Out-Classed by Our Critics?

Abstract

The Australian researchers offer one apparently damning criticism of Social Class in Modern Britain. Our treatment of the British survey findings on class identity are 'the height of sociological naivety', since we 'blandly inform readers' that social class identities have retained their salience, 'without any apparent reflection as to [the] veracity' of these data. Our results are merely 'an artefact of the design of [the] survey rather than an accurate reflection of the prevailing patterns of social identities in British society'. An alternative research strategy, 'making discursively available to . . . respondents other sources of identity formation', confirms that, in the Australian context, 'the relative salience of class as a source of social identity is . . . minimal'. In our defence we would submit that nowhere do we claim 'class is . . . the only category of subjective importance for Britons'. We simply maintain that (contrary to the weight of then prevailing academic opinion ) 'people's perceptions of social class are [still] sufficiently concrete to enable them to see this as a possible source of social identity' (Marshall et al. 1988:147). Or, again, that 'class is readily available as a source of social identity to most people' (Marshall et al. 1988:155). Even these more modest conclusions are but cautiously proferred. Thus, we explicitly concede that 'survey research [in general] is not the most appropriate vehicle for investigating the importance of different frames of reference in everyday life', and that our question about reference groups in particular 'is a fairly blunt strategy for unearthing the subtleties of social identities' (Marshall et al. 1988:148-49). Our reflections as to the veracity