Mr Kidman's Classroom
Revise the key ideas
Stratification and functionalist arguments
- Stratification and inequality — Social stratification concerns patterned ranking and unequal access to rewards and power. Income is a flow of money, while wealth is accumulated assets minus liabilities. Status concerns esteem. Differences can persist across generations, but social positions do not determine every individual outcome or imply differences in human worth.
Assets are things with financial value, such as savings or property; liabilities are debts or other amounts owed. Wealth subtracts liabilities from assets. Esteem means social respect.
- Davis and Moore — Their 1945 functionalist account proposed that important roles must be filled by capable people who undertake training and perform conscientiously. Higher rewards were said to encourage this allocation. Explain the steps connecting reward, preparation and performance; a list of well-paid occupations is not evidence that this mechanism is fair or necessary.
Explanation and evaluation: Some Principles of Stratification (1945) argues that societies must fill positions, recruit capable people, ensure necessary training and motivate conscientious performance. Unequal rewards are proposed as an incentive to undertake demanding preparation and fill functionally important roles. Evaluation: this identifies possible motivational effects, but high pay cannot itself prove importance without circular reasoning. Essential care work may be poorly rewarded while inherited wealth requires no occupational contribution. Unequal access to education can prevent talented people obtaining training, so stratification can waste ability as well as reward it. Cooperation, vocation and recognition may motivate alongside money.
- Functional importance — Essential care or cleaning can be poorly rewarded, while other highly paid activities are contested. Judging importance by pay makes the theory circular if pay is then justified by importance. Power, bargaining and ownership may explain rewards. Talent can also be restricted by unequal access to training.
Circular reasoning uses the conclusion as its own support: saying a job is important because it is highly paid, then saying its high pay is justified because it is important, supplies no independent test.
- Alternative views — Marxists see class rewards as exploitation; feminists question undervaluation of care and gendered barriers. Unequal rewards might motivate some people while wasting others' talents through exclusion. Compare what each perspective predicts and how opportunity, recruitment and performance could be measured.
Class and market position
- Marx's class model — Marx located class in relation to the means of production: land, buildings, machinery and capital used to produce goods. The bourgeoisie own or control these; the proletariat depend on selling labour. Exploitation concerns appropriation of surplus value, not simply an employer being personally unkind or every worker having identical income.
Explanation and evaluation: The bourgeoisie own productive assets; the proletariat sell labour power. Exploitation concerns owners appropriating surplus value generated in production, rather than simply paying different wage rates. Competition and accumulation can concentrate ownership and intensify antagonism, while class consciousness can turn shared interests into collective action. Evaluation: the model links wealth with control over work and investment. Its two-class emphasis can understate managers, intermediate positions and different employment relations. Weber adds market skills, status and political organisation; feminist accounts show why gender power cannot simply be read off ownership.
In this account, labour power is the capacity to work. Surplus value is the value workers create beyond the value of labour power paid for through wages; Marx argues that owners take control of this surplus.
- Conflict and ideology — Marx argued that dominant ideas can present unequal arrangements as natural or fair, obscuring shared worker interests. Class struggle can challenge these relations. Evaluate the proposed link between ownership and power; governments, institutions and individuals do not always act as a perfectly united class bloc.
- Weber's market situation — Weber agreed ownership matters but distinguished people by market chances, including valuable qualifications and skills. Professionals can obtain high earnings without owning major productive assets. Middle classes can expand rather than disappear. His account therefore challenges simple polarisation and an inevitable proletarian revolution.
Explanation and evaluation: For Weber, class concerns market opportunities: property and scarce qualifications affect the rewards people can secure. People without major property can still occupy different class situations because employers value their skills differently. Status concerns social honour; party concerns organised pursuit of power. Evaluation: these dimensions explain why income, prestige and political influence do not always coincide. They can be difficult to measure consistently and should not distract from how ownership concentrates resources across all three. His approach qualifies an exclusively economic model rather than denying economic inequality.
Polarisation means movement towards opposing groups. Proletarian means dependent on selling labour power, so a proletarian revolution refers to workers overturning the class system in the theory.
- Class, status and party — A respected religious leader may have little wealth; a wealthy person may lack prestige; a pressure group may unite people across classes. Weber used party for organised pursuit of power beyond electoral parties. Social closure restricts outsiders' access to valued group membership, protecting advantages such as credentials or networks.
Selected overview. Explain the qualifications using the notes. - Class divisions and mobility — Working, middle and upper class labels can refer to occupation, property, identity or culture. Intergenerational mobility compares parents and children; intragenerational mobility tracks a person's life. More professional jobs can create mobility without equal competition for them. A mobile individual does not prove the disappearance of structural class inequality.
