industrial societies; he has made a crucial contribution to the improvement of methodologies for comparative analysis; and he has provided firm substantive answers to long-running debates on the nature and impact of social mobility across industrial nations. In Chapter 20, however, Jonathan Kelley, while recognizing Goldthorpe’s achievement in helping to standardize mobility data across a number of countries, argues that Goldthorpe’s chosen ‘paradigm’ of analysis, log-linear modelling, is fundamentally flawed, because it (1) has a limited power in dealing with questions of hierarchy; (2) is unable to use continuous measurement; and (3) presents difficulties in incorporating variables such as education and income into the model. In his conclusion Kelley outlines an alternative model of social mobility which suggests that ‘inequality in the distribution of human and material capital’ is the key factor influencing social mobility.

In the last main section of Part II, Karl Ulrich Mayer and Terry Johnson look at the relation between theory and research in Goldthorpe’s sociology. In Chapter 21 Mayer argues that Goldthorpe’s contribution is one of the best current examples of how sociology should be conducted in order to be scientifically valid, intellectually convincing, academically successful and politically meaningful. In an extended metaphor Mayer also locates the key to Goldthorpe’s sociology (and personality) in what he calls the latter’s ‘Tennis Player View of Sociology and Society’. In Chapter 22 Terry Johnson also identifies a continuity in Goldthorpe’s sociology, suggesting that it is based on an ideological ‘interest’ in social openness and individual choice. However, Johnson examines a number of Goldthorpe’s major writings and concludes that the link between this ideological interest and its scientific expression in a ‘social action’ approach is never adequately elaborated, whether in terms of theoretical principles, methodological implications or research procedures. Ultimately, then, for Johnson, Goldthorpe’s ‘call to action’ remains rhetorical.

In Part III John Goldthorpe responds to his critics. Rather than treat each essay or exchange separately, he addresses seven issues which cut across a range of contributions. They are the relation between sociology and politics; the distinction between concepts and hypotheses; questions of data and analysis; sociological ‘problems’ and sociological theory; social mobility; class formation and class action; and the political economy of capitalist societies. He concludes with a Popperian commitment to the idea of ‘Consensus and Controversy’, which he sees as the two modes of communicative action which lie at the very heart of the scientific method.

The volume concludes with biographical details about the contributors; an outline intellectual biography of John Goldthorpe and a consolidated bibliography (both prepared by Jon Clark); and author and subject indexes prepared by Lyn Gorman.

II. GENERAL INTRODUCTIONS

2. John Goldthorpe as Sociologist

JON CLARK

INTRODUCTION

John H. Goldthorpe has a special place in the development and standing of the discipline of sociology, both in Britain and internationally. This is due in no small measure to the quality and thematic importance of the research and book publications with which he has been associated, beginning with the three volumes of the Affluent Worker study (1968/69), followed by the elaboration of an innovative approach to The Social Grading of Occupations (1974) and two highly acclaimed edited volumes of international papers, The Political Economy of Inflation (1978) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1984).

However, it is research into social mobility for which he is now best known and to which he has devoted himself almost continuously with various collaborators since 1969. The theme of social mobility has been one of the most important areas of sociological investigation in the post-war period. Indeed, in terms of certain criteria—such as the scale of projects, extent of international collaboration and sophistication of research techniques—it could well claim, as Goldthorpe himself has suggested, ‘a position of pre-eminence’ (1987a: 1). Goldthorpe’s own detailed research in this area began in 1972 with a large-scale survey of social mobility in England and Wales. This led in 1980 to the publication of the first edition of Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (SMCS). The reviews of this volume in the London Times—‘… the most exhaustive survey ever carried out into social mobility in Britain during the twentieth century’—and British Book News—This is the most important book on the British social structure to appear for a quarter of a century’—give a clear indication of the st...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Part One: Introduction
• Part Two: Consensus and Controversy
• Part Three: Conclusion
• Notes on Contributors
• John H. Goldthorpe: Outline Intellectual Biography
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index