Class Stratification

Comparative Perspectives

Richard Breen, David B. Rottman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317866893
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

An introductory account of the concept of class stratification, of contemporary approaches to the study of class, and of current debates about its role in the study of society. Definitions and an analysis of different theoretical approaches to class are accompanied by empirical material which compares the class structures of a range of countries and examines social mobility in cross-national perspective.

CHAPTER 1

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MAKING SENSE OF STRATIFICATION

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Introduction

The term ‘stratification’ conjures up an image of the population divided into groups which are like strata, one placed above another (Worsley et al. 1977:395). Such an image is both striking and persuasive: yet incorporating the concept of stratification into the study of society brings with it numerous problems, both conceptual (how do we define a stratum?) and empirical (who should be assigned to which stratum and on what basis?). These difficulties, however, are not evident at first sight: the idea that society consists of groups, arranged hierarchically like rock strata or the steps of a pyramid or the tiers of a wedding cake is a common one.

It is precisely because developing a rigorous use of the term ‘social stratification’ is more awkward than it might appear that we devote this first chapter to basics: in particular we believe that it is important to ground the study of stratification in a model of individual social action. This is true notwithstanding the fact that, in the study of stratification, the focus is on groups in society (the strata) rather than individuals. All groups are made up of individuals and to explain the behaviour of groups and the relations between them requires that we show how these arise ‘as the result of the action and interaction of individuals’ (Elster 1989:13). Hence we begin with a model of the individual person (or ‘actor’) in society. What emerges is a view of stratification as the study of social power and its distribution. By social power we refer to the resources that an individual possesses that enable him or her to undertake actions, and to the constraints attached to alternative choices of action. The actions of concern to us are those that affect people’s life chances, the ability to share in the good things in life, both economic and social.

A model of choices, preferences, constraints, and resources

An important part of social life consists of people making choices about which particular course of action they should pursue. Should I stay at school or leave? Should I take the job that has been offered to me or keep the job I have? Should I buy a carton of milk or a Danish pastry? In all these cases choices are made between alternatives, which can be ranked in order of preference: but the only relevant choices are those that are available to the actor. For example, the job I prefer over all others might be that of a professional tennis player, but unfortunately this alternative is not open to me: technically it does not fall into my choice set. The alternatives that do are those whose costs are within the capacity of my resources. Within the alternatives that meet this condition, the costs of each will probably differ. So, if I have a certain amount of money and I want to buy a new car, the only cars that I can possibly buy must not cost more than the amount of money I have, but, among the set of cars that meet this condition, prices will vary. In choosing between the available alternatives, I will try to make the best deal in the trade-off between how much each alternative costs and how strongly I prefer it.

This approach, which views actors as utilizing resources in order to make choices between differentially preferred alternatives each of which carries a cost, is widespread in the social sciences: indeed, economics is based on exactly this model. In economics costs are usually identified with prices, resources with what is called the individual’s ‘budget constraint’, and preferences with the ‘utility’ attached by the individual to the different alternatives. Within the neo-classical microeconomic framework this provides the basis for a powerful model of individual economic behaviour, albeit one which rests on some equally strong and, many have argued, debatable assumptions about individual rationality and the nature of individual preferences. In sociology and some of the other social sciences this approach is most developed in ‘rational choice’ theory.¹ This is well summarized and illustrated in the collections edited by Elster (1986) and Coleman and Farraro (1992) and in some of the contributions in Swedberg (1990). Even when the rational choice approach is not explicitly invoked, the model we have outlined can be found at the basis of much sociological theorizing. For example, in his work on social mobility (which we will discuss in detail in Chapter 5) John Goldthorpe (1980/87:99) argues that patterns of mobility between social classes are shaped by three factors. These are the relative desirability of different classes as destinations (in other words, preferences); the resources available to individuals that will allow them access to more desirable classes; and barriers to mobility — which we conceptualize in terms of costs, or, more generally, as constraints on actions.

