Occupational Sociology, Yes: Class Analysis, No: Comment on Grusky and Weeden's "ResearchAgenda"Author(s): John H. GoldthorpeSource: Acta Sociologica, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2002), pp. 211-217Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4194931Accessed: 19/11/2010 11:31

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ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 2002

COMMENT

Occupational Sociology, Yes: Class Analysis, No: Comment on Grusky and Weeden's Research Agenda

John H. Goldthorpe Nuffield College, Oxford, UK

Grusky and Weeden (G&W) have outlined an imaginative and potentially highly rewarding research agenda: one that could well revitalize the field of occupational sociology. However, I do not believe that this agenda can serve as an adequate substitute for class analysis. In what follows, I develop this argument under a series of headings.

1. The intellectual context

An initial question is that of why G&W should think that class analysis is in need of recon- struction, at all events of the very radical kind that they propose. Their reading of the present situation would appear to go something like this (cf. Grusky & Sorensen 1998). With the failure of the 'Marxist project', politically as well as intellectually, class analysts have 'discarded comprehensive class-based theories of history' (Grusky and Weeden 2001:205) and have indeed so scaled down their ambitions that their work now amounts to 'little more than describing the micro-level association between class membership and life chances of various kinds' (p. 212). In particular, issues of class formation or, as G&W would rather say, of 'structuration', are avoided. Consequently, it becomes difficult to mount any strong resis- tance to claims of the 'death of class' or to oppose the postmodernist 'retreat from the productive sphere' (p. 214). If class analysis is to be salvaged, G&W then contend, it will have to be 'ratcheted down' to a level where there is a better chance of 'structuration' being observed. And most promising here, in their view, is the occupational level, where it is possible for 'real

social groupings' to form 'around functional niches in the division of labour' (p. 203).

I have two comments to make on this account. First, there appears to be no place in it for a tradition of class analysis within which many European sociologists would see them- selves as working. This tradition developed long before the collapse of Marxism, and in fact has stood as a major alternative to, and basis for criticism of, Marxism - including at times when Marxism has been in high academic fashion. Thus, I for one have not 'discarded' Marxist or marxisant theories of class for the simple reason that I never adhered to them, and indeed have consistently opposed them (e.g. Goldthorpe 1972, 1990). This non-Marxist tradition of class analysis - with which American sociolo- gists have never easily engaged - is, I would maintain, alive and well, not in need of radical reconstruction but developing according to its own dynamic.'

This brings me to my second comment. Within the non-Marxist tradition, an interest in class formation, broadly understood, has always been present. However, not only is the historical inevitability of class formation rejected but so too in effect is the idea that class formation in G&W's more limited sense of structuration has to be empirically demonstrated before class analysis can take on any significant intellectual interest or socio-political relevance. In other words, the existence of this tradition serves as a basis for questioning G&W's assumption that structuration - i.e. the process through which economic categories become 'real social group- ings' (cf. Giddens, 1973:107-112) - is the sine

.2 qua non of class analysis.

It is true that, as G&W remark, for sociologists working in the non-Marxist tradi-

212 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 2002 VOLUME 45

tion a major concern is with the association, and actual causal connection, between class and differential life-chances - with how class influences what happens to people. G&W's some- what dismissive attitude towards this concern presumably arises from the fact that it is not one to which the degree of class formation need have any great relevance. However, pace G&W, there is also a complementary concern with the association, and causal connection, between class and differential life-choices - with how class influences how people act. And while in this case it is accepted that the degree of class structuration in G&W's sense may be crucial, as with some forms of class-based collective action, in regard to other class-linked regularities in action, widely revealed by empirical research. the importance of such structuration is not presupposed. It is rather treated as a central empirical and theoretical issue.

2. Real versus nominal groupings

G&W believe that class analysis should be founded on 'real social groupings', recognized by and meaningful to the individuals they comprise, rather than on mere aggregations 'fashioned by academics' (p. 208). The opposi- tion that they here set up, I would then note, is not simply that of realism as against nominal- ism, which is the formulation they favour. It is also that of actors' (or lay) concepts as against researchers' (or scientific) concepts.

