The matter of women and the rise of feminism also attack the support of class theory. Occupational class schemes and the majority of class politics have previously been by males with full time male employment in mind. As more and more women have gone into employment, the patterns have changed, resulting in the need for alternative theories. The gender division of labour poses a huge obstacle to the development of a single classification which would include men and women.
As a result of these changes in occupational structure it can be argued that “work” as employment has become evidently less important in the evaluation of structuring social attitudes.
Another factor to note when considering economic factors is that due to technological change and the expansion of state provisions, people are spending les time in paid employment and are therefore less depended on the sale of their labour in order to obtain the services they require.
Also, occupational scales can confuse “class” and “status”, and by merging these two terms it can risk creating the favour of “prestige” as the main measure of social position. Occupational scale is a useful descriptive device, but a favoured criticism from Marxist writers is that the problems that arise are that is does not explain the relations between the classes. Marxist writers believe that class division is obscured by scales which simply rank the working population by prestige.
Another notable factor that becomes relevant for the analysis of stratification systems is that of consumption. People’s identities are increasingly expressed through consumption rather than production, as consumption itself has become an arena in which people’s desires and hopes are centred. In today’s society social status can be judged by material possessions, such as an expensive car of designer shoes, but this is status created by imagery. This creates some confusion in the difference between social differences and economic differences.
“Classes’ are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; whereas “status groups” are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented by special “styles of life”
Changes in employment have lead to changes in the quality of life. Since the 1950’s the living standards of many working people have been improved greatly due to increased wages and the decrease in price of basic goods and mass produced consumer items. For house-holds with more than one income (rapidly increasing due to women’s employment), the material lifestyle has evolved and improved, emphasising further the importance of consumption. This transition of these groups has created what could be called a diamond-shaped “Middle mass” society.
Pahl (1989) argues that productive activity has been replaces by consumption when analysing social identity,
“If the symbol of the nineteenth century city was the factory chimney, the equivalent symbol at the end of the twentieth century in Europe and North America is the shopping mall.”
The increase of consumerism and the importance of it as a part of society creates further disruption to monitoring social class, as standard of living seems to be levelling out across the classes.
Politics and political parties often have a strong linking to social class, and sometimes people organize themselves into political parties which represent their economic interest, for example the parliamentary Labour Party. However, when political power results from such organizations it can be used for the benefit of party members at the expense of other groups in society, an example being in the former Soviet Union, where party membership was closely related to social status and economic privileges.
This then creates some difficulty in relating political parties to social class, as corruption scandals in Western democracies demonstrate that political power may be used as a device to increase economic privilege and social differentiation.
There have been changes is politics, not simply in the form of government politics, but changes that have also been reflected in the work place. The main noticeable change is the decentralisation of power and authority. The globalised economy and culture seem to displace previous centres of power, including its political institutions.
Due to increasing advantages in technology the work place has seen a decentralisation of power, and an increase in “middle management” as well as self monitoring.
“In advances liberal capitalism the self is now the subject and object of rule: we rule ourselves, the argument goes and have real authority over our condition, but this rule is inseparable from the numerous other technologies of rule, built on the self, in which authority is shared with many authorities beyond ourselves.”
Intellectual changes in society have brought about further questions about social class. It has been argued that some of the “new social movements” could take over the role of classes as agents of change in the political environment. Environmental groups, groups concerned with world peace, and representatives of women and subordinate ethnic groups are now shaping the face of political change. Rights have been not only extended to all human adults, but are now including children and even animals. These “new social movements” are gaining increasing support, which cuts across the boundaries of class and adds further to the weakening of the old class politics and any class bases political action.
It is increasingly apparent that the measure of social class faces a great many problems. What is therefore required is a re-evaluation of the concept, allowing for the changes in society, as it is undeniable that the concept of class is radical different today than it was at the turn of the century. Although recent methods have been devised, they all still face varying factors that create difficulty in making them a universal form of class stratification.
Bibliography
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- Class, Edited by Patrick Joyce.
- Sociology, Making sense of Society, by Ian Marsh.
- Social Class in Modern Britain, by Gordon Marshall, David Rose, Howard Newby and Carolyn Vogler.
- Changing Classes, Stratification and Mobility in Post-Industrial Societies, Edited by Gosta Esping-Andersen.
- Repositioning Class, Social inequality in industrial societies, by Gordon Marshall.
- Marxism and Class Theory, A Bourgeois Critique, by Frank Parkin.
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Mao Zedong, 1966: 2. Source – Sociology, Ian Marsh
Weber, quoted in Hughes 1984: 8. Source- Sociology, Ian Marsh
Pahl 1989:781-19, source Sociology by Ian Marsh
Class, Introduction by Patrick Joyce.
