Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

The British Obsession with Class

Fiona Devine, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

This talk will report and reflect on the Great British Class Survey which was completed by over 300,000 participants and the source of considerable public engagement.  This was a unique experiment in bringing together colleagues from the BBC and academics Mike Savage (LSE) and Fiona Devine (Manchester) and a team including Paul Wakeling from the University of York. The talk will describe the early collaboration in the development of the web-based survey, its launch in January 2011 and subsequent analysis of the data, and look at the pros and cons of a web-based survey. The fanfare around the announcement of the results in 2013 and additional participation and national and international engagement with the study, and also the key findings around polarisation and fragmentation and the seven classes identified from a capitals approach to class will be discussed.  Drawing on additional qualitative material, the extent to which class snobbery exists, even though it has gone underground, will be considered.

Report

The Great British Class Survey was undertaken in 2013 in association with the BBC’s Lab UK. The online survey asked the public to define their lives in terms of economic, cultural and social capital. Mostly filled in by middle class white people, it was highly unrepresentative. To correct the skewed results it needed supplementary face-to-face interviews to enable the appropriate statistical weighting. The seven new “classes” produced a lot of media interest both in the UK and internationally, and appeared to confirm the idea that the British are obsessed with class, though it was not clear whether the survey had itself generated a seeming class obsession. The intense interest and contacts with the media seemed to have validated the research for the academics – as the unexplained slides did not. Questions from the audience produced the more nuanced view, that the media have a class narrative, but people have a class awareness. Longitudinal studies may further correct the distortions of a snapshot survey.

Carole Smith