sociology revision - Working class

• Lower wages
• fewer fringe benefits
• Poorer life chances
• Lower life expectancy

• 1960,s David lockwood identified a group, ProletarianTraditionalists.
• Living inclose knit communities.e.g (coal miners)
• Their values: Loyalty,spent leisure time with work mates and persued goals collectivily.
• Fatalistic attitude
• Emphasis of immediate gratification.
• Segregated conjugal roles.

These characteristics are opposed to middle class values of individualism.

Marx , Predicted an expanding & increasingly homogenious, class conscious, working class.

Others argued the working class is becoming

• smaller
• more fragmented
• less class conscious

Zweig (1960s)argued that Skilled manual workers had adopted:

The economic and cultural life style of the middleclass.

They supported the conservative Party and had developed bourgeois values.

Goldthorpe and Lockwoods (1960s) study of Affluent workers,did not support this.

77% of their study supported labour.

Although their were signs of convergence between middleclass and workingclass lifestyles.

Goldthorpe and lockwood suggested

The economic basis for class identity and solidarity was weakening.

They identified the PRIVATISED INSTUMENTALIST WORKER,who didnt see work as a source of identity.

These affluent workers were, HOME CENTRED, and didnt subscribe to a notion of working class community.