Journal of Rural Studies 23 (20

Ph

y of

We

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a p

ion

din

rationale. The paper argues that the classication lends support to claims that rural studies have used an overly aggregative concept of

the middle class that obscures the spatial distribution of classes in the British countryside, although interpretation of the classication

also needs to consider a range of broader criticisms of class analysis. The paper concludes by suggesting that the paradox surrounding the

a Rural and Urban Area Classication produced by the

approaches may both fail to represent the complexities andintangibilities of life in the countryside (e.g. Cloke et al.,1997), and, somewhat perversely, are privileged over

associated proliferation of inscriptions, with their technol-

(e.g. Murdoch, 2004). A common theme within such studiesis that statistics are not neutral representations but socialconstructions and performances, produced by particular

ARTICLE IN PRESSagents, for particular reasons and having particular effects.This paper draws upon such arguments, albeit with some

particular twists. It will focus on the production of Census

0743-0167/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2007.02.001

Tel.: +44 116 252 3886; fax: +44 116 252 3854.E-mail address: mpp2@le.ac.uk.Ofce of National Statistics. The 2005 Report furthermoreexplicitly re-afrms governmental commitment to a cred-ible and well-founded rural evidence base (Commission forRural Communities, 2005, p. 2). On the other hand,academic rural studies have evidenced growing scepticismabout the value of statistical analysis. It has, for instance,been suggested by Cloke and associates that quantitative

ogies for classifying and enumerating have becomeeffective techniques of governmentality, allowing civildomains to be rendered visible, calculable and, therefore,governable (p. 238). Similar arguments have been em-ployed in studies of agricultural and environmentalstatistics (e.g. Enticott, 2001; Murdoch, 1995a), as well aswith regard to rural population gures and housing policiesclassication and rural class analysis more generally might be viewed through Latours, [1999. Pandoras hope. Harvard University

Press, London] concept of knowledge as a circulatory system.

r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Class analysis; Middle class territory; NS-SEC; Middle and service classes; Quantitative and qualitative methods; Circulatory system of

knowledge

1. Demographic statistics, class analysis and rural studies

Recent years have seen the emergence of a series of Stateof the Countryside reports which have drawn uponstatistical material produced following the 2001 PopulationCensus and, in the case of the last two reports (CountrysideAgency, 2005; Commission for Rural Communities, 2005),

qualitative ones within policy-related discourses (e.g. Cloke,1996; Milbourne, 2000). This last point is also highlightedby Abram et al. (1998) who point both to the generalarguments of Rose (1991) concerning the centrality ofstatistics to the exercise of governmental power, and to theeffects of demographic statistics on rural developmentplanning. They claim that the collection of statistics and theChanging class complexions on

Martin

Department of Geography, Universit

Abstract

This paper explores the class complexion of the English and

Classication (or NS-SEC), as well as reecting on the value of th

subject of analysis. The paper situates analysis using the NS-SEC in

to demonstrate successful incorporation of academic construct

production, while, on the other hand, academic discourses, inclu07) 283304

and in the British countryside

illips

Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK

lsh countryside utilising the National Statistics Socio-Economic

lassication given claims as to the death of class as a meaningful

aradoxical context, whereby its very use appears, on the one hand,

s of class into the agencies of governmental social statistical

g some within rural studies, appear to have undermined its very

www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud

and often still referred to, as the Registrar GeneralsClassication. This classication, which emerged in asso-ciation with the 1911 Census, came by the 1921 Census todifferentiate people into ve general classes (Fig. 1).Although widely used in British empirical class analysis,much of this work may have fallen prey to what Savageet al. (1992, p. 221) refer to as the pragmatic temptation ofusing a classicatory system simply because it is easilyaccessible, with little or no reection as to whether itactually measures what is required. Studies which haveexplored the classication (e.g. Rose and OReilly, 1997a)have noted both conceptual ambiguity and contestation,

