selection
Childcare - A hidden function
Childcare is an example of a hidden (latent) function. Schools are not
intended to free parents from child-care, but they do for a significant
portion of the day and this enables parents to do other things, such as
going out to work.
This importance of this latent function is illustrated by the effects of
the
1970 Education (Handicapped Children) Act. Until this Act, some
handicapped children had been considered "incapable of education".
As a consequence of the Act, school education was provided for
all children and, as a consequence of that, parents of handicapped children
found they could continue looking after their children instead of the
children going into an institution. Eventually, the institutions closed.
Selection - the controversial function
Selecting which people should have which jobs is the function of schools
that reveals most to us about the relation of the school as constructor of
identity and the structure of society.
We can look at this in terms of the role that a person is trained to
plays in society.
Talcott Parsons argues that
roles relate
identity
(who we think we are) to
social
structures. The role we learn does not just tell us who we are,
it also tells us what we may reasonably expect to do in society.
Social class and education
History and terminology
1842 on Acts prohibiting young children working also required
working children to be educated
A
series of Acts between 1870 and 1918 made education free
and
compulsory for children from five years old to ten, then to eleven, then to
fourteen. Education provided for the "childhood" period is known as
elementary or primary.
11 plus
Education provided for the adolescence period is
known as secondary
Under the UK's
1944 Education Act, secondary education was compulsory
and free for (almost) all children from eleven years to
fifteen years (from 1947) and then 16 (from 1973).
Tripartite
School
|
Skills
|
Destiny
|
Grammar
|
Academic
|
White collar
|
Technical
|
Technical
|
Skilled
|
Secondary modern
|
Basic and practical
|
Semi-skilled and manual
|
1965 Circular "requesting" a comprehensive system.
Comprehensive education was to "end selection at
eleven plus and to eliminate separatism in secondary education"
16 to 18 plus
The stage beyond
secondary education is not compulsory. It can be referred to as
tertiary (third level).
University level education ("higher" education in the UK)
generally
begins at 18. It can begin earlier or at any later age.
1964/1966 The Binary System under which "new
polytechnic" would become "education's equivalent of the comprehensive
school" (Eric Robinson 1968)
In the next part of the lecture we will look at the
tripartite system and the development of academic,
technical and basic secondary education - and also what it meant for
further and higher education.
The "tripartite" system did not emerge new and fully formed from the 1944
Education Act. The education system was evolving and the Act tried to
impose some order on the structure that existed. The following story of
Fred and Pauline Moore illustrates, amongst other things, how "technical"
education in the 1940s bridged secondary and tertiary education.
A "technical" education in the 1940s
Fred and Pauline Moore were both 82 in 2012.
They both went to "Hendon Technical College", and met there when they were
thirteen years old.
1943/1944?
|
Hendon Technical College was in what is now the Hendon Campus of Middlesex
University.
A
1939 book said "Middlesex is an important centre of
manufacturing industry and commerce, and under these conditions the public
system of technical education has acquired an added importance. The County
Council's programme of school building contemplates the provision of well-
equipped technical colleges in all the important industrial centres in the
County."
|
The "Technical College" Fred and Pauline attended may have become "Hendon
Secondary Technical School" after the 1944 Act. It remained part of the
college until
1959.
When he left school
1945/1946? Fred Moore "got a job at an export
company". Shortly afterwards, was employed as a secretary in the same
office. Fred and Pauline travelled on the tube together to work and
discovered they both enjoyed the theatre and began going to shows together.
At 18
1949?, Fred, like all young men at the time, was required
to do
National Service in the armed forces. He proposed to Pauline
when
he was de-mobbed
1951? and she married him at St Margaret's Church,
in Edgware on
5.9.1952. The wedding reception cost £25 and
Fred Moore was earning £4 a week at the time. (Camilla Goodman,
Chesham: Your Community website 7.9.2012
The
Binary System
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, National Service ended and young men
were free to think of 18 as an age to aspire for higher education and the
possibility of social mobility out of the class they were born into. Even
young women could have the same dream - but that was a more radical
thought. The secondary school part of technical colleges separated into
separate buildings and the technical colleges began to plan for entirely
adult education. At the same time, in the secondary modern schools,
children were sitting exams that showed that many of them were as capable
as children in grammar schools. It was time for an educational revolution
and everyone was arguing about the direction it should take. In the 1960s
"education" was the fastest growing specialism in sociology.
Education and selection - Some social statisticians
Schools do not just educate children, they select who should go into what
carers and have what life chances. Is this fair?
It may be that schools select people on the basis of their ability and fit
people into the work that they are best suited for.
To help you investigate this relationship between education, inequality,
work and stratification, I want to introduce you to four social
statisticians: four people who played games with numbers about society:
In 1970,
Julie Ford (aged 24) and
Cyril Burt (aged 87) wrote long letters to one another about the
relationship of education to class, work, inequality and social structure.
They had very different ideas about this, and would never have agreed.
Statistics were, in Julie Ford's words the "test" ground on which a
"cricket match" between their two world visions was played. The issue
between them was the limits of social engineering: Julie Ford believed a
a "class-less society" was possible and desirable. Cyril Burt believed it
neither possible nor desirable.
Sociology and the
average or normal person
In 1846.