The issues that thus arise are complex and contested. G&W do not in fact enter into them, and neither for present purposes will I, although I have done so elsewhere (Goldthorpe 2000: ch. 1). However, the position I hold is that while sociologists may in certain lines of investigation need to understand actors' concepts and to trace the relationship between these concepts and their own, it is always permissible, and quite often essential, that sociologists should develop and make operational concepts that are far removed from those of 'lay members'. From this standpoint, I would then challenge G&W's claim (p. 209) that, in seeking to go beyond descriptions of the association between class and life-chances or life-choices to the specifica- tion of causal processes, sociologists will not in fact get far 'without abandoning aggregate formulations', and (I take it) aiming, instead. to express all explanatory accounts in terms of individuals' memberships of groups with which they actually identify and of the properties of

such groups - i.e. their specific subcultures, norms, institutions, organizations, etc. 3

I do not of course dispute that what G&W propose is one possible explanatory approach. But I do question whether it is the only viable one, as they would maintain, or indeed that which, as far as class analysis is concerned, has at the present time the greatest potential.

Within the European tradition to which I have referred, an alternative approach has been on the following lines. The starting-point is with concepts of class that are quite openly 'fash- ioned' by sociologists rather than by actors. The aim is then to show how different class positions, as understood via these concepts, create different sets of constraints and opportu- nities for the individuals who hold them; and, in turn, to explain class-linked variation, both in what happens to individuals and in how they typically act, via causal processes that originate in their different 'class situations'. Moreover, as regards variation in action, the :further aim has been to bring out how this can be understood in terms of what, after Popper (see 1994: esp. ch. 8), might be called the 'logic of the situation': or, that is, as reflecting courses of action that, given particular class situations, are rational, at least in a subjective sense, and therefore intelligible (verstdndlich) (cf. Goldthorpe 2000: ch. 6).

As a classic example of this approach, one could cite David Lockwood's The Blackcoated Worker (1958). In this study Lockwood's con- cern was with the well-documented reluctance of clerks, in later 19th- and earlier 20th-century Britain, to ally themselves with manual workers in the trade union movement and in support for the Labour Party. Through a detailed empirical examination of the class situation of clerks, as decomposed into their 'market' and 'work' situations, Lockwood was able to demonstrate that Marxist claims of the 'proletarianisation' of clerical labour were much exaggerated and that most clerks remained significantly differentiated from manual workers. In turn, the lack of enthusiasm on the part of clerks for collectivist as opposed to individualistic strategies for defending and promoting their interests, or the distinctive features of the collective action in which they did in some cases engage, could not be dismissed as mere expressions of 'false consciousness'. They were, rather, to be under- stood as quite rational responses to their class situation.

Lockwood was indeed sensitive to differ- ences existing among clerks: for example, among bank clerks, local government clerks,

Comment on Grusky and Weeden 213

railway clerks, and so on. But what, for the present discussion, is chiefly notable is that in his analyses these more specific occupational groupings - though no doubt 'more real', in G&W's sense, than clerks as a class - play only a secondary role. They are treated, one could say, as a source of occupational variation on a class theme; and as variation that, while interesting in itself, can only be adequately understood in relation to this theme.4

The class schema that I have developed, with various colleagues, over the past twenty years or so (variously known as the 'Gold- thorpe', 'Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero' or 'CASMIN' schema) was in its earliest formula- tion much influenced by Lockwood's ideas of market situation and work situation. Subse- quently, its theoretical basis has been refined and elaborated in terms of employment rela- tions. Class positions are seen as being differ- entiated initially by employment status - i.e. into those of employers, self-employed workers and employees; but then further, in the case of employees, by typical forms of employment contract, explicit and implicit (Goldthorpe 2000: ch. 10). However, the use of the schema in class analysis is still on essentially the same lines as those pursued by Lockwood. That is to say, the aim is to bring out the constraints and opportunities typical of different class positions, and especially as these bear on individuals' economic security, stability and prospects; and then, on this basis, to construct testable explanations of empirical regularities of interest.