ARTICLE IN PRESSral Studies 23 (2007) 283304statistics, in part related to the aforementioned Rural andurban area classication, but more particularly focused onthe introduction by the Ofce of National Statistics ofthe National Statistics Socio-Economic Classication(or NS-SEC). In contrast to many of the statistical datasets addressed in earlier studies, the NS-SEC arguably isnot set to form part of an effective technology ofgovernmentality, having yet to be widely incorporated intogovernmental policy analysis: it is a notable absence fromthe current suite of State of the Countryside Reports. It isalso a dataset which has hitherto received little attentionwithin academic studies of the countryside, an issue whichthis paper will seek to explore by drawing on argumentsrelating to a so-called interpretative approach to classanalysis and debates over the class complexion of thecountryside.As discussed in Phillips (1998a, b), the notion of an

interpretative approach to class analysis was propoundedby Savage and Butler (Savage, 1994; Savage and Butler,1995), although their descriptions were programmaticrather than detailed and some later studies have adoptedother descriptors, such as a new sociology of class or evena new class paradigm (Savage, 2003; Reay, 2005b).Hitherto most attention has focused on interpretation asan epistemological response to the congested and contestedcharacter of academic conceptualization of class (seeSavage, 1994; Phillips, 2002b) and on how lay discoursesand identities connect, contrast, contest and performacademically identied constructions of class (see Phillips,1998b; Reay, 2005a; Sayer, 2005; Skeggs, 2004). This paperwill address these issues but will also pick up an argumentby Murdoch (1995b, p, 1214) that social scientists in theirtexts, make classes. Murdoch adds that this is obviousbut that what is less obvious is the relationship betweenthe sociological representations of class and class out therein the world of others. I want to suggest that the making ofclasses in texts is often far from obvious, as well asconsidering connections which link quantitative andcartographic inscriptions of class with class out there inthe world of others. The paper will begin by reviewing theemergence of the NS-SEC in relation to academic debatesover class classication and the utility of the concept ofclass, before exploring how the classication connects todebates over the class composition of the English andWelsh countryside. The nal part of the paper draws thetwo discussions together by exploring how the productionof the NS-SEC and the analysis of the class composition ofthe English and Welsh countryside link to recent debatesabout rural class analysis.

2. The paradoxes of the NS-SEC

This paper was stimulated by a sense of paradoxsurrounding the production and reception of theNS-SEC. On the one hand, its appearance may be seen

M. Phillips / Journal of Ru284to herald a bright new future for class analysis, not least inthat it replaced a classication of social class derived from,and also procedural transformation. For instance,although the class schema has been widely promoted as astable measure of temporal change (Szreter, 1984), Roseand OReilly (1997a, p. 3) remark that it has been aconstantly changing measuring rod with alterationsimplemented at every Census from 1921 to 1991. Further-more, not only has the title of the ve classes changedslightly over time but the conceptual basis of theclassication has also shifted.As Szreter (1984) details, the origins of the classication

lay in attempts by members of the Governments GeneralRegistry Ofce, and most particularly its medical statisti-cian Dr. Stevenson, to dispute naturalistic conceptions ofsociety as propounded by eugenicists and others. At thebase of this argument was an imagery of society structuredthrough a hierarchy of inherited natural abilities yreected in the skill level of different occupations(Marshall et al., 1988, p. 19). Occupations were seen torest on particular skills that in turn were conceived asinherited abilities to which people were born rather thanacquired through social learning processes. As Szreter(1984, p. 538) highlights, Stevenson very much opposedthis viewpoint and created his class classication as part ofan attempt to undermine it, although in doing so heincorporated some key elements of the eugenist positioninto his classication, notably that social inequalitynecessarily exists, that this inequality exists in acontinuous scale which might be analysed as a series ofordered grades forming a hierarchy applied across societyin essentially the same form regardless of locality or

Class I Professional, etc. occupations

Class II Managerial and Technical Occupations

Class III Skilled Occupations

III (N) Non-manual

III (M) Manual

Class IV Partly Skilled Occupations

Class V Unskilled Occupations

Fig. 1. The Registrar Generals Classication of Social Class, 1991variant. Source: Derived from Ofce of Population Censuses and Surveys,

