A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment

(2013) - Mike Savage, Fiona Devine, Niall Cunningham, Mark Taylor, Yaojun Li, Johs Hjellbrekke, Brigitte Le Roux, Sam Friedman, Andrew Miles

Journal: Sociology
Link:: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038038513481128
DOI:: 10.1177/0038038513481128
Links::
Tags:: #paper #SocialClass #GBCS
Cite Key:: [@savageNewModelSocial2013]

Abstract

The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world. The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK’s National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status. This principally distinguishes between people working in routine or semi-routine occupations employed on a ‘labour contract’ on the one hand, and those working in professional or managerial occupations employed on a ‘service contract’ on the other. However, this occupationally based class schema does not effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions. We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC’s 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes. We demonstrate the existence of an ‘elite’, whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of ‘new affluent’ workers. We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a ‘precariat’ characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.

Notes

·       This occupationally based class schema doe snot effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions

·       Using latent clas analysis on these variables we derive seven classes

·       We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enourmas interest from a wide social scientifc communoty in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensioanl model of social class

·       Although it is clear that for certain purposes it continues to prepresent a ''gold standard'' in the measurement of class, fivem meain lines of cirticism can be devleiped to point to ways in which its purview is limited (Goldthrope schema)

·       As a deductive class schema, the validation predominately focuses on criterion validity, that is to say, the extent to which it measures those features of the employment relations which are held to defin class relaitonships

·       Shown to be of less use in explicating the wider cultural and aosical activities and identiies

·       It is increadinlgy apparent that a major appeal of the schema lay as a pragmatic means of placing individuals into social classes using standard nationally represetnative surveys witha  moderate sample size

·       Dependent on hte hegemony of a particular model of the nationally represetnatd sampple survey

·       Goldthrope adopted the standard sociological appraoch of abstracting class from measures of income and wealth in order to derive class from measures of employment. However this has been cirtiqued from economists who examine moves between income groups

·       Feminist critics have insisted a focus on occuptions as the sole measure of class occludes the more complex ways that class operates symbollicaly and culturally, through forms of stigmatisation and marking of perosnhood and value

·       Although iwdley used in comaprative studies, the validity of the EGP schema has been challenged

·       Our mehtod, latent class analysis, finds the most parasimonius way to group people into classses. Latent class analysis is based on the idea that some parameris of a statistical model differ across unobserved subgroups, which form the categories of a categorical latent varaible. It can be distinguished from factor analysis, which identifies continuous latent variables

·       Conclusion

·       We need to reiterate that our anlaysis is depdent ont he mearues used to construct the indictoars of captials

·       The majority fall into calsses which have not been registers by more conventioanl appraoches to classs

·       The technical middle class are a pwoerful reminder that not all thsoe with economic caital have extensive social netwroks

·       In conclusion our new model offers a powerful way of comprhending the persistence, yet also the remking of social class divisions in the UK