Social Change and the Middle Classes

401 Pages·1995·13.612 MB·English

by  Tim Butler, Mike Savage (eds.)

Social change and the middle classes
This page intentionally left blank
Social change
and the middle classes
Edited by
Tim Butler and Mike Savage
O Routledge
H^^ Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
© Tim Butler, Mike Savage and contributors 1995
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
First published in 1995 by UCL Press
Reprinted 2003 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane
London, EC4P 4EE
Routledge is an imprint of the
Taylor & Francis Group
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data are available.
ISBNs:
1-85728-271-X HB
1-85728-272-8 PB
Typeset in Baskerville.
Printed and bound by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Notes on contributors x
Introduction Marking out the middle class(es) 1
David Lockwood
Part One Orientations
1 Glass analysis and social research 15
Mike Savage
2 The debate over the middle classes 26
Tim Butler
Part Two Class, gender and ethnicity
3 Gender and service-class formation 41
Anne Witz
4 Women's employment and the "middle class" 58
Rosemary Crompton
5 Black middle-class formation in contemporary Britain 76
Deborah Phillips and Philip Sarre
Part Three Restructuring, employment and middle-class
formation
6 Managerial and professional work-histories 95
Colin Mills
1 The bureaucratic career: demise or adaptation? 117
Susan Halford and Mike Savage
8 The remaking of the state middle class 133
Bob Carter and Peter Fairbrother
v
CONTENTS
9 "Too much work?" Class, gender and the reconstitution of
middle-class domestic labour 148
Nicky Gregson and Michelle Lowe
Part Four Place, space and class
10 Migration and middle-class formation in England
and Wales, 1981-91 169
Tony Fielding
11 Gentrification and the urban middle classes 188
Tim Butler
12 A middle-class countryside? 205
John Urry
13 The new middle classes and the social constructs of
rural living 220
Paul Cloke, Martin Phillips and Nigel Thrift
Part Five Consumption and the middle classes
14 Taste among the middle classes, 1968-88 241
Alan Warde and Mark Tomlinson
15 Home-ownership and the middle classes 257
Chris Hamnett
Part Six Politics and the middle classes
16 Political alignments within the middle classes, 1972-89 275
Anthony Heath and Mike Savage
17 Middle-class radicalism revisited 293
Paul Bagguley
Part Seven Conclusions
18 The service class revisited 313
John H. Goldthorpe
19 Reflections on gender and geography 330
Doreen Massey
20 Assets and the middle classes in contemporary Britain 345
Mike Savage and Tim Butler
Bibliography 359
Index 381
vi
Preface
Who cares about the middle classes? They are not, or are least do not at first glance
appear to be, a "social problem". They do not appear to have spectacular amounts
of power or influence. Worst of all, might not studying the middle classes encourage
navel-gazing and complacency amongst "middle class" academics themselves? Yet
the study of the middle classes actually poses a variety of interesting challenges. Tra-
ditionally, the social scientific gaze has been directed either downwards, to the
working classes, the poor and the dispossessed, or upwards, to the wealthy and pow-
erful. Despite the currendy fashionable interest in "reflexive" approaches to social
inquiry (e.g. Beck 1992) research has only sporadically focused upon the more mun-
dane types of people who go to make up the middle classes: the sort of people who
tend to write and read books such as this! In recent years, however, a series of argu-
ments have appeared that claim that the middle classes play a key role either as a
dynamic force changing contemporary societies (Lash & Urry 1987) or as bulwarks
of the traditional order (Goldthorpe 1982). More generally, given current contro-
versies about whether the concept of social class retains any relevance, it is interest-
ing that recent attempts to defend the concept have done so by explicit reference to
the middle classes (e.g. Savage et al. 1992). For all these reasons, a collection of origi-
nal papers on various aspects of the British middle classes seems an important ven-
ture that will cast valuable light on the course of social change in Britain more
generally.
This book therefore has a number of objectives. Most obviously it is designed to
bring together a series of accessible, high-quality research papers on various aspects
of the British middle classes. We hope that readers of this book, even those who are
not specifically interested in the fortunes of the middle classes, will learn things that
interest them about how contemporary Britain is changing. Secondly, this book is
designed to shed light on the general state of "class analysis" in social research. By
focusing on the middle classes, which are rising in numbers and (arguably) social
importance, rather than the (declining, at least in numerical terms) working class
we seek to give a new slant to debates about class, which have traditionally tended to
conflate the idea of class with images of the "traditional working class" (see further,