Adolphe Quetelet studied "the chest circumferences of 5738
Scottish soldiers." This is the "data plot", or graph, that he used to
illustrate his findings:
big chests
|
medium chests
|
small chests
|
Most of the solders had medium chests, but some had exceptionally large
chests and some had exceptionally small chests. Quetelet called the
majority
in the middle "average" or "normal" - Sociology would be about studying the
"normal man" and how some people deviated from that. Later, the curve was
described as the
"normal curve"
Sociology and
IQ
How fair is selection?
What work you do, how much money you earn, and your social status are
closely related to your Socio Economic Classification.
Cyril Burt
argued that the education system could make choosing who got
what job fair.
Intelligence Quotients were, he argued, a scientific way of
measuring a child's real ability and showing how they fitted the
normal curve of ability.
The
eleven plus examination was based on such tests. It was supposed
to show (for example) when a working class child had the inner mental
ability to do well if given the right education. These children would be
selected out of mainstream education and sent to grammar, or possibly
technical, schools. In this way social mobility would be facilitated
and natural ability and education, rather than class, would decide who got
the best jobs.
Cyril Burt told Julie Ford
"broadly speaking, occupations requiring an average or medium degree of
ability are by far the commonest... those requiring the highest and rarest
degree of ability are comparatively few. I suggest therefore that what is
needed is ... the matching of each individual's occupational class with his
innate abilities"
In the
1950s and 1960s a re-thinking of theories of intelligence took
place centred round the work of the Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget. This suggested that intelligence is not so much an
innate (inborn) ability as something that develops in stages, dependent on
the environment that the child experiences.
Julie Ford summarised the arguments against intelligence tests
"it is now accepted that talent is not a fixed genetic trait,
there is no finite 'pool of ability' to be tapped by increasingly
sophisticated selection procedures. Talent, rather than being given by
birth is, it is now believed, partly produced by school
experience". (Ford, J.
1969, p.20)
Talcott Parsons and others had shown that intelligence tests successfully
predicted the occupation that children would enter when they left
school.
This, however, Julie Ford argued, was an illusion:
"the predictive power of intelligence and aptitude test
reflects nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy... children learn to
limit their achievement to that which is expected of them"
(Ford, J. 1969,
p.20)
What this lecture was supposed to do and has not done!:
"Look at identity through symbolic interaction. Move on from
there to look at structure through the place of education in Durkheim and
Marxist theories.
Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Bourdieu on reproduction. Implications for equality and
inequality".
TABLE OF SOME IMPORTANT EDUCATION-RELATED TERMS IN SOCIAL THEORY
The meanings of the terms we use differs from author to author. In the
following table I start with the definitions
James Fulcher and John Scott give in the textbook
Sociology and then draw on my own
Social Science Dictionary with a Durkheim bias (Words to
describe social reality)
How fair is
Britain?
The 2010 "How Fair is Britain?" review says that:
There are significant differences in life expectancy between members
of different socio-economic groups. Men in the highest socio-economic group
can expect to live around 7 years longer than men in the lower groups. For
women, the comparable gap is similar.
Comment:
This relates life-span to Socio-economic group.
Socio-economic group's are our most used tool for describing the
stratification
of a nation's social structure
Socio-economic group classifies people according to their occupation
(socio) and income (economic). The United Kingdom system (as used in the
2001 census)
classifies people as
Higher managerial and professional occupations
|
Lower managerial and professional occupations
|
Intermediate occupations (clerical, sales, service)
|
Small employers and own account workers
|
Lower supervisory and technical occupations
|
Semi-routine occupations
|
Routine occupations
|
Never worked and long-term unemployed
|
Our system of arranging groups like this is just over one hundred years old
-
See history
Measuring people's
social class involves making decisions about
what it is about a person you need to measure. You could measure how much
money they have coming in (income), or how much they own (wealth) or what
they do (occupation)
The United Kingdom system focuses on occupation. The reason for this is
related to activities like trying to relate health and life-span to social
class.
In
1928 the man who devised the system,
Thomas Stevenson gave a paper on 'The Vital
Statistics of Wealth and Poverty' in which he argued that
"culture" is more
important than material factors [See
Marx] in explaining the lower mortality of the
"wealthier classes".
Culture included knowledge of health and hygiene
issues. He argued that this was more easily equated to occupation than to
income and wealth.
|
In these lectures on social structures and social identities, we are
looking at
1) How theorists imagine the structure of society and
2) how they relate structure to the social interactions that create our
personal identities as individuals
To do this with inequality, wealth and poverty, let us listen to an
anonymous song that British soldiers sang in the trenches in the
first world war about the seduction and
suicide of a woman who was poor, but honest. The chorus of this
is
"It's the same the whole world over,
Isn't it a blooming shame?
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
It's the poor what gets the blame."
Nothing, it may seem, can be more
personal and more
individual than
suicide. Nothing more
structural than the distribution of wealth and
poverty. The song describes the structure within which the
interactions
between the rich man and the poor woman takes place. In one verse we see
how wealth is related to
political
power
and how poverty might lead a woman
to prostitution:
"See him in the House of Commons,
Passing laws to combat crime,
While the victim of his evil,
Walks the streets at night in shame."
It seems that structure has determined her
personality: she walks the
streets "in shame".
However, the song makes her an
active
agent in
social interaction, even
after her death.
"When they dragged her from the river,
Water from her clothes they wrung,
And they thought that she had drownded,
Till her corpse got up and sung....."
"It's the same the whole world over,
Isn't it a blooming shame?