1991, Standard Occupational Classification, Vol. 3, London, HMSO, p. 12.

community, and that class was to be conceptualised andmeasured in terms of the level of and form of skills

ARTICLE IN PRESSM. Phillips / Journal of Ruralassociated with particular occupations. Initially, thisconcept was expressed through the use of the terms socialposition or social standing within the community,although the link to skill became progressively moreapparent both in the work of Stevenson (see Stevenson,1928) and in subsequent developments of the RegistrarGenerals Classication, which in 1980 became explicitly aclassication of occupational skill (Ofce of PopulationCensuses and Surveys, 1980).Such changes were often been ignored in studies utilising

the class schema, although perhaps even more surprising isthat its use continued in the face of mounting criticism ofthe theoretical assumptions that structured it. Szreter(1984, p. 540), for instance, concluded his examination ofthe origins of the scheme by arguing that all of its basicpremises were questionable, that it might be characterizedas a pseudo-analytical conceptualisation, functioning atbest as a Crude Inequality Index, and that there seemslittle reason why it should not be replaced by a moreexible, discerning and less stultifying simplistic apparatus(Szreter, 1984, p. 540). A range of alternative classicationshave been outlined, including notably, at least in terms ofthe frequency of citation in discussions of class analysis,those associated with John Goldthorpe and Erik OhlinWright.1

These two classications adopted quite different theore-tical stances; the former being widely, although notuniversally (see Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992), seen asWeberian in origin, whilst the latter was explicitly linked toMarxist concepts. Not surprisingly, the two classicationsthemselves became the source of considerable debate andcontroversy (e.g. Clark et al., 1990; Marshall et al., 1988;Wright, 1989b), with there being a series of attempts tolegislate between them, both theoretically (e.g. Crompton,1990b; Goldthorpe, 2000b; Gubbay, 1997; Srensen, 2000;Wright, 1989a, 2000, 2005a) and on the basis of a series oflarge-scale substantive empirical research projects (e.g.Ahrne and Wright, 1983; Marshall et al., 1988; Wright andSingelmann, 1982; Wright, 1997). Within Britain at least, itis widely perceived that the result of these exercises wasthat the schemas of Wright were found wanting comparedto the class schema developed by Goldthorpe et al.(Savage, 2000, p. 18). This was certainly the viewpointexpressed in Social class in modern Britain (Marshall et al.,1988), which whilst expressly the product of an interna-tional project examining the classication established byWright (1978, 1979) ended up lending considerable supportto the Goldthorpe schema as it came to reject Wrightsanalysis and arguments on every count (Crompton, 1990a,p. 17).

1For reviews see (Crompton, 1993; Edgell, 1993; Marshall et al., 1988;

Phillips, 1991, 1998b; Roberts, 2001) original references relating to theclassications include (Goldthorpe, 1987; Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992;

Wright, 1985, 1997).Given such conclusions it is not unsurprising to ndRose and OReilly (1997a) citing the study by Marshallet al. (1988) as indicative of both problems in Wrightsclass scheme and the value of Goldthorpes classicationvis-a`-vis those of Wright, and also the Registrar Generalclass schema, particularly given that David Rose was oneof the authors in both publications. One might, however,question the claim made of Rose and OReilly (1997a, p. 8)that most sociological class analysts adopt such a view,given the continuing debate surrounding class classica-tions both in their specics and increasingly with regard totheir overall value. With respect to the former, at least onewell-known group of class analysts expressed reservationsabout the theoretical basis of the Goldthorpe schema andproposed that Wrights work offers a far more useful baseto think about the nature of middle class formation thanhis critics seem to think (Savage et al., 1992, p. 12).Whilst Social class and modern Britain may not have

