Unequal parental choice

marketisation policies mean unequal parental choice as middle class parents have more cultural capital

Ball, Bowe and Gewirtz (1) examined the effects that marketisation policies which introduced competition and parental choice were having on the education system and on the opportunities for different social groups.

They found that middle class parents had more effective choice of schools because of their higher levels of cultural, social and material capital.

Researching parental choice

They studied 15 schools in neighbouring LEAs in England between 1994 and 1991 using a range of research methods including visiting the schools, attending meetings, interviewing teachers and parents and examining documents.

Central to the research study was a series of interviews with 150 parents whose children were in the final year of primary school, and so were in the process of choosing secondary schools. Some areas had mainly middle class populations, some mainly working class and some had significant ethnic minority populations, so the researchers were able to compare parental choice across these groups.

Marketisation: the effects on schools

The overall effect was a shift in the value framework of schools from comprehensive to market values.

The publication of league tables meant that schools were more keen to attract those more able students who could boost their position in the league tables. There was more of a focus on what prospective students could do for the school rather than what the school could do for the students.

Some schools had introduced setting and streaming so as to more effectively focus resources on those students who were judged likely to succeed and some schools had started to view students like commodities.

Schools were also putting more resources into marketing to promote a positive image of the school: producing glossy brochures to attract parents and staff were expected to spend more time on marketing activities, mainly opening days and evenings.

Neighbouring schools had stopped co-operating with each other and there was a new attitude of suspicion and hostility in some cases.

Schools lower down the league tables were more obsessed with trying to attract pupils, while the more successful schools were able to be more complacent and selective with the students they chose.

Budgetary concerns such as cutting costs were becoming more important than educational and social issues.

Marketisation and unequal parental choice

Gewirtz et al argued that not all parents had equal choice of schools. The amount of choice was limited by the availability of schools in the local area and the capacity of parents to make informed choices.

They identified three types of parents based on their ability to choose:

  • Privileged or skilled choosers
  • Semi-skilled choosers
  • Disconnected choosers

Skilled choosers

Skilled choosers were strongly motivated to put energy into choosing the ‘right’ school for their child and had the ability to make an informed choice.

Skilled choosers are mainly middle class and some had inside knowledge of the school system, such as those who were teachers themselves and tended to choose the most successful schools for their children.

They had both the knowledge to evaluate schools and the money to be able to move to into the catchment area of a particular school they wanted their child to go to.

Semi-skilled choosers

Semi-skilled choosers have a strong motivation to choose by limited capacity to engage with the market. They are less likely to be middle class than skilled-choosers.

They have just a strong a desire to get their children into the best schools but lack the cultural skills and social contacts to be able to make their choices stick.

For example semi-skilled choosers feel less at home at parents evening, less comfortable asking difficult questions and and are less likely to appeal if they don’t get their first choice of school.

As a result this group are more likely to settle for their child just going to a local school rather than a better school that they originally wanted.

Disconnected choosers

Disconnected choosers are just as concerned with their children’s education and welfare but don’t get involved with the school-choice market because they don’t believe it will benefit their children as they think there is little difference between schools.

They tend to consider a smaller number of school options, typically only the two nearest schools to where they live, and their child typically ends up going to one of these local schools which is unlikely to be the best academically.

Disconnected choosers are more concerned with their child’s happiness than them going to a school with a good academic record, and so sending them to a local school where their friends are also going makes sense.

Disconnected choosers are typically working class and the most likely group to send their children to undersubscribed, underperforming schools.

definitions of skilled, semi-skilled and disconnected choosers

Cultural and material capital and differential choice

Marketisation policies have made education less equal. Middle class parents are in a better position than working class parents to send their children to a school of their choice.

Because middle class parents have more cultural and social capital they are more able to play the system effectively:

  • they can make a better impression with the head teacher at open day.
  • they are more likely to make private appointments to discuss school choice.
  • they are more likely to appeal if they are not successful in their application.
  • In some cases they are more likely to actually know staff at the school.
  • They have more time and money to research and visit schools.

They also have more money which can help with:

  • moving into the catchment areas of the best schools.
  • Extra tuition to get their children into grammar schools.
  • Paying for transport or driving their children to schools which may be several miles away.

In contrast working class parents were more likely to want their children to go to local schools because then they didn’t have to make long and dangerous journeys (which maybe expensive) and they had access to their local community which was a support network.

In Bourdieu’s terms both middle class and working class parents made school choices based on their habitus, or their different lived experiences. And this meant the middle classes having free choice over a wide area, and the working classes simply choosing to stay local, which effectively meant no real choice at all!

Signposting

This material is relevant to the sociology of education topic, it is especially relevant to demonstrating how social and cultural capital give the middle classes an advantage in education.

Sources

(1) Ball, Bowe and Gewirtz (1994) Parents, privilege and the education market‐place

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Speech patterns and educational achievement

restricted and elaborated speech codes explain social class differences in achievement.

Speech and language are important aspects of communication and a child’s ability to learn is related to their ability to communicate effectively with adults and other children.

A child with more developed speech and language skills can learn faster than those with less developed skills, and thus will have better educational achievement.

Moreover a child’s ability at language (in English Language key stage tests, for example) is in fact a measure of their level of educational achievement, so in one respect, a child’s ability to communicate (at least in formal tests) is the same as their level of educational attainment!

This post summarises and evaluates Basil Bernstein’s work on speech patterns.

Speech patterns

Basil Bernstein (1) developed the theory that there are two different types of speech patterns, or speech codes: the restricted code and the elaborated code, the later having a wider vocabulary and more complex grammatical structures than the former.

