WEEK 6: Class, Status and Power: Key Concepts
Power can be seen as an effect of class and status as social relationships.
Class
Marx and class
Class as an exploitative relationship through which wealth is extracted by one group through the exertions of another- surplus product. In capitalism value is created by the working class but their concrete labour/effort goes unrecognized except in money equivalents, their work becomes an abstraction, so many pounds etc. this class relationship generates alienation: workers do not recognize themselves in what they do or create- work is seen as an imposition (see Rubel Selected Writings of Karl Marx).
Goldthorpe’s class scale (National Statistics Socio-Economic Scale)
Rests on Weber’s notion of life- chances. Group members have roughly similar life-chances. Employment status and employment relationships. Small employers and self-employed recognised as a specific class.
Two axes: skill level and autonomy (freedom from supervision).
Gives a reasonable account of life -chances –via health and mortality ratios etc. The disadvantages: doesn’t measure class identity, give an indication of wealth or property or acknowledge that life-chances are shaped by non-class factors- age, ethnicity, gender. The cut-off point for groups is quite arbitrary.
Some contemporary developments
Polarisation- but not as Marx envisaged i.e. the pyramid structure, rather the middle income earners are squeezed- a lot of people on relatively low incomes fewer in the middle than in the professional groups. –decline of skilled manual workers.
Fragmentation- 30:30:40 society
Manufacturing to services trend
Privatisation of public services
Decline of organised labour (union strength)
De-regulation of wage bargaining
Growth of poverty: 5- 12 million on less than 1/2 average household income between 1979 and 1990. Currently 20 % are claiming some form of benefit.
Status
Traditional- ascribed
E.g. caste system, S. African apartheid system, ‘religious groups’ in N.Ireland (sectarian divisions), U.S. racial segregation, the aristocracy- hereditary positions/titles.
The impact of status today: ethnicity, gender, the ‘old boy’ network
Ethnicity: differential class fractions (Robert Miles, Racism and Migrant Labour)
Differential incorporation of minorities (Vaughan Robinson)
Marginalisation (Berthoud and Modood, Ethnic Minorities in Britain)
Cultural capital (Nirmal Puwar, Space Invaders)
Gender: women as ‘negative men’, Oakley, Irigaray
Split roles- mothers and workers, not proper breadwinners (Crompton, Women and Work in Modern Britain)
‘Old Boy’ Network, A. Giddens, ‘An anatomy of the British ruling class’
Public school/’Oxbridge’ connection Edye & Lintner, Contemporary Europe
Top civil servants and cultural capital- Puwar, Space Invaders
Problem of social mobility, Dorling & Thomas, Identity in Britain
Networks of directorships, R. Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society
Power
Both class and status are a means of social group exclusion i.e. enable ‘insiders’ ro monopolise opportunities
Class as control of ideas –media moguls e.g. Murdoch/Sky/News International
Class as control of business decisions/allocation of resources
Status groups as transferring cultural capital via educational background, racism and male dominance also operate via exclusionary practices
Power can be seen as an effect of class and status as social relationships.
Class
Marx and class
Class as an exploitative relationship through which wealth is extracted by one group through the exertions of another- surplus product. In capitalism value is created by the working class but their concrete labour/effort goes unrecognized except in money equivalents, their work becomes an abstraction, so many pounds etc. this class relationship generates alienation: workers do not recognize themselves in what they do or create- work is seen as an imposition (see Rubel Selected Writings of Karl Marx).
Goldthorpe’s class scale (National Statistics Socio-Economic Scale)
Rests on Weber’s notion of life- chances. Group members have roughly similar life-chances. Employment status and employment relationships. Small employers and self-employed recognised as a specific class.
Two axes: skill level and autonomy (freedom from supervision).
Gives a reasonable account of life -chances –via health and mortality ratios etc. The disadvantages: doesn’t measure class identity, give an indication of wealth or property or acknowledge that life-chances are shaped by non-class factors- age, ethnicity, gender. The cut-off point for groups is quite arbitrary.
Some contemporary developments
Polarisation- but not as Marx envisaged i.e. the pyramid structure, rather the middle income earners are squeezed- a lot of people on relatively low incomes fewer in the middle than in the professional groups. –decline of skilled manual workers.
Fragmentation- 30:30:40 society
Manufacturing to services trend
Privatisation of public services
Decline of organised labour (union strength)
De-regulation of wage bargaining
Growth of poverty: 5- 12 million on less than 1/2 average household income between 1979 and 1990. Currently 20 % are claiming some form of benefit.
Status
Traditional- ascribed
E.g. caste system, S. African apartheid system, ‘religious groups’ in N.Ireland (sectarian divisions), U.S. racial segregation, the aristocracy- hereditary positions/titles.
The impact of status today: ethnicity, gender, the ‘old boy’ network
Ethnicity: differential class fractions (Robert Miles, Racism and Migrant Labour)
Differential incorporation of minorities (Vaughan Robinson)
Marginalisation (Berthoud and Modood, Ethnic Minorities in Britain)
Cultural capital (Nirmal Puwar, Space Invaders)
Gender: women as ‘negative men’, Oakley, Irigaray
Split roles- mothers and workers, not proper breadwinners (Crompton, Women and Work in Modern Britain)
‘Old Boy’ Network, A. Giddens, ‘An anatomy of the British ruling class’
Public school/’Oxbridge’ connection Edye & Lintner, Contemporary Europe
Top civil servants and cultural capital- Puwar, Space Invaders
Problem of social mobility, Dorling & Thomas, Identity in Britain
Networks of directorships, R. Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society
Power
Both class and status are a means of social group exclusion i.e. enable ‘insiders’ ro monopolise opportunities
Class as control of ideas –media moguls e.g. Murdoch/Sky/News International
Class as control of business decisions/allocation of resources
Status groups as transferring cultural capital via educational background, racism and male dominance also operate via exclusionary practices
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