Introduction
The central aims of this first chapter are to establish a rationale for this book and to ‘set the scene’ for the chapters that follow. In this chapter, we will examine and unpick social class as a complex, situated and multifaceted phenomenon. We will argue that social class division and inequalities based upon social and economic conditions are alive and thriving in contemporary societies across the world. However, further than this, we will also demonstrate that social class has important psychological and discursive dimensions that underscore its relevance for psychology as a discipline and for critical social psychology as a sub-discipline. Despite this having being recognised for decades, social class has and continues to be neglected by psychologists in comparison with other systems of categorisation and difference such as gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality. There are a number of reasons why we and other class commentators believe that this has been/is the case, which we will extrapolate and examine here. In short, we hope to convince the reader in this chapter that class is still relevant and important and that this is something that psychologists should be concerned with. The chapter will introduce some key themes and arguments that will be picked up and explored further in the forthcoming chapters; it is intended as a road map to signal where we are going next and to flag, at the outset, some of our key beliefs about social class.
Defining and Conceptualising Social Class: How Do We ‘Determine’ Someone’s Class?
Social class is a rather complex and messy affair (e.g. Argyle, 1994), and how we define and measure social class (indeed, whether or not this actually exists at all in contemporary societies) is the subject of ongoing debate in the social sciences (Bullock & Limbert, 2009). For one, understandings and definitions of social class are not static; rather, these are historically, socially and culturally located. These shift in line with changing social, economic and political conditions and the agendas of powerful groups and institutions in society. It is beyond the scope of the current text to provide a complete and comprehensive historical overview of class systems across the globe; indeed, this would be a book (or even a series of books) in itself. What we will do here is highlight some of the major trends in theorising and researching class in the social sciences, as well as some of the major shifts that have occurred in recent decades in terms of how social class is conceptualised, defined and measured. In doing so, we will attempt to situate these within broader frameworks of meaning and historical events.
Key questions have been whether it is possible to identify distinctive social classes and how to do so. According to the sociologist Savage (2015), the first attempts to map the class system occurred in the early decades of the nineteenth century and the first formal measures of households according to class in Britain were developed by the Registrar General’s Office in 1911. This system of classification was based on occupation, with ‘professionals’ at the top and ‘unskilled manual workers’ at the bottom. In the 1970s, the sociologist John Goldthorpe described a new occupational class scheme known as the ‘Goldthorpe Schema’ (Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1992; Goldthorpe, 1980/1987, 1997, 2007; cited in Savage, 2015) which became the basis of the system for class categorisation officially used today by the Office of National Statistics: The National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC). The NS-SEC describes a total of eight different social classes. These are (1) higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations, (2) lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations, (3) intermediate occupations, (4) small employers and own account workers, (5) lower supervisory and technical occupations, (6) semi-routine occupations, (7) routine occupations and (8) never worked and long-term unemployed. This system has been widely accepted and adopted across the globe and as can be seen above, defines and measures class (or socio-economic status—SES) according to occupation and employment relations. Goldthorpe believed that, despite a number of different categories as described, the fundamental divide was between employers on the one hand and employees on the other (Savage, 2015). It was believed that there were key differences between these groups in terms of the amount of control that they had (e.g. over the business or organisation) and their income (profits versus salary or wage).
This distinction has also been a central one to Marxist theorists such as Marx, Weber and Gramsci (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1978) who similarly conceive of class in terms of definable groups with particular roles and positions in the economic system of production in capitalist societies (Wagner & McLaughlin, 2015). Capitalist societies are generally understood as having an economic and political system that is characterised by the private or corporate ownership of goods and services for profit, rather than being controlled by the state (Jenks, 1998). The different groups located within these systems, according to Marxist theorists, have fundamentally competing interests. Notably, a distinction was made between the workers (‘proletariat’) and the owners of the means of production (their bosses), whereby the former are exploited for profit by the latter. Class relations then for Marxist theorists are characterised by domination and exploitation. In addition, dominant cultural ideologies uphold this system of domination and exploitation by making this appear a natural and inevitable way of organising societies (Gramsci, 1971), a ‘functionalism’ that is critiqued and challenged by Marxists. It is believed that increased ‘class consciousness’ (an awareness of this exploitation) will eventually result in social revolution and the downfall of capitalism.
The Office for National Statistics (2016) reports that the NS-SEC has been reasonably well validated as a predictor of health, educational and other outcomes related to social class or socio-economic status. Indeed, social scientific research utilising objective measures of SES has allowed important comparisons to be made between different groups in society. For example, research on health inequalities has shown that poorer health profiles and higher mortality rates plague those belonging to ‘lower socio-economic groups’ (e.g. Businelle et al., 2010; Richter, Leppin, & Gabhainn, 2006). Similarly, research on educational experiences and achievement has documented a range of barriers that those lower down the socio-economic hierarchy face. For instance, Rubin, Denson, Kilpatrick, Matthews, Stehlik, and Zyngier (2014) point out that studies have demonstrated how differences in income between students in higher education (or the income of their parents) impact on their participation, academic performance and retention. Such differences determine, amongst other things, the amount of time that they are able to devote to studying as opposed to part-time employment, as well as the study resources that they have available (e.g. owning a laptop or PC).
Before moving on, it is important to stress that position within the labour market and access to material resources are, undeniably, important components of social class. Further, there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that income disparities and social inequalities have increased dramatically over the last few decades in Britain (see Dorling et al., 2007). The top 10% of income earners in Britain are reported to earn almost 17 times more than the lowest 10% (Office for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2015), and in modern-day Britain, 21% of the population are said to be living in poverty (Duffy, 2013). Similarly in the United States, there has been a pronounced rise in wage inequality from the 1980s onwards (Autor, Katz, & Kearney, 2008). On a global scale, there has been a near-universal trend towards greater inequality based on income (The Economist, 2007), and in 2014, the World Economic Forum highlighted income disparity as one of the main risks to economic and political security in recent times (e.g. Savage, 2015). This suggests that the detrimental impact of wealth inequality on health, wellbeing, performance and so forth (as highlighted by a wealth of research studies) is likely to become more rather than less pronounced if such trends continue.
However, there are problems associated with categorising and measuring class according to occupation, income and level of educational attainment. For one, in the UK, such measures have traditionally been based on the ‘head of household’ (usually male), a practice which is problematic because such resources and status are not necessarily shared by all family members (e.g. ...