Block 1 - Class & Inequality

Question 1

Describe the National Statistics Socio – Economic Classification (NS-SEC)

Answer 1

• Based on Goldthorpe schema and has been used since 2001
• measures employment relations and conditions of occupation
• operationalises class into a measurement tool
• helps explain structure of socio – economic positions and explain variation in social behaviour
• Widely accepted and valued both as a measure and as a good predictor of health, educational etc

Question 2

What are the 8 classes of the NS-SEC

Answer 2

1 – Higher managerial and professional occupation – higher autonomy on themselves and others
2 – lower professional and high technical occupation
3 – intermediate occupation
4 – Small employers
5 – Lower supervisory and technical occupations
6 – Semi routine occupations
7 – Routine Occupations
8 – Never worked/Long time unemployed

Question 3

What is the 3 classes of the NS-SEC

Answer 3

1 – Higher managerial. Administrative and professional occupation
2 – Intermediate occupations
3 – Routine and Manual occupations

Question 4

Outline the GBCS

Answer 4

• the GBCS shifts away from focus on occupation categories
• cultural class analysis
• inductive rather than a deductive analysis – starts from straightforward evidence and generates theories from this
• The GBCS claims to address the social polarisation in British Society – why there is so much of a big gap between the rich and poor
• Also investigates class fragmentation in its middle layers/horizontal cleavages – the divisions within the middle class

Question 5

How does the GBCS measure class

Answer 5

• Uses measure of economic, cultural and social capital
• economic capital – the wealth, occupation, earnings, assets and savings
• social capital – social connections, who you know, political parties, social clubs and hobbies
• cultural capital – what are your interests, your education, how you spend your free time
• social and cultural resources provide opportunities and capability which you won’t otherwise have and others don’t have

Question 6

Bourdieu and class

Answer 6

• class struggle is through everyday struggles to define our social identity at the level of representation, discourse and meaning

Question 7

define symbolic capital

Answer 7

conferred by systems of representation and recognition that serves to legitimise class distinctions
- people see their own social position and the dominant class norms and cultural meanings

Question 8

A new model of class - GBCS

Answer 8

1 – Elite – 6%, wealthiest and privileged, 24% of this group were privately educated, London based and homeowners
2 – Established middle class – 25%, most gregarious and 2nd wealthiest, work in management, come from MC background
3 – Technical middle class – 6%, small and prosperous new class, work in science and social media
4 – New affluent workers – 15%, group is sociable, they are secure and come from WC backgrounds
5 – Traditional working class - 14%, scores low for economic and social factor, own their own home, some financial security
6 – Emergent service worker – 19%, financially insecure, but high social and cultural factors,
7 – Precariat – 15%. Poorest and deprived class group, more than 80% rent their home

Question 9

Define liminality

Answer 9

During this phase, individuals or groups may experience a sense of disorientation, uncertainty, and vulnerability as they undergo significant changes in identity, social status, or cultural roles.

Question 10

Savage et al 2013 - GBCS

ESSENTIAL READING

Answer 10

• The elites economic advantage sets it apart from the other classes (suggesting economic capital is the most important)
• The majority of the population falls outside traditional class boundaries, requiring a more fluid understanding of social and cultural distinctions.
• The new affluent workers and emergent service workers, may be seen as products of the traditional working class, demonstrating a break in working-class culture due to factors like de-industrialization, mass unemployment, immigration, and urban restructuring.

Question 11

Criticisms of the GBCS

Answer 11

• economically reductionist – as the established mc had more social and cultural capital than the elite but are lower due to their economic capital
• regional issue - some cultural activity are unavailable to some people
• very strict criteria

Question 12

What ways are cultural capitals expressed

Answer 12

• embodied by individuals
  
  • objectified in cultural goods
  • institutionalised in forms of qualification, honours and aways

Question 13

Outline Skeggs (1997) study - methodology

Answer 13

• 12-year ethnographic study of 83 working- class white women in the north-west of England, including an intensive 3-year period of participant observation.
• Begins with women’s enrolment on a course at a local college, the study follows them through education, labour market and family processes.
• • concern with ‘the emotional politics of class’ - the emotional struggle of class

Question 14

Outline Skeggs (1997) study - findings

Answer 14

• Skeggs’ respondents tend to reject class categories for themselves (disidentification)

‘Class positions and class identity, however, are not the same. The young women had a clear knowledge of their ‘place’ but they were always trying to leave it.’ (p. 81) - did not want to associate with their WC identity

Question 15

Outline Scandone (2022) study - methodology

Answer 15

• 17 in-depth interviews with British-Bangladeshi women from working-class backgrounds currently in higher education
  *stresses the multiple intersections between class, gender, race, ethnicity and religion

Question 16

What were Skeggs girls view on the MC

Answer 16

• not being middle class is certainly valued in many working- class social groups’ (Skeggs 1997: 11)
• ‘They’re really ignorant’
• ‘What gets me with these people with loads of money is they look like crap”

Question 17

Did Skeggs girls think they were WC (when they were young)

Answer 17

• ‘Well I think I’m working class …because my mum has always had to work for a living…’
• As Gidddens notes their is an intergenerational experience with class

Question 18

‘I don’t think I’m working class at all now .Not after we bought the house and that… I expect I’m now middle class…but it’s like when we go to Dave’s business dos, but I don’t really feel like some of them, you know the bosses’ wives with all their talk and that. I sometimes feel really frightened to speak in case I show him up. I expect they’re really middle class so I’m not really like them, but I’m not like the rest of our family without two pennies to rub together… I don’t really fit.’ (June 1989)

Answer 18

• stuck in a process of liminaltiy and in a struggle between their identity and their mobility

Question 19

Define habitus clive

Answer 19

Sam Friedman (2016)
a sense of self “torn by contradiction and internal division” around class origins and locations

Question 20

Outline Scandone (2022) study - findings

Answer 20

• class location was defined by ‘ways of being’, including embodied expressions, outlooks, and values, as well as by material properties such as employment, educational credentials, and income.
• Racial discrimination further undermined the possibility, for those of minority ethnic origins, to fully inhabit the legitimised middle-class location
• Societal expectations around gender roles and job structures often made it challenging for individuals to balance family responsibilities with seeking high-status employment opportunities.

