Social class Joan Garrod

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Social classJoan Garrod
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The Great British Class Survey

• The revision PowerPoint for Sociology Review Vol.
  23 No. 2 on social class groupings referred to
  the results of the Great British Class Survey,
  published in April 2013.
• The survey determined social class using three
  variables
• economic capital
• social capital
• cultural capital
• The researchers identified seven social class
  groupings. As a reminder, these are shown on the
  next slide.

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The new class groups
Class group of population Average age
Elite 6 57
Established middle class 25 46
Technical middle class 6 52
New affluent workers 15 44
Traditional working class 14 66
Emergent service workers 19 34
Precariat 15 50
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The new class groups
Here is another illustration of the new groups
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What do I need to know about this?

• The research generated a great deal of media
  coverage, but was not without its critics. The
  following slides outline some of the main
  criticisms.
• Knowledge of the rationale, methods and findings
  of the Great British Class Survey and the
  criticisms that have been made of it, show
  important sociological skills in answering exam
  questions about the nature of social class in
  modern Britain.
• As you look at the following slides, discuss with
  your teacher and classmates the extent to which
  you think that the criticisms are justified by
  the evidence.

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• Professor Colin Mills (University of Oxford) has
  made the following points
• There are obvious problems with a survey in which
  the respondents are self-selected. These
  problems may be even greater when the survey is
  online.
• To try to ensure that respondents understand the
  questions, these are likely to be blunt
  instruments, with a loss of subtlety or nuance.
• No checks can be made that the survey has been
  completed by the person claiming to do it, or
  that only one person has been involved.
• The nature of the process means that the
  respondents are likely to be skewed and not
  representative of the population as a whole. For
  example, managers and professionals are vastly
  over-represented, while what one might call the
  working class are vastly under-represented.
  Even if weighting is applied, the problem
  remains. For example, the working-class survey
  respondents are likely to be unrepresentative
  after all, they chose to complete the online
  survey, and there is no way to know in what ways
  they might differ from other working-class people.

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• Professor Colin Mills (University of Oxford) has
  made the following points
• There is only a fifth of routine and technical
  craft workers in the GBCS sample as there should
  be, and only a third as many routine workers.
• Despite the fact that there were more than
  160,000 responses to the online survey, almost
  all the information used as the basis for the
  empirical claims comes from a nationally
  representative quota sample of just 1,026.
  Mills claims that nothing substantial is revealed
  about the details of this sample, just that the
  authors are satisfied that it is nationally
  representative.
• Question What do you think of (a) the validity
  and (b) the reliability of a proposed new class
  system based on 1,026 people?

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• Professor Danny Dorling (University of Oxford)
  has made the following points
• The GBCS rejects occupation as a means of
  assessing social class, but in the social
  capital section, it uses the occupations of a
  persons friends and acquaintances as a way of
  assessing the social capital element of their
  class. Clicking on the limited variety of
  occupations on offer, a persons status rises if
  they hobnob with people from the higher groups,
  but falls if they admit an acquaintance with
  those from the lower levels. You get a higher
  score if your acquaintances are drawn from a
  variety of occupations.
• The cultural capital section divides peoples
  activities into emerging (e.g. use of social
  media, going to the gym) and highbrow (e.g.
  visiting museums, going to the opera). Dorling
  says that this reinforces existing stereotypes.

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• Professor Danny Dorling (University of Oxford)
  has made the following points
• The online social class calculator appears to
  show that if your household post-tax income is
  more than 100k, you are bound to end up in the
  elite, whatever your other answers, and if it is
  below 25k you will be in the precariat.
  Therefore the assessment of social class at the
  extremes of the model is essentially about
  income.
• The true elite is almost certainly much smaller
  than 6 of the population. Dorling calculates
  those at the very top as comprising around
  0.01.
• Dorling quotes a journalist from the Daily Mirror
  as saying
• The rich and powerful, and employers with the
  ability to sack you are in a different league.
  Theyre on the other side always have been,
  always will be. They want to control, and
  exploit. Thats the real class issue, not your
  music tastes or TV viewing habits.

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• Dorling makes the following comment
• Classes are all about comparisons. Classes exist
  only in relation to one another. People can only
  go hungry in a country as rich as Britain because
  others are not embarrassed about paying miserable
  wages or attacking risible levels of benefits.
  The Elite worry so much about whether they are
  elite because, even within that group, there are
  huge inequalities. Below the Elite the majority
  struggle and should be fearful because the
  wealthiest minority do not have their interests
  at heart. But if you believe all this, what class
  are you?
• Questions
• How would you define (and therefore measure) the
  elite?
• What are the problems with this concept? Were
  the researchers right to include social and
  cultural as well as economic capital?

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Over to you!

• This has been a very brief look at the findings
  of the Great British Class Survey and some
  criticisms that have been made of it. You should
  now do some research of your own.
• Using your preferred search engine, type in The
  Great British Class Survey for more details of
  the research (and the online class calculator if
  you wish to see in what class you/your family are
  placed), and then type the phrase in again,
  followed by Colin Mills and then Danny
  Dorling. You can then read their views in more
  detail. Further criticisms will be found if you
  type in J. P. E. Harper-Scott.
• Dont forget to make brief notes to look back at
  when you are revising.