He theorised that the working classes were largely limited to speaking in the restricted code, while the middle classes used both the elaborate and restricted codes, and that the limited use of the restricted code by working class children explained their relative underachievement in education compared to middle class children.

A comparison of the restricted and elaborated speech code

The restricted speech code

Bernstein stated that restricted speech codes are characterised by ‘short, grammatically simple, often unfinished sentences’.

This code has limited use of adjectives or adverbs and meanings are often conveyed by gesture and voice intonation.

The restricted code tends to operate in terms of particularistic meanings – it is usually linked to a specific context and utterances only make sense to people in that immediate context.

It is a sort of short hand between close friends or partners that have a shared understanding of a social situation such that there is no need to spell out meanings in any great detail.

The elaborated speech code

Elaborated speech code has a wider vocabulary and uses more complex grammatical structures than the restricted code.

It provides more in-depth explanations of meanings than the restricted speech code does and thus operates in terms of universalistic meanings: listeners do not need to be embedded in a specific context to fully understand what is being communicated.

To illustrate the difference between the two speech codes consider a cartoon strip of four pictures:

  1. Some boys playing football
  2. The ball breaking a window
  3. A woman looking out of the window and a man shaking his fist
  4. The boys running away.

A middle class child speaking the elaborated code would be able to describe the pictures in such a way that you wouldn’t need the pictures to fully understand the story, everything would be explained in detail. The explanation here would be free of the context, universal!

A working class child speaking the restricted code would refer to the pictures so that you would need to see the pictures to understand the story. The explanation here would remain dependent on the context.

Speech patterns and educational attainment

Formal education is conducted in the elaborated speech code, so working class kids are automatically at a disadvantage compared to middle class kids.

The elaborated code is necessary to make generalizations and to be able to understand higher order concepts.

Bernstein found that middle class children were much more able to classify things such as food into higher order categories such as vegetables, or meats, for example. Working class kids were more likely to classify them according to personal experiences such as ‘things mum cooks for me’.

Evaluations of Bernstein

His concept of social class is too vague. Sometimes he refers to the working class, others he talks about the lower working class. He also puts all non-manual workers into ‘middle class’ thus ignoring variation between the middle classes.

Bernstein also provides only limited examples of the two types of speech code. He does not make a convincing case that either of them actually exist in reality!

Labov (1973) criticized Bernstein for alluding to the elaborated code being superior, whereas in reality working class and middle class speech are just different, it is only the cultural dominance of the elaborated code in education that makes it seem superior.

Ebonics

The language of African Americans and White Americans can be very different, but it is historically Anglo-American English which is taught as standard English in schools.

Thus African American pupils in the USA have had a particularly negative experience of language in school, often experiencing school as a linguistically and culturally alienating environment.

Rather than their children feeling alienated, some activists adopted ‘Ebonics’ (the language of African Americans) as a medium of instruction, celebrating their linguistic heritage and pointing out differences with the ‘standard’ Anglo-American English.

Ebonics has highlighted the following:

  • it has indicated the extent to which language plays a role in educational success or failure.
  • It raised questions about the appropriateness of standard English in assessments.
  • It highlighted cultural tensions between several minority pupils in schools and the school curriculum.
Signposting

This topic is relevant to the sociology of education, especially the issue of social class differences in educational achievement.

Sources


(1) Bernstein (1971) Class, Codes and Control, Volume 1.

Barlett and Burton (2021): Introduction to Education Studies, fifth edition

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Feminist Perspectives on Socialisation

Oakley argued parents socialised passive children into traditional gender roles, but her work is criticised by the newer concept of gendering.

Ann Oakley developed sex-role theory to argue that there are distinct gender roles that come from culture rather than biological differences between men and women.

These roles are learned through childhood and continue on into adulthood and tend to maintain male dominance and female subservience.

Socialisation and Gender Roles

Socialisation shapes the behaviour of boys and girls from a young age, with boys and girls learning that there are certain activities gendered: some ways of acting are appropriate for boys and others for girls. Oakley (1974) argued here are four main processes involved.

  1. Manipulation
  2. Canalisation
  3. Verbal appellations
  4. Activities

Manipulation

Parents start to manipulate their children into gendered identities from the very first days of their lives. For example, girls tend to be ‘cooed to’ and held more tenderly than boys who are more likely to be ‘bounced on the knee’ (albeit gently when they are very young) and hence treated a little more roughly.

Mothers will also pay more attention to a girls appearance, especially bonding through doing her daughter’s hair, and girls will be dressed at least occasionally in more ‘feminine’ dresses while boys will be dressed in more ‘masculine’ clothes.

Canalisation

Gender differences are reinforced through canalisation which involves the direction of boys and girls towards gendered objects, which is most evidence in the different toys available for boys and girls, which tend to reflect stereotypical future male and female roles in society.

Boys will be directed towards toys which encourage manual labour such as Bob the Builder toy tool sets, toy cars and trains which emphasise speed and excitement and even overtly violent toys which encourage aggressive behaviour such as guns.

Girls are more likely to be directed towards more passive toys such as arts and crafts, flower arranging, and those encouraging the house-wife and motherhood role like toy domestic appliances, dolls and prams.

Gendered Activities

Boys are more likely to be encouraged to engage in adventurous or risky activities, such as camping, climbing, going to adventure playgrounds, and physical sports such as football and rugby.

Boys are also expected to be naughty more than girls, with some parents even think it is more acceptable for boys than for girls to spend time playing football (for example) rather than doing their homework.

Girls are expected to play more of a role doing domestic chores and maybe even caring for younger siblings, and are generally expected to be more passive and less adventurous than girls.

One manifestation of these differences might be that boys are allowed to travel further on their scooters or bikes when out with their parents compared to girls.

