Socio-political, cultural and economic preferences and behaviour of the social and cultural specialists and the technocrats. Social class or education?

Abstract

Do the social and cultural specialists differ from the technocrats and other social classes with respect to their socio-political, cultural and economic preferences and behaviour? If they do, is this attributable to their level and field of education? The social and cultural specialists are assumed to form ‚new’ social class and the technocrats ‚old’ social class. A typical social class should differentiate itself with respect to moral attitudes, socio-political behaviour and lifestyle forms. To reveal whether these assumed classes are indeed typical classes, we have studied a variety of socio-political, cultural and economic preferences and behaviour of members of these social classes using the Family Survey of the Dutch Population (FSDP) 1992, 1998, 2000 and 2003. To unravel the net differences between the social and cultural specialists and the technocrats, we controlled for the field of study, the level of education and background factors. Taking these control factors into consideration, the social and cultural specialists differentiate themselves substantially from the technocrats in their socio-political and especially economic preferences and behaviour. With respect to their cultural preferences and behaviour, they do not differ significantly from the technocrats.