Social Classes

SOCIAL CLASS AND PUBLIC DISPLAY

Since prehistory, all societies have perceived hierarchy among their members. Leaders and followers, strong and weak, rich and poor: social classifications are universal. Humans have invented numerous ways to classify people—by wealth, power, or prestige; by ability, education, or occupation; even by where they live.

The term "social class" originally referred to groups of people holding similar roles in the economic processes of production and exchange, such as landowner or tenant, employer or employee. Such positions correspond to different levels of status, prestige, and access to political power, but social class eventually took on a more generic meaning and came to refer to all aspects of a person's rank in the social hierarchy.



The Determinant of Social Class in society is the combination of three variables:
occupation, education, and income. In a very general way, these variables all measure the same thing.

"Someone from a very rich family will probably go to schools where kids from other very rich families go. They will have opportunities afforded to them by virtue of their family's money. These kids will fraternize and make friends. Some will fall in love and marry. They will graduate and find employment in companies and law firms owned and operated by their friends and their parents, or go to work for their parents. Get it? A few people inherit large sums of money from their families. These folks are few in number, although it is true that the top 1/5th of the population controls well over 50% of any nation's wealth, which amounts to a lot of inherited social power (for example, the Royals in British society)."

"Similarly, someone from an very poor family will probably go to schools provided by the state. Here they will have to make choices between continued education and early entry into the labor force, provided there is opportunity for them in the labor force. They will meet, make friends, and find spouses in this section, and probably go to work for a company. They'll be the last hired and the first fired."

The kind of education we receive also says something about our social class - anybody who could spend four years in college (whether or not they get their way paid) is obviously in a preferred position of higher status.

"Our Occupation, Education and Income imply a lifestyle, something about family background, special responsibilities, and certain privileges that are enjoyed. We use our social status to get us things - we wear status symbols as a means of recognizing membership in our class. Since we all look alike basically under under our clothes, we use cars, opulent surroundings, special and expensive clothing, and so on to dress according to our class. After all - the rich can smell different from the rest of us if they want to - they spend more time on themselves and spend less time doing the dirty work of life."

The UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) produced a new socio-economic classification in 2001. The reason was to provide a more comprehensive and detailed classification to take newer employment patterns into account.

National Statistics Socio Economic Classification (2001):

Group - Description: Old equivalent
1 -Higher Professional and Managerial: A
2 -Lower Managerial and Professional: B
3 -Intermediate occupations: C1 and C2
4 -Small Employers and non professional self-employed: C1 and C2
5 -Lower Supervisory and technical: C1 and C2
6 -Semi Routine Occupations: D
7 -Routine Occupations: D
8 -Long term unemployed: E

The social grade classification created by the National Readership Survey over 50 years ago looked different:

Grade - Status: Occupation
A - Upper middle class: Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B - Middle class: Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1- Lower middle class: Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative,professional
C2- Skilled working class: Skilled manual workers
D - Working class: Semi and unskilled manual workers
E - The lowest level of subsistence: Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners

The significance of social class is this:
•Life opportunities are determined by it
•Upper class members live longer and are healthier
•Those with less than 5 years of education are twice as likely to die early.
• . . . and experience more days of illness
• . . . and are more likely to have premature babies and babies with congenital birth defects.

During the lecture we were comparing some ads created for different social classes.
This is what I found:





The first one definitely relates to luxurious upper class and the second one to the lower middle class. In the first case we can hear slow, classic music, sophisticated background... And in Knorr advert the music is much quicker, less delicate and the whole ad takes place in the studio.

These ads are also related to upper class: