THE WORKING CLASS
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LIFE CHANCES AND CULTURE
Low wages, less job security, harsher conditions,
less autonomy, poorer life chances, lower life
expectancy.
 Some sociologists e.g. Lockwood suggest that
such an experience creates a distinctive working
class sub culture (norms + values) in opposition
to societal norms and values
 Lockwood called this sub culture ‘proletarian
traditionalism’

FEATURES OF PROLETARIAN
TRADITIONALISM
Belief in collectivism not individualism
2.
Living for the moment – unable to defer
gratification
3.
Fatalism (attitude to life)
4.
Class loyalty and strong trade union
identification – see class and politics as ‘them
and us’
5.
Collective leisure activities – work and leisure
very distinct
6.
Patriarchical family structures – segregated
conjugal roles – male head of household
A sub culture in direct opposition to middle class
aspirational individualism
1.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE WORKING
CLASS IN THE LAST 40 YEARS?
Global economic change has seen western
countries deindustrilaise – loss of primary and
secondary industries – loss of traditional working
class jobs
 45% decrease in manual jobs
 45% increase in service sector jobs
Traditional working class under threat – some
have fallen off the hierarchy altogether and
become ‘underclass’ others have moved into the
service sector and achieved some social mobility

EMBOURGEIOSEMENT
Put forward by Right wing theorists in the 1950’s
as an explanation for changes in working class –
Zweig, Kerr, Bernard
 Claimed that the new workers in service sector
were actually ‘bourgeois’ – middle class in values
and attitudeds as well as income
 Britain was becoming a nations of aspirational
individualists – collectivist and socialist ideas
were either dying or dead

AFFLUENT WORKER THESIS
Two Weberians Goldthorpe and Lockwood attempted to test the
embourgeiosement theory in a study of semi skilled workers in Luton
in the 1960’s
 They concluded:
1.
New workers had higher wages than traditional working class
2.
Still had inferior conditions and market situation compared to
middle class
3.
Were less likely to identify with trade unions but still had a
collectivist attitude
4.
Their collectivism was instrumental rather than solidaristic – they
believed in taking collective action to improve their pay and
conditions rather than out of belief or principle
5.
Affluent workers leisure had become privatised and home centred
6.
They still voted labour but instrumentally rather than out of
principled commitment
Go;dthorpe and Lockwood claimed there was a new ‘privatised and
instrumentalist’ working class in the stratification system located
between the traditional working class and the middle class

MORE RECENT STUDIES
Devine returned to Luton in the 1990’s to
examine what had happened to the ‘affluent
workers’
 Reached similar conclusions to Goldthorpe and
Lockwood but noted that some of these affluent
workers were now voting Conservative

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON
WORKING CLASS: MARXISM
Early Marxism predicted an increasingly
conscious working class. Workers ‘immiserised’
by the profit system – longer hours, harsher
conditions, low pay would eventually force the
working class to ‘wake up’ to or become conscious
of their position within capitalism
 They would start with violence and protest but
eventually become aware of the need to be
political active and revolutionary
 Objective class consciousness would result in a
Revolution to abolish capitalism and replace it
with communism

WEBERIANS (GOLDTHORPE AND
LOCKWOOD)
Divisions within working class limits the nature
and extent of class consciousness
 Affluent worker studies show traditional working
class values either in decline or changing
 Working class as a whole is divided and
disempowered

NEO MARXIST (GRAMSCI, ALTHUSSER,
BLACKBURN AND MANN
Working class still exploited and capable of
flashes of consciousness BUT shows
inconsistencies and contradictions in their views
because of the ideological power of the
bourgeoisie.
 Mass media, religion, education combine to
confuse and undermine class consciousness
 Severe exploitation has been exported to
developing countries by global capitalism –
working class is globally divided

THE UNDERCLASS
New Right theorists produced a cultural theory to
explain the phenomenon of the underclass
 Charles Murray – the ‘underclass’ is defined by its
own behaviours and choices
1.
Never employed and doesn’t want to work
2.
Dependent on benefits undermines functionality of
stratification system by getting ‘something for
nothing’
3.
Criminal and deviant
4.
Rejects societies values/norms
5.
Dysfunctional – socialises new generation into its
own values
6.
Single parent and highly dysfunctional households
The NR see the solution to the underclass to be –
reducing benefits, ‘making work pay’ reducing the
role of the State to reduce dependency

CRITICISMS
Structuralists like Marxists point out the
structural causes of poverty and unemployment –
lack of jobs not personal choice
 Giddens identifies the economic causes of the
underclass in the growth of a ‘secondary labour
market’ of low skill, temp, short term ,casual,
zero hours employment –employers use
immigrants, women and illegal's because they
are cheaper and more easily exploited
 Marxists call the Underclass the
‘lumpenproletariat’ and claim it is functional for
capitalism. A reserve army of workers can be
called on at any time to break strikes or drive
down wages
