CLASS AND MOBILITY

Social class may be described in a variety of ways. In a review of the biography "Wild Mary", you can read:

Mary Wesley despised the almost feudal manners and mores of the English upper class, with its emphasis on “old money” and “good blood”, and flouted them all. How is class described here, compared to how it is described in the figure below?:

Asking people what social class they think they belong to may not be the best way to examine social class. Anyway such an investigation tells us something about how people feel about class, their own place in the class structure and perhaps their chances for the future (social mobility). If people think they have no chances of climbing the social ladder, it may be bad for society. The Economist comments on the result of the poll to the left. Quote: WHEN George Orwell wrote in 1941 that England was “the most class-ridden country under the sun”, he was only partly right. Societies have always had their hierarchies, with some group—Boston's Brahmins, France's énarques, the Communist Party of China—perched at the top. In the Indian state of Bihar the Ranveer Sena, an upper-caste private army, even killed to stay there. By that measure class in Britain hardly seems entrenched. But in another way Orwell was right, and continues to be. As a new YouGov poll for The Economist shows,  Britons are surprisingly alert to class—both their own and that of others. And they still think class is sticky (The Economist, August 12th 2006)

In a traditional view the hierarchy of social groups (classes) may be represented in the form of a pyramid.  In the classical analysis of social class there was a focus on ownership of capital (means of production like for instance factories, trucks, ships, land, etc.). Those who owned the means of production had the means to employ others, who did not own capital.
In modern analysis there is also a focus on other types of social control and social resources. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu emphasized that there were also other types of capital than the strictly economic capital that meant something for the constitution of social classes. He talked of:

 social capital (influential social networks, strong neighbourhoods, etc),
 cultural capital (education and language), and
 symbolic capital (for instance honorary titles, "good schools", etc).

The image to the left shows possible connections between social background, class position and educational attainment in various kinds of society. In the society of equal opportunity there is no such connection, because it is (exactly) an equal opportunity (lige mulighed) society. In the meritocratic society it all depends on educational attainment (uddannelsesniveau og - resultater)

The neoliberal market society is based on the rule of the market. Therefore social background (e.g. you may inherit your parents business or fortune) and education determine class position (where you are placed, for instance at the top or at the bottom of the "social ladder"). In the aristocratic society you inherit your position as a birthright. Hence, social background determines both class position and how far you can go educationally.

VOCABULARY

 

Social Class	Group of people with a common position with regard to work, income and wealth
Equality/Inequality	How big parts of the "pie" do various groups get?
Income Distribution	How big parts of all income in a country do various groups get?
Wealth Distribution	Wealth = Value of houses, shares, money etc.
Distribution of Fortunes	Fortune = Accumulated wealth
Gini Index	A measure of inequality of distribution of income in society. At a value of 0 there is no inequality. At a value of 1, there is a lot of inequality. Gini index of income distribution in Denmark = about 0,25
Social Mobility	The ability to change position from one social class to one higher in the hierarchy
"Old money"/"New money"	Based on heritage, or wealth acquired through your own hard work
Class Hierarchy	The distribution of groups along a scale of class layers
Meritocracy	Those with higher learning and ability decide most and "run" society
Free Market	The exchange of goods and services is free
Market Forces	Forces of demand and supply
Skills	e.g. carpentry,  brick laying, engineering
Merit based pay	Pay is based on your contribution to production, not on "who you are"
Compete	Show that you are "better than" others
Competition in the Market Place	Companies and workers compete: Who can "deliver" at the lowest price?
Welfare Society	A society that distributes incomes and wealth  among social groups. Material security from birth to grave
Universal Welfare	Welfare that is distributed to everybody in society
Social Conditioning	What you become depends on where you come from
Share of National Income	How big a part of national income (all income in a country) do various groups and individuals receive?
World Market	The exchange of goods and services in the world
Poverty	Being poor means that you only have access to a limited amount of goods and services
Affluence	The opposite of poverty
Prosperity	The opposite of poverty
Capitalists	People who own factories, shares and land
Workers	People who do not own factories
Employees	People employed on monthly contracts
Employers	People who employ (give work to) others
Salaries	The pay to people employed on  monthly contracts
Wages	The pay to people employed on short-term contracts
Outsourcing to poor Countries	Production "sent out" and  performed in low-pay countries
Industrial Society	The society that comes after agricultural society. A lot of things are produced in factories
Post-industrial Society	Service or information society
Higher Education	For instance university education
Access to Higher Education	Terms and conditions for getting into university or other institutions of higher learning
Invest in Real Estate	Invest in land and buildings
Stock Market	A market for buying and selling shares
Share ownership	When you own a share, you own part of a company that may or may not be  listed on the stock exchange
Shareholder Value	You talk of "shareholder value" when you attach importance to the earning of profit for shareholders
Stakeholder Society	A society with many having a "stake" in it
Stock Exchange	A market place for buying and selling shares
Pension Fund	A fund for accumulating pension savings and investing them

There have been lots of discussions about the class nature of our (post)modern society. Many social scientists claim that class divisions are not so harsh in the so-called  knowledge society. This society is no longer divided into a capitalist entrepreneur class and a working class, whose only prospect for the future is  "the manacles it can lose". In the affluent post-industrial society wealth and good incomes are more widespread than in the days of classical industrialism. On the other hand, inequality is increasing in many parts of the world -  and in the world at large.
    Class divisions may be more acceptable if there is social mobility, so people can move from a lower class to a higher class throughout their life times or between generations. In a report from the London School of Economics that was published in 2005, the social mobility of eight countries was compared. The report stated that social mobility had not increased to the extent that had been anticipated. 

