Social Class in the 21st Century

Citation

Savage, M., Cunningham, N., Devine, F., Friedman, S., Laurison, D., McKenzie, L., Miles, A., Snee, H., & Wakeling, P. (2015). Social Class in the 21st Century. Pelican (Penguin Books).

Chapter Summary

The book presents the findings of the BBC's Great British Class Survey, carried out in 2011 by a research team led by Mike Savage and Fiona Devine, to a general readership. The publisher says the authors explore how and why British society is changing, including for people at the margins as well as the centre, and propose a new conceptualisation of class based on three kinds of capital: economic (income and wealth), social (the kinds of people one knows) and cultural (leisure and cultural preferences). The publisher's page does not list a table of contents. The outline below follows a published review by Ana Paula Hey and Anna Isabella Grimaldi (Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, 2019), which describes four parts divided into chapters and gives the titles of the chapters it discusses, so it is not a complete chapter list.

Part One: The History of Social Class

The review describes this part as a literature review. It introduces class categories used since the nineteenth century and the shift in the 1960s associated with Pierre Bourdieu, whose attention to cultural and social forms of privilege underlies the book's approach.

Part Two: Capitals, Accumulation and Social Class

Combines survey data with interviews. The chapters named in the review are "Accumulating Economic Capital" (income, savings and house value), "Highbrow and Emerging Cultural Capital", "Social Capital" (who you know) and "The New Landscape of Class", which draws the three kinds of capital together and presents the new class divisions.

Part Three: Social Mobility, Education and Location

Takes up mobility, education and place. The chapters named are "Climbing Mountains", on how unevenly capital is distributed and what that means for social mobility; "A Tale of Two Campuses", on meritocracy and university education; and "Class and Spatial Inequality", on the geography of class in Britain and the position of London.

Part Four: The Class Divide in 21st Century Britain

Focuses on the two extremes of the class structure. The chapters named are "The View at the Top", on the elite; "The Precarious Precariat", on the group with the least capital of every kind; and "Class Consciousness and the New Snobbery", on how people perceive and talk about class. The review adds that concluding comments follow.

Key Concepts

Part One

• Class categories over time: how classes have been defined since the nineteenth century and why occupation alone has been questioned.
• Bourdieu's forms of capital: the idea that advantage takes economic, cultural and social forms.

Part Two

• Economic capital: income, savings and house value.
• Highbrow and emerging cultural capital: two kinds of cultural capital measured through leisure and taste.
• Social capital: the range and standing of the people one knows.
• The seven classes: the review lists the model's classes as Elite, Established middle class, Technical middle class, New affluent workers, Traditional working class, Emergent service workers and Precariat.

Parts Three and Four

• Social mobility and meritocracy: set out in "Climbing Mountains" and "A Tale of Two Campuses".
• Spatial inequality: the importance of place, with London treated as a dominant centre.
• Elite and precariat: the two extremes the book examines.
• Class consciousness and snobbery: how class identity and judgement are expressed.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Evidence from a very large survey. According to the review, the Great British Class Survey drew about 161,000 respondents and measured cultural activities and social ties in detail, using a question asking whether respondents knew people in 37 occupations.
• A broader picture than occupation. The review notes that the three-capital model shows class position is no longer tied to occupation alone, and that economic capital includes savings, pensions, inheritance and property as well as income.
• Attention to the extremes. The reviewers present the focus on the elite and the precariat, rather than the usual middle-working class boundary, as the book's distinctive contribution.
• Open about limits. The review reports that the authors acknowledge the survey's skew towards the very wealthy and its under-representation of poorer areas.

Limitations

• Contested method. The review lists published criticisms of the book: of its methodological approach (Ainley), of representation (Riding), of its leaving aside Marxist ideas of exploitation (Thomas), and of readability for non-academic audiences (Colville, in The Telegraph). The model's seven classes were also criticised in the academic literature for being reified.
• Skewed respondents. The review says the survey attracted an exaggerated skew towards the very wealthy and wariness from poorer areas, so the results should be read with the authors' own caveats rather than as a straightforward portrait of the whole population.
• Britain only. The analysis concerns Great Britain, so conclusions about other countries need other sources.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the class and inequality course, Savage and colleagues provide the British, survey-based view of class built on Bourdieu's forms of capital. Annette Lareau's Unequal Childhoods is an ethnography of how class shapes family life in the United States, a fine-grained complement to this broad statistical picture. Dennis Gilbert's The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality builds a model of the US class structure from data on jobs, income and wealth, and is the closest national counterpart.

Jeff Manza and Michael Sauder's Inequality and Society and the reader Social Stratification collect classic and current writing on inequality, and put the book in a wider debate. Erik Olin Wright's Understanding Class sets Marxist, Weberian and stratification approaches side by side; it is the place to take up the criticism that Savage's approach sets aside exploitation.

How to Use This Book

No prior knowledge is needed; the book is written for a general readership as well as students. It suits undergraduates beginning a course on class and inequality, and readers interested in British society.

A practical plan:

• Start with Part One to understand why occupation-based class schemes were questioned and what Bourdieu's capitals add.
• Read Part Two for the core argument. "The New Landscape of Class" is where the model and the seven classes come together.
• Choose from Parts Three and Four by interest. "Climbing Mountains" and "A Tale of Two Campuses" for mobility and education; "The View at the Top" and "The Precarious Precariat" for the extremes.
• Read the criticisms. Hey and Grimaldi's review lists the published critiques; reading one alongside the book helps with an essay.
• Pair with other course books. Use Lareau for the micro level and Gilbert or Wright for comparison and theory.