legislated between alternative conceptions of class asconclusively as Rose and OReilly seem to imply, thisstudy, and subsequent work by several of its authors andmentors, can be seen to have profoundly impacted classanalysis in Britain. In 1994, David Rose was commissionedby the Ofce for Population Censuses and Surveys and theERSC to undertake a Review of Government SocialClassifications (see Rose and OReilly, 1997b). The threephase review was set up to consider whether or notgovernment social classications should continue to beproduced, to review existing alternative classications,recommend an alternative or revised classication and toassess the overall effectiveness of recommended revisions(Rose and OReilly, 1998, p. 2). The review had a steeringgroup which had amongst its 14 members, GordonMarshall and David Lockwood. The former was a co-author of Social class in modern Britain whilst the latterplayed a prominent role in the development of theGoldthorpe class schema through the elaboration of theconcepts of work and market situations (see Lockwood,1958; Goldthorpe et al., 1969, 1980; Goldthorpe, 2002b).The results of the review included assertions that there waswidespread demand for a system of class classicationfrom users in government, local authorities, academia andthe private sector, extensive recognition of the conceptualand operational deciencies of the Registrar GeneralsSocial Class Classication, and the claim that the bestavailable sociological evidence implies that out of all thealternative classications, that of Goldthorpe is the besttheorised and has the greatest amount of independentcriterion and construct validity (Rose and OReilly, 1998,pp. 2, 2728). A new class schema was outlined which hadexplicit connections to the Goldthorpe classication. Aftersome minor amendment, this came to be adopted in 2001as the new government class classication (see Ofce ofNational Statistics, 2005), in the processes signalling theofcial demise of the Registrar General scheme.

Studies 23 (2007) 283304 285The new classication, which essentially classies peopleinto seven class groups plus those who have never worked

ARTICLE IN PRESS

Collapsed class

identifiers

Analytical class

identifiers 1 Higher manag

1.1

1.2

Large employoccupationsHigher profes

2 Lower manag3 Intermediate o4 Small employ5 Lower superv6 Semi-routine 7 Routine occup8 Never worked

Students Occupations nNot classifiab

Fig. 2. National Statistics Socio-Economic Classication. Source: Based on O

Classification: User Manual, Palgrave, London, p. 3.

M. Phillips / Journal of Rural286or have been long-term unemployed (see Fig. 2),2 has beenpromoted as reective of contemporary class theories, aswell as formulated to allow temporal longitudinal compar-isons with earlier classications. This is achieved throughthe development of a nested hierarchy of categories, withthe seven basic analytical classes being reducible to ve orthree classes, whilst also being constructed out of sets ofoperational groups which themselves can be re-grouped toestablish different class groupings, including those of the1991 variant of the Registrar Generals class schema andalso, perhaps unsurprisingly given the intellectual ancestryof the NS-SEC, the Goldthorpe schema (see Rose andOReilly, 1997a, p. 18; Ofce of National Statistics, 2005,

p. 16).3

2The long-term unemployed and those who have never worked may be

seen as constitutive of an important class category, namely the reverse

army of labour. The basic, or collapsed version of the NS-SEC represents

these two groups as an eighth class group. However, here this group is

excluded from the analysis, which focuses on the relative distribution of

people classied into one of the other, economically active, class

groupings. It should also be noted that in the 2001 Census people were

allocated a class identier on the basis of the last main job for those not in

employment. As a consequence the number of people identied as long-

term unemployed will tend to be an under enumeration because many

people out of work for some time will have been assigned a class position

based on when they were previously economically active. It is clearly,

however, important theoretically and empirically to consider the distribu-

tion of those who remain outside of employment in the ofcial, money

economy (Phillips, 1994, 1999; Agg and Phillips, 1998). It is further

suggested in some of the discussion surrounding the NS-SEC that there

may be reasons for separating the two constituent of Class 8 (see Rose and

OReilly, 1997a; Ofce of National Statistics, 2005).3Whilst both Hoggart (1997) and Rose and OReilly (1997a) refer to a

singular class schema, as with the Registrar Generals schema there have

been a series of transformations of the Goldthorpe classication across the

various publications by Goldthorpe and his co-workers (see Phillips,

1991).The debates surrounding governmental classication ofsocial class have gone largely unremarked within ruralstudies, as indeed to a lesser extent did criticisms of theRegistrar General class schema and debates surroundingalternative systems of classication. Amongst the notableexceptions is Hoggart (1997) who employed Goldthorpesclassication in an analysis of the Longitudinal Studydatasets from the 1971, 1981 and 1991 Censuses. Hoggartexplicitly, albeit very briey, reects on class classications,explaining that,