Verbal appellations

Boys are less likely to be told off for being ‘deviant’ than girls while girls are more likely to be cautioned against such behaviours and praised for being good and obedient.

Girls are more likely than boys to be called ‘pretty’ and ‘beautiful’ which may explain why girls are more likely to worry about their appearance in later life compared to boys.

Boys are more likely to called tough or strong: ‘oh my, what a strong boy you are, look how fast you can run’ and so on.

Criticisms of Oakley

Oakley’s work has been very influential within Feminist sociology but she has been criticised for overstating the passive nature of gender socialisation and sex-role theory entirely fails to explain the increasing diversity of gender identities.

Sex-role theory does not explain power differences between men and women. It does not explain WHY it is men who are socialised into dominant positions and women in subordinate positions.

Oakley’s theory is based on the notion that there are clearly differentiated roles for men and women in society, whereas postmodern feminism suggests there is more of a diversity of roles.

It is a very passive theory of socialisation. It assumes that girls and boys simply soak up gender norms from their parents, whereas in reality boys and girls play a more active role in their own socialisation, and there are plenty of children who actively resist being socialised into traditional gender norms.

Gendering

Gendering refers to an active process of individuals ‘doing gender’ and thus actively creating gender differences. It recognises that individuals play an active role in their own socialisation rather than it being a passive process in which their identities are simply determined by their social environment.

Individuals are influenced by their social environment but they actively engage and interact with it, and some choose to accept dominant gender norms and thus reproduce more traditional gender roles, but others choose to resist and challenge such norms creating a greater diversity of gender identities and changing the social environment.

Three levels of gendering

Harriet Bradley (2007) developed a theory of how gendering works, suggesting that that it operates at three different levels:

  1. The micro level involves individual decisions by men and women
  2. The meso level involves social institutions which rules about the expected behaviour of men and women: such as gendered school uniforms in school and sex-segregation in sports and prisons, for example.
  3. The macro or societal level. The micro and meso level come together to form structural differences in gender norms and roles which are very robust and operate across the whole of society.

Gendering at the these three levels operates to limit the behaviour of most ordinary men and women in day to day life. One example Bradley gives is that men cannot usually choose to wear dresses.

There is always the capacity for individuals to break away from gender norms (gendering is an active process after all), but we tend to see this most in people with power who are removed from the ordinary duties of daily life. Pop stars, for example, are among those most likely to break with traditional gender norms, because they have more freedom to experiment with diverse identities than ordinary people who have to hold down a regular job and look after their children.

Signposting

This material is primarily relevant to the Culture and Identity option which forms part of the first year A-level Sociology course (AQA specification)

Sources/ fiND OUT MORE

Anne Oakley (1974) The Sociology of Housework

Harriet Bradley (2007) Gender.

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Postmodernism and Popular Culture

Postmodern theories of popular culture emphasise a breakdown of the boundaries between culture, society, art and popular culture, substance over style and a decline of metanarratives

Postmodern theories of popular culture have become increasingly dominant in recent decades. According to Dominic Strinati this is because capitalism is now focused on consumerism, and postmodern theories are being popularised by a new ‘creative’ middle class seeking power, and people are listening to them because of the erosion of collective identities.

In this post I summarise Strinati’s analysis of the main features of postmodern analyses of popular culture, his theory of why postmodern theories are so popular (summarised above) and his evaluations of postmodernism, which are mainly critical.

Five main features of a postmodern analysis of popular culture

There are five main features of a postmodern analysis of popular culture:

  1. The distinction between culture and society disappears
  2. Style is emphasised over substance
  3. A breakdown in the distinction between art and popular culture
  4. confusion over time and space
  5. A belief in the decline of metanarratives

The distinction between culture and society disappears

Postmodern culture is a media saturated culture. Rather than describing our social reality the media become so dominant and all-encompassing that they create our reality

Computers are the main hardware behind this. Virtual realities become more important than face to face in-person interactions and the economy is more focused on the buying and selling of digital products rather than physical products.

Style over substance

Particular products become popular because they have a label which evokes an attractive lifestyle.

Societies develop a ‘designer ideology’ – surface qualities become more important than anything deeper.

Playfulness and jokes become more important than substance content and meaning. Qualities such as realism, authenticity, integrity, intellectual clarity and seriousness are undermined.

A breakdown of the distinction between art and popular culture

In Postmodernism, art is anything which can be turned into a meme.

As a result elements of what used to be thought of as high culture become incorporated into popular, postmodern culture, and the status of individual pieces of art are undermined.

There is no longer anything special about ‘art’ – in Postmodern culture art is subsumed into everyday life, it becomes part of it.

An example of this is Andy Warhole’s ’30 are better than one’ in which he produced a print of 30 copies of the Mona Lisa…

Andy Warhole: 30 Are Better than One.

Confusion over Time and Space

Following the ideas of David Harvey, instantaneous communications and rapid travel mean that people’s sense of time and space become confused.

Instantaneous global news reporting mean that people get information about events taking away thousands of miles away as soon as they happen, and this means people’s sense of space gets confused – in the course of one news show, multiple events which are distant all seems close to oneanother!

Postmodern culture also relates confuses people’s sense of time. Theme parks recreate the past and try to create the future, incorporating copies of historical architecture with futuristic installations. Many city scapes are also bewildering mixtures of historical buildings and cutting edge works of postmodern skyscrapers.

Postmodern films and T.V. shows are also more likely to jump around in time, not moving straightforwardly from beginning to end, and thus our sense of linear time is disrupted.

