The British Society: What Remains of the Social Class - Essay Example

23 April The British Society: What Remains of the Social Since the coming of innovations in the complexities of the world, social class in Great Britain had undergone eventful changes even until today. The modernization of societies globally by virtue of industrialization brought multitude of impacts that changed the face of modern Britain today. The focus of this paper is intended to unravel the social class that has been with the British society that extends from the ancient medieval times until contemporary Britain. The idea of the biased social culture changed magnificently worldwide in the coming of social reforms. Has the world not evolved in the manner to finally eradicate the social blockage that has been controlling the status quo in the society? This research paper will analyze within its context of whether the social class has been fully dissolved within the communal goal of modern day Britain. Is Great Britain still a class defined society despite the claim of modernization? Has it really disappeared totally or was just set in silence that still creeps among its dark alleys? What is really left of Britain’s social class in the advent of the modern world? To eventually answer the question posed above is to go over salient points of history in the field of British sociology. The wide range of reading materials used for the research are from the pages of credible published articles that gave guidance in the proper analysis of whether Britain still remains a class society. Social Division and the British Social Class The society is not only made up of many separate individuals, but at some points individuals are very similar to one another and so can be differentiated from other types of people with differing social conditions (Payne 2006, p. 5). These differences in social conditions are considerably factors that people are categorized accordingly such as employment, income, education and others—these are sociological factors or basis for social division. Class is a multi faceted concept. The use of the term class to indicate lifestyle, prestige or rank is the most commonly used sense of the term. In the context of sociology class is bound up with hierarchy, of being higher than or lower than some other person or group (Crompton 2008, p 15). Social division according to Payne are those substantial differences between people that run throughout the society that has two categories, each of which has distinctive material and cultural features. In other words, one category is better positioned than the other and has a better share of resources because it has greater power over the way the society is organised. This explains why the better positioned members of the society have better privileges in terms of social freedom. The differing identity and categories affects how people conduct social interactions with other people of different class (Payne 2006, p. 6). There are three major social divisions: class, gender and ethnicity. However class is most commonly used when people talk about differentiation in the society. Furthermore, to better understand social class, Barrow (2012) cited that sociologists often define social class as the grouping of people by category of occupations. Common examples are doctors, lawyers and professors that are given more status than labourers of the lower status such as factory workers. The different positions represent different levels of power, influence and money. According to history during the early years of Britain a person’s class status would affect a person’s chances of getting an education, a job, and even social privilege such as the type of people whom a person could socialise with and marry. The presence of social class then stereotypes a person according to the class he was fortunately born into. It is said to be fortunate if a person is born to the class of upper hierarchy for it will definitely assure the person of good chances on education, job, social roles and a good living in totality. On the contrary once a person is born to a lower class it will be his class his entire life. It is believed today that this type of thing is all-but-gone with the high-profile exception of the Royal family (Barrow, 2012). The British society has often been considered to be divided into three main groups of classes: the upper, the middle and the lower classes. The upper class members of the social class are often people with inherited wealth since it is said that people during then are born to their respective class so upper class members are people of the same lineage, with many of them being titled aristocrats (Barrow, 2012). The Middle Class on the other hand composes the majority of the population of Britain. They include industrialists, professionals, business people and shop owners while people of the Working Class are people who are agricultural workers, mine workers and factory workers (Barrow, 2012). If these classifications are viewed within the modern understanding of society and labour, these classifications surely will give rise to controversy among groups for this classification entails high level social inequality and unjust ruling that favours the upper class. As Payne puts it, social divisions are not natural rather they are outcome of previous social interactions, events, decision and struggles hence are socially constructed (Payne, 2006, p. 5). Social Inequalities Social divisions result in social inequalities. Since social division segregates the society in classes it tends to divide people into categories. Those people in the better category have more control over their own lives and usually have more money and can generally be seen to lead happier lives compared to the people in the worse category. Social divisions are therefore also about which class has the power to create and maintain situation in which social inequalities persist (Payne, 2006, p. 6) Social inequalities refer to the differences in people’s share of resources--money, health, education and so on. This explains how poverty and wealth equates the poor and the rich. The rich sector gets the bigger portion of the social resources. The most obvious example would be acquisition of wealth in terms of money and since they have the most money they have better access to amenities, education, food, clothing and shelter. Thus, social inequality is part of the idea of social division (Payne, 2006, p. 5). The virtue of equality: the realization of social freedom All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, article 1). These words imply the universality of equality in dignity and of rights of every person from the time of birth. Thus all persons are deemed dignified and has equal rights by this virtue regardless of the social class they belong to. The universal declaration of human rights removed the great walls that separate the social classifications. These separating walls for the longest time deprived the lower class of the society from lifting their ways of living until the coming of social reforms that views every person as equals. Equality is important. As Dorling puts it that equality matters because human beings are creatures that thrive in societies to be treated more as equals than as being greatly unequal in mental ability, sociability or any other kind of ability. People work best, behave best, play best and think best when they are not labouring under the assumption that some of us are much better, more deserving and so much more able than others (Dorling 2011). Inferiority takes place when people starts questioning a person’s ability because they do not treat him equal there is always presence of doubt that they would have done it better. Then that doubted person will doubt his own abilities if he is not strong to deal with the pressure and so performs with least effort. Thus people performs the worst, are most atrocious in our conduct, are least relaxed and most unimaginative in outlook, when people live under the weight of great inequalities (Dorling 2011). Equality is important because in equality every person is given a fair chance at life, despite the many factors that complicates man’s existence, man acts well in a society where he is equally looked upon than in a society that labels him as inferior and of the lower status. The importance of equality can be best described in a group of workers under a task. If every person of the group is deemed equal, the work load is less of a problem for every member are likely to contribute because they know that their opinion is warranted as equal. Thus finding solutions and options to get the task done is much more realizable. Compare to a group were some would rather not contribute an idea thinking the ideas are most likely to be rejected. The ideas are limited here and the participation in the group is hardly solicited due to inferiority. Inequality thus prerequisites much more social evils such as poverty, oppression, abuse of power and crimes (Dorling 2011). Spicker (2006) cited that policies for equality can aim at three aspects: equality of treatment, equal opportunity and equality of outcome. By aiming for these three aspects the likelihood of targeting the social inequalities that lurks the society today is highly achievable. Equality of treatment means looking upon the people of the society without bias or special conditions regardless of a person’s class (Spicker 2006, p. 113). People must deal with each other as equals and not on the basis of wealth, educational attainment and status by doing this the highest level of equality is not afar. Equal opportunity gives every person the opportunity to compete on the same footing as others. Job openings for instance should not be limited to the certain ethnicity (Spicker 2006, p. 113). Every person qualified for the job must be given the equal chance to compete for the job. Lastly, equality of outcome which is concerned with inequalities of income or health status is generally concerned with removing disadvantage in outcome (Spicker 2006, p .105). The strategy of equality is an important tool in order for the propagation of equality in society to be a success. Tawney (1931, quoted by Spicker 2006) argued that public spending is the most effective way of redistributing resources. The aim of redistributing resources is not to divide the nation’s income into every single family under its rule but the pooling of its surplus resources by means of taxation. The funds are obtained to make it accessible to all, irrespective of their income, occupation or social position (Spicker 2006). This redistribution explains the process of the welfare state wherein the people are held in responsibility with the government to take into account the social burdens such as poverty by means of taxation. The provision of universal benefits helps to create equality in its widest sense - the reassurance provided by social protection (Spicker 2006). The same virtue of goodness lies in the macro and microeconomics of inequality. Large profiting companies’ financial circuits can be shifted to charitable organizations. This is trading wealth for honor; often getting a concrete token of reward in the form of personal reputation that they have helped made the world become better from the money they have earned. The moral prestige of being a charitable donor entails a personal social accomplishment (Collins, 2000, p. 21). The Clash of the social class: Is modern Britain still a class society The advent of industrialization paved way for occupational transition. The coming of new jobs brought about by development created new ones. As a result, the proportion of people working in manual jobs has decreased. More women now are engaged in paid employment. Most people stay on in education well because more jobs now require advanced skills. The experiences are broader and the encounters with different ways of life more common. The old localised and relatively rigid patterns have declined and the society offers greater opportunities to select from a multitude of styles, groups and identities. People have greater opportunities to select from and can shift from one industry to another in order to bring change in one’s social status. Consumption and lifestyle can be manipulated. The global society opened freedom for the people. People now exercise a greater choice over what they do without the boundaries of social division (Payne, 2006, p. 13). Also with the modernization is the advent of what Ferdinand Mount calls a lower class. Mount analyzed the ways the working class has been consistently denigrated, disempowered, and subjected to a sustained programme of social contempt and institutional erosion which has persisted through many different governments and several political fashions. This according to Mount has caused a kind of cultural misery to the sense that the worst-off in Britain’s impoverished lives (Mount, 2004, quoted in Lanchester, 2004, p 8-9). The