- Embourgeoisement debate — Embourgeoisement proposes that affluent workers become more middle class in outlook. The affluent-worker debate examined whether income changes beliefs, solidarity and lifestyle. Distinguish material consumption from political attitudes and class identification. Similar possessions do not necessarily imply equal power, wealth or opportunities.
- Devine revisited — Affluent Workers Revisited (1992) used late-1980s interviews with Luton car workers and wives, revisiting the earlier affluent-worker setting. Devine found continuing concern about class injustice despite improved consumption, challenging predictions of privatised instrumentalism and uncritical acceptance of capitalism. A local qualitative sample cannot represent every worker or period.
Explanation and evaluation: Affluent Workers Revisited (1992) returned to the debate over whether increasing prosperity makes manual workers middle class. Interviews with Luton workers and their partners explored identities, aspirations and social relationships. Improved consumption and a private family life did not automatically erase working-class identification or solidarity. Evaluation: interviews distinguish subjective identity from income and occupation, challenging the inference that owning consumer goods proves embourgeoisement. A local qualitative study provides depth rather than a representative measurement of the whole working class, and its period and employment setting matter.
Privatised instrumentalism means treating work mainly as a means to earn money for private household goals, rather than finding wider social belonging through work. Devine’s findings challenge reducing workers’ outlook to this alone.
Life chances and overlapping inequalities
- Life chances — Life chances include access to education, employment, housing, health and security. They describe opportunities and risks, not an inevitable biography. Compare mechanisms such as money, networks and discrimination. Life expectancy is an average measure for a population; it is not a prediction of an individual's lifespan.
- Class resources — Assets can fund housing and education, cushion unemployment and support unpaid training. Material deprivation restricts necessities; social exclusion limits participation in ordinary institutions and activities. Networks can open job opportunities. Income and wealth should be analysed separately because similar earnings can coexist with very different security.
- Gender and sexuality — Caring responsibilities, occupational segregation, harassment and unequal recognition can affect opportunities. The glass ceiling is an invisible barrier to advancement. Sexuality-based discrimination can restrict safety and access even when formal inclusion exists. Patterns vary with class, ethnicity and institutions; laws and stated equality do not alone establish equal outcomes.
Occupational segregation means different groups being concentrated in different types or levels of work, for example women and men being unevenly distributed across jobs.
- Race and ethnicity — Race categories are socially constructed; ethnicity concerns cultural identification and belonging. Racism can influence hiring, housing, policing and recognition of qualifications. Analyse institutional and interpersonal mechanisms without treating minority groups as uniform or interpreting unequal outcomes as biological differences.
- Age and disability — Age stereotypes can restrict training or employment. Disability involves the interaction of impairments with barriers such as inaccessible transport or exclusionary hiring; support and adjustments can alter chances. Avoid assuming older or disabled people are uniformly dependent or lack skills and agency.
- Religion and belief — Religious communities may provide support and connections, while discrimination or unsuitable institutional arrangements can restrict participation. People with no religion also have beliefs and rights. Evaluate the specific mechanism rather than assuming one faith always improves or worsens opportunities.
- Intersecting inequalities — An older low-income disabled woman may face barriers unlike those experienced by a wealthy younger woman. Compare contexts and avoid assuming one hierarchy explains every outcome. The same resource may have different value across settings, so good explanations link social location to an actual process.
Poverty, deprivation and explanations
- Absolute and relative poverty — Absolute poverty concerns insufficient resources for basic survival needs. Relative poverty concerns exclusion from customary living standards in a society. Thresholds depend on definition and household needs. A person may survive physically yet lack resources to participate, and a low-income measure is an indicator rather than a complete account of deprivation.
- Townsend's relative deprivation — Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979) used a large household survey and a deprivation index covering diet, housing, clothing and participation. Townsend argued that income alone and official benefit thresholds missed important dimensions. An item absent by choice differs from one unaffordable; index design and historical norms affect interpretation.
Explanation and evaluation: Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979) defines poverty in relation to resources needed to participate in customary activities and living conditions, rather than survival alone. Survey indicators of deprivation connected low resources with exclusion from ordinary social life. A household may survive physically yet lack the means for participation regarded as normal in its society. Evaluation: this exposes social exclusion missed by a subsistence threshold. However, choosing indicators involves judgement; not taking a holiday or joining an activity may reflect preference, health or age as well as lack of money. Researchers must distinguish enforced lack from choice, and update expectations rather than treat a historical list as timeless.
- Townsend's historical findings — Townsend's analysis of 1968–69 identified much more poverty through relative deprivation than through the contemporary state standard. These historical estimates demonstrate the consequences of measurement choices, not current UK prevalence. Evaluate selection of items, weighting, household needs and the line between preferences and constrained choices.
Weighting gives some indicators more influence than others when combining them into an index. Researchers must justify those choices as well as deciding which items to include.
- Culture of poverty — This account proposes that learned attitudes and practices can reproduce poverty across generations. Critics argue that insecurity and constrained opportunities may create the behaviours described, and that generalisation can blame people without explaining low wages or housing costs. Ask whether evidence shows causation, variation and realistic alternatives.
- Murray's underclass — Losing Ground (1984) focused on the USA; Murray later applied arguments to Britain. He claimed welfare could discourage work and stable families and promote an underclass. These are contested causal claims, not facts about benefit recipients. Critics highlight weak evidence, structural unemployment and conventional aspirations among people in poverty.
Explanation and evaluation: Losing Ground (1984) argues, in an American New Right account, that welfare arrangements can weaken incentives to work and encourage long-term dependency. The proposed mechanism concerns how the balance of rewards and costs affects conduct, with family instability also treated as part of a claimed underclass pattern. Evaluation: the argument prompts examination of actual incentives, but unemployment and lone parenthood are not evidence of a shared deviant culture. Job shortages, low wages, disability, childcare and housing costs constrain choices. Association between benefit receipt and hardship does not show benefits caused hardship; people may claim because they already lack resources. Do not transfer a US policy claim directly to British welfare arrangements without evidence.
- Structural explanations — Low wages, insecure jobs, unemployment, caring costs, unequal assets and barriers to services can constrain income. Marxists emphasise capitalist inequality; feminists add gendered unpaid work and dependence. Compare these with cultural accounts using evidence about jobs and household circumstances rather than assuming poverty results from laziness.
- Government responses — Governments can use income support, taxation, public services, training and employment measures to reduce hardship. Evaluate adequacy, take-up, cost, incentives and unintended effects. A policy can support some households while missing others. Distinguish its stated aim from evidence of changed material conditions and participation.
Take-up is the share of eligible people who actually claim or receive a form of support. A programme can exist yet have low take-up because people do not know about it or face barriers to applying.
- Globalisation — International production, trade and migration can shift job opportunities and bargaining power. Some groups gain employment or cheaper goods while others face displacement or insecure work. Global patterns affect UK life chances through specific mechanisms; avoid presenting globalisation as a uniformly beneficial or harmful force.
- Poverty measurement — Compare before/after housing costs, household composition, prices and a defined period. Relative and absolute low-income indicators can move differently. Surveys may miss some people and assets. Do not treat a percentage below a threshold as a direct measure of every form of deprivation or as a moral judgement.
Power, authority and relationships
- Power and legitimacy — Formal office provides authorised decision-making powers; informal influence can arise through networks, reputation, expertise or control of resources. Authority involves accepted legitimacy. A manager's office and a colleague's influence are different sources. Hidden agenda setting can matter even when no command or open conflict is visible.
- Traditional authority — Weber's traditional type rests on established practice and inherited position. People obey because the arrangement is regarded as customary. It is an ideal type for comparison, not a claim that every hereditary institution lacks written rules or that every older practice is automatically legitimate to all participants.
An ideal type is an analytical model that emphasises defining features for comparison. Ideal here does not mean morally best, perfect or necessarily found in pure form.
- Charismatic authority — Followers regard a leader as extraordinary and accept personal authority. It differs from popularity alone and can exist outside formal office. Authority may weaken when confidence declines or become organised into institutions. Analyse followers' recognition, not merely a leader's claim to be exceptional.
- Rational-legal authority — Authority rests on accepted rules and procedures, as in a lawful official role. Occupants change while the office remains. The existence of rules does not ensure justice or equal treatment. Actual organisations can combine traditional, charismatic and rational-legal features, so types guide analysis rather than exhaust reality.
- Perspectives on power — Pluralist accounts emphasise competition among groups and dispersed influence. Marxists stress class dominance, feminists patriarchal power, and functionalists coordinated collective goals. Compare access, outcomes and agenda setting in a specific institution. Voting rights alone do not demonstrate equal influence over all decisions.
Patriarchy and unequal relationships
- Walby's six structures — Theorizing Patriarchy (1990) identified paid work, household production, culture, sexuality, male violence and the state as interacting structures. For example domestic care can constrain earnings, weakening bargaining at home. This is a framework for examining mechanisms, not a claim that every man personally controls every woman in an identical way.
Explanation and evaluation: Theorizing Patriarchy (1990) locates male dominance across household production, paid employment, the state, male violence, sexuality and cultural institutions. The structures interact: unequal pay can increase economic dependence, which can make leaving an abusive relationship harder. Private patriarchy centres on household control; public patriarchy involves institutional inequalities as women enter employment and public life. Evaluation: the framework explains why entering paid work need not end inequality and avoids locating power only inside marriage. However, the broad category of women can conceal differences of class, ethnicity, sexuality and historical setting. Evidence of changing opportunities or women’s agency should qualify claims of uniform male control without assuming patriarchy has vanished.
