Is social class still relevant in the UK?
We will discuss the changing attitudes to and evaluation of social class as a classification system for society. We will mention the historical significance of social class stratification and then move on to how young people today relate to social class. Finally, we will discuss Saunders' view on social class.
Importance of social class
Sociologists have been debating whether social class is still a useful concept to measure society by. Scholars are divided about the issue. One approach suggests that social class has lost its relevance in contemporary British society and that class identities and divisions are much less significant today than they used to be.
Sociologists of this perspective tend to point to voting patterns and highlight that the link between social class and voting behaviour has weakened in the past decades.
Before the 1970s, there was a clear division between the votes of working-class people and middle-class people. Working-class individuals usually voted Labour, while middle-class individuals voted Conservative. This pattern was referred to as class alignment.
Recently, there are signs of class de-alignment - as claimed by sociologists - as social class does not necessarily determine what people vote.
Social class: examples in sociology
In the 1950s, social class was a very significant part of British life. Each and every class was easily identifiable by the clear characteristics they were associated with.
Let us look at the three main social classes of the 1950s and their most distinguishable (maybe even stereotypical) characteristics.
Characteristics of social classes
| Upper-class | Middle-class | Working-class |
Characteristics | Stately homes Aristocratic backgrounds Posh accents
| Semi-detached houses Suits and bowler hats
| Council flats Fish and chips Common accents
|
Because there was such a clear cut between social classes, society had an ‘us vs. them’ mentality. Society was divided into the workers and the rich employers.
This was present, for example, in pubs, which were usually divided into a public bar and a lounge to accommodate people of different classes without having them mix with each other.
Another example were railway carriages, which also had First, Second and Third class compartments.
What changed?
There have been significant changes in the occupational structure.
The manufacturing industries, mining and shipbuilding declined, which resulted in a shrinking working-class. There have been less, and less working-class communities built around heavy industry, coal mining and shipbuilding.
Since the 1970s, trade unions have dramatically shrunk in size as well.
Some sociologists argue that class identities have weakened over time. In the 1950s most manual workers in the UK identified as working-class, while most non-manual workers such as professionals, managers and clerics identified as middle-class (Butler and Watt, 2007). This is not the case any more.
Social class has lost its special weight in personal identification; now it simply belongs to a number of other factors a person considers when identifies with a social group. Besides class, ethnicity and gender are significant identifiers nowadays.
The impact of social class
There is another approach which argues that social class still has a significant impact on peoples lives and on how they identify themselves.
Objective class and subjective class
According to the 2016 British Social Attitudes survey, people still identify strongly with social classes, however, based on different factors than before.
Around 60% of people identified as working-class, while around 40% of Brits identified as middle-class in 2016. These are the same results as in 1983, even though the proportion of people doing working-class jobs have fallen a great deal.
This discrepancy suggests that people nowadays identify with a certain social class based on their family backgrounds and educational achievements rather than based on their current occupation.
For instance, many people who do not have a university education but work in middle-class jobs identify as working-class.
Sociologists claim that according to this pattern, one can identify an objective and a subjective class for each individual.
A person’s objective class refers to the social class they belong to based on occupational classification.
Subjective class refers to the class a person identifies with. This is often not based on their occupation, but more on their family backgrounds, surroundings and educational attainment.
Some sociologists claim that the recession and economic changes has/have made people more aware of class differences.
Social class inequalities in education: sociology
Let us look at young people and social class in Britain today.
Educational experiences of pupils from social classes were very different. It used to be very easy to predict one’s educational and career path based on their social class. This is not the case any more. The majority of the UK’s population goes into further education now. Statistics show that close to one in two teenagers will end up going into higher education.
In general, young people take longer to study, intern, travel and establish their chosen careers. Even after they ‘settled’ for a profession, they change paths in increasing numbers. This means they have very diverse experiences and people are socially mixed in the workplace more so than previously.
For instance, at a call centre, there might be university students working there to support themselves through their studies.
In a call centre, some employees might lack higher education while others might work there in order to support themselves through their university studies. Pixabay.com
As a result, social classes are getting blurred.
Saunders on social class
Saunders (1996) argues that social class origins are not as influential on people’s later lives as they used to be in Britain.
He acknowledges that people of different social classes have different life chances in many areas of life. He admits that middle-class children are more likely to benefit from private education than working-class children, for instance.
Not only that, but he even identifies four main factors that can affect a person’s occupation in the future:
That said, Saunders argues that one can overcome their limitations and achieve any occupation they desire and work for, despite their social class background. He believes that personal ambition, motivation, ability and talent are much more significant in influencing occupational destinations than social class origin. He identifies mental ability, motivation to succeed and qualifications as the key factors in a person’s occupational destination today.
Saunders bases his theory on the concept that Britain, its education and work system, is meritocratic. According to this theory, people in Britain are allocated to certain occupational class positions based on their ability and effort.
Significance of Social Class - Key takeaways
- Sociologists have been debating whether social class was still a useful concept to measure society by.
- In the 1950s, social class was a very significant part of British life. Each and every class was easily identifiable by the clear characteristics they were associated with.
- Some sociologists argue that class identities have weakened over time.
- People nowadays identify with a certain social class based on their family backgrounds and educational achievements rather than based on their current occupation.
- Saunders believes that personal ambition, motivation, ability and talent are much more significant in influencing occupational destinations than social class origin. He bases his theory on the concept that Britain, its education and work system, is meritocratic.
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