The pervasiveness of this simple idea can be seen in the breadth of topics to which it can be applied. One good example of this is the way the model can be applied to interaction between individuals. For example, consider a salesman and a woman who comes into a shop to buy a vacuum cleaner. The salesman may have had a late night, be suffering from a hangover, and have had an argument with his teenage son before he left the house that morning. His preference would be to tell the customer to go away and buy her vacuum cleaner somewhere else. What stops him telling her this and why, instead, does he act in a respectful and polite fashion towards her? The answer is obvious: if he told customers to go away and do their shopping somewhere else, he would soon lose his job. Besides, he also wants to make a sale to earn commission, and he knows that, to accomplish this, one thing he must do is behave in a polite and friendly manner towards the customer. Why? Because this is what he believes the customer expects. In this situation, then, there are several alternatives that the salesman could choose, all of which carry costs. Of them all, the one which is preferred (telling the customer to go away) is also the most costly, both in terms of the risk of losing his job and in terms of the commission he will certainly not get.

We all find ourselves, from time to time, in situations in which we know we should express some sort of deference or respect for the person with whom we are talking (or, more generally, interacting). Whether, in any given instance, we do behave in this way is up to us: but if we fail to behave in the ‘appropriate’ fashion, we will probably have to bear the cost.

The important issue, from the point of view of the study of social stratification, is not simply that actors make choices within this framework of resources, constraints, and preferences, but that different people have different resources and face different sets of constraints.² That different people have different resources is easily seen if we think of economic behaviour where resources can often be identified with the amount of money someone has. In addition, however, different people face different constraints on their actions. So, for example, the driver of a police car could go through a red light with impunity, while a customer who had a sufficiently large and important bank account could probably be quite rude to a bank manager and still get the loan he or she wanted, while someone with more modest financial assets probably could not.

The differential distribution of resources and constraints is extremely important in explaining differences in behaviour. People who possess similar resources and face similar sorts of costs attached to actions frequently behave in ways that are similar when making a particular choice, and differently from people who face different constraints and/or have different resources. So, in Northern Ireland (and in many other societies), a man or woman is much more likely to marry someone of his or her own religion (Catholic or Protestant in Northern Ireland) than someone from the other religious grouping. This is partly, but not entirely, because the constraints (such as the possible social ostracism from family and friends) on marrying someone of the other religion are so substantial. The result is that very few Protestants marry Catholics, and the majority of marriages are between people of the same religion.

This idea can be applied to what we might call ‘strategic choices’. Individuals may overcome constraints by means of strategic action. So, an individual worker may be powerless to compel her employer to, say, improve her working conditions; but if she can organize her fellow workers in collective action (through forming a trade union, for example) then the employer may be forced to make some changes. Such strategic action itself, however, is hedged with constraints and people face different constraints in pursuing such action (for example, trade unions are illegal in some countries). Or consider the case of parliamentary lobbying. One function of this is to persuade legislators to amend the law in a way that favours the lobbyists. Obviously, not all individuals in society have the resources that would allow them to engage in this kind of activity. What is perhaps most interesting about this example, however, is that it demonstrates that some actors, through strategic action in one arena, can change the ‘rules of the game’ (the set of constraints acting upon the process of choice) in some other arena.

Social regularities

In many areas of social life, people make choices, in which they seek to acquire what they most prefer, subject to the constraints they face and the resources they possess. To the extent to which people have similar resources and face the same set of constraints (and have the same preferences) they largely make the same choices. So, undergraduates do not have to take their examinations — they are free to decline the offer. However, most of them do, and the consequences of not doing so are clear to all. There are two important, and related, points to make here. First, we should stress that we are talking about choices that people make — in other words, we accept that people have free will and that they are free to make up their own minds about what choices to make, what courses of action to pursue, and so on. But, where people are placed in much the same position with respect to resources and constraints, they will tend to make the same choices. The relationship between sharing the same position and making the same choices is probabilistic (rather than deterministic). That is to say, the greater the extent to which different people have the same resources and face the same set of constraints on their choices, the greater is the probability that their choices will be the same. Therefore, not all Catholics in Northern Ireland marry other Catholics — but the great majority do. Likewise, not all customers seeking a loan are polite to their bank manager — but most are. And not all sales people are friendly and polite to customers.

