Are you working class and proud of it?

[tinyjo]

Listening to the Today programme this morning I hear that apparently about 60% of people agree with the statement "I'm working class and proud of it". They had a couple of people on to discuss this, one of whom tried to define what it meant to be working class by suggesting that it was all about your family connections (he claimed Cherie Blair was working class because she lived close to her mum for childcare) in some nebulous fashion.

The whole thing struck me as rather odd. When I think of class, I tend to think of education at least for the lower 2 - nearly everyone who's been to university is at least middle class by the end of it while those people who never did any work then left after their GCSEs are generally working class.

So, what do you think?

[Poll #54709]

Comments

[squigglyruth.livejournal.com]

Are you sure? I don't have the reference to hand, but I'm sure that studies of IQ and class carried out in the last 50 years or so have found a social mobility of at least 25%, and that IQ was a good predictor of class as an adult. Of course, IQ is by no means independent of childhood class, and I don't want to go into its faults as a measure of anything useful, but 'very restricted' seems a harsh assessment if my memory of the figures is correct. Lower than it should be in an ideal world? But what criteria would determine what class someone should be in an ideal world? And remember that social mobility is not just in one direction. I tend to agree with Sonia.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

I don't have the reference to hand, but I'm sure that studies of IQ and class carried out in the last 50 years or so have found a social mobility of at least 25%

That's the highest estimate I've ever heard! Well, I'd like to see the reference for that. A lot depends, of course, on what signifiers researchers are using to denote class in the first place. But I've never seen a figure that high.

remember that social mobility is not just in one direction

Right, and in fact it may be that downward mobility is more common. Now I'm intrigued - I'll have to take a look at the sociology textbooks when I go back to work...

By "very restricted" I meant that it's harder than is usually acknowledged to move between classes. And at the time I was actually studying the subject, movement crossing the three categories - working class to upper class, and vice versa - was statistically so negligible as to be non-existent.

I tend to agree with Sonia

I thought I was agreeing with Sonia, too?

[squigglyruth.livejournal.com]

I may have misremembered, or missed (or forgotten) some detail of the method that explains it. I was paying more attention to the IQ-related content, since that was what I had to write an essay on. I'll have to look it up.

>>I tend to agree with Sonia
>I thought I was agreeing with Sonia, too?

I meant that I agree with Sonia that class is an odd concept - it just seems too simplified to me.