Life Situation and Subculture: A Comparison of Merited Prestige Judgments by Three Occupational Classes in Britain

Abstract

s NUMBER OF STUDIES in Great Britain and the United ; States show that the various socioeconomic classes agree on the w Xoutlines of the occupational prestige structure. For the most part representaiives of different classes wll rank broad occupational categories in the same order. Within this loosely common framework, however, there is reason to expect some variation based on the posiiion of the rater. The widely held view that socioeconomic classes differ in the values to which they adhere, i.e. in the kinds of objects which they regard as worthy and unworthy, suggests that class judgments should differ on many matters.2 Furthermore, an individual's rating of an occupational group ordinarily takes into account his view of how others in society rate that group. The private views of some classes may differ more widely from their public judgments than do the private views of other classes.3 Recently Michael Young and Peter Willmott have secured empirical evidence that some ratings made by working-class people differ fiom the standard Hall-Jones gradings.4 Making use of interariews with a selected sample of British males, the present report offers a further exploraiion of class differences in judgments of prestige. The study employs a somewhat different kind of prestige judgment from that commonly used in other studies. Interviewees were asked for judgments of merzted prestige, defined as the social standing to which the rater feels that a designated person or group is entitled. The judgments of merited prestige are examined in three principal ways in this paper. First, the judgments made by representatives of different classes are compared. Second, the judgments are compared with estimates of actual social standing made by the same interviewees. And third, an effort is made to shed some preliminary light on why the typical member adopts the prevalent judgments of his class and why other members do not. 299