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
It's the poor what gets the blame."
|
rich and poor not the same the whole world over
GLOBAL
AND
NATIONAL
VIEWS
The concept of inequality is most often associated with images of wealth
and poverty. Two distinct images spring easily to mind, the image of
wealthy people and poor people in the same society (See
Big Issue)
, and the starker image
of international inequality that comes to us with appeals for famine
relief (See
Oxfam).
Why are they different images? A careful reading of Fulcher and Scott
reveals that it is because our images of inequality are related to the
social reality of society. (See
Durkheim).
There are real societies that we
call nations
and real inter-relations between them that we call international relations.
At the present stage of history, the
solidarity within nations is greater
than the solidarity across national boundaries.
Marx argues that economic inequality plays a key role
When we read about the rich man and the poor woman
"See him in the House of Commons,
Passing laws to combat crime,
While the victim of his evil,
Walks the streets at night in shame."
We are reminded of Marx and Engels arguing in the
Communist Manifesto (1848) that
"The bourgeoisie has at
last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the world market,
conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive
political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for
managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."
inequality, wealth and poverty are not just economic
The song also reminds us that inequality is not just economic.
The song is
about the relations between a rich man and a poor woman and
Marx and Engels (in particular) pointed to the double standards in sexual
morality that helped to secure male domination of women.
(See hetaerism above)
Fulcher and Scott speak of
"various dimensions" of inequality which include:
gender inequality,
amongst
others.
They relate these
structured inequalities to the different
"life chances" of
the different groups.
Relative wealth and poverty can also be defined to include more than just
economic wealth. This is done by the United Nations in its Human
Development Index which combines data on life expectancy, education and
the material standard of living into a single statistic. It is also being
done by the United Kingdom's Office of National Statistics, which is
experimenting with Wellbeing indicators health, personal
relationships, work, education, personal finance, political participation
and environmental conditions which will be combined into a single statistic
to be used, eventually, alongside Gross Domestic Product statistics. See
the
social science dictionary entry on Wealth
STRUCTURED INEQUALITY
MARKET
AND
STATE
Robert Merton, a student of
Talcott Parsons analysed society in terms of structure and
culture. He argued that there could be a strain between the two. The
culture could set out ideals that the structure made difficult to achieve.
A similar idea underlies what
Fulcher and Scott say
about structured
inequality.
culture
"
Universalism involves treating all people in the same way... In
a universalistic system , all are free to achieve social goals through
their own individual efforts" (Fulcher and Scott 2007") p.724)
"Universalism has generally been seen as operating most
effectively through either a market mechanism or a bureaucratic mechanism"
(p.724)
In England the Conservative Party usually sets out the benefits of the free
market and the Labour Party puts more emphasis on the power of the state
bureaucracy to achieve the welfare of the people. However, different views
"agree in ... involving universalitic standards..."
(Fulcher and Scott
2007 p.724)
structure
[MOBILITY -
Fulcher and Scott
2007" pages 741-744]
If the development of the market and the development of bureaucracy are
both seen (in our culture) as aiming at greater
equality of
opportunity, we might expect to see reduction of poverty and the
development of an increasingly open society in which people moved up (and
sometimes down) the social ladder.
Fulcher and Scott present evidence to show that in some respects, and from
some views, this is what happened in Europe and the United States. However
1) Studies of social mobility (movement between classes) in Britain showed
that "people were more likely to remain where they were born than they were
to rise or fall"
(Fulcher and Scott
2007 p.741)
2) In the United States "the effects of universalism... were partially
counteratcted by the persistence of racism and of disadvantages linked to
ethnicity".
(Fulcher and Scott
2007 p.744)
These conclusions (and others) suggested to the researchers that there are
structural features in the societies that are at odds with the cultural
ideals. What these structural features might be are matters of debate, but
we might suggest that the existing
hierarchies of inequality have ways of
resisting downward mobility of the people at the top, and upward mobility
of people at the bottom.
PARSONS ON THE
CLASSROOM
|
We can use our
earlier diagram to think about how inequality
relates to the social structures of the family, school and society outside
them.
Parsons study of Boston schools showed that children from different classes
were assessed on what he considered universalistic criteria. They were not
rewarded because of who their parents were, but because of their
achievements.
|
As a result, many children from lower classes planned to go
on to college, and, Parsons says, going to college was the main thing that
decide who went into the higher classes.
Parsons looked at boys from different classes but of similar ability
measured by
IQ tests meant to tell what a child is capable of. He found
that amongst the pupils with the greatest ability
"
the range of college intentions was from 29 per cent for sons of labourers
to 89 per cent for major white collar persons
"
If almost a third of the brightest working class boys go to college and
change class that certainly suggests some mobility. But there a forces at
work in the opposite direct, for almost 90% of the upper class boys go on
to college.
What are the structural forces against mobility? Finance would appear to be
one force. Ambition might be another. Discrimination might be another.
These are matters for investigation.
As we have seen, boys from black families were much more unlikely to
advance than boys from white families. A reason for this could have been
that, on average, black pupils had less innate ability than white pupils.
IQ tests seemed to support this finding. In the 1960s, however, researchers
suggested that IQ tests did not measure an innate fixed ability, but only a
stage of development that a child had reached. It was argued that the
family life of many black children (with mainly manual class parents) did
not develop their abilities in the way that the life of many white (mainly
middle class) families did.
PIERRE BOURDIEU
1963 to 1968 empirical research in French schools
1979 (in French) Distinction: A Social Critique of
the Judgment
of Taste
Argument: Power defines taste.
