1. Class and Social Inequality
A presentation by
Rowan Cassels-Brown

2. A few definitions…
• Marx-Society divided into two major classes-
(a) Capitalist owners of production and (b) the
working class
• Erik Olin Wright-suggests third class in
between.
• Weber-(by contrast) social is a hierarchy
multi-dimensional spectrum-complex and
based on many aspects.

3. Aspects of class
• Income-growth of gap between rich and poor
• Wealth-property ownership, stock market
shares etc.
• Prestige-medicine largely considered
prestigious whilst porter not.
• (Weber) Consciousness, lifestyle etc.

4. Diane Reay
• Class is an integral part of social identity and inequalities We
are defined by our social class and must be aware of this.
• Focusing purely on occupation means looking at class against
the background of a ‘male’ territory (the global labour
market) and fails to acknowledge the roles of women within
class. Thus overlooking ‘the complexity inherent in the
relationship between gender and social class’.
• Social class an important division with regards to women.
• Growing gap between rich and poor marks the importance of
class inequality, but studying economic conditions is based on
the male terrain of structural analyses and is too simplistic.

5. Contemporary Discourses of
Classlessness
• Jan Pakulski and Malcom Walters- ‘there has been a radical dissolution of class in two senses:
a decentering of economic relationships, and a shift in patterns of group formation and lines
of socio-political cleavage’
• Reay- Attitudes of ‘Classlessness’ simply support the interests of the middle and upper
classes.
• Arguments that the free market dissolves class are misguided; it doesn’t get rid of class
divides, merely masks them with the illusion of self determination and free choice. Asserting
freedom for all act in the interest of the more privileged classes denying their own social
advantages.
• Social class is integral to the way in which certain cultures are consumed and perceived. The
‘legitimacy and acceptance’ of a culture is based on the class and social sanding of the person
who is ‘espousing’ it.
• Classes are defined increasingly by the consumption of products as opposed to their
production. Eg perceptions of the middle class drinking luxury coffee, the working class
eating less healthily etc.
• The middle class label the working class as an exclusionary mechanism to strip them of their
citizenship. Eg lazy, benefits, not hard working. But actually the working class are largely
bound by their social limitations and are unable to self-determine as much as the middle-
class argue.

6. The Triumph of Individualism
• Pakulski and Walters- The lack of collective expression of class interests is
confirming evidence of the current unimportance of social class.
• Reay- It doesn’t necessitate lack of class altogether.
• Middle class exercise power through control of media and social
institutions to marginalise and restrict collective working class interests.
• Social hegemony of British society based on individualistic consumerism
and middle-class lifestyles: ideas of self determination and freedom don’t
allow room for the working class to feel a sense of unfairness.
• Not as socially acceptable to be working class as it is to be middle-class,
thus the working class try to associate with the normative ideas of middle-
classness and distance selves from collective working class notions.