crisis is related to the fact that the modern culture now values only two things, money and celebrity, and the poor by definition do not have either. Today’s thinking of poverty is more on a personal responsibility level, that the upper class think they deserve it and poverty on the other hand is an self inflicted sense of worthlessness (Lanchester, 2004, p 8-9). In the 1980s, Thatcher government on private enterprise created a culture that claimed that everyone had an equal opportunity to better themselves. By implication, everyone is given the chance to work their status up and those who remained among the bottom stratum of society were considered lazy compared to the ambitious entrepreneurial middle classes and therefore deserving of their social position (Williams, 2012). This is only one proof that social class is already in the hands of a person by working hard to earn respectable reputation. Mount in his own words defines the classes as the Uppers and the Downers. Mount examines the experiences of these groups in terms of economic equality, lifestyle and equality of opportunity. According to Mount the society have a situation in which “the old class system has been reconstituted into a more or less meritocratic upper tier and a lower tier which is defined principally by its failure to qualify for the upper tier. This is the new gap according to Mount that the society has to mind (Pateman 2002). On a personal point of view it is never a person’s fault to be born to a poor family but dying poor is something of a different perspective. Every person may be born with differences in wealth but all are given equal chances at life because all are given the intellect and capabilities to manipulate each one’s destination in life. Luckily today that the social class no longer restricts a person’s capabilities to expand horizons. Everyone now is given the freedom to choose and to do actions that will uplift his social standing in a just manner. People now have equal chances to education, health and other amenities since the government can already sustain the expenses from its wealthy development. An example of such is the vision of a welfare state that intends to bring equal services to the entire citizen regardless of social status. Every citizen is held responsible in shouldering social burdens in ways of taxation to cover for the expenses. The assumption was that industrialisation had somehow dehumanised the working class. And in order to rescue them the state had to step in because the poor were incapable of fending for themselves, educationally and morally as well as economically. Therefore a national system of education, a state system of welfare and all the other institutions were created to cover for the social burden together with the people (Pateman 2002). The changes in views of the social class do not mean that social class no longer exist. Drawing on an explanation of Weber’s original conception of social stratification, there is a continuing class differential in material conditions, security of employment, health and life expectancy. When most people today talk in popular jargon about ‘class’, they are actually referring to status and lifestyle, which presents a distinctive occupations-based account of the three main class groupings – the subordinate (wage-paid) classes, the intermediate (salaried or self-employed) classes and the advantaged classes (capital owners, employers). This only shows that despite social changes that happens over time, the social division of class survives in new forms (Payne, 2006, p. 17). In the modern world, social class are mere words to describe the lifestyle of people and but still have impacts on the ego of a person to be labelled in a class. The social reform has travelled an eventual way before its actual realization. Over the years people have come to realize the value of equality and social justice. Although classification will never out of the societal regime what is important is that people have learned to grow out of the unjust side of social class and are now mere words to define groupings that can be under so many classification and not to define a person’s whole life and being. People now have the greatest capability of manipulating and changing their lives accordingly to what is opted and never on the dictates of the society anymore. Some articles argue that Great Britain still resides in the social class but some articles points out that the social class was never really out of the societal scene for it evolves with industrialization. The concepts of social class have softened over the years. The British society no longer suffers directly from the social classification. Nowadays social class merely defines a person’s current status and can change. Jeremy Seabrook (2008, p. 8) said that poverty is not the problem in a world of such abundance, wealth is. Today the acquisition of too much wealth and power has leaded the world to more social problems. The poor are pressed down more because the wealthy wants to get hold of the power bestowed upon them by money through acquiring more wealth and compromising the rest of the world, thus inequality is always present and the social barricades will never be down unless all are treated equal. Bibliography: Barrow M. (2012) Project Britain: British Life & Culture. Social Class [internet], Available from: [Accessed 22 April 2012] Collins R. (2000) Situational Stratification: A Micro-Macro Theory of Inequality. American Sociological Association (18) 1, pp. 17-43 Crompton R. (2008) Class and Stratification. Third edition. Polity, pp. 1-20 Dorling D. (2011) Why equality matters. University of Sheffield, pp. 12-41 Mount F. (2004) Mind the Gap: The New Class Divide in Britain. Short Books Publishing. Pateman J. (2002) Mind the Gap. Information for social change [Internet], Available from: [Accessed 22 April 2012] Payne G. (2006) Social Division. Introduction to Social Division. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-13 Seabrook J. (2008) Why do people think inequality is worse than poverty? The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York, p. 1-7 Spicker P. (2006) An introduction to social policy [Internet] Available from: [Accessed 22 April 2012] Spicker P. (2006) Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. The Policy Press. University of Bristol, pp. 63-114 Williams E. (2012) Modern Britain is Still a Class Society. New Histories [Internet], Available from: [Accessed 22 April 2012] Read More