Lay Perceptions of Inequality and Social Structure

Irwin, Sarah

doi:10.1177/0038038516661264

Cited by 67 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This is often interpreted according to reference group hypothesis, which holds that people compare themselves to people in their own social context (Ibid). However, this previous research also notes that people also take into account broader societal contexts, including comparisons with other countries (Evans and Kelley 2004;Irwin 2016). This means that although comparisons between societies on the basis of individually reported self-positioning on a social ladder are valid, differences are likely to be mitigated, since people primarily compare themselves with a reference group based on their direct social context.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education-Based Status in Comparative Perspective: The Legitimization of Education as a Basis for Social Stratification

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Classical and recent accounts of education posit that education legitimately, and authoritatively, classifies individuals to positions of lower or higher status. However, despite these general theoretical claims, empirical evidence that provides an in-depth picture of the relationship between educational attainment and social status remains scarce. In this paper, based on a dataset of 31 countries (International Social Survey Programme), we investigate the extent to which education is related to subjective social status, the degree to which this is seen as legitimate, and how this relationship varies between countries. We contextualize this relationship with the influence of the centrality of education in countries (operationalized as the share of higher educated). Results showed that education is an important source of subjective social status for individuals across all countries, and is seen as relatively legitimate and uncontroversial among all educational groups. Moreover, among those who perceive education to be more important for status, subjective status differences between educational groups are larger. Additionally, in countries with larger shares of higher educated, educational differences in subjective social status correlate more strongly with whether or not people obtained a degree of higher (tertiary) education. Lastly, the relationship between education and subjective social status in these countries is more independent from other sources of status, such as income and gender. It therefore seems to be that as higher education becomes more central and widely shared in a society, rather than leveling social differences, ironically it also becomes more distinctive and diagnostic in distinguishing people along group lines.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education-Based Status in Comparative Perspective: The Legitimization of Education as a Basis for Social Stratification

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Crucially this position, common across our interviews, is placed in the specific context of the continued effacement of the role of inequality in their own career success. This leads to an important set of divisions in their understanding of inequality, echoing much of the discussion of class and inequality seen in the debate between Savage et al (2001) and Payne and Grew (2005), and recent work by Irwin (2015Irwin ( , 2018. Creative and cultural industries are narrated via problems of inequality, but those problems are outside of individual senior men's own lives and careers.…”

Section: The Lucky Gentlemen Producing Culturementioning

confidence: 98%

“…The contrast to Robert's inequality talk is stark, although, as we have noted, not entirely unexpected. Awareness of structural issues is often in contrast to biographical narrative, whether in terms of positioning oneself within a broader social hierarchy (Irwin, 2015(Irwin, , 2018 or in accounts of career success (Miles et al, 2011;Miles and Savage, 2012).…”

Section: The Lucky Gentlemen Producing Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality talk: How discourses by senior men reinforce exclusions from creative occupations

Brook¹,

O’Brien

Taylor

2019

European Journal of Cultural Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cultural Studies has drawn attention to the way that cultural and creative industries are marked by significant inequalities. This article explores how these inequalities are maintained, through fieldwork with senior men making decisions in cultural and creative industries. Drawing on 32 interviews with senior men across a range of cultural and creative industry occupations, conducted as part of a larger (N = 237) project, the analysis shows that misrecognition and outright rejection of inequalities are now not the norm. Rather, ‘inequality talk’ and the recognition of structural barriers for marginalised groups is a dominant discourse. However, individual careers are still explained by gentlemanly tropes and the idea of luck, rather than by reference to structural inequalities. The distance between the discourse of career luck and ‘inequality talk’ helps to explain the persistence of exclusions from the workforce for those who are not white, middle class origin, men. This has important implications for inequalities in cultural production and consumption, and in turn for wider social inequality.

show abstract

“…nelle yrkeshierarkiene. De var ikke naive i sine forståelser av hierarkier, og her lignet våre funn på funn fra tilsvarende studier i England (Irwin, 2016). Selv nølte mange fra arbeiderklassen med å foreta slike rangeringer, eller de rangerte yrkene annerledes.…”

Section: Arbeiderklassens Grensedragninger Mot Rike Og Politikereunclassified

Klassiske klassekonflikter? Grensedragningeri den norske arbeiderklassen

Skarpenes¹

2018

TfS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

De siste tiårene har økonomiske og sosiale forskjeller økt i mange i vestlige land. Konsekvenser av endringene er høyere arbeidsledighet og mer utrygghet i arbeiderklassen. Forskning gjennomført i Frankrike og USA viser at arbeiderklassen ser ut til å utvikle nye kulturelle verdier. Fiendtlige holdninger til fattige, og skeptiske holdninger til innvandrere, vokser i omfang og intensitet. I denne artikkelen presenterer jeg data som viser at det er antisolidariske verdier og innvandringsskeptiske elementer også i kulturen til den etnisk norske arbeiderklassen, men denne skepsisen er ikke like tydelig som i USA og Frankrike. Representantene for dette sosiale segmentet i Norge trekker sterkere grenser mot rike og velstående enn mot utsatte grupper. Tolkningen jeg foreslår er at arbeiderklassen i Norge fortsetter å kjempe en kamp for anerkjennelse av sin rolle, og at denne kampen fremdeles kjempes mot de bedrestilte i samfunnet.

show abstract

Lay Perceptions of Inequality and Social Structure

Cited by 67 publications

References 26 publications

Education-Based Status in Comparative Perspective: The Legitimization of Education as a Basis for Social Stratification

Education-Based Status in Comparative Perspective: The Legitimization of Education as a Basis for Social Stratification

Inequality talk: How discourses by senior men reinforce exclusions from creative occupations

Klassiske klassekonflikter? Grensedragningeri den norske arbeiderklassen

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About