Bourdieu (1985), Bottero and Prandy (2003) and
partially Chan and Goldthorpe (2004) have brought back in the notion of
distance as a metric to penetrate a very elusive question in social
stratification: which stratifies people in a society? In other words, what are
the elements that tend to form ‘natural’ groups within larger groups, but which
ultimately echo the notion of hierarchy? It is elusive for at least two
reasons. Firstly, it is not trivial to identify a unique set of criteria which
can summarize the information of the distribution of positions of the
individuals; two examples can illustrate the foregoing. Gender might result
insufficient when for instance (historically) the position of various women in
the distribution of material resources is of advantages in reference to other
women, for instance a queen versus a prostitute. The second example is
ethnicity or in the less politically correct language of USA race. But again
within any ethnic (race) group we can observe an unequal distribution of
resources, i.e. Mr. President versus an African-American pimp. The second and
related reason is—in case there was an agreement regarding which the most appropriate
criteria are—the identification of which criterion has more associative power
than other. In our example, for instance, is not trivial to define whether
gender or ethnicity need to be measured with same or different weights, or how
actually these two might interact. In sum, two very important dimensions of
societies, gender and ethnicity (race), do not exhaust the main question posted
above, and therefore sociological reason, in the realm of social
stratification, remains infertile to its promise of “[penetrating] to the very
nature of [social] things” (Rytina, 1998:203).
A serious alternative to this research challenge has
been ‘class analysis’, since the distribution of economic resources (i.e
occupations and its many criteria: skills versus lack of skills?; Manual and non-manual;
position within an organization; type of contract; and so on) can be an
appropriate criterion to identify the position of the individuals in a given
larger group. Indeed what differentiates, among other things, the prostitute to
the queen is their access to material resources. However, as Bourdieu, Bottero
and Prandy and partially Chan and Goldthorpe argue, the restrictions of this
strategy can also be associated to the two limitations previously identified
and that is why the offer a somehow similar response. In other words, while it
would be quite hard to argue that this group of five authors do not acknowledge
the impossibility of penetrating social reality in full; they seem none the
less to agree that certain analytical strategies i.e. class analysis from
Marxist and Non-Marxist traditions, are less effective in getting closer to
answers which guide the stratification research program, and therefore by
introducing the notion of space and distance the promise of sociological reason
in this field can be kept alive.
One element highlighted by Bourdieu is that the
criterion of material resources is rather limited since the presence of other
capitals might be also useful in understanding the position of individuals in a
given society. In this regard, and partly echoing Weber’s analysis of status
and class, Bourdieu introduces the notion of cultural, social and symbolic
capital. These concepts ultimately recognize the complexity of social reality,
and thus help responding the question of how the distribution of these capitals
takes place. Secondly, Bourdieu argues that Marxist class analysis conflates
“is” with “ought to” (an old battle of positivism) once class is associated to
a given collective path. Certainly the revolutionary path that the working
class could take is the “ought to” part of the conflation. Under this criticism
Bourdieu elegantly shows a twofold inconsistency of the latter statement: i)
“alliance between those who are closest is never necessary, inevitable, (…) and alliance between those most distant
from each other is never impossible” (Bourdieu, 1985:726)[1];
ii) “there is no mention of the mysterious alchemy whereby a “group in
struggle” (…) arises from the objective economic conditions” (Bourdieu,
1985:727). But the most important criticism of Bourdieu to this type of
analysis, besides the one where his sociology of knowledge illustrates the
blind spots of various social scientists, included of course defenders of Marxist’s
theory of class, is the reification of class as a category of analysis whereby
the aggrupation made by the observer can take its own life and do the acting.[2] This
cul-de-sac allows Bourdieu to look
for a geometrical conceptualization whereby individuals can actually be located
in different positions in the social space and their distances can be taken as
metrics of differences. For Bourdieu in the social space individuals’ positions
are “defined in terms of a multi-dimensional system of co-ordinates whose
values correspond to the different variables” (Bourdieu, 1985:724). This system
furthermore needs to differentiate, Bourdieu argues, between quantity and
composition of capital. This notion of social space has an objective character
because it influences affinities and indifferences, or propinquity and remoteness
between individuals, and then the identification of social groups. Within this
analytical strategy the emergence of collective action, is not, however, a
necessary condition of group identification. This strategy, on the other hand,
allows ascertaining differences in terms of life-styles between individuals
from different groups. The expression of these differences is associated to
patterns of experiences, which have been accumulated and later on transmitted,
and ultimately takes an objectified character by the individuals. These
differences, however, arise when the individuals recognize them, but this acknowledgment
can only be executed by the process of socialization which the individuals went
through i.e the language of prostitute cannot be spoken by the queen, as much
as the queen would wish it, and the prostitute cannot speak the English of the
queen; furthermore only some can recognize when an English’s accent is fake.