The second, and related, point, is that the result of this is the existence of what are called aggregate regularities in social life. Many of these are encapsulated in well-known social facts such as that children from working-class families are much more likely to leave school without qualifications than are children from middle-class backgrounds. Such regularities are striking because they are so strong, and yet they arise from the independent decisions made by individuals.

The important distinction here is between individual events (which are not predictable) and aggregate behaviour (which is much more predictable). This link can be illustrated using a simple analogy. A single throw of a dice is not predictable: there is (if the dice is unbiased) an equal chance of its coming down on any of its six sides. But the result of a large number of throws of the dice (or of a single throw of a large number of dice) is predictable: we know that the average of the rolls of the dice will be roughly three and a half.³

In fact, regularities underpin all of social interaction. A little thought will be sufficient to convince anyone that, if social life were not regular (and thus predictable — albeit in a probabilistic rather than deterministic sense), it would not be possible. Suppose, for example, that when I met people I had absolutely no idea how they would behave towards me. So, the man in the newsagent’s might sell me the newspaper I ask for or he might ignore me or he might hand me a computer magazine. Or imagine what life would be like if all train drivers tossed a coin each morning to decide whether they would drive a particular train or not. Clearly, the rail service would not survive long, and the newsagent would soon lose all his customers. If the whole of social life was like that, social life would break down — indeed, it would no longer be ‘social’ at all.⁴

People could act in capricious ways if they chose to: but the newsagent does, in fact, hand me the newspaper I want because he has a living to make, and train drivers do generally drive trains, because they lose their job if they do not. People are free to choose, but choices are constrained, and people who possess the same resources and face the same constraints tend to (but do not always) make the same choice.

Extending the model

But is this model of choices made in a framework of preferences, resources and constraints really an accurate depiction of social life? Do we really make conscious choices about even the minutiae of everyday interaction? The answer, of course, is that we do not. The model we have described applies only to part of social behaviour, a part that Max Weber called ‘purposively rational action’. For much of the time, we do not engage in a calculation of costs and benefits before we act; indeed, we do not experience the constraints on choices as constraints at all. It never occurs to the newsagent to do anything other than hand me my paper, just as it may never occur to me to drive through a red light. It is not the fear of prosecution that stops me from stealing; rather, not to steal is part of the morality that was instilled into me when I was a child. Constraints are internalized through socialization — the behaviour that they shape is taken for granted.⁵ Nevertheless, the constraints are real, as anyone who tries to go against them discovers. For instance, people do not take shopping from another person’s trolley in the supermarket. Strictly speaking there is no reason why people should not do this — the goods have not been paid for — yet it is not a course of behaviour that ever enters our thoughts. Anyone rash enough to attempt it, however, will quickly be made aware that the behaviour carries costs large enough to make it prohibitive!⁶ It follows that even though constraints are internalized, they may still be differentially distributed.

A further and closely related complication arises if we consider more carefully the relationship between resources, constraints, and action. We have been dealing with the set of objective constraints faced by individuals (whether they are aware of them as constraints or not). But if we want to understand why people behave as they do we need to focus on the constraints as they are perceived. Within the set of given objective constraints it is the subjective perception of constraint that is important if our goal is to account for observed behaviour.

A third complication concerns people’s preferences, which, as we have already noted, can also vary. To return to marriage in Northern Ireland, it is unusual for Catholics to wish to marry Protestants and vice versa. In this case preferences concerning the religion of one’s spouse more or less exactly match the most likely outcome. In the words of Pierre Bourdieu, ‘the dispositions’ inculcated by objective conditions (i.e. constraints)’ engender aspirations (i.e. preferences) and practices objectively compati...