vii
PREFACE
Savage, Ch. 1). We therefore hope that, by assembling together a variety of very dif-
ferent articles under one cover, it will be possible to judge the contemporary rel-
evance of class by the quality and timeliness of academic research being done,
however loosely, under the rubric of class.
In pursuing these objectives, we are particularly concerned to see if research on
class can counter the fragmentation of social science research into different re-
search communities with different methodologies and perspectives. Much class
analysis, especially the research associated with Goldthorpe and his colleagues,
adopts quantitative techniques, which in itself may be one reason why it is
unpopular in some circles. However, as we seek to show in this book, there is also in-
teresting qualitative research being carried out on social class, and we want to dem-
onstrate some of the strengths of quantitative analyses. Our hope is that, by drawing
together papers with a variety of research techniques, both quantitative and quali-
tative, we will encourage readers to think about how boundaries between different
research traditions might be bridged. We are genuinely excited that we have been
able to bring together well-known contributors from very different research tradi-
tions, and hope that this book may valuably encourage interchange and debate.
The papers for this book were all specially commissioned by the editors. Con-
tributors were asked to report on their research in the context of debates about the
nature and changing character of the British middle classes. Authors were asked to
pay particular attention to a number of competing approaches to both class analy-
sis in general and specifically the middle classes - in particular the concept of the
service class developed in different ways by Goldthorpe (1982) and Urry with vari-
ous collaborators (Abercrombie & Urry 1983, Lash & Urry 1987); the asset-based
approach to the middle class pioneered by the American Marxist Erik Wright
(1985) and developed in the British context by Savage et al. (1992); as well as Marx-
ist, culturalist, feminist and race-sensitive approaches to class.
We have been concerned, at all stages, to make this book both interesting to the
specialist but also accessible to a general readership. We want this book to be read
widely by undergraduates studying not only sociology but also other disciplines
such as geography and cultural studies. We think that the specialist will find the new
research appealing, and the fact that this book contains important statements on
social class by some of the central figures in the field should provoke much of inter-
est. In order to help those unfamiliar with debates about class, we have included two
introductory chapters by the editors, on the current debates and research. We have
also provided editorial introductions to the various sections of the book in order to
explain to readers how the specific papers fit into wider debates.
We cannot claim that this book - long though it is - is comprehensive. Particularly
glaring is the omission of studies of health and education. Nonetheless, if you feel
you have learnt something about how Britain is changing and about some of the cur-
rent issues in social science research, then the book will have served its purpose.
viii
Acknowledgements
We would first like to thank UGL Press, and especially Justin Vaughan, for their
enthusiasm for this book, and their support and advice throughout. Secondly,
would like to thank the contributors for their papers. Unlike most edited collections,
this book been a genuinely collective endeavour. Early drafts of nearly all the papers
were discussed at a specially convened conference in Danbury Park near Chelms-
ford in June 1994, and we are grateful to everyone who made the meeting an enjoy-
able and lively one. In addition to the contributors to this volume, the following
commented in detail on each of the sections that make up the book: Fiona Devine,
David Lockwood, Andrew Miles, Sophie Watson and Rosemary Grompton. David
Lockwood and Rosemary Crompton subsequently agreed to contribute to the book
itself. We would also like to acknowledge the generous assistance of the Research
Committee of the Sociology Department of the University of East London which
made it possible to invite contributors who were unable to obtain financial support
from their own institutions. Thanks also to Joan Tremble from the University of
East London for carrying out the administration of the conference with such effi-
ciency and within budget. Tim Buder is grateful to Susan Fitzgerald and the
Internet, who helped ensure that this book appeared despite his disappearance to
Peru. Mike Savage would like to thank the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill for its support (notably, extensive use of the fax machine!) during the period
when this book was actually assembled in a finished state, and also Joe Gerteis, a
graduate at Chapel Hill, who worked bravely on assembling the bibliography and
checking papers.
IX