Social Class and Identity

To what extent do people of different social class backgrounds identify with their objective social class position and feel as if they share anything in common with people of the same class?

According to the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) there are seven objective social classes in Britain today, based on the amount of mainly economic but also cultural and social capital people have, which crucially has accumulated over time and is passed down the generations.

An individual’s objective class position impacts their life-chances but while most people can recognise the existence of social class and may recognise the class they are, most people today DO NOT consciously identify with that class position: they are more likely to be ambivalent about their own social class, and are unlikely to feel any sense of shared identity with those from the same objective class background.

This is especially true for those in the middle of the social class scale: there is widespread uncertainty around working and middle class identities, but the Elite class are more likely to see themselves as ‘elite’ and the precariat more likely to recognise that they have been labelled as such by wider society, but seek to distance themselves from that label.

Only 32% identify with a social class and the proportion rises the higher up the social class ladder you go, which is a sort of inversion of class consciousness.

  • 50% of the elite identify as elite.
  • 25% of the precariat identify as working class.

Of those who do did identify:

  • 25% of people identify as upper middle class
  • 41% identify as Middle Working Class
  • 62% identify as Working Class.

So people shy away from identifying as middle class: People are most likely to identify as being ‘somewhere in the middle’ irrespective of where they fall in the objective class structure.

This post with take a brief look at the history of social class identification in Britain before exploring social class identities in contemporary British society, looking at ‘elite’ identity, working and middle class identities, and the Pecariat.

A Brief History of Class identification in Britain

Historians have shown that class awareness has a long history in Britain. Compared to other nations it is the persistence of working class identities that stands out.

In Britain the early onset of capitalist agriculture in the sixteenth century produced a large group of wage-earning farmers who also moved into part-time handicrafts to supplement their incomes.

Thus even before the industrial revolution there were a lot of independent skilled and unskilled trades people in Britain, and this cross fertilised with the socialist and labour movements in the 19th century, producing a strong shared identity.

In contrast to this was the British upper class which was not shattered through revolution as was the case in France. The British upper classes pursed a form of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ which was embedded in industrialism and colonialism and they prospered through innovation and free-trade enterprise.

The expanding middle class of businessmen, managers and white collar workers existed in an uncertain position in the middle of the aloof upper classes and proud working classes, and they were in a sort of mediating position between the two.

The franchise being extended in 1832, 1867 and 1885 to gradually incorporate more of the middle classes did something to distinguish the middle classes from the working classes who still could not vote.

Gradually throughout the 19th century the middle classes engaged in conspicuous consumption to differentiate themselves from the working classes below them, but their position remained somewhat uncertain and insecure.

During the 19th century the class position of women was even more ambiguous than that of men. Women’s occupations consisted of mainly domestic work (such as cleaning) for upper-middle class and upper class families, nursing and teaching. They thus occupied either working class positions in closer contact with higher classes compared to men, or lower-middle class positions which didn’t command the same status as men.

For much of the 20th century there was a preoccupation with who was working class and who was middle class, further fuelled by the changing nature of work during that period.

The work of George Orwell is a good indication of the fascination and complexities surrounding understanding class in the early 20th century.

Elite class identity

Britain’s ordinary class elite is the top 6% of society who have the highest levels of economic, cultural and social capital. They are most likely to own their own homes (a crucial source of wealth) and be in high income professional occupations such as law, finance and journalism.

Britain’s ordinary class elite are most likely to positively identify as ‘elite’, although they also tend to ‘play down’ how important their enormous amounts of economic, social and cultural capital have been in providing them with better life chances, preferring to delude themselves that their success is purely down to their hard work and talent.

While Britain’s ordinary class elite makes up only 6% of the population, they made up 25% of the British Class Survey sample. They were queuing up to do this in droves, and Savage (2015) suggests this is because the survey was a self-legitimating activity for them: it was a chance to get quantitative/ scientific/ objective confirmation that they were at the top of British society.

And this class were the most likely to share their class status to social media, suggesting again positive identification with and a sense of pride in their social class status. However, they usually did this with a sense of irony or humour, in an attempt to distract from the bragging aspect.

The elite don’t really identify with everyone from the same class: they tend to identify more with people in similar occupations and in their local neighbourhoods: so those with similar value properties, they also tended to stress that they had some friends outside of the elite too to demonstrate that they weren’t living in an isolated social class bubble.

