Descriptive occupational and status hierarchies and the analysis of ‘social classes’
The most commonly class scheme was used in the UK. For example, have been developed the scale of the scheme Szreter (1984), which was originally associated with eugenics, as it was believed that the social and professional structure more or less reflect the natural hierarchy of abilities and morality in society. That is why, the scheme of civil registration was a hierarchical. Other schemes have been developed primarily for wide commercial exploitation of social class. For example, for a national readership study such scale is commonly used by marketing agencies. The scale divides the population into A, B, CL, C2, D and E - accordingly the upper middle, middle, lower-middle-skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled working classes (there are separate categories for the self-employed and unemployed). Again, the occupations comprising the different ‘classes’ closely resemble those of the other hierarchical scales in general use.
Another descriptive strategy, identifying a multiplicity of ‘classes’, that has become of increasing importance in market- and policy-oriented research is geodemographics, or residential area classifications. ‘From the point of view of marketing professionals knowledge of where someone lives is a particularly powerful predictor of all manner of consumption practices, values, tastes, preferences and so on’,- says Burrows and Gane.
The two most commonly used classifications are ACORN and MOSAIC, both developed and owned by commercial companies. The basis of these classifications is postcodes, rather than occupations. A wide variety of data items taken from the Census, as well as from commercial sources (purchasing behavior such as in-store loyalty cards, for example) is statistically manipulated to generate detailed descriptive groupings, by postcode, which are then characterized by numerous categories and subcategories ranging from ‘Symbols o f success’ (example o f a subcategory: ‘Golden empty nesters’) to ‘Welfare borderline’ (example of a subcategory: ‘Bedsit beneficiaries’). It has been argued that geodemographic classifications combine both ‘class’ and ‘status’ in a single measure. That is, these classifications encompass both economic situation (‘class’) and cultural (‘status’) signifiers.
Theoretical (‘relational’) class schemes: Wright
Wright has followed a self-consciously Marxist project, a central feature of which has been his efforts to develop a Marxist class scheme. His main aims were:
Create a Marxist class map, which would adequate to modern society.
Reflect not only the "technical" professional division, but also class relations (since the division on the basis of the profession do not produce classes).
He dismisses hierarchical or gradational schemes as ‘static taxonomies’: 'While it might be the case that most of the participants in the storming of the Bastille had status scores of under 40, and most of the French aristocracy had scores above 70, such labels do not capture the underlying dynamics at work in the revolutionary process’. Thus we have, yet again, the criticism that such schemes do not tap the dynamics of class relationships.
Wright also draws a sharp distinction between ‘class’ and ‘occupation’. Occupations, he argues, are understood as positions defined within the technical relations of production; classes, on the other hand, are defined by the social relations of production.
Notions of control and exploitation within the social relations of production are central to Wright’s analysis. Social relations in production are divided into:
Attitude control over money capital.
Attitude control over physical capital.
Attitude control over labor - power and discipline in the production process.
Domination is a significant aspect of class relations but it may be viewed as essentially epiphenomenal - that is, as being a consequence of exploitative class relationships, rather than their cause. In his development of the analysis o f exploitation (rather than domination), Wright distinguishes four types of assets, the unequal ownership or control of each of which forms the basis of different types of exploitation. These are: labour-power assets (feudal exploitation), capital assets (capitalist exploitation), organization assets (statist exploitation) and skill or credential assets (socialist exploitation).