The recent Netflix series, Kaleidoscope, is a good example of this

Postmodern culture involves the decline of metanarratives

Following Lyotard, postmodern culture also means people have a declining faith in the validity of ‘big stories’ such as political ideologies or religions, or anything else which makes a claim to the universal truth.

Postmodern culture rejects the idea that there is any sense of progress in history, and this is shown in the use of the collage which mixes elements drawn from many different genres, cultures and historical periods.

The implicit idea of the collage is that one can mix and match anything together and that no one aspect of the collage is any more valid than or superior to any other aspect.

Reasons for the Emergence of Postmodernism

There are three main reasons for the emergence of postmodern theories:

  1. Capitalism taking a consumerist turn, away from heavy production
  2. The rise of new middle ‘creative’ classes
  3. The erosion of collective identities.

Capitalism turns to consumerism

In the early phases of capitalism, capital invested in industry which focussed on the production of basic material goods to meet people’s basic human needs.

In advanced industrial societies the majority of people can meet their basic needs with a relatively small proportion of their income, and populations have more money and time for leisure.

Thus capitalism turns its attention to investing in mechanisms that can persuade people to buy goods and services they don’t actually need but they consume simply for pleasure and enjoyment in their leisure time.

Hence why the media becomes central in postmodern culture, it is the primary avenue through which capitalists advertise unnecessary yet desirable leisure products to consumers.

The New ‘Creative’ Middle Classes

In postmodern culture a new middle class emerges consisting of people with jobs in design, marketing, advertising and a whole host of creative industries.

People in these jobs are concerned with persuading people about the importance of taste, and once people are persuaded, these ‘creatives’ become experts who are relied upon, with people usually accessing their expertise through the media.

Strinati also sees jobs such as teachers and therapists as being more important because these people are concerned (at least to some extent) with guiding people into particular lifestyles, and thus encourage people to take their lifestyle seriously.

Ultimately once people adopt a lifestyle that they believe is suited to them, as advised on and legitimated by experts, they are more likely to consume goods and services to enhance that lifestyle.

Postmodern culture is accelerated by this new middle classes’ quest for power.

The erosion of collective identities

In postmodern society the bases of traditional collective identities such as social class, community and the nation-state have been eroded.

People’s identities become more individualised, with popular culture and media being the only frame of reference some people have to construct their identities.

An Evaluation of Postmodern Theories of Culture:

As well as describing postmodern theories of culture, Strinati also evaluates them.

Postmodern theorists greatly exaggerate the extent to which media realities have taken over from grounded reality. There is little evidence that people can’t distinguish that characters in soap operas are real, for example. Also, many people still look to work and family as important sources of identity, and a lot of people switch off their media devices from time to time as well!

Postmodern theory exaggerates the ability of the media to shape what people consume. Those who do purchase products are discerning and often choose not too (preferring to save for a house, for example), and also at least the bottom 15% of society are too poor to take part in a high-consumption lifestyle.

Postmodern is itself a metanarrative. The popularity of postmodernism undermines the claim that metanarratives are in decline!

Strinati accepts David Harvey’s view that people’s perceptions of time and space have been altered in postmodern culture, but notes that not all people have the same capacity to share in time-space compression. Most people in the world cannot afford to travel on airplanes!

Strinati accepts that there has been something of a breakdown in the distinction between art and culture in postmodernity, but this mainly applies to the design and creative industries (the ‘new occupations’). Most people can distinguish between art and popular culture.

There is still hierarchy in postmodernism, postmodernist put their playful collage culture at the top, at least they try to!

Postmodernism has had a limited impact on popular culture , mainly in the spheres of architecture and advertising, but elsewhere very little impact.

For example in film, most films still have distinct, modernist style narratives, or strong, linear story lines with familiar themes and characters. There is really very little new about them compared to films from the 1950s!

Postmodern theories of culture: Conclusions

Strinati concludes that postmodernists claims that we now have a distinct postmodern popular culture in which all boundaries and hierarchies have disappeared is greatly exaggerated.

Ultimately, postmodern theories of culture are too limited to help us develop a sociology of popular culture.

Signposting and Relevance to A-level Sociology

This material has primarily been written for students studying the Culture and Identity option as part of A-level Sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Andy Warhole: 30 Are Better than one (fair use)

Education Policy and Gender

How have education policies addressed gender differences in society and school?

If we take a longer term historical perspective, education policies have tended to reflect the dominant gender norms within society, and for the most part have served to disadvantage girls in relation to boys.

It wasn’t until Feminism and the 1975 sex discrimination act that research and policy started to address what was then the underachievement of girls.

And since the 1988 Education and the National Curriculum there has been more concern with boys underachievement than girls.

Historical education policies are also very traditional in terms how they deal with gender: they focus exclusively on differences between males and females. There is a serious lack of research on the experiences of LGBTQ pupils in schools and no explicit policy initiatives to improve the experience of LGBTQ pupils.

This post focuses on the history of education policies designed to address gender differences in education from the early 19th century to the 1988 Education Act.

Education and Gender in the 19th and early 20th Centuries

In the 19th Century there was a distinct division between male and female gender roles in society, with men working and women being consigned largely to domestic roles. Women also had no political power as they were not allowed to vote.

In the middle classes women were encouraged to marry at which point they effectively became their husband’s rather than their father’s property, and women were not allowed to divorce.

Education policies for the middle classes reflected these gender power differences. Public and grammar schools were for boys only where boys learned the skills required for politics and/ or work.

Middle class girls were educated at home by governesses, and their education largely consisted of learning the skills to be a lady within society.

The Education Act 1870 made state education free to all pupils irrespective of gender, but the experience of education was gendered, different for males and females, for many years to come.

Even women getting the right to vote in 1918 didn’t do much to change the heavily gendered experience of education

The Tripartite System and Comprehensives

The 1944 Education Act introduced single sex grammar schools, and this introduced a gender divide which benefitted boys because there were more boys grammar schools. Boys thus needed lower 11 plus scores than girls to get into a grammar school.

Some secondary moderns were single sex, but not all, these were more likely to mixed.

The 1965 education act saw the abolition of single sex grammar and secondary modern schools and all pupils were educated in mixed sex comprehensive schools.

However the experience of education still remained very gendered – with girls and boys having different experiences – subjects were often determined by gender stereotypes with girls being pushed into needlework and boys into metalwork, for example!

Education policies designed to address differences in achievement by gender

1970s -80s Feminist inspired research into gender inequalities in schools

From the mid 1970s Feminists started to take an interest in the differential experiences of girls and boys in education, why girls were so much less likely to do hard science subjects and maths, and the underachievement of girls.

Whyte (1975) looked at gender stereotypes in the primary curriculum, finding that the representation of men and women tended to reinforce traditional gender roles.

Sharpe (1976) looked at gender sterotypes in secondary schools and how they encouraged girls to act in feminine ways and develop lower career aspirations.

Spender (1982) researched the marginal position of girls in classrooms, suggesting this reflected their marginal roles in society.

Curriculum Changes in the 1980s

The 1980s saw a few policy initiatives to improve girls underachievement and their low numbers in science subjects.

Girls Into Science (GIST) ran from 1979 to 1983 which investigated the reasons why so few girls were going into science and technology subjects and encouraged teachers to develop strategies to get more girls doing these subjects.

Genderwatch was an initiative which encouraged teachers to monitor gender differences in schools and develop anti discriminatory practices.

The problem with these policies were that while they may have worked for some middle class girls, they were very individualistic, offered very little in the way of real guidance and also provoked a male backlash.

The backlash was partly due to the myth of girls underachievement – despite their low take up of science and maths girls did better in English and Modern Languages at O-level and got better overall O-level Grades at A-C.

Gender and the 1988 Education Act

The 1988 Education Act was not concerned with any kind of equality of educational opportunity, just pure competition.

The publication of GCSE results showed gender differences in achievement more clearly than ever, and from the late 1980s it was clear that girls were outperforming boys in most subjects.

Since the late 1980s both boys and girls have improved in education, with girls generally improving faster than boys, hence the gender policy focus in the 1990s switched to helping boys improve.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the sociology of education topic.

Sources/ Find out More

This is a great historical post on boys, girls and science subjects in the 1970s and 1980s.

The increasing cost of Christmas

25% of people say they can’t afford the Christmas they want in 2022, double the number from 2021.

The cost of Christmas is up by around 20% in 2022, and almost 40% say the cost of Christmas makes the event too stressful, but despite these woes, 70% say that ‘cancelling Christmas is not an option’.

These are some findings from a recent YouGov survey and in this post I consider how all of this might be relevant to sociology!

How much does the average person spend on Christmas…?

The average person in Britain plans to spend £642 on Christmas in 2022, which is down only slightly on 2021 when the average person spent £670. (These are Mean, not median averages).

However given inflation, people will be getting a lot less for their money this year even though the reduction in raw expenditure isn’t that significant!. According to The Guardian the cost of our various Christmas expenditures – mainly presents, food and, for some, travel have risen by more than 20% this year compared to 2021….

This basically means everyone’s going to be having one less slice of turkey, maybe a couple of less potatoes, and, worst of all, fewer pigs in blankets (yes, things really are THAT bad!)

25% of people can’t afford the Christmas they want

Given that the cost of Christmas has risen sharply it’s not surprising that the number of people saying they cannot afford the Christmas they want has doubled to 25%.

This proportion sounds about right based on the poverty stats: about 20% of the UK population are in relative poverty and I imagine most of the people responding positively to that question are going to come from this 20%.

Of course not all of them will, several people on low incomes budget for Christmas by saving all year round, and some of those responses will be more middle-income families having to cut down on their usual more affluent Christmas.

I do find it interesting that 75% are happy enough with their finances to be able to afford the Christmas they want, suggesting that people aren’t that sucked into the consumerist hype – the average figure of £650 seems to be adequate.

Maybe that’s a fail for the Christmas hype-machine, further suggesting that people aren’t as passive as you might think?!?

40% say Christmas is too Stressful

This is depressing – a significant minority of the population find the event too stressful because of the money…

This means that maybe that the veneer of Christmas is something of a lie, while underneath at the micro-level there’s a lot of suffering going on.

Value Consensus around Christmas?

Besides the increasing cost of Christmas and the increasing numbers of people feeling stressed about it and going into debt to fund it, nearly 70% of Britons say that ‘cancelling Christmas is not an option’

And it’s very rare these days that you get that many people to agree on anything, and so celebrating Christmas is maybe one of the few points of value consensus that we have.

Or is this value consensus at the level of society? Christmas is one of the few periods of the year where we all get to retreat from the world of work and society and spend some time with our families, so maybe here Britain is saying ‘we value being able to retreat to our private households’, so one could interpret this as being anti-social.

Signposting

This is really just a bit of annual Christmas fun with statistics!

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Culture, Class and Distinction

Recent sociological research criticises Bourdieu’s theory that social classes are divided by taste

Recent sociological analysis by Bennet et al (2009) analysed the extent to which cultural tastes vary by factors such as social class, age, gender and ethnicity.

They found that while social class explained 48% of the variation in tastes, gender and age were also important, but not so much ethnicity.

There was also evidence of a lot of cultural omnivores who had tastes that spread across the main class, gender and age ‘divisions’ and also a number of taste subcultures.