"the working-class 'aesthetic' is a dominated 'aesthetic' which
is constantly obliged to define itself in terms of the dominant aesthetics"
The children of different classes learn different habits of mind and
behaviour in the family.
As a result, children expect different things from life.
A working class child might not expect photography to be an art form, for
example. He or she might become a photographer who took straight pictures,
whilst a child from an "artistic" home might pursue photography a art
school.
In this way, stratification is perpetuated by the culture we learn at home.
TABLE OF SOME IMPORTANT INEQUALITY-RELATED TERMS IN SOCIAL THEORY
This table first inter-relates the definitions
James Fulcher and John Scott give in the textbook
Sociology. It also links this to material in my own
Social Science Dictionary with a Durkheim bias (Words to
describe social reality)
click for dictionary
|
|
EQUALITY
|
Fulcher and Scott: A condition in which all members of a society are equal
to one another in one or more measuarable respects. Includes
"equality of
opportunity",
"equality of outset" and
"equality of outcome"
|
INEQUALITY
|
Fulcher and Scott do not include in their glossary, but say (under
"A structure of inequality and
domination",
p.12) that "some groups benefit
more" from societies activities (see
life-chances). They say the "various dimensions" of inequality
include:
class,
ethnic,
gender,
religious and nationality inequalities
within
nations and international inequalities between nations.
Three theoretical issues raised by the study of inequality are
Stratification, control, and
conflict
|
POVERTY
|
Fulcher and Scott (page 728) say that poverty and
wealth are best defined
in relation to one another. Relative to what is
"normal for citizens in a
particular society", the poor are those who are deprived of, or even
exluded
from full public life. In a "theory box" they distinguish this concept of
relative
poverty from the concept of absolute poverty
|
ABSOLUTE POVERTY
|
Fulcher and Scott (page 728) say that an absolute view of poverty tries to
measure it in terms of a fixed and unchanging baseline. Poverty is seen as
defined as physiological subsistence or fixed human needs.
|
RELATIVE POVERTY
|
Fulcher and Scott: A condition where people follow a way of life that is
deprived relative to the standard of living that is customary or accepted
as
normal in their society. They are unable to fulfil the rights of
citizenship to the full.
|
WEALTH
|
Fulcher and Scott: The opposite of poverty
(relative poverty). because of their income and asset, the
wealthy are able
to enjoy life chances and lifestyles that are superior to those that are
recognised as normal for citizens in their society. Wealth is the basis of
privilege.
|
LIFE CHANCES |
Fulcher and Scott: The
opportunities that a person has to acquire income, education,
housing, health, and other valued resources. They are the basis of
inequalities.
|
OPPORTUNITY
|
Fulcher and Scott define
equality of opportunity as a condition in
which entry to all social positions is governed by criteria of
universalism: they are open to all on the basis of merit, rather
than being limited by birth or social background
|
OUTCOME
|
Fulcher and Scott define
equality of outcome as a condition in
which all members of a society enjoy the same standard of living and
Life-chances
|
OUTSET
|
Fulcher and Scott define
equality of outset as a condition in
which all start out from similar positions in the competition for
advantages, as in a competitive race.
|
How fair is
Britain?
"Work and Wealth:
"The mean gender pay gap for women and men working full-time in 2009 was
16.4 per cent; and progress today appears to be grinding to a halt. Women
aged 40 earn on average 27 per cent less than men of the same age. Women
with degrees are estimated to face only a four per cent loss in lifetime
earnings as a result of motherhood, while mothers with no qualifications
face a 58 per cent loss.
"By the age of 22-24, figures suggest that 44 per cent of Black people are
not in education, employment or training, compared to fewer than 25 per
cent of White people. One in four Bangladeshi and Pakistani women work,
compared with nearly three in four White British women, and only 47 per
cent of Muslim men and 24 per cent of Muslim women are employed.
"Pakistani and Bangladeshi men's earnings fall 13 per cent and 21 per cent
below what might be expected, and Black African Christian and Chinese men
experience pay penalties of 13 per cent and 11 per cent.
Fifty per cent of disabled adults are in work, compared to 79 per cent of
non-disabled adults.
Chapter eleven: Employment
|
work - employment
Context - Industrial society
Speaking of "industrial society" often involves two ideas
Industry can be used as a word for part of the
economy: Manufacturing and
trade as distinct from agriculture and services.
Agriculture
|
Services
|
Industry
|
This idea is joined with the idea of an industrious social order in most
concepts of an industrial society.
John Stuart Mill, in
1848, for example, spoke of
"the great social evil of a non-labouring class"
This might be illustrated by the leisured classes of slave owners or
landed aristocracies in pre-industrial societies. Mill said
"I do not recognise as either just or salutary, a state of
society in which there is an 'class' which is not labouring"
|
Fordism is one development of industrial society. It
refers to a
system of
mass-production developed by Henry Ford in the car factories he set up in
the United States. These became a model for the low-cost production of
standard goods for a mass market.
|
"Mass production and mass-consumption were interdependent and
linked by the advertising provided by the mass media" (Fulcher and Scott
2007, p.693).
post-industrial society
As heavy industry has become a less important part of advanced economies,
the idea of a post-industrial society has developed. This term was used in
a book title by the French sociologist Alain Touraine in 1969 and by the
USA sociologist Daniel Bell in 1973.
hardware and software societies
solid and liquid modernity
A similar contrast has been made by Zygmunt Bauman when he distinguishes
between "solid modernity" which is related to railways and factories and
"liquid modernity" which is related to computers and networks. [See
Thinking Sciologically the
Bauman and May way]
Similarities and differences
Compare the picture of the twenty-first century call-centre below with the
picture of an assembly line in 1913 below that. Think about the
similarities and the differences.