For example, Evans (1993) has followed this approach in providing an explanation of class differences in political partisanship and of changes in the pattern of these differences over the life-cycle. And, in similar fashion, Richard Breen and I (Goldthorpe 1996; Breen & Gold- thorpe 1997; Breen 2001) have developed an explanation of persisting class differences in educational choice and attainment. In explana- tions of the kind in question, it is not then necessary to claim or to suppose that classes are 'real social groups'. Little appeal to what G&W would subsume under 'structuration' is required. Regularities are seen as arising from the extent to which individuals respond in similar ways to similar class situations, not from the extent to which they are influenced by class-specific subcultural values or social norms, except perhaps where norms serve instrumentally as useful 'rules of thumb' (see further, Breen & Goldthorpe 1997).5 And, indeed, from this standpoint 'culturalist'

accounts based on the study of real social groups may be called into question as not causally adequate to the regularities to be explained, as, say, in the case of accounts of class differentials in education that are derived from school ethnographies (e.g. Willis 1977).

3. Occupational closure and class mobility

G&W believe that social mobility is 'governed by the deeply institutionalized boundaries' that actually exist between occupations (p. 208) rather than by the divisions of class schemata formed by social scientists. More specifically, what should be seen as crucial to the explana- tion of mobility rates and patterns are the 'closure tactics' engaged in by members of occupational groups or their organizations - such as the intergenerational transmission of businesses or job rights or licensing, certifica- tion and job demarcation - supplemented in some instances by the influence of 'occupational communities' with their own distinctive 'organic cultures' and life-styles. For this among other reasons, the central concern of the research agenda that G&W propose is then to map out the 'local structuration' of occupa- tions across modern societies in a systematic way (p. 207).

As I remarked at the outset, I would see such a project as one that could be of great value and in particular in helping the sociology of occupations to move beyond its tradition of rather ad hoc case studies, the shortcomings of which G&W recognize. However, as regards the explanation of mobility, my accompanying critical point - that their research agenda cannot substitute for class analysis - also applies.

Occupational closure or, in other words, the restriction or regulation of the supply of labour to an occupation can be a significant factor in determining the relative rewards associated with that occupation - its members' rates of pay, conditions of employment, and so forth. And we no doubt need to know more both about how extensively and how effectively closure practices do in fact operate in this respect. However, what we can learn in this way about mobility processes will be quite limited. We may gain a better understanding of why in some occupations there is a marked propensity for intergenerational 'inheritance', or succes- sion, in the sense of children following directly in their parents' footsteps. But research into

214 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 2002 VOLUME 45

class mobility, at all events, is about a good deal more than this. We want to be able to explain, for example, not so much why doctors' children have a high propensity to become doctors or coal miners' sons to become coal miners, but rather why those doctors' children (the major- ity) who do not become doctors are far more likely to move into other kinds of professional or managerial employment instead of becoming manual wage-workers and, correspondingly, why the sons of coal miners (again the majority) who do not become miners are far more likely to move into some other kind of wage-work than into professional or managerial positions. And in these respects, the closure practices of specific occupations would seem of little relevance.

It is certainly true that, as G&W argue, analyses of mobility made at the level of class categories will tend to conceal what goes on at the more detailed occupational level. But it does not then follow from this, as they would suppose, that a 'problem' for class analysis arises, the solution to which is 'to disaggregate until realist occupations are secured' (p. 209). Not only does the remedy prescribed seem worse than the disorder diagnosed but, in this case, 'decomposition' would actually guarantee, rather than stave off death, so far as class analysis is concerned.

