scholarly journals Was (ver-)messen eigentlich Klassen? Zum Zusammenhang zwischen unterschiedlicher Operationalisierung sozialer Klassen und ihrer Erklärungskraft mit Blick auf Stratifikation und Ungleichheit in Deutschland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Forian R. Hertel
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Class Membership ◽  
Time Class ◽  
Subject Areas

Deutsch: Darüber, wie die soziale Position in einer Gesellschaft am besten gemessen werden sollte, besteht keine Einigkeit. Da die Operationalisierung jedoch weitreichende Folgen für Forschungsdesign und Interpretation der Ergebnisse hat, werden hier sieben Konzeptionen sozialer Positionen auf ihre Erklärungskraft für ganz unterschiedliche Phänomene hin verglichen. Die Analyse sucht damit die vor allem methodische Frage zu beantworten, ob und wie sich die einzelnen Klassenmessungen in ihrer Erklärungskraft bezüglich Stratifikation und Klassenungleichheit bei 35 Eigenschaften von rund 25.000 Allbus-Befragten in Deutschland unterscheiden. Die Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass Klassenzugehörigkeit Menschen nur in wenigen der hier untersuchten Eigenschaften wirklich stratifiziert. Gleichzeitig lassen sich aber bedeutende Klassenungleichheiten bei objektiven Statusindikatoren und intergenerationalen Mobilitätsmessungen finden. Während insgesamt Mikroklassen die höchste Erklärungskraft aufweisen, sind die Unterschiede in Bereichen, in denen aggregierte Klassifikationen eine besondere Erklärungsleistung für sich beanspruchen, marginal. Die Ergebnisse empfehlen neben den quasi paradigmatischen ESEC-Klassen auch andere der hier vorgestellten Klassifizierungen ergänzend in der Ungleichheitsanalyse einzusetzen. English: There is little agreement how to best measure social class position in contemporary societies. The chosen measurement, however, has substantial implications for a study‘s design and the interpretation of its findings. Therefore, I empirically compare the explanatory power of nine alternative social class concepts regarding their ability to map stratification and identify class inequality. The analysis is repeated for 35 characteristics measured in the Allbus data 1980 to 2018 for almost 25,000 individuals. Results indicate that class membership stratifies only few of the studied attributes. At the same time class concepts are able to detect meaningful class inequality especially in terms of but not limited to objective SES measures and social mobility indicators. While microclasses outperform more aggregated class measures in general, the differences are rather small in subject areas for which the latter theoretically claim particular explanatory power. In the spirit of parsimony, the results hence would seem to suggest the use of the more aggregated classifications at least with regard to some subject matters. I suggest to complement the almost exclusive usage of ESEC in contemporary stratification research with alternative class measures.

Social Class and Cultural Consumption: The Impact of Modernisation in a Comparative European Perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Gerhards ◽  
Silke Hans ◽  
Michael Mutz
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
Class Membership ◽  
The One ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Pierre Bourdieu’s work has argued that there is a homology of social classes on the one hand and cultural consumption on the other. In contrast, theories of individualisation posit that social class plays only a minor role in shaping lifestyle in contemporary societies. In this paper we examine a) how much contemporary highbrow lifestyles in 27 European countries are structured by class membership, b) the extent to which highbrow consumption varies according to the level of modernisation of a society and c) whether the explanatory power of social class in relation to highbrow consumption decreases in more modernised European countries. The findings show that highbrow lifestyles are strongly influenced by social class, and that highbrow consumption is more common in more modernised societies. Moreover, the findings confirm the hypothesis that the formative power of social class on lifestyle decreases in highly modernised societies, albeit without disappearing completely.

scholarly journals Re-Imagining Social Mobility: The Role of Relationality, Social Class and Place in Qualitative Constructions of Mobility

2021 ◽  
pp. 136078042098512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Folkes
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Occupational Position ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Key Techniques ◽  
Class Community

