Skilled Workers in the Class Structure

This book reinterprets the British class structure and its evolution from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1980s.

Roger Penn (Author)

9780521128490, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 February 2010

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.4 kg

This book reinterprets the British class structure and its evolution from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1980s. It provides a detailed empirical study of the growth of trade unions, and development of earnings differentials and patterns of class inter-marriage during this period, and uses this material to reassess theoretical questions of class consciousness, the notion of the 'traditional working class', and the ideas of a 'labour aristocracy'. A particular feature is that this book is part of the development of a mode of sociological analysis intended to be compatible with economic theory. Its primary focus is on the relationship between skilled and non-skilled manual workers. This 1984 suggests that an internal division of the manual working class on the basis of skill has been a persistent feature of economic relations since the late nineteenth century. It goes on to show, however, by the extensive analysis of inter marriage, that this economic division has not been translated into equivalent social boundaries.

List of tables, diagrams and models
Acknowledgements
Part I. Debates and Definitions: 1. Orientations to the analysis of class in Britain
2. The traditional working class
3. The labour aristocracy
4. Theoretical orientations to skill
5. Aspects of the social structure of Rochdale, 1856–1964
Part II. The Economic Structuration of Class: 6. The trade union structure in the Rochdale cotton and engineering industries
7. The course of wage differentials in Rochdale during the period 1856–1964
8. Skilled manual workers in the labour process
Part III. The Social Structuration of Class: 9. Classes, strata and occupations
10. Class analysis and marital endogamy
11. Intermarriage in Rochdale: class endogamy of brides and grooms
12. Intermarriage in Rochdale: class endogamy of fathers of brides and fathers of grooms
13. Skilled manual workers in the British class structure
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]