It is very important to recognise that NOT actively recognising that their elite status is important is the primary means whereby this class maintain their dominance. They benefit from high levels of cultural, economic and social capital, but in playing down the existence of these advantages, they help to keep such advantages hidden, but the GBCS revealed just how obvious such advantages were in keeping this class and their children at the top of British society.

Working and Middle Class Identities

The traditional view of class is that people would identify with their objective class position. This was the view of THOMPSON: the working classes would unite in tight knit working class communities and come together around collective political campaigns for labour interests. However, in the 21st century there is a more muted, individualised and complex set of class identifications.

The GBSC found that people were ambivalent about class, preferring to say that they straddle middle class and working class boundaries.

Class is not important as a badge for most people, but its mention does prompt emotional reactions, especially negative ones. People wanted to avoid the labels of CHAV or as someone who has ‘middle class problems’.

People also felt a sense of shame if they were from a lower social class background but had not climbed the class ladder.

People shy away from identifying as middle class. They were most likely to identify as being ‘somewhere in the middle’ irrespective of where they fall in the objective class structure.

Identity among the Precariat

The Precariat were well aware of the negative labels attached to them by the mainstream media and the widespread dislike of them by many in mainstream society.

They were the most reluctant to take part in the GBSC, probably because they had little to gain from doing it: they didn’t want to take part in what was effectively ritual humiliation the end result of which was receiving a formal label which placed them at the bottom of the social class scale.

In terms of identity, the Precariat didn’t positively identify as Precariat, and had no interest in shouting about their low social status (unlike many members of the elite) and they were reluctant to even talk about social class, preferring instead to identify in other ways, such as with other members of their local community or through using other markers such as gender.

Sources

Savage, M (2015) Social Class in the Twenty First Century.

Why is Phillip Schofield Trending News…?

The scandal surrounding Phillip’s Schofield departure from This Morning has eclipsed many other news items over the past week.

The scandal is that several years ago Schofield had an affair with man 30 years his junior while at This Morning who he’d initially met when the younger man was just 15 years old, and then he had lied to This Morning bosses and everyone else about having had the affair when questioned.

So he held his hands up last week and quit, not only This Morning, but he says his TV career is now over.

This whole event has been headline news for a week. It’s a very popular news item, according the the BBC’s most read item list Philip Schofield’s career ending is more interesting than the government potentially losing its legal battle over breaching covid rules, for example.

The above screen capture was taken on Friday 3rd June, the same day Schofield did a brief interview with the BBC in which he was questioned about his relationship with the young man, it was emotional, but content thin.

Interestingly around the same time the BBC also did a similar style interview with the scumbag Andrew Tate, in which he is challeneged about his misogynist views, but that is nowhere in trending.

It seems people are much more interested in trivia compared to critical issues of power and politics.

Why is Schofield Trending?

I think probably the pluralist view is the most applicable here: Schofield has been a presenter on national British T.V. for decades, many people grew up with him, and here he is having his career ending early.

And it’s a tragic end in real life to a great career, brought down by one mistaken relationship and one little white lie, it’s a real tragedy, a real life drama.

People love this kind of thing, this is just pure demand for drama and entertainment and so the media provides.

I don’t think we can find any support here for the Marxist theories of the media which argue this is all about media manipulation of content and agenda setting to keep people stupid, this event just happened too quickly for that to be the case.

Of course maybe the public have been trained to need this kind of content over the longer term, so this could be a result of a long term drip-drip effect of trivia in the mainstream media, which may offer some support for Marxist theories, but this is very difficult to prove empirically!

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Two ways globalisation has influenced religion’s capacity to change society

The following 10 mark outline and explain question above came up in the AQA’s November 2021 Sociology 7192/2 topics paper, as part of the beliefs in society section.

Outline and explain two ways that globalisation may have influenced the way in which religion acts as a force for change (10)

Probably the safest way to approach this question is to consider one way in which globalisation has reduced the capacity of religion to act as a force for social change and another it has increased it.

The challenge is going to be to keep the question tightly focussed on two ways, and drawing out the links, rather than drifting into discussing several ways in general.

This post on the impact of globalisation on religion more generally would be a good source to draw on for this question.

Globalisation and religion for social change

  • One aspect of globalisation is the increased use of the internet for global communications which makes it easier for people to access information about religion.
  • This means it is easier for fundamentalist groups to gain access to a wide audience via setting up their own websites and through social media, increasing their global reach, meaning that groups such as ISIS have managed to radicalise individuals in countries thousands of miles away from their main base such as England.
  • Fundamentalism may appeal to people living in postmodern society as there is more anomie, and the simple messages which appeal to traditional values offer a sense of certainty and identity to people who may feel lost and without purpose.
  • In some cases radicalised individuals have travelled to countries like Syria in order to become part of fundamentalist movements.
  • The internet has also made it easier for fundamentalist groups to gain funding through cryptocurrency, meaning it is harder for governments to cut off funding for them, giving them more power.
  • Such groups can make use of encrypted apps such as Telegram to discuss strategy and recruit members making it more difficult for governments to prevent terrorist attacks, and this is such a serious matter there is currently an online privacy bill going through parliament that may make Whatsapp illegal in the UK.
  • Another indicator of how serious a threat to social change fundamentalism may be is the PREVENT agenda in schools, designed to protect British Values from radicalisation.

Globalisation undermining religion and social change

  • one aspect of globalisation is increasing amounts of cultural diversity as ideas and people migrate from country to country.
  • This means in the UK for example that we now have several religions rather than one.
  • This undermines the capacity of the Church of England to claim that it has a monopoly on the truth and thus undermines its ability to compel people to act in its name.
  • We saw this in the attitude of religion during the King’s Coronation, with all of the religious aspects looking outdated and a little bit silly which was broadcast to a global audience via the media.
  • State religion now seems like something that is for entertainment and a choice rather than something with the power to change society.
  • When there are many religions competing with each other it becomes more obvious that there are religious truths rather than one truth and the State increasingly focuses on how to create a society in which multiple religions can get along without conflicting rather than the state allying with one religion as a powerful source for social change.
Signposting and Sources

Mark Scheme for AQA Sociology Paper 2 November 2021.

Analyse two ways in which family diversity has been influenced by government policies

This question came up in the AQA’s November 2021 7192/2 topics paper, in the families and households section.

This post includes some advice on how to interpret the item and answer the question.

Applying material from Item C, analyse two ways in which family diversity in the
UK has been influenced by government policies (10)

item for AQA' 10 mark question A-level sociology

Using the item…

The item in this case is very short and also a bit tricky, directing you to ‘aspects of diversity’ rather than policies.

TWO types of increasing diversity…..

  • more divorced families….
  • more same sex couples.

The item then refers to government policies more generally.

So what this seems to be directing you to do is to talk about a range of policies in relation to increasing divorce and the increase in same sex couples.

As with any question it’s probably a good idea to not have too much overlap, so try to apply different policies to both types of diversity.

Policies relating to increasing divorce

  • The divorce act of 1969 led to a rapid increase in divorce, changing the grounds (you should include details of this). However divorce had been increasing before the act and continued to increase after the act so clearly there were social changes contributing rather than just the policy.
  • The 1984 divorce act made divorce possible after a shorter period of marriage, there was an immediate spike in that year, so clearly this made a difference.
  • Benefits for single parents make it easier for women to get divorced in families with children so they are not as financially dependent on men, apply terms such as breadwinner/ role/ carer role and Feminism.
  • The equal pay act of 1975 – women equal pay to men, more financial independence, same logic as above.
  • This is crying out to be evaluated… divorce has been going down for 20 years, one of the reasons is immigration (still a policy), immigrants have lower divorce rates.
  • Maternity and paternity pay may have helped ease (lower) the divorce rate as these take pressure off young families.
  • Final evaluation – it’s probably more about social changes and social policy changes reflect that!

Polices relating to an increase in same sex couples

  • The civil partnerships act 2004 made it legal for same sex couples to get a civil partnership, same basis as marriage, reduced stigma, increases number of formally partnered couples.
  • Same sex marriage act 2013 enabled same sex couples to get married, further reducing stigma.
  • Analysis point: possibly the number hasn’t increased, just the amount of openly gay couples.
  • Adoption Act (2004) made it legal for same sex couples to adopt children on same basis as opposite sex couples, increase in same sex families.
Signposting and related posts

For more information on how to answer exam questions please see my exams and essay writing advice page.

AQA mark scheme for this November 2021 paper.

Gender inequality at work

A lot of research evidence suggests tech companies and academia are biased against women.

There are number of quantitative and qualitative research studies which show that recruitment and employment practices are biased against women, despite the fact that employers claim to be meritocratic.

In this post I focus on gender bias in tech companies and academia.

Sexism in tech companies

The tech industry is the peak of gender bias in employment, with only 25% of tech company founders saying they weren’t interested in diversity or work-life balance at all, which severely disadvantages women because they are more likely to be have higher loads of domestic responsibilities.

An analysis of 248 performance reviews from a variety of tech companies found that women are a lot more likely to receive negative personality criticism than men.

Women were called bossy, abrasive, strident, aggressive, emotional and irrational, and usually told to watch their tone and step back. For the most part men’s personality traits didn’t come up in these reviews, and on the rare occasions they did, they were criticised for not being aggressive enough.

Women make up only 25% of employees in the tech sector and 11% of its executives, and more than 40% of women leave tech companies after 10 years compared to only 17% of men, with women leaving mainly because of ‘workplace conditions’, ‘undermining behaviour from managers’ and ‘a sense of feeling stalled in one’s career’.

One of the possible reasons for gender bias in tech is that the historic recruitment practices are based on male gender stereotypes: the ‘ideal type’ of person who would be good at coding as overwhelmingly male characteristics, so the recruiters think.

For example, any recruitment program involving multiple choice maths tests are male biased, and there is a historic network-bias towards men that helps them get tech jobs.

Historically antisocial people have been stereotypically seen as good coders, which automatically disadvantages women who historically tend to do more social and emotional labour.

Some tech firms also use social data to trace the interests of prospective applicants. In one example, a ‘preference for Manga’ was seen as solid predictor of someone having good coding skills, and it is mainly boys and men who look at Manga sites.

Research has also found that the stronger you believe in meritocracy, the more likely you are to act in a sexist way, which is a particular problem in the tech sector, because tech founders tend to have a very strong belief that they are super meritocratic. In reality, according to the research, they are not meritocratic.

Sexism in Academia

Female students and academics are significantly likely to receive funding or get jobs than men, and where mothers are seen as less competent, being a father can work in a man’s favour.

Studies have shown that double-blind peer-reviewing results in a higher proportion of female articles being accepted for publication, but most journals and conferences do not adopt this practice.

Men self-cite 70% more than women, and citations are a key metric in determining career progression, so this can perpetuate gender inequality in academia.

When it comes to teaching women are asked more often to do undervalued admin work and are more likely to be loaded with extra teaching hours which impacts their ability to do research and get published.

Teaching evaluation forms are biased against females to the extent that it is statistically significant. An analysis of 14 million reviews on ‘RateMyProfessors.com’ found that female professors are more likely to be dubbed as ‘mean’ ‘unfair’ or ‘annoying’ and they more likely to get glib and offensive comments about their appearance.

Female academics also have to do more emotion work than males, as students with emotional problems usually go to female staff not male for help.

There is also a catch 22 situation where women are penalised if they aren’t deemed sufficiently warm and accessible, but if they go too far this way they are criticised for not being authoritative and professional.

Two simple solutions

Firstly, companies need to sex-disaggregate available data to analyse the relative performance of men and women in companies, and then they’d probably find that men and women have equal performance.

Secondly, they need to have gender-blind recruitment practices as these have persistently shown that more women get hired when they are adopted.

The biggest barrier to more gender equality in the workplace is algorithmic recruitment programs which claim to be neutral but actually have a gender bias hard wired into them, as with combing social data.

Signposting and sources

This material is supporting evidence for the view that there is still gender inequality in society, and shows us that Feminism is still relevant today.

The material above was summarised from Perez (2019) Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.

Net migration to the UK increasing!

Net migration to the UK reached 600 000 in December 2022, up more than 50% since December 2018.

graph showing net migration to the UK 2018. to2022

Since Brexit net migration from the EU has been declining, with around 50 000 more EU Citizens leaving the UK than entering; and the increase in net migration is driven entirely from non-EU countries, especially Nigeria, Bangladesh and India.

Reasons for Migration to the UK

The main reason for the recent increase in migration is more people coming to study in the UK, and much of that is driven by the dependent partners and children of students coming to join them.

After that, work is the main reason, with people coming in the take up jobs in sectors of our labour market where there are vacancies, such as health and social care and seasonal agricultural work.

bar chart showing reasons for migration to the UK 2018 to 2022

2022 also saw more humanitarian sources of migration with more than 100 000 refugees come to the UK from the Ukraine and more from Hong Kong.

Analysis

Immigration is a sensitive political issue, with 60% of the UK population thinking it is too high according to YouGov tracking (2).

However it is also clear that we need immigration to fill gaps in the job market and a lot of the increase from 2021 to 2022 was about doing just that.

Also, very few people believe we took in too few refugees from Ukraine so people are not outright opposed to migration.

Finally, the figures are somewhat skewed by students coming the UK to study for three years, and bringing their dependents…. most of these will return home after study, and while they are here they are paying huge fees to British universities which should benefit the UK economy: they are basically paying to be here!

From a policy perspective, however, such levels of net migration to the UK are the highest on record, which suggests a profound failure of government policy given that every PM since 2010 has been elected on the promise of bringing net migration down, which simply hasn’t happened.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This material is primarily relevant to the demography topic, which is part of the families and households module.

Sources

Census UK (accessed May 2023) Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending December 2022

(2) YouGov: attitudes to immigration tracker.

Old Age

sociological perspectives on when old age begins and the norms surrounding later life.

There is no universal biological age at which ‘old age’ or ‘later life’ begins, rather there is variation across societies and historically within societies, so the concept of old age is at least to some extent a social construction.

mind map on the social construction of old age.

The social construction of old age

In Europe before the industrial revolution old age began whenever individuals reached that stage in life when at which physical or mental deterioration reached the point at which they became dependent on others to look after them, and thus ‘old age’ didn’t begin at a particular age, rather it varied from individual to individual. (1)

The concept of a universal retirement age/ old age which started at the same biological age for all people came much later…

European societies started to introduce state pensions in the early 20th century and over time the age at which people qualified for a pension came to mark the point at the ‘old age’ started, and so from this point forwards we’ve had something of a social consensus about when a ‘universal’ stage of life known as ‘retirement’ begins

The concept of retirement based on pensionable age marks out ‘later life’ or ‘old age’ as the time at which individuals are no longer required to do paid-work, rather they are entitled to sate -benefits based on their biological age, the amount they receive being dependent on what they have paid in to the pension pot during their working lives.

The retirement age is subject to change depending on social policy. For example in Britain the state pension age stood at 65 for men and 60 for women for many decades, but today the state pension age is being put back, depending on what year you were born in.

Similarly, the state pension age is now being increased: it is currently 66 and will increase to 67 for those born after April 1960, from 2026, and then it is set to increase to age 68 in the 2040s, and all of these ages and dates are subject to possible change in the future.

screen capture of pension age calculator UK

All of this demonstrates that the concept of the final stage of life is a social construction because:

  • It is mainly based on government defined notions of when people are formally allowed (though not obliged) to quit work.
  • The retirement age has changed overtime and is subject to potential age in the future.

Of course the concept of the retirement age is not the same as old-age, only related to it and one problem with conflating the two concepts is that most people live 20 years beyond the state retirement age and some live 40 years beyond it.

For this reasons some sociologists break up the stage of ‘old age’ into further sub categories. For example Jane Pilcher distinguishes between:

  • Young old – aged 65-74 years
  • Old elderly – aged 75 84 years
  • Very elderly – aged 85 years.

Laslett (1989) distinguishes between the Third Age at which retirement begins and people have fewer responsibilities and the Fourth Age when you become limited physically and or mentally.

One problem with this later conception of old age is that ‘decline’ is often gradual and by degree so there is no clear dividing line between third and fourth age.

Variations in old age between societies

Every known society on earth defines some people as old, but the age at which ‘old age’ begins varies, based on either biological age, physiological and/ or mental conditions/ capacities or generation.

The social norms and expectations of old age also vary. There are variations in how active/ passive old people are expected to be, how dependent or independent and whether they have high or low status within a society.

image of village elders having a meeting
Older people are often treated with more respect in traditional societies.

Why does ‘old age’ vary between societies?

Social organisation: nomadic societies tend not to value the elderly (based on their physical capacity) as they may be a burden when the group has to move on, and thus may be abandoned or encourage to commit s**cide for the good of the group. Non-nomadic societies tend to value older people more as physical capacity isn’t as essential to survival.

Preliterate societies tend to value the elderly more as they are repository of knowledge and skills and are vital to the passing down of those skills and knowledge to younger generations. In literate societies knowledge and skills are stored in text form and so this function of the old becomes redundant, thus they are valued less.

If society is organised in such a way that it is mainly the elderly who control wealth and resources then they may gain more respect if the younger generations have to pander to them to benefit from their wealth.

Cultural attitudes towards death and the afterlife also affect attitudes to ageing. in some societies withe ancestor belief systems the very old are seen as being closer the the spirits of the dead and so may gain status because of this. However in more secular societies which value life over death and there is no belief in the afterlife the old are more likely to be seen as more useless because their ‘best days’ are behind them!

Variations of Ageing within societies

Social class, gender, ethnicity and cohort all affect the experience of old age, and according to conflict perspectives there are stratifying effects based on these factors.

These stratification effects accumulate over the life course and so the effects of being in a relatively disadvantaged social class, cohort, ethnicity or gender will be greatest in old age.

Social class and old age

There is considerable variation in the income of pensioners across the UK (3).

Pensioners are spread fairly evenly across the income distribution, with a slight tendency to be richer than working people.

  • 20% of pensioners are in the richest fifth
  • Approximately 22% are in the next richest fifth and third richest fifth
  • 21% are in the fourth quintle.
  • Only 14% are in the poorest quintile.
pension income distribution UK 2021

Those in the richest fifth are more likely to have had careers in professional occupations and to have private investment incomes.

Those lower down the income scale are more likely to have spent a life in temporary or insecure employment and so are going to be dependent on just the state pension for their income.

Life expectancy also varies by social class and so not only do the higher classes have higher pensions, they stay alive longer to enjoy them.

Gender and old age

Sexism and old age can combine to make the experiences of older women especially difficult.

Older women are more likely than men to be characterised as unattractive, and dependent and helpless victims, for example.

Sarah Arber (2006) notes the following differences in the social positions of older men and women.

  • Women live longer men and so tend to outlive their partners which means they are less likely to have a spouse to care for them in older age and are more likely to end up living in care homes than men.
  • Older women are more likely to be in poverty than men because of lower levels of economic activity during their working lives because of more childcare duties.

In contrast men are more likely to have partners to care for them in later life as they die younger, but those who end up single tend to have higher levels of pension wealth.

Older women have become more independent over time, and more are finding intimate partners in later life, although they tend to opt for living apart for them to avoid caring duties.

Ethnicity and old age

Minority groups tend to have lower occupational pensions. The average gross weekly income for pensioners in 2021 was £556, but for Black and Asian pensioners income was only £391 and £412 pounds per week respectively.

pension income by ethnicity bar chart, UK 2021

Despite their lower pension incomes members of all ethnic minority groups live longer than white pensioners (5):

Older members of minority groups tend to have more social contact with family members which may reflect the higher rates of multi generational households and they also stronger social networks so are less likely to be isolated.

Variations in the experience of age by Cohort

The current generation of pensioners were born mostly in the 1940s and 1950s and are most likely to be enjoying a long and well funded retirement which started at age 65 or earlier for many of them, and most have no mortgage payments as they own their own houses outright.

In contrast today’s Gen Zers are unlikely to get on the property ladder until their late 30s and face a possible retirement age of 70 or later, and the possibility of their mortgages carrying on into their mid 70s.

It is much more likely that a higher proportion of pensioners in 40 years time are going to be in poverty than today.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the culture and identity module, one of the options usually taught as part of the first year in A-level Sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources/ find out more

(1) Featherstone and Hepworth (1990) The Mask of Ageing and the Postmodern LIfecourse.

(2) Pilcher (1995) Age and Generation in Modern Britain.

(3) Gov.uk (accessed May 2023) Pensioner Income Series.

(4) Gov.uk (accessed May 2023) Ethnicity Facts and Figures: UK Pensioner Income.

(5) Office for National Statistics: Life Expectancy by Ethnicity.

(6) Check your State Pension Age.

Arber et al (2006) Changing Approaches to Gender and Ageing.

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

Outline and Explain Two Ways in which Consumption may be Affected by Social Class (10)

This 10 mark question came up on the November 2021 A-level sociology exam paper (AQA), here I provide an elaborated answer based on the guidance in the mark scheme.

In a 10 mark question without the item you are expected to fully discuss any of the two ways/ reasons/ criticisms mentioned in the question. You have to analyse (e.g. show the logical links between points/ pick up on differences) but there are no specific marks for evaluation (although some analytical points may be evaluative in nature!).

NB this isn’t a complete answer, just some thoughts on how you might approach this question.

How is consumption affected by social class?

The mark scheme suggests the following:

  • popular, mass, high and folk cultures and social class
  • differences between social classes in leisure opportunities and choices
  • financial resources for consumption
  • time considerations because of work commitments
  • expectations about what it is acceptable for different social classes to consume
  • conspicuous consumption
  • taste as a symbol of identity.

How to answer this question using the bullet points…

You need to pick up on the two bits of the question, in this case ‘social class’ and ‘consumption’ and then draw the links between them… you are looking for two differences between social class that lead to two differences in consumption.

Actually it’s not a bad idea to quickly do a list in note form like the above, and then your ‘two ways’ can just be fusing these bullets together, that way you are guaranteed to include more concepts and theories and show the links between them.

Looking at the list above I’d personally pick material differences between social classes and then cultural/ social norm differences, so your two ways are:

  • Social class, money and consumption differences
  • Social class, culture (norms and values) and consumption differences

Social class, money and differences in consumption

  • People lower down the social class scale have less money so are less able to engage in more expensive forms of conspicuous consumption.
  • Whereas those with more money are more likely to engage in consumption of expensive clothes and cars to display their wealth and perceived higher status.
  • This may have the effect of pushing consumption of culture more into the private realm for the poor – out of a sense of shame, whereas in the public realm what we tend to see is the more affluent side of consumption of culture.
  • Lower incomes also means those lower down the social class scale have to work longer hours to survive meaning they have less leisure time to engage in consumption, possibly meaning leisure is more passive rather than active.

Social class, cultural differences and differences in consumption

  • Lower social classes possess less cultural and social capital than higher classes.
  • This means children growing up have less knowledge about high culture (classical music and so on) and are less likely to know people who work in the high cultural arts (lack of social capital) .
  • They thus have less access to such cultural products and so are less likely to want to consume them.
  • In contrast the elite class actively encourage their children to consume high culture from a young age, and these people are more likely to grow up and into consuming such products.
  • The fact that high culture is very much upper-middle class may actually act as a further barrier to working class kids and adults wanting to consume it.
  • Lower social class groups are more likely to consume popular or mass culture because it is much more accessible (and cheaper).
  • A Marxist take on this is that the lower classes are being pacified by mass culture, although postmodernists would rather see this as still a matter of choice.
  • Those from higher classes invested in high culture may look down on popular culture and see it as inferior, thus avoid consuming it for this reason, believing their high culture products to be indicative superior taste.

Sources and signposting

For advice on how to approach the sociology exams please see my page on exams advice.

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Sources: AQA Paper 2: Topics in Sociology Mark Scheme.

The online safety bill: get ready for life without WhatsApp!

The online safety bill currently working its way through parliament is set to undermine the privacy of individuals using currently encrypted apps such as WhatsApp.

At the moment if you use WhatAapp or Signal your communications with whoever else via the app are private, they are protected through encryption so third parties cannot easily access them.

However the online safety bill does not include any specific protection for encrypted apps such as WhatAapp and effectively gives government agencies such as OFCOM the right to demand that such companies who are operating the UK monitor their user’s communications.

Because they can’t currently do so, because of the encryption in place, this means WhatAapp and similar communication apps would have to stop encryption in the UK, thus undermining the privacy of all peer to peer communications.

The theory behind the online safety bill is to be more able to track communication related to child abuse, trafficking and terrorism, but to be able to do this you literally have to make everyone’s communications potentially open to government surveillance.

This is an interesting example which reminds us that the Nation State is in some ways still more powerful than global companies, at least sort of….

If the bill goes through then WhatAapp will probably just stop operating in the UK, as the UK only represents 2% of its global user base, it is a global company after all, showing us just how small the UK government is in relation to global forces.

The only other countries which outlaw encryption are China, North Korea, Syria, UAE and Qatar, all countries with not the best human rights record.

So this is what’s becoming of the UK… it is becoming a surveillance state. The real losers are ordinary UK citizens….

Another problem with banning encryption and giving the government more power to store private data is that it makes data breaches more likely. The chances are that if you are surveilling possible criminals, you are probably going to catch some non-criminals in the surveillance net too, exposing their data to potential hacks.

It’s literally another case of the UK government trying to undermine individual human rights, in this case the right to privacy.

Find out More

The Guardian.

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Britain’s New Ordinary Class Elite

The top 6% of the UK population by wealth and income make up a new elite class who also have the most cultural and social capital

In Britain today, there is an ordinary wealth elite who make up the top 6% of the population by wealth. Their mean household income is £89 000 and the average values of their homes £325 000. They have average savings of £142 000.