A preference for the Goldthorpe scheme arose both inresponse to the awed notions that underlay the

Title

erial and professional occupations ers and higher managerial

sional occupationserial and professional occupationsccupationsers and own account workersisory and technical occupationsoccupationsations and long-term unemployed

ot stated or inadequately described le for other reasons

fce of National Statistics, 2005b. The National Statistics Socio-Economic

Studies 23 (2007) 283304Registrar Generals classication and on account ofthe theoretical merit in the Goldthorpe scheme (Hog-gart, 1997, p. 260).

He adds, however, that Goldthorpes classication is notunproblematic, noting how the classication may be toobroad to give a nuanced account of localised classstructures, that there is a question mark over gender biasin its conception and there is an issue of appropriate unitof analysis (personal or household) (Hoggart, 1997,p. 261). To these issues can be added many others.Concern, for instance, has been raised about the

theoretical basis of Goldthorpes class schema, not leastbecause in some writings he seems to sever class analysisfrom theory, claiming for instance that class analysis doesnot entail a commitment to any particular theory of class(Goldthorpe and Marshall, 1992, p. 381). More generallyhis extensive corpus of work contains relatively little that isexplicitly conceptual (Ahrne, 1990), although Goldthorpe(1990) has responded by saying that most of his work is oftheoretical relevance even if not explicitly theoretical. InGoldthorpe (2000a) there is much more explicit theory andwithin earlier texts it is possible to identify clear theoretical

dimensions to his work, although these have by no meansbeen entirely constant through his works.4 Goldthorpesclassication is widely viewed as Weberian in character,and while this forms a valuable theoretical grounding forsome analysts, for others it is a subject of concern related toscepticism about the general value of Weberian classtheories (e.g. Barbalet, 1980). Furthermore, even those whosee value in such a conceptualisation and/or in Gold-thorpes own theoretical statements, have raised concernsabout the operationalisation of theoretical principles with-in the classication. Breen (2005, pp. 4142), for instance,claims that whilst the Goldthorpe class schema, even in itslatest manifestations, draws theoretical inspiration fromWeberian notions of work and market relations, it hasnever, in fact been operationalised by measuring thesecharacteristics of positions (see also Evans, 1992). Otherissues raised in relation to Goldthorpes classication

ARTICLE IN PRESSM. Phillips / Journal of Ruralinclude concern that it inadequately represents differencesin ownership and control relations, particularly with regardto capitalist class (e.g. Penn, 1981; Ahrne, 1990); continuedreliance on occupational and status-related categorisations(e.g. Dale et al., 1985; Marshall et al., 1988; Phillips, 1991);and the emphasis placed on trust relations to theformation of a distinct service class (Savage et al., 1992).Such issues have, however, been over-shadowed in the

context of rural studies, and indeed elsewhere (e.g. Pakulskiand Waters, 1996), by a more general questioning of thevalue of the whole enterprise of class analysis. Abram(1998, pp. 374378), for instance, utilises Hoggarts studyto launch a general questioning of the value of classanalysis, arguing that class as a concept is impotent topredict or explain commonality or difference, that itconates a whole set of more subtle transformations andmay have become a term so general, so bland, as toindicate almost nothing of interest.Whilst Abrams arguments have in turn been the subject of

critique (see Hoggart, 1998), they may be seen as indicative of

4In early work such as Goldthorpe et al. (1980), recourse is made to the

concepts of work and market situation as developed by Lockwood (1958).