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Question 21

I am working-class, but I don’t feel like I have working-class attitudes and values. Because working-class values are money and success but I’m focusing on my education. . . . There’s a negative sort of label to working-class people. . . . Have you heard of the term chav? I wouldn’t associate myself with that. And also the way I speak, I don’t use slang all the time. . . . Also I’m not ignorant I don’t like to stereotype races. Because they say working-class people lack education, but I feel middle-class people also lack education . . . they get the news from the media so they put negative labels on us. . . . I think I’ll be middle-class in the future in terms of my income. My values, what I teach my kids may be working-class. I want them still to work hard, I want them to work for what they get. . . . I do want to make it easier for them but only in terms of income, I guess that would make me middle-class, but my values, my Bengali cultural and religious values will still stay the same. I don’t want to completely lose myself. . . . Middle-class I just feel like the values is quite different. . . . It’s more English I think, more British. (Chandi)

Scandone (2022)

Answer 21

• Chandi sees ‘proper’ middle-class culture to include white British cultural features
• Chandi stresses the desire to retain her working class and ‘Bengali cultural and religious values’ and not to ‘completely lose [her]self’. Bourdieu’s notion of habitus helps to explain this tension between becoming middle-class and retaining one’s ethnic and religious identity.

Question 22

Define Habitus

Answer 22

Bourdieu (1977, 2004)
A socialized subjectivity” refers to a deeply ingrained framework of perception, appreciation, and behavior formed through the internalization of both collective and individual class experiences. This framework shapes individuals’ actions and practices to align with their class-based background.

Question 23

Nicola Rollock (2014) - Methodology

Answer 23

• focus on ‘how we perceive, feel and respond to categorisations of our class identity and the extent to which classed capitals are seen to have weight, worth or legitimacy for different ethnic groups’
  = 2-year interview study exploring the educational strategies of parents of Black Caribbean origin
• 69 respondents, all in professional or managerial occupations

Question 24

How did Rollock (2014) define class identities

Answer 24

the ‘invisible whiteness’ of middle- class norms and representations
* white gatekeeping and ‘white’ social spaces

Question 25

Crawford et al (2016) study - findings

Answer 25

found that graduates earned significantly more than non-graduates, and were less likely to be unemployed shows there is a graduate premium.
Also noted a class effect, as graduates who came from high-income backgrounds earned significantly more than those who came from low-income backgrounds - class ceiling

Question 26

Define class ceiling

Answer 26

Freedman & Lawrenson (2020)
- family class has a drag effect which will impact us in future life e.g. career and education

Question 27

Britton J et al (2021)

Answer 27

• ‘Returns are especially high for ‘privately-educated graduates, whose median earning at age 30 are the highest of all groups’
• ‘However we find that the groups with the lowest graduate earnings, such as Pakistani students or state-educated students from the poorest families also have high returns from going to university’ (Britton J. et al 2021) - people from Pakistani and State educated background tend to be the poorest so going to university stretch the gap
• shows that private and secondary educations continues to make an impact on our earning.
• further supports class ceiling

Question 28

Is Oxbridge becoming less diverse

Answer 28

Lammy 2017

• The richest gained 80% of offers available
• Regional distribution of socio-economic population impacts offers to Cambridge (BBC 2010-15) found that most offers given out to residents of affluent areas in southern England, whereas few offers given out to those in North West
• Lammy had urged Oxbridge to lower offer to working class students as figures show how southern students dominant these prestigious institution’s
• Which Oxford university had responded to by reposting a tweet calling Lammy bitter after his criticisms
• As well as this Oxford had been accused of social apartheid with 3 of its colleges failing to admit any black students till 2015

Question 29

Reay et al 2009

Answer 29

• uses Bourdieu concept of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ in exploring the exploring experiences of WC students in elite universities
  
  • Field - a place in relation terms (where we interact with others)
  • Habitus - our ways of life which is shaped by our socialisation

Question 30

‘Although the habitus is a product of early childhood experience, and, in particular, socialization within family, it is continually modified by individuals encounters with the outside world’ (Reay, et al 2009: 1105)

Answer 30

• As students, are habitus can be altered through the spaces we are in - Habitus clive (Friedman 2015)

Question 31

Reay et al 2009 - methodology

Answer 31

• Case study method of 9 WC students studying at elite ‘southern’ university

Question 32

Reay et al 2009 - findings

Answer 32

• Both White and BAME working-class students across diverse universities faced challenges due to unfamiliarity with university culture, peer expectations, and societal perceptions of their identities.
• Student identities were influenced by social, geographical, and educational backgrounds, as well as differing university environments.
• While students aimed for successful careers, class mobility was not their primary focus.
• Many engaged in processes of identity reconstruction, managing multiple versions of themselves in a liminal space. (habitus dislocation)
• Overall, the experiences of working-class students underscore the importance of addressing inequality and promoting inclusivity in higher education policy and practice.