A Ford assembly line in 1913
Fordism
Fulcher and Scott pages 693 following
Henry Ford was born in
1863
in Michigan, USA. In
1896 he made a self-
propelled vehicle which he named the Ford Quadricycle. The photograph below
shows Henry and Mrs Ford driving his first "car" it many years later.
In 1908 he
began the manufacture of cars for the general public.
A new term in the United States vocabulary that has been traced back to
1914 is assembly line. The journal Engineering
said "labour costs may be... reduced... by the use of sliding assembly
lines"
In 1926
the Encyclopedia Britannica included an article on "mass production" over
the name of Henry Ford (although he did not write it). The term began to
supersede "Fordism" as the popular term for the process using assembly
lines. (external link missing). The term Fordism regained currency through
the
writings of the Italian marxist
Antionio Gramsci
1934 Antionio Gramsci's notes on America and Fordism -
But Americans could not read them until 1971.
Features of Fordism
A standard product produced cheaply in large numbers
for a mass market by mainly semi-skilled workers doing
simplified and routine tasks on an assembly line.
Some key dates in the development of Fordism and post-Fordism
1492 Christopher Columbus landed on an American island in
his search for a way to India. Marx and Engels wrote in
1848
"Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery
of America paved the way".
Manufacture and the division of labour preceded steam by
about two hundred years. The splitting of the tasks in needle
and pin manufacture is often taken as an example.
1763 Steam and
Machine
1776 Britain's American colonies declared themselves
independent and Adam Smith published his An Inquiry into The Nature and
Causes of
the Wealth of Nations
The United States that became independent were economically relatively
advanced parts of America. Parts of the American continents were the source
of images of primitive, undeveloped economies. Adam Smith contrasted this
with the wealth of European countries and put the difference down to the
division of labour between societies, within societies, and within
"factories".
Adam Smith's example of the division of labour within a factory was taken
from a French pin-factory in which each step in the making of the
pin was a separate stage in a process carried out by different people.
1836
Bridgewater Foundary
1934
Gramsci on America and Fordism - Available in English in
1971
June 1935 Alan Turing tried to envisage a machine that
would decide the provability of any mathematical assertion presented to it.
His paper "On Computable Numbers..." in January 1937 laid the
mathematical foundations for modern computers that can handle complex
thought patterns much more complex than older, mechanical, machines.
A "computable number" is any number that can be defined by some rule.
Turing's imaginary machines linked the world of abstract symbols to the
material world of metal and glass. Valves and then silicon chips would
later sort out thought at speeds beyond the speed of thought
December 1943
"Colossus" the first electro-mechanical computer was installed
as part of the British war effort. It was top-secret. The technology
introduced a previously unimaginable flexibility into what machines could
do.
1984 John Atkinson Flexibility, Uncertainty and Manpower
Management
Flexible Firm Model
FLEXIBLE EMPLOYMENT
[This section by Malcolm Richardson]
Until the late 1970s, in most of the industrially developed societies jobs
were relatively plentiful, and most people believed they had a relatively
secure and prosperous future. Today, it seems, those times have long since
gone.
Politicians and business leaders tell us that we must adapt in a rapidly
changing global economy, or suffer painful economic decline. It seems
particularly harsh if we are poor, or unemployed, or possess few skills or
educational credentials. But, even highly qualified, skilled professionals,
face a more insecure future, with frequent changes of job, and unreliable
incomes.
The uncertainties of rapidly changing markets as well as the need to cut
labour costs have forced employers to seek new ways of matching the demand
for labour with changing market conditions. These include:
1. Relocating more labour intensive aspects of their business to parts
of the globe where labour is cheaper. Examples are the so-called 'sun-belt
zones' in the southern USA, or the 'export-processing zones' established by
government's in many developing countries, including China.
2. Global corporations have also sought to match their various labour
and technical requirements to the different skills available in various
parts of the world. They can do this by dispersing their production,
managerial, technical, or administrative departments to different
locations, often in different countries across the globe. Everything can be
managed and coordinated through global electronic information and
communication networks.
post- Fordism
Fulcher and Scott pages 693-697
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Fordism
|
Post-Fordism
|
Product
|
Standard
|
Diverse
|
Priority
|
Cheapness
|
Quality
|
Market
|
Mass
|
Segmented/niche
|
Work tasks
|
Fragmented and repetitive
|
Multiple and varied
|
Skills
|
Mainly semi-skilled work
|
Multi-skilled worker
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Labour force
|
Occupationally divided
|
Integrated and flexible
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Management
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Centralised
|
Decentralised
|
Industrial relations
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Conflictual
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Cooperative
|
Trade unionism
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Multiple and independent
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Singe and integrated
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Gendering of occupations - domestic labour
These two pictures are taken from
Where Women Have No Doctor - A Health Guide for Women
(1997). This part of the book is about Sex and Gender Roles and it
explains that:
"Each person is born with either a girl's body or a boy's body.
These physical differences determine a person's sex, which does not change
overtime.
A person's gender role refers to the way a community defines what it is to
be a woman or a man. Each community expects women and men to think, feel,
and act in certain ways, simply because they are women or men. In most
communities, for example, women are expected to prepare food, gather water
and fuel, and care for their children and partner. Men, however, are often
expected to work outside the home to provide for their families and parents
in old age, and to defend their families from harm.