These concepts were explicitly linked to the work of Max Weber and the

class classication widely been characterised as Weberian in its theoretical

character. Goldthorpe himself, however, explicitly distanced himself from

such a characterisation, while other analysts such as Penn (1981) and

Marshall et al. (1988) suggested that the classication rested on Weberian

notions of status, rather than class, via the concept of a social grading of

occupations (Goldthorpe and Hope, 1974). This concept itself bore close

parallels to the principles underpinning the Registrar General class

classication, even though Goldthorpe et al. (1980) explicitly criticised this

classication and the Weberian notion of status as the basis of class

analysis. In a latter elaboration of the class schema a different theoretical

rational is employed (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992), with the concept of

employment relations replacing that of work and market situations, a focus

which continues in subsequent work which has sought to elaborate a more

systematic and theoretically informed (Goldthorpe, 2000, p. 209) treatment

of class classication drawing on rational choice theory (or RAT). For

people such as Breen (2005, p. 42), however, this new analysis still retains its

Weberian character, it being suggested that differences in employmentrelations are in effect productive of the variations in market and work

situations that were relevant in the earlier version.what Miller (1996, p. 109) identies as a retreat from theage-old problem of seeking to generalise in class terms.However, as argued in Phillips (1998a, 2002a), this notionpresents a dualistic construction of the future, wherebyresearchers are asked to choose between a seeminglymodernist class analysis or a postmodernist non-classanalysis. Not only can one point to the continued interestin class analysis by some rural researchers (e.g. Murdoch,2003; Cloke et al., 1998; Phillips, 2001, 2002a), but it is alsoworth noting Cloke and Thrifts (1990, p. 165) claim thatrural studies has had a long-standing aversion to notions ofclass reective of, they suggest, a rural ideology whichtraditionally presents the countryside as an essentiallyclassless society. Arguably a postmodern non-class analysisrepresents a back to the future movement.On the other hand, although class analysis has arguably

never had a large constituency within rural studies, it is clearthat recent years have seen a questioning of class analysisproceed more widely. Castree (1999, p. 138) for instance, hascommented that class is no longer at the cutting edge ofcritical geographical research and that it has been broughtinto a form of theoretical crisis that demands y constantproblematisation as analytical tools. For Savage (1994, p. 544)the problematisation of class both reects and necessitatesa movement from a modernistic legislative approach toclass to an interpretative approach, class having moved fromvery close association with state and ofcial discourse to aposition of detachment in which academics work to lter andtranslate ideas between different communities (Savage andButler, 1995, p. 345), unfettered by direct political demandsfrom the state. However, as the production of the NS-SECstatistics illustrates, the detachment is far from complete withthe Ofce for National Statistics and other governmentalagencies acting to produce a whole raft of social statisticsincluding the new class classication which, as discussedpreviously, clearly draws upon academic discussions of class.Hence the paradox: at just the moment when academic

class theories and debates relating to class have becomeenrolled into the mechanisms and resources of the Ofce ofNational Statistics in such a way that results in a nationallyproduced dataset in conformity with a widely, although byno means universally, respected theoretical position, so thewhole project of class analysis, whilst arguably neverwidely subscribed to within rural studies, has becomewidely critiqued such the class statistics produced throughthe National Statistics may have lost any affectivity. AsSavage (2003) remarks, whilst the NS-SEC has beenvalidated in quantitative terms by exercises showing thatthe scheme is a good measure of employment relationsy[and] is also correlated with a range of important medicaloutcomes it is unlikely to impress the end of classwriters. This paradox poses many questions, not leastwhether the NS-SEC can and should be enrolled withacademic class analysis.In this paper, I seek to address this question in two ways.