Discussions around social mobility have increasingly gained traction in both political and academic circles in the last two decades. The current, established conceptualisation of social mobility reduces ‘success’ down to individual level of educational achievement, occupational position and income, focusing on the successful few who rise up and move out. For many in working-class communities, this discourse is undesirable or antithetical to everyday life. Drawing upon 13 interviews with 9 families collected as part of an ethnographic study, this article asks, ‘how were social (im)mobility narratives and notions of value constructed by residents of one working-class community?’ Its findings highlight how alternative narratives of social (im)mobility were constructed; emphasising the value of fixity, anchorage, and relationality. Three key techniques were used by participants when constructing social (im)mobility narratives: the born and bred narrative; distancing from education as a route to mobility; and the construction of a distinct working-class discourse of fulfilment. Participants highlighted the value of anchorage to place and kinship, where fulfilment results from finding ontological security. The findings demonstrate that residents of a working-class community constructed alternative social mobility narratives using a relational selfhood model that held local value. This article makes important contributions to the theorisation of social mobility in which it might be understood as a collective rather than individual endeavour, improving entire communities that seek ontological security instead of social class movement and dislocation.

Pathways to Social Class: A Qualitative Approach to Social Mobility.

Social Forces ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 1549
Author(s):  
Charles E. Hurst ◽  
Daniel Bertaux ◽  
Paul Thompson ◽  
Rudolf Andorka ◽  
Iabelle Bertaux-Wiame ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Class A

Higher Education, Social Class and Social Mobility

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Marie Bathmaker ◽  
Nicola Ingram ◽  
Jessie Abrahams ◽  
Anthony Hoare ◽  
Richard Waller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Social Mobility

How Many Classes Are There?

Uneven Odds ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Divya Vaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Objective Measure ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Intergenerational Change ◽  
Definition Of

To examine the elements of social mobility, especially the intergenerational change in social position, requires the establishment of an appropriate schema that captures social class position across generations. This chapter summarizes the major debates surrounding the definition of social class, with a specific focus on class in the Indian context. So far there is little consistent effort to map the possible classes in Indian society. This chapter discusses the conceptualisation of class and its operationalisation in terms of a class schema. The focus is on a possible ‘objective’ measure of class in the Indian context.

Subjective social class and individual preferences for redistribution

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189
Author(s):  
Anil Duman
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Multilevel Models ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Preferences For Redistribution ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Subjective Social Class ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The recent increase in economic inequalities in many countries heightened the debates about policy preferences on income distribution. Attitudes toward inequality vary greatly across countries and numerous explanations are offered to clarify the factors leading to support for redistribution. The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between subjective social class and redistributive demands by jointly considering the individual and national factors. The author argues that subjective measures of social positions can be highly explanatory for preferences about redistribution policies. Design/methodology/approach The author uses data from 48 countries gathered by World Values Survey and empirically tests the impact of self-positioning into classes by multilevel ordered logit model. Several model specifications and estimation strategies have been employed to obtain consistent estimates and to check for the robustness of the results. Findings The findings show that, in addition to objective factors, subjective class status is highly explanatory for redistributive preferences across countries. The author also exhibits that there is interaction between self-ranking of social status and national context. The author’s estimations from the multilevel models verify that subjective social class has greater explanatory power in more equal societies. This is in contrast to the previous studies that establish a positive link between inequality and redistribution. Originality/value The paper contributes to the literature by introducing subjective social class as a determinant. Self-ranked positions can be very relieving about policy preferences given the information these categorizations encompass about individuals’ perceptions about their and others’ place in the society.

Francis Galton on twins, heredity and social class

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID BURBRIDGE
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Monozygotic Twins ◽  
Twin Studies ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Francis Galton

In 1875 Francis Galton was the first to study twins as a test of the relative strength of heredity and environment. This paper examines Galton's work on twins, using his surviving working papers. It shows that his enquiry was larger and more systematic than previously realized. Galton issued several hundred questionnaires to parents of twins, with the aim of establishing how far the similarities and differences between twins were affected by their life experiences. The paper also discusses Galton's study in relation to his understanding of the physiology of twinning and his theory of heredity. The modern concept of monozygotic twins had not yet been established, and the similarity between Galton's work and modern twin studies should not be overstated. While Galton's work was important as a pioneering study, in some respects his conclusions went beyond his evidence. The paper finally examines whether Galton's twin studies influenced his position on the links between social class, heredity and social mobility, and surveys the evidence for his views on these issues.

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