Unlike the physical differences between men and women, gender roles and the
activities associated with them are created by the community. Some
activities, like preparing food and caring for children, are considered
'women's activities' in many communities. But others vary from place to
place - depending on a community's traditions, laws, and religions. Gender
roles can even vary within communities, based on how much education a
person has, her race, or her age. For example, in some communities women of
a certain race are expected to do domestic work, while other women have
more choice about the jobs they hold."
Multi-tasking
In "developed" Western societies the divisions between men's work and
women's work has changed. Compare the following picture with the one's
above. What similarities and differences do they suggest between gendered
work in different societies? What is the lady doing on the telephone? Could
she
be running a business from home? If so, what kind of business?
Radical social theorists in the first half of the nineteenth century argued
that industry was liberating women by providing them with paid employment
and freeing them from dependence on men. This argument was made by, amongst
others, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, and Harriette Taylor and John
Stuart Mill.
But, as Marx and Engels pointed out, capitalist industry also undermined
the family
"The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed
co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more,
by the action of modern industry, all family ties among the proletarians
are torn asunder and their children transformed into simple articles of
commerce and instruments of labour." (Marx and Engels 1848,
paragraph 2.46)
The Coal Mines Act of 1842 and the Factory Acts from 1844 tried to prevent
the destruction of the family by modern industry. We saw, when speaking of
education, that they were important in introducing compulsory
schooling for working children.
You can find out more about life for men, women and children in a
nineteenth century coal mine by
clicking on this link
|
Two semi-naked teenagers descend into a 19th century mine by the rope lift.
Many illegitimate children were said to be conceived in the mines.
|
The coal mines and factory Acts controlled the extent to which women could
work in industry. This was controversial and social theorists such as
Harriette Taylor argued that it was wrong to treat women as children in
order to reinforce motherhood and women working at home.
Notice that homelife and education can both be regarded, from one
perspective, as freedom from work (leisure) and from another perspective as
work. Notice also that the different perspectives are related to gender
feminisation of work
Read "Growing employment of women" Fulcher and Scott pages 75-78
Have we stopped identifying ourselves through our employment?
Henry Ford's cars were made in one size and all painted one colour
(black).
"Car factories now provide a wide range of models, each of many
variations in style and engine power, and many optional extras. The decline
of mass
production
was interwoven with the decline of mass
consumption,
where major changes were also taking place. The decline of
class
and
community as sources of
identity and the growth of
individualism meant that
consumer goods were seen increasingly as an expression of personal
identity. This was no longer a matter of the work a person did of the place
they came from but of what they wore, what they drove, where they took
their holidays." Fulcher and Scott page 694.
leisure
.
This part of the lecture has not been written, because I was looking at
the plants in my garden
No. This is not me. - It is a friend looking at plants in my
garden
TABLE OF SOME IMPORTANT WORK-RELATED TERMS IN SOCIAL THEORY
The meanings of the terms we use differs from author to author. In the
following table I start with the definitions
James Fulcher and John Scott give in the textbook
Sociology and then draw on my own
Social Science Dictionary with a Durkheim bias (Words to
describe social reality)
Being written
If I do not finish on time I will bluff
Like this
|
I know what I am talking about and if you cannot understand me it is
because you are all upside down!
|
Mrs Alexander's Hymns for Little Children, first published in
1848, launched the hymn
"All Things Bright and Beautiful", in which the natural and
social orders are praised as the creation of God:
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All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
This verse appears to refer to the story of the rich man "Dives" and
the poor man "Lazarus"
|
Illustration (by Palmer?) to 1871 sheet music "Dives and Lazarus"
In a
story told by Jesus, Dives is a rich man and Lazarus is a poor
hungry man who sits at his gate hoping to eat the crumbs that fall from the
rich man's table. After death, their situations are reversed and Lazarus is
taken care of by Abraham in heaven whilst Dives finds himself in hell.
Dives pleads with Abraham to help him. Abraham tells Dives that in life we
have the morality of religious law and prophets to guide us towards a
caring compassionate society of mutual help. after death, it is too late.
The social values set out in Mrs Alexander's hymn have been described as
paternalism or maternalism or even the granny
state.
They are the principles of those who are well off (the higher strata)
caring and providing for those who are not (the lower strata)
In
The Communist Manifesto, which was also published in
1848. Marx and Engels called ideas like this feudal socialism. They
were ideas that wanted to go back to past
(feudal) relations of dependency and submission, with social
care. Marx and Engels suggested they were just a ploy on the part of the
aristocracy to secure the support of the workers
"The
aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian
alms-bag in front for a banner."
Also in 1848, and for similar reasons, Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill
wrote about
dependency theory
which makes the ruling class responsible for the welfare of the ruled.
The arrangement of society in strata (layers - as in rock formations), is
another word for
hierarchy.
In 1706 a dictionary defined strata as "layers or beds of different kind of
earthy matter, that lie one over another"
19th century social theorist began to compare this to the structure of
society. In
1850, for example,
Thomas Carlyle wrote
"in the lowest broad
strata of the population..are produced men of every kind of genius."
(Carlyle, T. 1.4.1850)
An
1840 cartoon showed social strata as layers in a beehive
Social stratification used to be used (as by Carlyle above) just in
reference to class, but more recently some social theorists have argued
that common characteristics such as race/ethnicity and gender also rank
people into strata.