Bottero and Prandy (2003) also recognize the quasi monopoly
of class analysis in stratification studies since attention towards material
inequality dominates this research program. While they authors suggest that
even within class analysts the limitations have been acknowledged, they also
point out that some of their renew strategies actually leave class, as unit of
analysis, almost without explanatory power and therefore “it is hard to see
what remains of ‘class in ‘class theory’” (Bottero and Prandy, 2003;178). The
approach which class analysts have taken resemblance social distance analysis,
they argue. However, in similar fashion as Bourdieu the premises of
stratification are different. More precisely these authors argue that
“differential patterns of association and lifestyle constitute the structure of stratification” (Bottero and Prandy,
2003:178).[3]
These authors identify three different approaches of
social distance—Bourdieu’s, the Cambridge stratification group, and Rytina’s
SSIC[4]—which
not only share the notion of distance as a metric but also do not assume a
priori a given social structure as the American tradition (Duncan, 1967) and
the European one (Goldthorpe, 1980) do. Influenced by the pioneering work of
Laumman, whereby this author explored social distance “using large data-sets on
patterns of interaction” (Bottero and Prandy, 2003:180), the social distance
approach developed by the Cambridge group states that individuals are likely to
interact with those who have the same or very similar rank. Drawing in Goffman,
Bourdieu brings a similar concept of how certain type of interactions prevails
over others. According to the French sociologist agents (individuals) accept
the world as it is. This disposition,
Bourdieu argues, the sense of one’s place “implies a tacit acceptance of one’s
place, a sense of limits (“that’s not for the like of us,” etc.), or which
amount to the same thing, a sense of distances, to be marked and kept respected
or expected” (Bourdieu, 1985:728). According to the authors, the Cambridge
group uses a variety of close social relationships in order to research social
distance because the main assumption is that regularities can be found in non-work
situations. The first scale particularly used friendship patterns and was later
used to predict educational outcomes, ethnic inequality, health and lifestyle,
political variables as well as social mobility. Similarly to Goldthorpe
research agenda, this scale was also used for international comparisons.
According to Bottero and Prandy different types of social relationships such as
friendship, marriage, affinal and consanguineal kinship, display the same
social distance configurations. This ultimately reflects, these authors argue,
a ‘scale of shared experience’ which measures material and social advantages
(p.184).
One important commonality of the social distance
approaches is the interpretation of the social space whereby the interaction of
individuals takes place, Bottero and Prandy argue. However, an alternative, and
literally a deeper, concept to theoretically describe social space is offered
by Rytina. This author states that ‘granularity’, in the context of social
theory, refers to “gaining mental access to the full complexity of what something involves (…) [A] central feature of the experience of
granularity is coming with an exhaustive
comprehension of the range of possibilities (…) of the states of the system ”
(Rytina, 1998:203-205)[5].
Unlike categorical classifications, which are used for class analysis for
instance, this concept promises to grasp very fine texts which are more in tune
with social reality. Furthermore, in analysis of social stratification this
paradoxically has the benefit of acknowledging the complexity of different interactions
of individuals in the social space, rather than mapping them a priori in
specific and artificial groups. In other words, it does not succumb to the
logic of latent class analysis where the noise of the outliers is silenced by “forcing”
them to be part of social groups, which are not in principle exhaustive of the
complexity of every individual’s position and interaction.[6] Of course after assuming a structure in a given
social space, where there are degrees of commonalities, latent class analysis can
be an effective and efficient strategy of classification whereby noise is
reduced; nevertheless the price of this approach is neglecting that boundaries
among groups as Bourdieu states are “flame[s] whose edges are in constant
movement, oscillating around a line or surface” (Bottero and Prandy, 2003:186),
and therefore losing the granularity of stratification.
Lastly, and in a very social-democrat way Chan and
Goldthorpe harvest some fruits of the promise of the social distance metric. In
a larger research program whereby cultural, political and economic dimensions
are identified for the British context, these authors test the Weberian notion
of class and status in order to see which ‘variable’ explains better these
dimensions. Furthermore this program helps them to review some interpretations
made in reference to the oeuvre of Bourdieu, whereby the French author is
associated to an ontological position where the material world would prevail.
In the paper reviewed, the scholars from Oxford ask a twofold question whether
status can be identified in modern societies, and whether this element can be
differentiated from Goldthorpe’s class scheme. As the Cambridge stratification
group, these two scholars also use Laumann’s approach, whereby analysis of
closest friends’ respondents is carried out. As the former group they also
conclude that there is one dimension which reflects a hierarchy of status. When
comparing both tables 1 and 2 we observe that the overlapping will depend on
what is considered to be top or bottom. For instance only one category of tables
1 and 2 (company treasures, financial managers, computer system managers,
personnel managers) is top 3 and only general labours remain in the bottom 3 of
both tables. Once we considered top and bottom 6 only two categories are for
top (SM and GMA) and three for the bottom (GL, PMO and TO). This illustrates
that effectively there are differences and commonalities between both orders,
however the differences seem to, by statistical tests, be more relevant to
identify different social structures. There is a question that remains luckily
open, why class and stratification measures of granularity (i.e. social
distance) will show differences in terms of their association to political or
cultural patterns as these two authors claim? Which sociological theories can
explain why differences in metrics show differences in social commonalities?
More explicitly why class schemes are better associated to political traits
than metrics of status, whereas metrics of status seems to be more precise to
identify patterns of cultural consumption (Chan and Goldthorpe, 2007)?
References
Bottero, W. and K. Prandy 2003. “Social interaction
distance and stratification.” British
Journal of Sociology 54(2): 177--197.
Bourdieu P. 1985. “The Social Space and the Genesis
of Groups.” Theory and Society, 14(6):
727--744.
Chan, T. W. and John Goldthorpe 2007. “Class and status:
the conceptual distinction and its empirical relevance” American Sociological Review 72:512--532.
____________ 2004.
“Is There a Status Order in Contemporary British Society?: Evidence from the
Occupational Structure of Friendship.” European
Sociological Review. 20(5): 383--401.
Hedström and Swedberg 1996; “Social Mechanisms.” Acta Sociologica, 39(3):281--308.
Rytina S. 1998. “Loosening the Chains of
Philosophical Reductionism” pp.192--218 edited by Alan Sica What is Social Theory? The Philosophical Debates.
Blackwell publishers.
van den Berg, A 1998. The Immanent Utopia. From
Marxism on the State to the State of Marxism. Princeton Press.
[1] van den Berg has another
perspective in order to illustrate the foregoing point “But of course, the fact
that people can and do cooperate in the defense of their common interest does
not automatically make them unable to tolerate anything but cooperation and solidarity”
(van den Berg 1988, 66).
[2] Somewhat related is the social
mechanism approach promoted by Hedstöm and Swedberg whereby they state that
“class in and of itself obviously cannot influence an individual’s income or
health. A class cannot be causal agent because it is nothing but a constructed
aggregation of occupation titles” (Hedström and Swedberg, 1996:289)
[3] Their emphasis.
[4] Since we have briefly commented
on Bourdieu’s proposal and we will dedicate more specific readings to Rytina’s
proposal I will focus on the Cambridge stratification group.
[5] My emphases.
[6] It is not forcing them per se
because as latent-class analysis suggests observations (i.e. individuals) have
a probability of being part of a hidden group.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario