Social Class and the Ranking of Occupations

Abstract

HERE ARE FOUR RECENT STUDIES of social grading | of occupations, in each of which a similar list of occupations X has been used. The findings from each of these studies are, it is claimed, similar (Hall and Jones (I95O), Congalton (I953), Taft (I953), and Montague and Pustilnik (I954)). Davies (I952) offers a summary and a criticism of social grading studies. It is the aim of this paper to supplement Davies' criticisms. The problem with svhich we are concerned is the relation between the 'classes' resulting from such studies and 'social classes'. Glass in his introduction to Social Mo6ility in Britain emphasizes that the Hall and Jones study and the related work on social mobility 'is concerned with social status or social prestige, and not with social class in the classical sense of the term' (I954, p. IO). N7ot all iters have been so explicit. Usually there is some implicit assumption that occupational gradings are in some way related to social class concepts: a more detailed consideration of this relationship is needed. Glass himself continues to say that although the concern may be with social status or prestige, 'This does not mean that the studies do not throw light on problems of social class'. We find that some research workers are inclined to think that 'class' and 'status' are synonymous terms. We suggest that the difference between these ^sords lies in the fact that status may be conceived of as infinitely variable. It may be expressed on a continuous scale whose sub-divisions depend merely upon the sensitivity of our measuring instrument. To get classes we must find some common element as a basis of classification, and certainly with occupations, ^ve may find many common features as the basis of classification. We may classify occupations into indoor and outdoor, white-collar, manual, and intellectual, clerical, engineering and teaching, etc. We may classify them into broad income categories. But none of these can necessarily be described as social classes. We may group into broad categories based on social prestige but this also does not necessarily give us social classes. We 26