The key findings of the report:

• International comparisons indicate that intergenerational mobility (mobilitet gennem generationer)
in Britain is of the same order of magnitude (størrelse) as in the US, but that these countries are substantially
less mobile than Canada and the Nordic countries. Germany also looks to be more
mobile than the UK and US, but a small sample size prevents us drawing a firm conclusion.

• Intergenerational mobility fell markedly over time in Britain, with there being less mobility
 for a cohort of people (en gruppe, der følges igennem en periode i undersøgelsen)
 born in 1970 compared to a cohort born in 1958. No similar change is observed in the US.

• Part of the reason for the decline in mobility has been the increasing relationship between family income and educational attainment between these cohorts. This was because additional opportunities to stay in education
 at both age 16 and age 18 disproportionately benefited (nød godt af) those from better-off backgrounds.

• For a more recent birth cohort (born in the late 1970s and early 1980s), there is a more mixed
picture on changes in educational inequality. Their education participation (deltagelse) in the 1990s was
characterized by a narrowing in the gap between the staying on rates at 16 between rich and poor children,
but a further widening in the inequality of access (adgang) to higher education.

• The expansion of higher education since the late 1980s has so far disproportionately benefited
those from more affluent (velhavende) families.

• The research shows clearly, using a variety of identification techniques, that family income
 in the childhood years does make a genuine (ægte) difference to educational outcomes (resultater),
 rather than reflecting other aspects which differ across families. However, the estimates (estimater)
 are not able to say definitively whether this causal effect has increased in strength over time.
 

ASSIGNMENT
1. Make a (post)modern analysis of social class by looking for class determining elements in the text pieces below:

This was to be my summer holiday, in a village by the sea. My bag is open on the bed, a book of Love Poetry and a biography of Rod Stewart on top. Yesterday I went to Kensington High Street and shopped for guide-books, walking boots, novels, sex toys, drugs, and Al Green tapes for my walkman. I packed last night and got to bed early. This morning I set my alarm for six and read a little of Stanislavski's 'My Life In Art'. "I have lived a variegated life, during the course of which I have been forced more than once to change my most fundamental ideas..."
            Later, I ran in Hyde Park and as usual had breakfast in a cafe, with my flat-mates, an actress and an actor with whom I was at drama school. "'Good luck! Have a great time, you lucky bastard!" they called, as I headed for the station with my bag over my shoulder.......

 I had been finding it difficult to break with my background, in South London. The men I grew up with were tough and loud-mouthed, bragging of their ignorance and crudity. They believed aggression was their most necessary tool. On leaving school they became villains and thieves. In their twenties, when they had children, they turned to car dealing, building or Security. They continued to go to football matches, drink heavily.........  Not that I am particularly educated. If she notices it, Florence never comments on my ignorance. She can be lightheaded and frivolous herself; once she shopped for two days. Nevertheless, she sits me down in front of the most exacting films. Bergman's 'Cries and Whispers', for instance.  (Hanif Kureishi: Strangers when we meet)

He didn't go upstairs to the two small bedrooms, but waited for her at the door.
        He knew every inch of the house, but he'd forgotten it existed as a real place rather than as a sunken ship in the depths of his memory.
        It was the only house in the street which hadn't been knocked through or extended. Mother hadn't wanted noise or 'bother'. There was still an air-raid shelter at the end of the garden, which had been his 'camp' as a child. There was a disused outside toilet which hadn't been knocked down. The kitchen was tiny. He wondered how they'd all fitted in. They'd been too close to one another. Perhaps that was why he'd insisted that he and Alexandra buy a large house in the country  (Hanif Kureishi: Goodbye Mother)

.... Many homeless men would rather sleep on the street than in San Francisco's most notorious shelter, calling it a dangerous drug haven. But for the regular inhabitants at Fifth and Bryant streets, the shelter offers a warm place to sleep, a solid meal and a chance to be with friends.
   The big metal doors at Multi-Service Center South opened with a clang at 4:30 p.m. The line of men leaning against the beige outside wall began shuffling through.
   MSC, they call it on the street. The homeless who refuse to set foot in here believe this is the toughest of San Francisco's emergency shelters, a filthy, violent drug den (hule) where everything not tied down is stolen.
   You wouldn't have known it from the looks of the men clumping up the concrete steps toward the registration desk, bags or backpacks in their hands. "Can't wait to eat," said one skinny man in a tattered, brown leather jacket. He slapped a high-five with a fellow in line next to him. "Man, could I use some sleep," his friend replied.
   Fifty were in this line, and it was just the beginning. Three hundred more would filter in throughout the warm July evening as MSC South, the two- story hulk at Fifth and Bryant streets, slowly filled up.
   At the front desk, everyone was handed a thin, gray wool blanket. In 15 minutes, the whole line was logged inside -- including a Chronicle reporter and photographer, beginning a two-night undercover stay.
   "Go pick your mat," the clerk said. He pointed to a large gymnasium-like room with ceilings about 20 feet high and gray-tile floors mopped to a shine. On the floor were 150 plastic mats -- each about 3 inches thick and slightly smaller than a single-bed mattress.... (Shame of the City. SF Chronicle 2.12.03)
 

