The book I will be reviewing today is ‘social class in the 21st century’ by Mike Savage, Savage is a professor of sociology at the London school of economics and has written multiple books based on inequality in Britain.
Savage’s text focuses on the meaning and development of the term ‘social class’, as a leading international authority on social class Mike Savage along with many others have deciphered changes and the impact of social class in modern life. The findings from the great British class survey played a role in the analysis of the modern definitions of social class. The objective of the text was to use the responses from the Great British Class survey to come up with a more ‘up to date’ model of class in the UK, they found that class was more complex than just upper and working class and there were in fact several categories of class in the UK.
The text focuses largely on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital in defining social class, savage has compared the modern outlook on class to the previous idea that class was purely based on wealth and is very focused on Bourdieu’s notion that class today is a result of social, economic and cultural capital meaning that money isn’t the most important factor in defining class nowadays.
Throughout the text, especially in the first chapter, savage comes across as rather biased towards the work of Bourdieu, describing him as “undoubtedly the greatest sociologist of the second half of the twentieth century” (Mike Savage pg46) this demonstrates a lack of objectivity due to biases towards the work of Bourdieu, despite Bourdieu being a highly respected sociologist Savage has made subjective claims over the ranking of him compared to other, also respected sociologists which makes it seem like savage is in favour of Bourdieu’s work over other legitimate theories. This makes Savage particularly critical of the traditional way of measuring class as the type of occupation an individual is in, however Marxism is largely focused on the exploitation of the working class and how there wouldn’t be the class inequality to the extent that there is if the bourgeoisie hadn’t exploited the working class for their own benefits, this shows that no matter how high up of an occupation an individual has, they are still being exploited by the elite.
Savage argues that this ‘elite’ isn’t just an aristocratic group with connotations with social closure like we’d previously have thought the wealthy elite to be, it is now largely made up of self-made business owners mainly focused in London as he describes it “a single incubator for the elite” (pg ) the importance of London and universities in London and Oxbridge is referenced in abundance due to the focus on the concentration of Britain’s elite in London, class in the UK has a greater class divide across the geographical locations, for example the north has largely precariat and in turn has less representation in the British class survey compared to the south i.e. London.
Throughout the text there is great focus on the great British class survey, the disadvantages of this survey most noticeably include that the ‘precariat’ account for 15% of the overall population but in the survey the precariat is only accounted for 1% of the overall survey, while the ‘elite’ were over represented, demonstrating how the less well off in society are less inclined to know their place. This survey in itself then lead to the class calculator – the results of the class calculator lead to an 191% increase in people buying theatre tickets seeing as being upper class was associated with activities such as going to the theatre, savage focuses on how society is meritocratic and with the inequality comes the desire to work hard and strive for the higher positions in the social class hierarchy, the point is made that if these inequalities didn’t exist there wouldn’t be any barriers stopping people from getting to the top based on their own achievement, arguably in this remark inequality isn’t necessarily a problem within itself. Furthermore, it could be argued that to get the achievements needed to move up the hierarchal ladder, the upper and middle classes are already at an advantage due to the higher standards of schooling they receive and the high levels of cultural, social and economic capital already ascribed from their parents which makes it a lot easier to obtain higher occupations, as opposed to working class children who have to put in more effort and are less likely to attend higher education due to their social backgrounds. Despite the number of working class attending higher education rising, the number of ‘elite’ students also going on to further education has risen so the proportion is still relative. The value of a degree has also declined which makes the extra help working and upper-class children get to achieve higher places in the social hierarchy even more beneficial. The idea of meritocracy in this book could be viewed as advocating equality as it suggests that anyone has the opportunity for social mobility if they work hard enough but it also disputes that by reiterating that the higher classes already have a massive head start and there are only few anomalies that make it from the precariat to the elite through the use of social mobility i.e. Alan Sugar.
In the text savage and his fellow authors come up with a 7 class scale of measuring class, Savage could be praised on this as by providing new and updated references to social class and also by making a wider spectrum, he is moving away from outdated terms such as middle and working class which relate back to industrial era when social class was much more rigid and the divisions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was a lot more black and white – after the introductions of new types of capital discussed in the book such as social and economic it seems wrong to keep the same definitions of social class structure. In the text Savage interviews people by asking them where they’d rate themselves in terms of money on a scale of 1-10, all the noted interviews rated themselves central on the scale despite all having very different levels of income and savings, the interviewees with the highest income rated themselves central, the comparing factors between the interviewees was the importance on money in their lives- the participants with the lower income placed importance on money and said they had enough to ‘get by’ as opposed to the wealthier participants saying “moneys not a thing for me” (Savage pg 62) despite being modest with their ratings.
One of the improvements that could be made to the text is Savage could potentially have made the text so it wasn’t so broad, the topic of focus is social class but the text seems to open up more questions than it seems to answer, due to the status of the author being a professor of sociology the book could have focused in on a single aspect of social class in the 21st century rather than the broad spectrum that it did. Nevertheless, because social class is such a subjective concept and it is always changing along with the developments of capitalism it is particularly difficult to answer specific questions – especially because everyone’s experiences with social class are so different as Savage covers in his interviews about people’s opinions of how they’d rate themselves in terms of money. Savages work is essentially an add on to the French academic Thomas Piketty whose book was published in 2014 and focused on how inequality is a result of wealth and not just income, the elite have not only larger salaries but larger houses and more expensive cars which savage goes on to argue are not just factors of economic capital but also social and cultural capital as well. Due to the amounts of capital the elite have in regard to who they know, their possessions and their abilities to be able to progress up in the worlds of business, even if an outsider does manage to go through the process of social mobility – they will always feel ever so slightly out of place.
Overall, I believe Savage has done a decent job in covering social class in the 21st century
And raising arguments such as how going to university benefits entry into the elite – the book offers an up to date view on social class and also covers a lot of the arguments raised from multiple perspective, for example the argument on meritocracy is considered from the viewpoint that there is social mobility in Britain but also from the viewpoint that the upper classes are already at an advantage and there for have a better chance of social mobility up the social hierarchy. The book doesn’t necessarily offer answers, but it does make the reader think and it raises questions about the Britain’s social class structure that may have gone unnoticed before.