Studies 23 (2007) 283304 287First, by undertaking some geographical and statisticalanalysis using NS-SEC and seeing whether this analysis

the middle classes observed by rural researchers, suggestingthat rural studies may simply be picking up trends andprocesses occurring in many other places as well.When advancing his study, Hoggart suggests that part of

the problem is a lack of evidence relating to the characterof rural migration or change in rural social class composi-tions at a local scale, with the latter issue beingcompounded by the use of areal units, such as localauthority districts, which have substantial urban tracts intheir so-called rural zones (p. 259). Hoggarts own analysisis based on electoral districts, but even these may well be oftoo large a scale to avoid the problems he identies. Abram(1998) also questions the regional constructions of spaceutilised by Hoggart, which differentiated rural, and non-rural, areas, into the South East and Remote.The developments of the NS-SEC together with the NS

Urban and Rural classication at the output area levelpermit examination of the social class composition of ruralareas at a more localised level than conducted by Hoggart,and also arguably employ rather less centreperipherycategorisations of space.5 Furthermore, the similaritiesbetween the NS-SEC and the Goldthorpe class schemaemployed by Hoggart permit reection on the ndings ofhis analysis utilising more recently constructed data.Fig. 3, for instance, shows the distribution of middle

class groupsdened here as NS-SEC Classes 1, 2 and6

ARTICLE IN PRESSral Studies 23 (2007) 283304could be enrolled with a range of contemporary conceptsand debates circulating within class analysis and studies ofthe British countryside. Second, by exploring the value ofthis analysis in relation to debates within rural studiesabout the value of class analysis. The paper ends byconsidering how the paradox surrounding class analysismight be interpreted and addressed.

3. Geographies of class: images from the NS-SEC

Despite claims regarding rural studies aversion to classanalysis, Hoggart (1997, p. 255) observes that the tone ofmuch writing on rural England points to a movementtoward middle class dominance, a comment which mightbe equally made with respect to Scotland and Wales (seePhillips, 1993; McCrone, 1992; Shucksmith et al., 1996;Cloke et al., 1995, 1998). Rural areas of Britain are widelyseen to have undergone a process of gentrication in thesense that this term is interpreted as areas becoming moremiddle class (see Phillips, 1993, 2004, 2005 on this andother interpretations of the term rural gentrication).Hoggart (1997, p. 255), however, argues that care needsto be exercised before endorsing this line of argument, notleast because there is, he claims, a [m]ost discomfortingyundifferentiated reference to the middle classes. He addsthat whilst the the catchy phrase middle class territory iscommon in the literature, some of the more theoreticallyorientated studies have explicitly or implicitly focused on asub-set, or fraction, of the middle classes, namely the so-called service class which is often seen to be made up ofprofessional and managerial workers, although Hoggartcomments that even here there is no precise agreement onwhat comprises the service classes (Hoggart, 1997, p. 255).Hoggart goes on to utilise data contained in the OPCS

(now ONS) Longitudinal Study to explore the assertion ofgrowing middle class or service class demographic dominancein rural areas. Drawing on the class schema of Goldthorpe,Hoggart examines whether there have been changes between1971 and 1991 in the size of three middle class groups:professionals and managers, the so-called service class groupas identied explicitly by Goldthorpe as well as moregenerally by rural researchers; clerical workers; and small-scale proprietors, or what Hoggart identies as the petitebourgeoisie. His ndings include the suggestion that thenumber of professional and managerial workers increased inrural areas between 1971 and 1991 but that their numericalsignicance was insufcient to merit referring to a serviceclass capture of the countryside, although the notion of abroader middle class capture might be appropriate in thatmore than half the residents in rural wards are from themiddle classes (Hoggart, 1997, p. 262). Even here, however,Hoggart sounds words of caution, suggesting that the phrasemiddle class capture might be equally applicable to Englandand Wales as a whole as the three middle class groupsincreased their relative size across these countries from 50.2

M. Phillips / Journal of Ru288percent in 1971 to 60.5 percent in 1991. He questions whetherthere is anything specically rural (p. 268) in the growth of4in England and Wales, roughly equivalent to themiddle class identied by Hoggart. The resulting images,

5Hoggart (1998, p.385) has expressed sympathy with Abrams critique

of his use of the expression remote, arguing that there was no intended

assumption of an urban continuum in the expression and that the

classication was based on the work of Hodge and Monk (1991) and was

utilised as a tag for areas that are (relatively) dominated by farm and

service-type activities. In other words, it was a substantive as opposed to a

relational coreperiphery classication.