The study of mobility at the class level is, I would maintain, an entirely viable undertaking in so far as three conditions are met: (i) the classes fashioned by sociologists are not merely arbitrary aggregations but have a clear con- ceptual grounding, and one that can be implemented with adequate criterion validity - i.e. so that the classification does adequately capture what, conceptually, it is supposed to capture; (ii) analyses of mobility based on the classes distinguished reveal meaningful empiri- cal regularities - this being in turn indicative of their construct validity; and (iii) the way in which classes are conceptualized itself provides a starting-point for developing explanations, in terms of social action - i.e. micro-to-macro explanations (Coleman 1990) - for the regula- rities displayed.

Mobility research using the class schema earlier referred to does, I believe, meet these conditions to an encouraging degree. The criterion validity of the schema was extensively examined, with generally favourable results, prior to a new instantiation of it being adopted in 2001 as the official British socio-economic classification (Rose & O'Reilly (eds.) 1997; Rose & O'Reilly 1998: see also Rose & Pevalin 2002),

and such work is now being extended in connection with a proposed EU classification. Through the application of the schema, it has been possible to demonstrate important regu- larities, especially in relative mobility rates, across both time and space and, further, dis- tinctive 'mobility characteristics' of the classes themselves (see e.g. Erikson & Goldthorpe 1992 and subsequent work within or following on the CASMIN project).6 And at least some initial efforts have been made at formulating possible explanations of these regularities by reference to the 'mobility strategies' taken to be typical of members of different classes and in turn intelligible in the context of the constraints that their class situations impose and the opportunities they afford (e.g. Goldthorpe 2000: ch. 11). This latter approach, it may be added, provides a clear contrast with, as well as alternative to, the focus proposed by G&W on the 'closure tactics' of particular occupational groups.

4. Collective class action

G&W observe (p. 205) that for Marxists and neo-Marxists, social closure is of interest 'not because it provides a vehicle for pursuing purely local interests . . . but rather because it allegedly facilitates the development of class- wide interests and grander forms of interclass conflict. But, they further comment, the 'aggregate classes identified by contemporary sociologists have so far shown a decided reluctance to act in accord with such theoriz- ing'.

What I would note here are two implicit suggestions, or at least assumptions. The first is that those sociologists who have identified aggregate classes do share alike in Marxist or marxisant expectations about collective class action. As against this, I have already stressed the existence of a non-Marxist tradition of class analysis to which G&W's animadversions do not apply. The second suggestion or assumption, on which I will concentrate here, is that collective class action has to be conceived in essentially Marxist terms: i.e. as involving class structura- tion, in the sense of the transformation of Klasse an sich into Klassefiir sich, and in turn the large- scale mobilization of individuals in action of a dissident and conflictual, if not revolutionary, character.

However. for those European sociologists who, while not Marxists, have still sought to

Comment on Grusky and Weeden 215

link class analysis to issues of political economy, the focus of interest has been on a form of collective class action quite different from that envisaged under what might be called 'the storming of the Winter Palace' model. This is action taken through organizations - chiefly, though not exclusively, working-class trade unions - in the context of neo-corporatist or 'social partnership' institutional arrangements, the rationale of which is in fact to accommodate rather than to heighten class conflict. Most typically, trade-union 'centrals' bargain with governments and the peak organizations of employers over regulating the wage and other demands of their memberships so as to conform with national economic strategy in return for what they would regard as concessions and advances, especially in social welfare and fiscal policy (see e.g. Schmitter & Lehmbruch 1979; Goldthorpe (ed.) 1984; Alvarez et al. 1991).

For the effectiveness of collective action of this kind, the important requirements are that the rank-and-file should be ready to trust their national leaders and to accept the restraints that the latter have to 'deliver' to their bargain- ing partners - and even under conditions in which immediate gains could in fact be made at the occupational or workplace level. So far, then, as class formation is concerned, what is chiefly important is the extent to which mobility patterns are consistent with classes possessing demographic identity (Goldthorpe 1987: esp. ch. 12) or, if G&W would prefer, simply 'mediate' structuration7 - together with such organiza- tional factors as forms of rank-and-file repre- sentation and leadership accountability. 'Proximate' structuration, on which G&W focus their attention, is a far more dubious requirement. Elster's definition of class con- sciousness (1985:347) has here a particular aptness: i.e. 'the ability to overcome the free- rider problem in realizing class interests' - essential to which, at the level of 'real social groups', may in fact be class-oriented inaction. In other words, in so far as structuration does occur chiefly on the basis of occupations or workplaces, it may lead to the strategic pursuit of class interests being subverted by attempts to advance interests of a more local and sectional kind.

Now G&W do in fact at one point give recognition to this argument. They remark (p. 214) that 'low-level structuration . .. is some- times assumed to undermine aggregate organi- zational forms', and in this regard they contrast the US case with that of Sweden where class-

based organization reflects the absence of 'competing local structuration'. However, they then add that while Sweden may thus give some support to a 'neo-Marxian' position, it is 'unclear' whether class organization of the kind in question extends beyond Sweden or at all events Scandinavia.

In response to this, two things might be said. First, even if Sweden or Scandinavia could be regarded as distinctive and even if (another point G&W might have wanted to make) the forms of neo-corporatism that operated there in the postwar years have now broken down, this does not detract from their theoretical signifi- cance - any more than the decay of craft and other kinds of occupational unionism in coun- tries such as the UK removes interest in the forces that once sustained them. Secondly, though, it is not in fact the case that neo- corporatism was confined to Sweden or Scandi- navia, nor yet that neo-corporatist institutions and practices are now in uniform decline. At least in 'co-ordinated' as opposed to 'liberal' market economies, issues of the level at which economic interests are aggregated and repre- sented remain quite crucial and there is no reason for supposing that a 'ratcheting down' to that of real social groups, occupational or otherwise, is inevitable, nor, conversely, that higher-level, and including class-based, strate- gies are henceforth precluded (cf. Iversen et al. (eds.) 2000; Hall & Soskice (eds.) 2001).

5. Conclusion

G&W observe (p. 214) that in 'characterizing stratification systems of the past, sociologists have typically relied on categories that were embedded in the fabric of society (e.g. estates, castes)' and that the resort to nominal cate- gories is 'peculiarly modern'. This may be true, but why should the modern (more social scientific?) approach be thought mistaken? It is not evident, to say the least, that the studies we have of estate or caste stratification are socio- logically superior to those of modern class structures. And there are at all events good a priori reasons for supposing that in modern gesellschaftlich societies, where job and residen- tial mobility are frequent and multiplex social networks uncommon, to base the study of stratification solely on gemeinschaftlich entities will prove unduly limiting.

I welcome G&W's research agenda, even if for reasons that do not correspond with their

216 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 2002 VOLUME 45

own motivations, and I appreciate their honest recognition that, so far, they are dealing largely in speculation and that, as research proceeds, it may turn out that even at the occupational level a high degree of (proximate) structuration is only rarely to be found - as would be my own expectation. But this only increases my fear that in treating their agenda as one for class analysis rather than for occupational sociology, they may end up not rescuing class analysis from its present detractors but rather selling it seriously short. For, as I have tried to show, there is no reason, methodological or theoretical, why class analysis need be dependent on the success of a 'search for structuration' of the kind in which G&W propose to engage.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Richard Breen, David Grusky, Yaojun Li and Herman van de Werflhorst for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

' It is inadequate to characterize this tradition simply as 'Weberian' or 'neo-Weberian' as, it seems, G&W intend (p. 214). Other influential figures who should be recognized include Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Renner, Fritz Croner, Theodor Geiger. David Lockwood and (early) Ralf Dahrendorf. The tradition is not of course without its internal differences and conflicts, any more than is the Marxist tradition. Its lack of influence or even recognition in American work in the field of social stratification is probably related to the degree of polarization that exists between the 'socioeconomic status attainment' and ,narxisant schools, which G&W's paper itself reflects.

