identity in modern britain

In Britain today Social Class does not have as much impact as it once did on individuals 'identity ' Discuss

Within this essay I will explain different types of social class and how social identity is important in modern Britain today.

Identity may be defined as distinctive characteristics belonging to any given individual,or shared by all members of a particular social category or group.(Rummers.J)

According to Copper the term social class may be defined as a group of people with certain common traits ;decent education,accent, similarity of occupation , wealth moral attitudes, friends,hobbies,accommodation and with generally similar ideas , and forms of behavior , who meet each other on equal terms and regard themselves belonging to one group.

Class is seldom measured as on end itself, it is a means of stratifying a society enabling evaluation of any inequalities. In subjective method of class measuring, you simply ask what class people think they should be in. The objective method , in contrast uses a range of measures such as occupation ,unemployment,income,post code. More recently postcodes have been suggested as a possible useful measure. These have the advantage of being easy to collect and available for all of the population. The individual in modern society strives to achieve or obtain the things that are labeled as desirable by their culture. A persons opportunities to obtain their fair share are know as their life chances. Max Weber , identified three elements which determine a person's life chances:economic factors, status and power. As individuals position on this scale of stratification may influence many aspects of life. Education is affected by a person's life chances .In general access to higher levels of education is controlled by economic factors , as money can buy a better quality private education. Vital for every person’s survival is health, but even this can be influenced by an individual's economic factors. Those in lower classes, with lower levels of education and lower income will very rarely be able to afford the kind of healthcare that the higher social class can. Social immobility can mean that social classes will often group in many aspects of their life. Due to finical situation or work commitments , members of the different social classes will often live in groups , the middle class generally in the suburbs and the working class in the inner- city.

The process which had emergence of traditional working class were urbanization and industrialization. The main characteristic of traditional working class was heavy laboring and factory based work,the traditional industries such as manufacturing and mining were often very dangerous and involved many of manual workers working together which created the sense of solidarity. The traditional working class usually lived close-kit communities, and most of their time they spend in men's club , which created brotherhood. For many workers Labour party was their representative , and until 1970 the Labour party could rely on the support of 80% the traditional working classes. Trade Union also created support and special bond between workers and Labour party.

In 1979 Margaret Thatcher become a prime minister of Britain, and the new policies were introduced to Britain. One of the policy was opposing of Trade Unions and the introduction of the legalization. Thatcher government believed that the Trade Unions is one vital tool that can tackle inflation by creating unemployment. Thatcher was always prepared for the strike after taking power from trade unions by accumulating coal at power station the effects of the strikes on the economy diminished. She also passed some legalization to make striking more difficult with a compulsory secret ballot and less effective with flying pickets being removed and were banned. As Thatcher wanted to distribute wealth to all individuals. In early 80s recession take a peak , Thatcher had begun to propose privatization as a potential panacea .She emerged doctrine that privatization would make the large utilities more efficient and productive , however due to privatization a lot of people mainly from traditional working class lost their jobs , and this created high unemployment through the Britain. Thatcher also introduced Right to buy shame were all council tenants could buy their homes , however Right to buy shame had a massive 15% interests and many homeowners found themselves losing their homes due to spiralling mortgage payments.

According to some researches the working class identity is less important nowdays. The main reason for this is that the numbers of people employed in traditional industries such as mining or shipbuilding have drop rapidly since 1970 and 1980, so class solidarity has weakened. The new working class took totally new social class identity , one of which is instrumental seeing work as means to an end , rather than a source of community and status. Capitalism is seen by workers to be effective in order to rise living standards,. Individualism is very important for them , they put their intermediate family and themselves first, rather than collective or community action. They define themselves through their lifestyles , family and standard of living , rather than through their work.

The underclass are described by New Right approach as the groups that have no desire to work and are content to live of the welfare state, raising unruly children with no respect for authority. They argue that the main problem is the dependency culture the welfare has created resulting in the emergence of the underclass. The New Right approach to welfare argues that the welfare state is not solution , but in fact the cause of the issues or ills of society , they promote individual self- help and meeting social needs required minimal state intervention in the provision of welfare . Structured views of underclass suggest that society itself is flawed. The government has not provided adequate work. Structural perspective differ from New Right approach as they blame the inequalities in society , rather than the cultural values of the poor. In their view underclass exists because the material resources needed to succeed in society are distributed unequally.

In 1995 Savage carried out a study about types of middle classes, in his conclusion he stated that in today’s Britain has got 4 different types of middle classes identity. One of this group are professionals, such as doctors and lawyers. This type of middle class adopt their intellectual identity from a long and successful education. The qualifications , values and cultural assets are important for them and cultural capital is contributing to the success of children from this social group.
Another kind of middle class are managers in private businesses. They define success in terms of their living standard and leisure pursuits. Their salaries are usually very high , however they do realize that their jobs are more unstable than professionals like doctors or lawyers. Another class are self-employed owners of small businesses who usually operated as individuals. However the recent recession have brought insecurity and it leaded to collective action such as blocking of fuel depots by farmers.
The last class is entrepreneurial group . They mainly work in the city or media. Their identity resolves around mixture of popular culture. They may attend the Royal Opera House or simply spending night out clubbing.

Scott in 1986 stated that the upper class in today’s society is often distinguished by of the possession largely inherited wealth. Upper class lives in a private world from fee paying education to private healthcare and social network that are almost invisible for non-wealthy. Upper class have got very powerful sense of social class identity. Children born in upper class families learn distinct ways of speaking , mannerism attitudes and the way the sees the world clearly distinguishes them from other groups. From an early age they have certain privileges of security and they can control and power over the live of others. Upper class has got high self-confidence and sense of social superiority.

Postmodern approach argues that class in modern Britain is disappearing, and there are numerous different sources of identity. However for H. Bradley class is not strongest source of identity in modern Britain, for her class is fragmenting and polarizing. She quotes a number of studies which one prove inequalities in Britain are increasing. Bradley is pointing out that today’s days richer are becoming richer. And poor becoming more worse off. She also got an evidence that class is fragmenting with development of underclass and big increase of self-employment.
Gender identity is very important for her as a source of identity in modern Britain . She moves away from theories who claim that and men are single group and are united. Gender is an active politicized identity for women as a result of the influence of feminism. Recently gender also has started to become politicized for men , with men movements and demands of male rights. However she stated that it does not mean that all women and men experience gender as their main source of identity , other sources of identity interacts with other sources.
Importance of ethic identity starts when people recognize themselves as a different from others because of their color, race, country of origin, traditions etc. Miles 1989 claimed that ethnicity is an important part of social identity , which result in strong sense of self and others imagined assumptions about other ethic groups. Racism got a huge impact on ethic have identity .Gardner and Shukur made a research on Bengals and concluded that they are loyal to Islam because it provides a support and positive identity denied by white culture. In 1998 Johal stated that British-Asians have a dual identity .They adopt to British identity and inherit Asian identity. They consequently adopt and switch between both cultures . Butter in 1995 carried out a study on Muslims women and concluded they choose from a variety of possible identities , he also found that they accepted western norms and values concerning career and education, but they still respect their traditional religious ideas. Another source of social identity is nationalism. Nationalism become important with emergence of nation- state and has become very important in modern times. National and local cultures may be strengthened as a resistance to globalization as many cultures approve fundamentalist movements. Society's members are socialized into national culture mainly through the same language they speak and history, religion. Nationalism give and promote sense of belonging.

In modern Britain are many social classes, and form some of them social class doesn’t have a much impact on their lives or social identity, however for some of the social groups powerful social class identity is important and it impact on their social identity