These figures mean they have wealth and income more than double that of the next class down on the Great British Class Survey, and they have got there by reaping the rewards of steady accumulation of their capital assets. The rise of rentier incomes from second homes forms a significant part of this.

Among the elite, meritocratic justification about wealth ran deep. They tended to stress that their success, income and wealth reflected their hard work, rather than it being down to the advantages they had because of the generations of accumulated cultural, social and economic capital they had benefitted from.

Others played down their wealth by positioning themselves in a relative sense, pointing out they were not as well off as their friends, and some deflected the issue by pointing out ‘accidental accumulation’: house prices having increased so much in London and the South East for example.

However, the top 6% do not see themselves as united, but are more aware of their differences There are fractures as well as solidarity at the top. In other words, the upper class layer is not a coherent and cohesive group but rather a scene of internal contestation between those with the most resources.

Cultural Capital and the Elite Class

The contemporary class elite defies traditional ‘upper class’ presumptions. It is a differentiated and heterogeneous formation which lacks a unitary defining feature.

Its cultural motifs vary and its members conform to a highbrow norm, although they are the most likely to express a preference for opera, classical music and so on.

While the traditional elite of the past marked their distinction by selectively consuming only the visible prestigious forms of culture, members of today’s elite are also in tune with contemporary and popular culture.

Occupational diversity also makes up part of this constellation. There is no unitary group to be found among the wealth class. Different professions such as business, law, academia, media and science compete with each other to assert their authority in the public domain.

These elite occupational blocs may have distinctive cultures of their own and so form niches, and this is especially true for some of the older professions such as architecture and law.

In spatial terms London is where the elite class predominately live. Having a relationship to the London scene and being prepared to work in London are essential. There are also regions within London, niches dependent on property prices.

You don’t necessarily have to have been born in London, but living close to it and being familiar with its geography are important.

There are also cultural elite bubbles in places such as Hampstead and Hackney and a legal elite around Waterloo station for example.

The elite class and meritocracy

The ordinary elite class strongly believe they got to where they are through meritocratic means, through their own hard work and effort, and they often contrast themselves to those who are not, like them, hardworking, but we shouldn’t take these beliefs at face value.

While it is true that they often got into their current high paying jobs by performing well in the education system and then succeeding in the cut throat professions they have also benefitted from their parents’ economic, cultural and social capital.

Many of them went to private schools and Shamus Khan has pointed out that private education is today about imparting the ‘meritocratic skills and practices’ that are required to get ahead in corporate and professional jobs. Ironically because these skills are taught most effectively in fee-paying private schools this means this is NOT meritocratic.

However there is still recruitment to this class from the outside: 25% come from comprehensives.

Elite universities play a role in separating out the very top professions: a boundary separates those who went to Oxbridge from the even those who attended Russel group universities.

The ordinary elite is not very glamorous nor glittering or self-recruited. It is not socially closed. However, people do have to perform to join it. They have to display knowingness, it is hard work being a member of the ordinary elite!

The Elite and the GBCS

The elite were more likely to do the Great British Class Survey. Despite making up only 6% of the objective class structure, 21% of the sample doing the GBCS were from the elite class.

Due to technocratic confidence they have the intellectual confidence and interest to take part, and taking part was a chance to obtain the private gratification that they had made it to the top.

They saw doing the survey as self-affirming, as a chance to have their elite status confirmed and flocked to it in disproportionate numbers, and the GBCS obliged them by awarding them with an ‘elite coat of arms’.

picture of the elite class summary from the great british class survey

Many of them then flocked to Twitter to communicate their ‘official’ elite status to the world. One example:

‘According to new #bbcclass survey I am elite. Nice to see a long-obvious reality reflected in hard data at last. Knee! Bow! And so on…’

What this (representative) tweet shows us is that the elite wanted to boast about their now socially recognised status, but dressed it up in a tongue in cheek way with humour to deflect away from this bragging.

It was also as if doing the survey gave this group a kind of scientifically based legitimacy to brag about their status: rather than them judging themselves as ‘elite’ the survey had done it for them, so all they are doing here (apparently) is stating ‘facts’.

This material was summarised from Savage (2015) Social Class in the 21st Century.

This material is relevant throughout A-level sociology but especially relevant to the Culture and Identity module.

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