Social Class is a group of people with similar status.
It describes one form of social classes. The inequalities refers to the existence of socially created inequalities such as; Health, education, housing and jobs. Social stratification refers to the existence of distinct social groups which is ranked in terms of wealth. Social mobility in the UK is possible.
Britain is an open system meaning it is possible for people to attain a higher status with what they started with. Movement is possible as social classes are not based on birth, but on factors such as education and professional success.The Government for example use of the NSSEC 2000 which can measure a person’s social class by their occupation. There has been changes over the past hundred years regarding social classes in Britain. There has been a decline of heavy manufacturing industries.
Blue collar work has declined whilst white collar work has risen. Blue collar work involve skilled or unskilled manufacturing, mining, oil, field construction, mechanical, maintenance, technical installation and other physical work. In contrast, white collar perform in an office environment involving sitting at a computer.Another change has occurred in the upper class. It has undergone a process of decomposition due to wide share ownership and managerial revolution.
Another change is women entering the workplace. Women were previously excluded from class studies. There has been an increase in service industries. Much more women have entered, thus allowing them to achieve independent class status. Before legal and cultural practices, combined with religious and educational conventions restricting women’s entry and participation in the workplace.
Sociologists now see the need to recognise women’s work as an important part of the class structure. Functionalism is a macro structural consensus theory. It sees society in positive terms; that harmony will produce a well functionalism society. Davis and Moore, who are two sociologists recognised that having inequalities are necessary.
It allows people to occupy certain roles. The justification for it is that it gives the lower class something to aim for. Different jobs give different rewards. It is a way of achieving social mobility known as Meritocracy.Meritocracy is a system of stratification where the most qualified get high positions in the hierarchy and the least qualified get low positions.
If you want people to study hard to better themselves; there should be on economic award. This motivates individuals to get on. A strength of this theory is that it provides an explanation for inequality. It shows how social class links to the maintenance of society. Inequalities give different people different roles.
A weakness of this theory is that it ignores the conflict generated by inequalities. There can be many problems with ideas of hard work and education creating a pair society.Another strength is that it suggests that people can climb up the hierarchy. It recognises functional importance of certain positions, therefore high reward is attached to these positions. Another weakness is that it does not satisfactorily explain who decides what the functionally important jobs are. It fails to explain whether it is that simplistic to actually measure the functional importance of a job.
Peter Saunders who is a functionalist, believes ‘Unequal but fair’. He questions other studies which argue that Britain is a Meritocracy, particularly relative mobility is limited.He argues that there is inequality however not based on unfair inequality of opportunity – but because of differing abilities of individuals. Therefore inequality is both inevitable and desirable. He has concluded that children ended up in jobs which reflected their ability. Strengths of Saunders study is that it is strong in challenging many of the conclusions drawn by other studies that had previously been conducted on social mobility.
He argues social mobility is far more widespread than other studies claim. Saunders study supports functionalism’s concepts of Meritocracy.Weaknesses of his study is that he never included part-time workers or the unemployed in his study. This then makes the results invalid.
He also does not look at people who are in good positions through luck, family inheritance. Marxism is a macro structural conflict theory. It focuses on a critical evaluations of Capitalism societies. It sees society being made up of individuals who must compete for social, political, leisure etc. it believes that social mobility is not possible. You cannot change your class.
If you are born poor, you are likely to stay poor. If you are born rich, you are more likely to stay rich.This is known as social closure. History is driven by conflict between the two classes-Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. Individuals in similar class positions tend to develop a consciousness that they hold a similar interests.
A strength of this theory is materialism that results from Capitalism separates social classes. Upper class value materialistic things that lower class don’t have creating a division. A weakness of this theory is that it doesn’t recognise that people that people can change their social class by working hard, achieving higher award meritocracy, good education or even winning the lottery.Another strength of this theory is that is draws attention to importance of conflict ‘motor of history’.
Not only explains how classes form, but how they are presented. Another weakness is that it is too economically deterministic. It concentrates too much on economic and production factors. It shows ownership or non-ownership of means of production is the important division. Stanworth and Giddens who are also sociologists carried out a study in 1971. They found out of 460 company chairmen studied, only 1% had manual class background.
66% came from upper class such as industrials and land owners. Indicators point large degree of social closure in the upper sections of British class system. The strengths of this study is that it supports the notion of closure and elite self-recruitment in higher structures of business. Weaknesses of this study is that it’s dated, more than 35 years old. New research need to be done in this area.
It concentrates on men, not women as they are also included in the workplace now. Also 460 is a small amount for a study.
