@payneModelsContemporarySocial2013

(2013) - Geoff Payne

Journal: Methodological Innovations Online
Link:: http://mio.sagepub.com/lookup/doi/10.4256/mio.2013.001
DOI:: 10.4256/mio.2013.001
Links::
Tags:: #paper #SocialClass #GBCS
Cite Key:: [@payneModelsContemporarySocial2013]

Abstract

Although conceptually distinctive, a comparison of the Great British Class Survey (‘GBCS’) and NS-SeC (taken to be illustrative of previous class schema) shows they produce basically similar pictures of class in contemporary Britain. Among the advantaged, GBCS usefully separates off a very rich class, and technical professionals, from the established middle class (although with some problems of cut-off points of financial advantage, and the concept of ‘elite’). However, the intermediate classes remain an area of less clarity in both schemes. Among the less advantaged, substantial age differences prompt reflection about economic history, and the extent to which cultural capital captured as differences in consumption behaviour is actually bounded by fashion and material circumstances. Although NS-SeC is preferred for its practical utility, the measurement of occupational groups remains problematic, indicating the continued need to improve the tools of class analysis.

Notes

“a comparison of the Great British Class Survey (‘GBCS’) and NS-SeC (taken to be illustrative of previous class schema) shows they produce basically similar pictures of class in contemporary Britain.” (Payne, 2013, p. 3)

“Although NS-SeC is preferred for its practical utility, the measurement of occupational groups remains problematic, indicating the continued need to improve the tools of class analysis.” (Payne, 2013, p. 3)

“As we also know from occupational ranking exercises (e.g. Coxon and Jones 1978, 1979) or studies of social association like CAMSIS (Stewart et al 1980; Bergman and Joye 2001; Bottero 2005), cleaners are not equated to consultant surgeons, nor care workers to car workers.” (Payne, 2013, p. 5)

“From this perspective, GBCS offers three innovations. On the one hand, it largely retains the traditional picture of the more ‘advantaged classes’ (to follow Scott’s (2013) framework), while effectively proposing a simple sub-division which adds emphasis to the economic inequalities of the ‘elite’. On the other, its characterisation of the less advantaged classes is more innovative, suggesting more substantially different working classes, in keeping with the contemporary labour market and a consumer/service society. Finally in the middle of the schema, the intermediate classes continue to tax our theoretical frameworks.” (Payne, 2013, p. 5)

“Despite their privileged existence, it is potentially misleading to treat all of these people as the members of what is normally called the elite – a much smaller, more powerful, interconnected and homogenous group (see Stanworth 2013).” (Payne, 2013, p. 6)

“If however, the emphasis is not on their wealth, or class or power relations, but on the fact that a segment of the managerial and professional class, in this study comprising 6% of the population, are extremely advantageously placed, then GBCS is making a useful point. This group have household incomes ‘almost double that of the next highest class’, the worth of their houses is ‘considerably higher than any other class’, and their savings are ‘well over double’ those of any other class.” (Payne, 2013, p. 7)

“Although not featured as such in the GBCS, the occupations most represented in this upper segment seem to be managers rather than professionals, perhaps suggesting that the ‘controllers’ are in a superior material position vis-a-vis the ‘social and cultural experts’ who Bell and others have argued form a new middle class (Guveli et al 2012).” (Payne, 2013, p. 7)

“Whereas NS-Sec uses employment contract to differentiate its two classes, GBCS’s introduction of noneconomic capitals seems in practice to separate out the very rich, and then to split the remainder into two groups in a way that still has echoes of the old fault line between management/old professions and newer, less prestigious technical professions” (Payne, 2013, p. 8)

“‘users of the old SECs wanted something similar to the old ‘manual/non-manual’ divide and so the three-class model was created as a faute de mieux approximation’(ONS 2013a).” (Payne, 2013, p. 9)