Class divisions in contemporary britain: lessons from The great british class survey and the national child development study

The Great British Class Survey Developed by BBC Lab UK as part of their concern to develop ‘public value’ and respond to digital journalism. BBC approached us to assist with a survey specifically on cultural, economic and social aspects of class which they thought would have current affairs as well as ‘scientific’ interest Survey launched in January 2011 and generated 161,000 respondents by that summer. The survey designed to be ‘interactive’ Indicates the extent of polarisation at the top and bottom of British society

A new approach to class? At the centre of our analysis was seeing class not as a ‘bundle of occupations’ groups but as the product of three forms of ‘capital’. The questions on cultural capital, following in the spirit of Culture, Class, Distinction, (Bennett et al 2009) were unusually sophisticated and have not been fully elaborated The ‘position generator’ question for social capital is the most wide ranging ever conducted (whether you know people in 37 different occupations….). Questions on economic capital examine income, savings and house price….. .

2: New class fractures: ‘elite’ and ‘precariat’   Elite Established middle class New affluent workers Technical middle classs Traditional working class Emergent service workers Precariat Household income £89 082 £47 184 £29 252 £37 428 £13 305 £21 048 £8 253 Household savings £142,458 £26 090 £4 918 £65 844 £9 500 £1 138 £793 House value £325 000 £176834 £128 639 £163 362 £127 174 £17 968 £26 948 Social contact score 50.1 45.3 37.8 53.5 41.5 38.3 29.9 Social contact number 16.2 17.0 16.9 3.6 9.8 14.8 6.7 Highbrow cultural capital 13.7 6.9 9.2 10.8 9.6 6.0 Emerging cultural capital 14.4 16.5 11.4 6.5 17.5 8.4

Established middle class New affluent workers Technical middle class   Elite Established middle class New affluent workers Technical middle class Traditional working class Emergent service workers Precariat Household income 1 2 4 3 6 5 7 Household savings House value Social contact score Social contact number Highbrow cultural capital Emerging cultural capital This has the same variables in rank order. It shows the elite are first at most things, the precariat have least of most things. Hence the two outlying classes are very distinct. Those in the middle have more flux between the different measures

Age 57 46 52 44 66 50 32 Elite Established m c New affluent workers Technical mc 46 52 44 Traditional w c Emerging service workers Shows that the elite are older and that generally the classes intersect strongly with age divisions, so showing how these generational divides are bound up with generational and age issues 66 Precariat 50 32

% ethnic min 4 13 9 11 9 13 21 Elite Established m c New affluent workers Technical mc 13 9 11 Traditional w c Emerging service workers Shows that the elite have fewest ethnic minority and the precariat not especially high. Helpful in moving away from the view that the precariat is a kind of ‘underclass’. In fact they are subtly different from this characterisation 9 Precariat 13 21

% female 50 54 59 43 62 57 55 Elite Established m c New affluent workers Technical mc 54 59 43 Traditional w c Emerging service workers Some gender differences in class composition 62 Precariat 57 55

Implications…. The GBCS suggests the power of a ‘voracious’ and reflexive corporate elite, attuned to methodological novelty, for which London is a magnetic force and which is subject to (partial?) elite reproduction And within this framing, how do we understand the situation of those at the bottom? Now a somewhat ugly shift to the NCDS part of my research to conclude and round off the talk

Precarious lives: accounts from qualitative interviews…

If you had to represent your life through a diagram, which of these would it be? Now returning to this picture, which was part of the NCDS project. The finding here is that most people chose 3 or 7, very few chose a straight line, Why? Because jags allow them to present themselves as individuals with distinctive stories which escape sociological classification. Hence, the GBCS as a classification exercise exists in tension with a pre-occupation to evade being classed and defined.

Narratives of the ‘precariat’   Male Female Occupations Administrative officer; archivist; electrician; decorator; road sweeper; no occupation Bookkeeper; administrator; catering assistant; civil servant; courier; account executive; supervisor; no occupation (2) Net pay per hour Under £5; £5-7.50 (2); £10-12.50; missing (2) Under £5 (2); £5-7.50; £7.50-10; £10-12.50; Over £20. Highest educational qualifications None (2); NVQ1; NVQ2; NVQ3 (2) None; NVQ1 (3); NVQ2 (5). Housing tenure Owns outright; owns with mortgage (3); rent (2) Own outright (5); own with mortgage (3); rent. I took the 15 most ‘deprived’ interviewees, those without cultural, economic, and social capital and focused on them in particular detail. These would not do the GBCS of course. We can link their interviews to survey responses which show they do not conform to a simple underclass model. They are mostly in work, own their own homes, and have some level of education. But they are poor.

Telling an ‘abject’ story 13 of the 15 offer accounts of their lives which articulate dealing with ‘trauma’ which is known to be shaming Unemployment Dealing with criminality and living in disreputable area Ill health and inability to work Severe family/ relationship abuse Most of these accounts mobilise motifs of the ‘sequestration’ of shame through placing it into a narrative Here I am responding to the recent book by Imogen Tyler on ‘Abject subjects’ which explores how marginalisation and stigmatisation takes place through the construction of abjection, which is seen to be visibly polluting and excessive. I argue that the ‘precariat’ in this sample are aware of this and try to deal with it by offering a life story which presents ones own life as marked by abject experiences which have been overcome (a kind of bildungsroman) and

The appeal of class identity definitely working class I think.   Working class, [actually] somebody who actually goes to work I just class myself as a working class, get on with anybody, if I like them…. Working class ain’t it? [laughs] I’ll never grow out of working class, I won’t be middle class. I would say working middle….. I see myself as a working hard person, trying to provide for a family, because I come from a working background….. I would say that I’m--, definitely I’m working class, down to earth if I’m honest. In this context, where respondents seek to distance their current state from previous experiences of ‘abjection’ they want to hold fast to a class identity which is secure to them and gives them a primordial attachment which supercedes specific abject situations they have been in. Hence, for these people, there would be no interest in something like the GBCS. Different view from Bev’s in that it is the elite who want to disidentify from class (even whilst finding it fascinating) whereas the abject want to cling onto a class identity which gives them a degree of reasurance that they are ‘ordinary’.

Conclusions Focus on outlying classes and move away from ‘the problematic of the proletariat’ Need to develop a new understanding of elites not as ‘gentlemanly’ status groups, but an expert, knowing and corporate class, fully implicated in ‘Knowing Capitalism’. Need to recognise the significance of cultural politics for class analysis, where the stakes of engagement and visibility itself is central. Hence want to argue that class culture and politics is now divided in a really profound way: a narcisstic expert elite culture which is interested in itself and seeks to stigmatise all those outside its frame of reference stands opposed to a ‘subject position’ which deals with marginalisation through elaborating stories of reconciliation from states of ‘shame’ and which hence claims a primordial attachment to a secure class position. Will explore how this generates cultural politics dividing the ‘expert’ from the ‘innocent’, and that the terms of this engagement are bound to place the expert in

And finally…. I am delighted to be involved – with colleagues from many Departments – in developing LSE initiative for an international centre on inequalities Watch this space! Hence want to argue that class culture and politics is now divided in a really profound way: a narcisstic expert elite culture which is interested in itself and seeks to stigmatise all those outside its frame of reference stands opposed to a ‘subject position’ which deals with marginalisation through elaborating stories of reconciliation from states of ‘shame’ and which hence claims a primordial attachment to a secure class position. Will explore how this generates cultural politics dividing the ‘expert’ from the ‘innocent’, and that the terms of this engagement are bound to place the expert in