Overall they concluded that Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus in which tastes vary mainly by social class does not apply to society as whole, but there is a signifiant division between elite cultural tastes (and cultural capital) and everyone else.

Multivariate Analysis on social divisions by taste…

The National Centre for Social Research conducted survey research in 2004/5 to find out more about cultural divisions in the United Kingdom and test Bourdieu’s theories about social class and cultural capital.

The research consisted of questionnaires sent to a random sample of 1564 respondents, with the questions having been designed with the help of focus groups. An additional 224 respondents from ethnic minority backgrounds were also sampled. 44 respondents were then selected for interviews to collect more in-depth data.

They collected data on which activities people participated in and the frequency of their participation and then analysed that data using multiple correspondence analysis to see which tastes and cultural practices were correlated with each other.

The results were analysed and findings published in Tony Bennet et al (2009)

Variations in Culture by social class, gender and age

Bennet et al wanted to examine whether there really were distinctive class cultures as Bourdieu had suggested.

Their theoretical starting point (their hypothesis if you like) was that other factors such as gender and ethnicity would have more of an impact on cultural divisions and that divisions would not be as clear cut because of the impact of globalisation. Globalisation, they thought, has led to a transnational culture which undermines national conceptions of social class.

Bennet et al also examined whether the tastes of individuals were connected across different cultural fields such as art, music, media and sport.

Bennet et al found that there were four quantifiably distinct axis of taste – people ranked along the same axis for art and literature tended to have the the same tastes in other areas such as television. Altogether these four axis accounted for 82% of the variation in tastes.

Variations in cultural tastes by Social Class

Axis one distinguished groups in terms of levels of participation in ‘high culture’, which accounted for 48% of the distinctions between taste groups.

On one side of this axis were those who who went to the opera and museums frequently, preferred eating at French restaurants and disliked fish and chip restaurants, had lots of books at home appreciated impressionist art

Those on the other side of axis one liked fish and chip restaurants, Western films and snooker, had no books at home and never went to museums or the opera.

Does liking fish and chips mean you’re working class?

The taste-divisions above were highly correlated with social class, especially with levels of education, and on the basis of the above Bennet et al actually found there were three classes depending on the frequency with which they engaged with activities such as those listed above:

  • the working class
  • the intermediate class
  • the professional-executive class.

Variations in taste by age

Axis 2 revealed that there were taste differences by age.

Young people expressed a preference for more commercial forms of culture: they were were more likely to enjoy horror, science fiction and fantasy films, and preferred going to nightclubs.

Older people showed a preference for more traditional forms of culture: they preferred westerns, costume dramas, musicals, cartoons and documentaries and were more likely to visit stately homes and art galleries.

Variations in taste by Gender

Axis three found that there were variations in taste by gender:

Females expressed a preference for self-help books, soap operas, romantic fiction and television dramas while male preferences included sport and westerns.

Cultural Omnivores

The final axis focused on the extent to which people engaged in a wide range of cultural activities compared to a narrow range.

Here Bennet et al found that more highly educated and younger people were more likely to be cultural omnivores – picking and choosing from a range of ‘high’ and ‘popular’ cultural products.

They found that higher education lecturers and people who worked in the media were especially omnivorous.

Support for Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory

Bennet et al’s findings found that there was some support for the existence of a small cultural elite culture which valued high cultural practices such as the opera, classical art and going to the theatre and that knowledge of such tastes did confer social capital.

There are certain tastes which professionals look down on – such as watching lots of T.V, especially reality T.V. shows and reading tabloid newspapers, and they don’t like country and western music.

These cultural distinctions may form the basis of a class divide along social class lines, but it is nowhere near as significant at a societal level as Bourdieu suggested.

Criticisms of Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory

Bennet el al’s findings demonstrated that cultural tastes were not as influenced by social background as Bourdieu had theorised. There was a lot more variety in tastes across social class lines. There were enough people from working class backgrounds enjoyed museums and enough people from professional backgrounds liked football (for example) to show that cultural tastes were not ‘determined by social class background’ .

However social class did still have an influence on cultural tastes, but it acted more like a forcefield which steered people towards particular tastes, but within limits and not in a deterministic way.

There was little that was distinctive to working class culture. And one of the things the middle class valued was an openness to experiment with new cultural pursuits meaning the middle classes were increasingly adopting aspects of traditionally working class cultural pursuits. Football is a great example of this.

All of the above means that cultural divisions along class lines are not significant enough for there to be a distinctive habitus.

Bennet et al also found that there were significant variations in cultural practices along the lines of age and gender, but not by ethnicity.

Taste subcultures

Bennet et al argued that ‘taste subcultures’ were more important than social class

Familiarity with national cultures – belonging to a national culture is more important than social class for generating a sense of belonging (kids TV shows) and lack of familiarity with a national culture can prove a barrier

Subcultures are important for small groups but only small groups – draws on Thornton – but rave culture only gives status during the weekend.

emotional cultural capital is an additional form of cultrual capital – the ability to empathsis with others based on shared cultural experience.

Relevance to A-level Sociology

The material above is most relevant to the culture and identity topic, usually taught as part of the first year of A-level sociology.

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Sources

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Global Population at 8 Billion People

the world population hit 8 billion on 15th November 2022, but the growth rate is slowing and the UN doesn’t present this as too much of a problem!

The global population hit 8 billion people on 15th November 2022, and is projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100, according to the latest United Nation’s World Population Prospects 2022.

While landmark 8 billion figure may sound alarming, the rate of global population growth is actually slowing, and is currently only at 1%.

Global Population Growth by Region

Population growth varies by region.

Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Eastern Asia are the two regions of the world which will see relatively high population growth between now and 2050, but most other regions will see either only relatively limited population growth or population decline.

Regions with high population growth rates still have relatively high fertility rates – as high as 3 to 4 per woman in some countries, but this is considerably lower than was the case in past decades and is falling in the majority of countries.

Conversely 61 countries are predicted to have lower populations in 2050 than they currently have now, and so are in population decline.

Future Population growth is based on past growth

Interestingly the report notes that all of the population growth to 2050 is already ‘locked in’, assuming development continues at a steady pace and there are no unforeseen catastrophic global events.

What this means is that future growth is based mainly around current young populations living longer, which seems to be a kind of last-gasp for the demographic transition.

There is no reason to expect population growth to carry on growing significantly after 2100 because the average fertility rate is now 2.1 per woman, which is just over replacement rate and increases in life expectancy are slowing.

In other words, there is no real need to panic, and the discourse around the 8 billion mark seems to suggest that while population growth will make other sustainable development goals harder to achieved, we are unlikely to see a mind of Malthusian meltdown.

Population Growth and other Sustainable Development Goals

The report suggests that there is little need to focus attention on reducing fertility rates in most countries, because these have been falling rapidly in recent years, rather the international development community should focus its attention on poverty alleviation and education of the young.

Ageing Populations a future problem?

Another thing the report highlights is that the global dependency ratio is going to increase going forwards and so there will be fewer people to care for the old.

The share of the global population over 65 is going to increase from 10% today to 16% in 2050, and the report suggests that countries which are projected to have higher proportions of old people need to put in place policy measures such as adequate health care and social security measures to accomodate for such changes.

The impact of Migration

The report notes that for high income countries net migration had more of an impact on population than net gains from the number of births (once deaths have been taken into account).

Between 2020 and 2022 high income countries experienced net migration of 80 million and 66.2 million people added by net births.

However, it’s worth noting that we are taking about relatively small figures for immigration – 80 million spread over 20 years is only 20 million a year spread over all high income countries.

And immigration of young and working age populations could help solve the challenges rich countries face from ageing populations, so happy days.

Signposting and Relevance to A-Level Sociology

This report is most relevant to the Global Development and Globalisation module, and it seems to suggest that the Malthusian view of population growth is simply no longer relevant today.

Sources

United Nations: World Population Prospects 2022.

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Raymond Williams

Williams was a neo-marxist cultural theorist who argued that while economic structure and class position do influence culture, the economic base did not determine culture, and that people weren’t just passively subsumed by ruling class ideology.

Raymond Williams is one of the most influential cultural theorists of the modern era. He developed theories of culture from a broadly Marxist perspective, although he was critical of many aspects of traditional Marxism.

For the purposes of A-level sociology Williams is classified as a Neo-Marxist.

Culture and Society

In Culture and Society (1961) Williams criticised the traditional Marxist conception of economic base and superstructure and the relationship between them.

Williams argued that Marx and Engels mistakenly saw economic infrastructure as determining the superstructure (or culture), whereas in reality culture is much more complex and diverse and can change significantly even if the economic base remains the same.

Williams argued that a new Marxist theory of culture needed to take account of the relative autonomy of the superstructure from the economic base, seeing the economic base as ‘the guiding string on which a culture is woven’ rather than something which determined it in a fixed and predictable way.

Cultures were not the automatic product of economic structures, people respond to their class positions consciously and create their cultures actively, thus culture is much more dynamic than Marx and Engels believed was the case.

Williams also criticised Marxist cultural theorists such John Berger for having too narrow a focus purely on the arts. He argued that contemporary marxism should focus on the interdependence of all aspects of social reality and thus examine culture more broadly, treating culture as a ‘way of life’ rather than just focussing on art and literature.

Working class culture and bourgeoise culture

The working classes did not develop much art and literature during the industrial revolution but they did develop their own distinctive institutions and lifestyles.

Williams argued that the main basis for working class culture was a commitment to collective action because the working classes realised that they could not progress in life as individuals because the life chances of individuals were too restricted throughout the 19th century.

It follows that the key working class institutions which developed historically were trades unions, co-operatives and also the labour party which focussed on collective action for change.

Williams saw bourgeoise culture as more individualistic – the key defining aspect here being that members of the bourgeoisie sort success as individuals, in contrast to the collectivist culture of the working classes.

However Williams also argued that there was not a hard and fast dividing line between working class and bourgeois culture

Challenging the Dominance Ideology

There may well be a dominant ideology in a culture, but it also likely that there will be challenges to this dominant ideology.

Challenging ideologies can be either residual or emergent and either alternative or oppositional…

  • residual ideologies – are those of a declining culture, but which is still important in a society
  • emergent ideologies – the ideas of new social groups outside of the ruling class.

Residual and emergent ideologies can either be alternative or opposition

  • oppositional ideologies oppose the dominant ideology and may challenge it overtly.
  • alternative ideologies co-exist with the dominant ideology without challenging it

Hence for Williams the dominant ideology doesn’t necessarily impose itself on people and create a false consciousness.

In fact it is likely that several people in a culture will develop cultures of their own that challenge or overlap with the dominant ideology.

Evaluations of Williams

Williams work is an improvement over traditional Marxist theories of culture because it is less deterministic and recognises the active role individual humans play in creating their own cultures.

Postmodern theorists criticise Williams arguing that there is no such thing as working class culture today, and especially not a collectivist working class culture.

SignPosting and Relevance to A-Level Sociology

This material should be relevant to students studying the Culture and Identity option within the AQA specification.

Sources

Sources/ Find out More

Adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives, edition 8.