2 I assume here and throughout that in their use of the concept of 'structuration' G&W are indeed following Giddens, to whom they several times refer. However, it may also be observed that while they acknowledge Giddens' distinction between 'mediate' and 'proximate' (or 'local' ) structuration, it is on the latter that they concentrate. I would myself prefer to work with the idea of class formation. the basic level of which is seen as demographic - i.e. the formation of classes as collectivities with a recognizable identity over time - without however, the relation between socio-cultural and socio-political formation being regarded as necessarily hierarchical (see further below and also Goldthorpe 1987:329-345 esp.).

3 This claim is made specifically in regard to research into social mobility, but it is, I assume, one that G&W would wish to maintain as a quite general one.

4 Lockwood also complements his account of the class - i.e. market and work - situation of clerks with a consideration of their 'status situation'. However, this is likewise treated as secondary (cf. 1958:211), and Lockwood is in any event more concerned here with 'the position of the individual in the hierarchy of prestige in the society at large' ( 19 58:15) than with the involvement of individuals in 'real' status groups.

' Perhaps the main development in this approach in the recent past has been the attempt to go beyond relatively informal

reconstructions of situational logical to the more formal development of some kind of 'rational choice' or 'rational action' explanations.

6I am somewhat puzzled that G&W (p. 210) should regard Erikson & Goldthorpe (1992) as a work proposing or defending any kind of 'convergence thesis'. What they presumably have in mind is something rather different - i.e. its support for a qualified version of the hypothesis (Featherman et al. 1975) of a 'basic similarity' in endogenous mobility regimes across all societies with market economies and nuclear family systems. In fact, in this regard, Erikson and I spend much time documenting the idea of specific cross-national 'variations on a theme', including variations deriving from distinctive national employ- ment systems such as the German and Japanese to which G&W refer. And again the point may be made that such variation is scarcely comprehensible without recognition of the theme.

7 Class formation in this sense is necessary in that if mobility were such that classes had no significant degree of demographic continuity, nor then of identity, over time (which is not in fact the case). the very idea of class interests would become problematic.

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A Class Analysis for the Future? Comment on Grusky and Weeden: 'Decomposition Without Death: A Research Agenda for a New Class Analysis'

Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund Institute for Sociology and Geography, University of Oslo, Norway

As the Marxian project falls out of favour, scholars have therefore settled into some version of Weberianism or postmodernism, neither of which pays much attention to occupation-level structuration. We have outlined a quasi-Durheimian third road that refocuses attention on local forms of structuration within the division of labor (Grusky & Weeden 2001:214)

In order to revitalize class analysis, Grusky and Weeden (hereafter G&W) launch a new orienta- tion and approach to class. Their main argu- ment is that the concept of class should be disaggregated into occupational categories, such as carpenters, teachers, and so on. Occupations are gemeinschaftliche groupings, G&W argue, that are institutionally embedded in society. At the level of occupations, we will find occupation-based organizations, such as unions, that participate in producing social identity, social closure, various types of out- comes (such as income) and possibly also collective action. If class is defined as occupa- tions, the scholarly and lay understandings of class correspond as well.

G&W address an important topic (see also

Grusky & Sorensen 1998). In the 1990s we witnessed strong voices of anti-class criticism, against which various representatives of class analysis defended the importance of class, yet with concessions such as arguing in favour of a weaker form of class than previously advocated. This debate on classes can be divided into two parts, one on whether class matters at all in modern societies, and another on how we best measure class in modern societies. Whereas the former debate on the fruitfulness of class altogether involves anti-class critics and class defenders, the latter debate activates class defenders, with different perspectives on class (such as Wright 1997; or Erikson & Goldthorpe 1992). It is mainly this second debate that G&W address, though they are well aware that a better understanding of class might have a bearing on the first debate as well. There are many issues on which I would agree with GW However, even if their new approach to class analysis is interest- ing, I am not quite convinced. I will address their argument by focusing on three issues:

I. The realist claim II. Gemeinschaft

III. Globalization