Grammar exercise: Turn the verbs in the  following sentences into the present tense (nutid):

Jim and Irene Westcott were the kind of people who seemed _________ to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability that is reached by the statistical reports in college alumni bulletins. They were _______  the parents of two young children, they lived _____ on the twelfth floor of an apartment house near Sutton Place, they went ______ to the theatre on an average of 10.3 times a year, and they hoped _____ some day to live in Westchester. Irene Westcott was ______ a pleasant, rather plain girl......

Beyond the music, there was _____ a rustling that reminded  _______ Irene unpleasantly of the sea, and as the quintet progressed _______, these noises were _______joined by many others. She tried _______ all the dials and switches but nothing dimmed ________ the interference, and she sat ________ down, disappointed and bewildered, and tried ________to trace the flight of the melody. The elevator shaft in her building ran ________ beside the living room wall, and it was ________ the noise of the elevator that gave ______ her a clue to the character of the static. The rattling of the elevator cables and the opening and closing of the elevator doors were _______ reproduced in her loudspeaker, and realizing that the radio was ______ sensitive to electrical currents of all sort, she began _______ to discern through the Mozart the ringing of telephone bells, the dialing of phones, and the lamentation of a vacuum cleaner. By listening more carefully, she was _____ able to distinguish doorbells, elevator bells, electric razors, and Waring mixers.....

In the following text some of the expanded tense (udvidet tid) forms are wrong. Find them and make the sentences correct by changing these forms into simple tense (simpel tid):

"Did you hear that?" Irene asked.
"What?" Jim was eating his dessert.
"The radio. A man said something while the music was still going on — something dirty."
"It's probably being a play."
"I ain't thinking it's being a play," Irene was saying.

They were leaving the table and taking their coffee into the living room. Irene was asking Jim to try another station. He was turning the knob. "Have you seen my garters?" a man said, - "my garters"?" the man was saying again. "Just button me up and I'll find your garters," the woman said. Jim shifted to another station. "I wish you wouldn't be leaving apple cores in the ash-trays," a man said. "I'm hating the smell."
"This is strange," Jim said.
"Isn't it?" Irene said.
Jim turned the knob again. "On the coast of Coromandel where the early pumpkins blow," a woman with a pronounced English accent said, "in the middle of the woods lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo: Two old chairs, and half a candle, one old jug without a handle..."
"My God!" Irene cried. "That's being the Sweeneys' nurse."
"These were all his worldly goods," the British voice continued.
"Turn that thing off," Irene said. "Maybe they can hear us."

Jim switched the radio off. "That was Miss Armstrong, the Sweeneys' nurse," Irene said. "She must be reading to the little girl. They live in 17-B. I've talked with Miss Armstrong in the Park. I know her voice very well. We must be getting other people's apartments." "That's impossible," Jim said.
"Well, that was the Sweeneys' nurse," Irene was saying hotly. "I know her voice. I'm knowing it very well. I'm wondering if they can hear us."
Jim turned the switch. First from a distance and then nearer, nearer, as if borne on the wind, were coming the pure accents of the Sweeneys' nurse again:"Lady Jingly'. Lady Jingly!" she said, "Sitting where the pumpkins blow, will you come and be my wife, said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo..."
Jim went over to the radio and said "Hello" loudly into the speaker.
"I am tired of living singly," the nurse  was going on, "On this coast so wild and shingly, I'm a-weary of my life; if you'll come and be my wife, quite serene would be my life..."
"I guess she can't hear us," Irene said. "Try something else."

Jim turned to another station, and the living room was filled with the uproar of a cocktail party that had overshot its mark. Someone was playing the piano and singing the Whiffenpoof Song, and the voices that surrounded the piano were vehement and happy. "Eat some more sandwiches," a woman shrieked. There were screams of laughter and a dish of some sort crashed to the floor.

Comment on the use of relative pronouns (who, which, that)  in the text below:

Marriage, the birth of a legitimate heir and the second world war provided the sexual liberation she craved: a chance to sleep with any man she fancied—which meant quite a few, since men responded eagerly to her erotic magnetism.......This second union, to Eric Siepmann, an Englishman of German and Jewish descent who was loathed by her family for being “foreign”, finally put an end to Wesley's long promiscuity.......“Wild Mary” is at its best when documenting two destructive melodramas, both initiated by women. The first was Phyllis Siepmann who, when her husband left her for Mary, responded with an obsessive campaign for vengeance which she never quite knew how to handle.
 

New York Times: Class in America

American federal statististics with information/stat. on income, social welfare, etc.

Income and wealth Britain

Education Britain

Article on Inequality in the US