Raymond Williams: Wikipedia entry.

John Berger

John Berger was a marxist cultural thinker who argued that art reflects ruling class ideology.

John Berger was an artist, novelist, cultural thinker and art critic who developed a Marxist inspired theory of art.

His best known work is ‘Ways of Seeing’ (1972) in which he explored the ‘hidden ideologies’ in historical works of art.

Berger argued that art reflects the political and economic system in which it was produced and that “the art of any period tends to serve the ideological interests of the ruling class” (1)

Berger is an extremely influential Marxist critique of the arts who is also credited with introducing the concept of the Male Gaze to visual analysis.

John Berger in 2009

Berger: Art and Ruling Class Ideology

Oil painting was the dominant medium for painters between 1500 to 1900.

The ruling classes were more able to impose their view of the world through art simply because oil paintings were expensive and they had the money to commission them.

Berger argued that oil paintings had unique properties that made them especially suitable for portraying ruling class ideology during the Renaissance years and into modernity.

These were the years of emergence of Capitalism when acquiring private property and earning money through trade were becoming increasingly central to the world-view of the ruling class, and most oil paintings during 1500-1900 were concerned with depicting the accumulation of such wealth and property, reflecting the interests of the ruling classes during that period.

Oil paints were particularly suited to making what they depicted seem tangible, or ‘real’ because of the texture, depth and lustre of the medium.

The depiction of wealth in oil paintings changed as modernity developed.

Oil paintings had always portrayed items of value, but in early periods these items were usually linked to the glorifying God. However, as capitalism developed paintings focussed increasingly on portraying the wealth and power of the ruling class, effectively suggesting that money was more important than religion.

Another change was that older works portrayed wealth as a symbol of a fixed social or divine order, reflecting the traditional nature of religious power structures, while oil paintings during modernity portrayed wealth as something more dynamic and linked to the successes of the individuals who had acquired it.

Interestingly many of the works commissioned by the wealthy elites during modernity were of poor quality, or ‘hack work’ as Berger calls it.

This was because it was more important to the elites to have their art showing off their wealth in the way that they wanted rather than for them to have high quality works.

In short there were many more mediocre artists prepared to ‘paint to demand’ than there were excellent artists prepared to do so! So even here the market influences the quality of work that is produced.

The Portrayal of the Ruling Class in Art

Landscape paintings portrayed the property of the rich, and sometimes the property owners insisted on being in the landscapes themselves, to demonstrate that it was them who owned the land.

Berger uses the example of Mr and Mrs Andrews by Gainsborough (circa 1748 to 9). In this landscape painting the husband and wife are in the foreground and Berger argues that their ‘proprietary attitude to what surrounds them is visible in their stance and their expression’.

Mr and Mrs Andrews by Gainsborough

Other still-life paintings during modernity portrayed expensive furnishings in houses and tables laden with exotic foods as symbols of wealth. Animals were also featured, but not animals in the wild, rather domesticated livestock with a rare pedigree, so that their monetary value was clear.

The Portrayal of the Lower classes in Art

Paintings representing the lower classes were also popular among the ruling classes.

A common theme in portrayals of the lower classes was that of the common people being drunk and debauched in taverns which suggested they were immoral, feckless and lazy.

Such portrayals served to foster a kind of ‘myth of meritocracy’ – the idea that the poor were to blame for their own poverty because they preferred to drink and party rather than to work hard, while it was the hardworking who prospered and thus deserved their wealth.

And of course it was the ruling classes who saw themselves as hard working and deserving the wealth displayed in their own paintings of themselves.

NB – it’s worth noting the following difference:

  • the ruling classes controlled what went into the paintings of themselves that they commissioned.
  • the working classes had no control over this – artists drew them without any input from them.

Some artists break free of Ruling Class Ideology

While most works of art reflect ruling class ideology, Berger accepts that some artists break free from such ideological constraints.

One example of someone who did this is the artist Rembrandt.

Berger points to an early painting of Rembrandts: Self-Portrait with Saskia (circa 1635) in which Rembrandt is painting within ‘ruling class ideology’ – the painting depicts himself showing off his wife as a form of property, a symbol of this own wealth and success.

However, 30 years later when he produces ‘self-portrait of an old man’ (circa 1664) in this painting he just sitting on his own in a sombre and reflective mood with no symbols of wealth depicted.

In Berger’s interpretation of Rembrandt’s journey he has undergone a struggle over the course of his life to throw off the shackles of ruling class ideology and succeeded in producing a piece of art that is more authentic.

Evaluation of Berger’s theory of art

John Berger’s work has been extremely influential, with Ways of Seeing being described as ‘revolutionary‘.

Berger’s work has become a standard edition to cultural studies and history of art courses the world over and he is responsible for encouraging students and anyone else who reads his work to think critically about the role of power and money in influencing art and culture.

Even if you you do not entirely agree with Berger’s analysis, at the very least you should appreciate the fact that he is encouraging us to ask critical questions about the processes which lie behind the production of art.

It is possible that his analysis isn’t that systematic and thus alternative interpretations maybe just as valid. For example do the expressions of the Andrews really demonstrate that they own the land in the background…? Does Rembrandt’s old man portrait really show that he’s been through a life-time of personal struggle to break free from ruling class ideology, or is he just showing that he’s ‘old and sad’…?

Even though Berger devoted some time to how women are portrayed as being owned and controlled by men in Ways of Seeing he has been criticised for not giving female analysts more of a central role in discussing this.

Sources/ find out more

Brtannica: John Berger

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

John Beger image.

Mr and Mrs Andrews

Signposting

This material is primarily relevant to those studying the Culture and Identity option within A-level Sociology.

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