Science in
1848, when Mrs Alexander's Hymn was published, included ideas of
geology and class. In both, scientists were interested in how structures
change - in what we call
evolution.
Karl Marx and Friederich Engels in
The Communist Manifesto (also
1848) wrote that
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles."
Class struggle was the power that heaved stratas of society into
new positions.
Geology and
evolutionary view of world history
|
In the
12th century the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi wrote "I have seen
on high mountains conchs and oyster shells, often embedded in the rocks.
These rocks in ancient times were earth and mud, and the conchs and .and
oysters lived in water, Subsequently everything that was at the bottom came
to be at the top, and what was originally soft became solid and hard"
In
1815, William Smith's map A Delineation of the Strata of
England and Wales with part of Scotland was the first geological map to
identify the layers of rock based on the fossils they contained rather than
on their composition
|
Saint Simon and
Marx and Engels and evolutionary view of social history.
Different social strata at different times:
slavery,
serfdom,
domestic and
wage labour
|
Slavery is a property relationship. The slave is owned. The English word
had its origin in a Latin word for "captive", on the basis that people
captured in war lost all rights and became the property of their captors.
This American picture of an agricultural worker in the 19th century reminds
us of the slavery we know most about: the slavery of Africans taken as
commodities across the Atlantic from the
15th Century.
However,
ancient civilisations, like those of Greece and Rome were made
possible by slavery. These slave societies ran from about 800 years before
Christ to the time of the prophet Muhammad. The Greeks made slaves of
(white) foreigners that they called "barbarians".
In western Europe this method of production gave way to feudal relations
and then to free labour. But, as free labour developed in Europe, Europe
developed slave labour abroad.
|
Serfdom
Between the slave-owning empires of Ancient Greece ad Rome and modern
societies where owners of capital employ free wage earners, was the
feudal period. The bottom layer of the feudal system were the
serfs
Serfs were semi-free workers who owed their lord labour on his land
and received, in return, the right to work on land where they could grow
their own crops.
This illustration is from a book of Psalms (Psalter) made about
1310-1320. The man with the stick is not a slave-driver.
He is the "Reeve" or manager of the Lord's estate. In some manors it was
the custom for the serfs themselves to elect the Reeve. The serfs had their
own rights to grow crops on strip-fields and graze animals on the common
land, but they owed the Lord service fr so many days a year. They could not
leave the Lord, so they were not free. But neither were they slaves.
Serfs escaping and becoming freemen in towns was one of the origins of
free-labour.
Two forms of free labour that we should consider are domestic (home-
based) work and wage work, especially the wake work in factories that we
discussed under
"Fordism"
Domestic labour
Wage labour
Mill and Taylor's comment: the position of women
Harriet Taylor (1807-1858) provided the ideas for an article
"On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes" in a book by
John Stuart Mill that was the standard text book on economics in the second
half of the 19th century.
|
The article argues against
paternalism and for self-determination.
Paternalism is where a benevolent, but authoritarian, government provides
for the welfare of the people. It is the kind of policy associated, at the
time, with people like
Lord Ashley.
summary of Mill and Taylor's essay
Mill and Taylor argued that, after the basic necessities of life have been
met, freedom is the most important human need. Freedom meaning, for them,
the opportunity to develop one's own life according to one's own values,
rather than living, however comfortably, under the control of someone else.
The working class, they argued, were rightly taking this power into their
own hands.
Women, they added, should do the same.
|
Mill and Taylor presented two models relevant to the position of both
labourers (Mill 1848
par 1) and women (Mill 1848 pars
3 and
18). They
opposed the theory of dependence and protection (Mill 1848 pars
2-8) and
supported that of self-dependence (Mill 1848 pars
9-16).
Dependency theory makes the ruling class responsible for the welfare of the
ruled. According to this approach, the rich should regulate the social
environment beneficially, and educate the poor in socially constructive
ideas (Mill 1848 par
3).
Dependency theory also says men should be providers and protectors for
their wives (Mill 1848 par
18). This, Mill and Taylor suggest, treats
workers and women as children (Mill 1848 pars
12 and
25).
Mill and Taylor argue that it is both undesirable and too late to treat
workers or women as children: The working classes were taking their
interests into their own hands (Mill 1848 pars
9-10), leading to an
increase in their education and intelligence (Mill 1848 pars
12 following).
Some women were beginning to take the same path (Mill 1848 par
25). The
process, (taking place for the same reasons in both cases: Mill 1848 par
18), was beneficial because it was essential for
self-development (Mill
1848 pars
12-20).
Bibliography
Mill, 1848, Principles of Political Economy. Section On the Probable
Futurity of the Labouring Classes. Paragraph numbers from
http://studymore.org.uk/xmil1848.htm
Weber and
status
Max Weber distinguished between status and class. Status can refer to
prestige, and this does not need to be related to wealth or class. So, in
analysing society, Weber believed we should consider both economic class
and social status. An academic, for example, may have status, but be poor.
Weber argued that we cannot reduce everything to class or economics.
|
Rosemary Crompton in Class and Stratification (2008,
p.15) speaks of 'Class', a multifaceted concept
'class' as prestige, status, culture of 'lifestyles'
Her other two meanings are
'class' as structured social and economic inequality [As when we
measure class by indicators such as occupation or income]
'classes' as actual or potential social and political actors [As in
Marx's analysis where class structures (modes of production) give rise to
particular forms of class consciousness that in turn result in class
actions. (Crompton p.16).
|
Identity and class stratification: who do people think they are?