- Private and public patriarchy — Walby distinguished direct control through fathers or husbands from domination in public institutions, where women participate but face segregation and exploitation. Access to employment may increase without equal power. Evaluate historical change and differences within groups; public participation does not by itself prove gender equality.
- Power across social positions — Resource ownership, citizenship, discrimination, caring responsibilities and institutional access can affect voice and control. Sexuality, disability, religion and age can change these relationships. Analyse a specific decision or barrier rather than ranking whole groups uniformly; agency and collective action can challenge unequal arrangements.
- Evaluating stratification evidence — Occupational categories, income surveys and interviews illuminate different dimensions. Statistics show distributions; accounts reveal meanings. Evaluate definitions, sample and period, then connect evidence to the theory's mechanism. No one measure proves that society is wholly meritocratic, wholly closed or free from inequality.
Further stratification and political concepts
- Historical systems — Slavery treats people as property and denies basic freedom. Feudalism involves historical relationships of landholding and obligations. Caste systems allocate inherited ranked membership with restrictions on mobility. Aristocracy concerns a privileged hereditary elite. These systems differ from a modern occupational classification and should not be treated as interchangeable.
- Class locations and identity — White-collar work typically involves office or professional tasks; manual work involves physical labour, though skills and rewards vary. The petty bourgeoisie are small proprietors. Proletarianisation involves becoming dependent on wage labour. Lumpenproletariat is Marx's contested category outside stable productive class organisation. Subjective class is how people identify, which can differ from a researcher's categories.
- Poverty processes — A cycle of deprivation links disadvantages across time or generations. Environmental poverty involves inadequate surrounding conditions and services. A poverty trap describes arrangements where increased earnings yield little net improvement after costs or lost support. Subjective poverty concerns perceived insufficiency; a state standard uses official criteria. Distinguish these from income thresholds and an asserted culture of dependency.
- Benefits and work — Universal benefits apply to an eligible category without an income test; selective or means-tested benefits depend on specified need or resources. Social security and welfare benefits support income or security through public arrangements. Unemployment means lack of work while seeking or available for it under the measure used; underemployment means insufficient hours or use of skills. A wage is employment pay, not total household wealth.
- Welfare labels — Terms such as welfare scrounger or benefit cheat can stigmatise recipients and conflate claiming support with wrongdoing. A claim about fraud needs evidence of deception, not merely low income or benefit receipt. Welfare reform changes rules or provision; the welfare state uses public institutions to support wellbeing. Evaluate incentives alongside jobs, care and costs.
- Economic and political ideals — Capitalism organises production through private ownership and markets. Socialism favours collective or public control for social ends; communism proposes a classless society. New Right approaches often combine neoliberal market emphasis with neoconservative support for traditional authority. Privatisation transfers provision or ownership towards private organisations. These terms describe contested systems and arguments, not uniform national realities.
Neoliberal arguments emphasise markets, competition and a smaller state role in many areas; neoconservative arguments emphasise established authority, order and traditional social values. New Right accounts can combine these emphases.
- Government forms — A nation-state claims political authority over a territory and population. Monarchy places a monarch at its head; dictatorship concentrates control with limited accountability; oligarchy involves rule by a small group. Fascism is an authoritarian ultranationalist ideology. Liberal democratic values emphasise political rights, pluralism and accountable government; actual practice requires evidence.
- Political participation — A political party seeks organised governmental power; pressure or interest groups pursue particular aims. MPs represent constituencies and a prime minister leads a government under the relevant system. First past the post awards a seat to the leading candidate; proportional representation seeks a closer relationship between votes and seats. Formal representation does not ensure equal informal influence.
A constituency is an electoral area represented by an MP. Under first past the post, the candidate with the most votes in that seat wins; this need not be more than half the votes cast.
- Collective interests and change — Class alignment links political support with class position; dealignment weakens that link. Political socialisation teaches political meanings and practices. Trade unions organise worker interests; industrial disputes concern employment relations. Direct action seeks change outside ordinary representative procedures, and new social movements may organise around environment, identity or other cross-class issues.
- Integration and difference — Assimilation expects newcomers to adopt dominant patterns; multiculturalism recognises continuing cultural diversity. An asylum seeker requests protection from persecution, distinct from every other migrant category. Ageism is unequal treatment based on age. Deference is acceptance of higher-status authority; these attitudes vary and should not be inferred simply from a person's background.
Poverty, deprivation and explanations
- Different poverty traps — A cycle of deprivation describes disadvantages reinforcing one another over time or generations, such as insecure housing disrupting education and later opportunities. A poverty trap concerns circumstances in which higher earnings produce little net gain after costs and withdrawn support. These are not interchangeable with a culture-of-poverty claim about learned values. Test the mechanism with evidence about resources, rules and choices, and avoid treating any framework as an inevitable biography of every low-income household.