The class sketch below illustrates the first of her three meanings 'class'
as prestige, status, culture of 'lifestyles'
7.4.1966 BBC "Frost report" comedy sketch on the British
class system.
|
|
I look down on them because I am upper class.
I look up to him because he is upper class but I look down on him because
he is lower class. I am middle class.
I know my place.
I get a feeling of superiority over them.
I get a feeling of inferiority to him but a feeling of superiority over
him.
I get a pain in the back of my neck
|
|
In this comedy sketch, John Cleese as the upper class man wears a bowler
hat
"the headgear
that once defined British civil servants and bankers"
(Telegraph 5.10.2012)
|
|
Ronnie Barker as the middle class man wears a trilby.
Rene Cutforth (1976) in Later Than
We Thought wrote of the trilby hat as "the universal headgear of the
middle classes ... By the thirties it had certainly become degenerate ...
It was a hat which had lost all aspiration: it had become a mingy hat".
|
|
Ronnie Corbett as the lower class man wears a cloth cap.
The Oxford English Dictionary
defines something as "cloth-cap" if it is "pertaining to or characteristic
of the working class"
|
Rosemary Crompton and current relevance - Are we all just
individuals?
Rosemary Crompton contrast the
above sketch with a BBC2 series in
1996 called Parsons on Class
"contrasting aristocrats who sent their children to state
schools with low-paid workers who paid for private education, keen golf-
club members who lived in local authority housing, and self-made men who
had brought their own private shooting rights."
The argument of this, she says, is that
"particular kinds of consumption practices are no longer tied
to particular status groups"
Tony Parsons meets the
|
Gordon-Duff-Pennington family "aristocrats who sent their children to state
schools"
who own a castle in
Cumbria, to see what life is like for the upper classes. This family once
owned 23,000 acres of Cumbria but has now been reduced to 1,800.
They battle to preserve Muncaster Castle (the ancestral home). Their
aristocratic Britain "is gone" "Now it's the successful businessmen who bag
the pheasant" (07/03/1996 On Your Uppers)
|
|
The Jones family who live in Maghull, Liverpool, who paid for private
education for their children. Talking to them about
"about their lives,
aspirations and hopes for the future as members of the middle class."
(21/03/1996 Keeping up with the Joneses: last programme)
|
The Annely family low-paid workers on the
Blackbird Leys estate outside
Oxford, whose roots are working class but who are upwardly mobile.
The working class Annely family have adapted to a middle-class way of life.
"The factories have gone and so have the whippets". They are "keen
golf-club members who lived in
local authority housing". "The red flag is kept flying only over the 18th
hole" (14/03/1996 Up with
the Workers)
|
|
In the
1966 comedy sketch class was fixed in both the
occupations
and the clothing of the three individuals. The banker wore a bowler, the
shop-keeper wore a trilby and the man in the market wore a cloth cap. In
the
1996 documentary occupation and lifestyle are more
flexible. The
aristocrat saves money by sending his children to state schools, the family
with working class roots play golf and bankers aspire to be aristocrats
whilst middle class people save money to send their children to private
school .
It could be argued that class has become a style of shopping!
See individualistation
2013
Journalist Harry Wallop argues that in our consumer society, class no
longer depends so much on how you earn your money as on how you spend it.
This relates to the idea that identity is replacing class as
a significant tool of sociological analysis.
This is related to a move from
Fordism to post-Fordism or
post-Industrial society
Zygmunt Bauman relates it to the move from hardware to software
times.
|
|
Work (occupation) used to provide a focus for the development of class-
based identities in industrial societies. This was especially so in the
case of communities based around employment, such as mining villages, or
industrial towns where people worked in local factories.
But, according to
Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (2002), increasing
insecurity associated with the
flexible labour
market mean that both class and status are losing their
significance. (Crompton p.75).
Ulrich Beck
and
Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim
refer to this process as
individualistation
Individualisation is a shift in our social relations from valuing
community and inter-connectedness
to valuing
individualism and
autonomy
Speaking of Western Germany, Urich Beck says that, since the mid
1950s
"the unstable unity
of shared life experiences mediated by the market and shaped by status,
which Max Weber brought together in the concept of social class, began to
break apart. Its different elements (such as material conditions dependent
upon specific market opportunities, the effectiveness of tradition and of
precapitalist lifestyles, the consciousness of communal bonds and of
barriers to mobility, as well as networks of contact) have slowly
disintegrated'
(Beck, U. 1986/1992 p.96)
In the new conditions
"class biographies, which are somehow ascribed, become
transformed into reflexive biographies which depend on the decisions of the
actor"
Which, in plainer English, means that once a person's life was decided by
the community (class) they were born into, but now they choose it.
|
The last word
|
TABLE OF SOME IMPORTANT STRATIFICATION-RELATED TERMS IN SOCIAL
THEORY
The meanings of the terms we use differs from author to author. In the
following table I start with the definitions
James Fulcher and John Scott give in the textbook
Sociology and then draw on my own
Social Science Dictionary with a Durkheim bias (Words to
describe social reality)
© Andrew Roberts
My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography
entry:
Roberts, Andrew 11.2011 - Social structures and social identities
Available at http://studymore.org.uk/structur.htm
and intext references to (Roberts, A. 11.2011).
See ABC
Referencing for general advice.
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