The NS Urban and Rural classication employed in this study is based

on assessment of population concentrations within settlements and around

settlements, with urban areas being differentiated from rural ones on the

basis that the former are physically built-up areas which have a population

of 10,000 or more within their bounds, while rural areas are differentiated

initially on the basis of a sparsity index which reects contextual

population density proles (which are a series of density measures

focused on single hectare cells but calculated at 10, 20 and 30 km

resolutions (see Bibby and Shepherd, 2004)), and then on the basis of a

morphology index involving nine settlement forms reective of popula-

tion density proles calculated at much ner spatial resolutions (i.e. at 200,

400, 800 and 1600m resolutions). Taken together these two indices are

used to identify six distinct types of rural areas: sparse small town and

fringe, non-sparse small town and fringe, sparse village, non-sparse village,

sparse hamlets and dispersed settlement, and non-sparse hamlets and

dispersed settlement The classication is focused on population distribu-

tion and density and hence does not directly relate to socio-economic

variations nor imply a coreperipheral relationship save for proximate

areas of high or low population density.6The analysis of the NS-SEC in this paper is restricted to England and

Wales because the National Statistics Rural and Urban Classication was

only produced for these countries. Whilst urban and rural classications

have been produced for Scotland (Scottish Executive, 2004) and Northern

Ireland (Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, 2005), theseclassications are signicantly different in construction and cannot be

used for direct comparison.

ARTICLE IN PRESSralM. Phillips / Journal of Ruwhich are based around standard deviations from the meanproportion of householders with a class position identiedwithin NS-SEC, parallel the results of Hoggart. It is,for instance, clear that there is an extensive middleclass presence across much of England, and also Wales.It is also apparent that many of the areas with relativelylow proportions of householders classied as middleclass are within major urban conurbations and industrialregions: the locations of Merseyside, Greater Manchester,Tyne and Wear, the West Midlands and the South WalesValleys are all clearly sketched out within the areasbelow the mean. This point is reinforced when use is madeof the National Statistics RuralUrban Classication ofCensus output areas. Fig. 4, for instance, shows thedistribution of the middle class in areas classied asnon-urban in the classication. It is clear that much ofrural Britain is, as Hoggart suggested, dominated, at leastdemographically, by the middle classes, although there are

Fig. 3. The relative signicance of the middle class in England and Wales, 2

Univariate Table 31 and Census Output Area Boundaries (Crown copyrigh

permission of the Controller of HMSO.Studies 23 (2007) 283304 289some areas of countryside, notably Lincolnshire, parts ofnorthern Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, South Yorkshireand the South Wales Valleys that have relatively smallnumbers.Hoggarts claim that whilst the notion of middle class

capture might be applied to characterise the classcomposition of the English countryside, the notion ofservice class capture is more problematic, and this is alsoborn out by analysis of the 2001 NS-SEC data. Fig. 5, forinstance, shows the distribution of the service class ascategorised, quite explicitly, by the NS-SEC Classes 1 and 2(see Ofce of National Statistics, 2005, p. 3). The imagerycertainly seems to conform to Hoggarts argument thatprofessional and managerial groups are numericallysignicant in rural areas in the South East, although italso tempers this by suggesting signicant presencesbeyond this, notably in a corridor stretching from London,through the Midlands and into areas bordering the

001 Census. Sources: Derived from 2001 Census, Census Area Statistics

t 2003). Census output is Crown copyright and is reproduced with the

ARTICLE IN PRESSM. Phillips / Journal of Rural290Merseyside, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshireconurbations. The proximity to major urban conurbationsis suggestive that service class capture, to use Hoggartsphrase, is occurring in peri-urban/urban-fringe/metropoli-tan countrysides where there is likely to be signicanturban commuting as well as de-centralised industrial andservice sector employment (e.g. see Lewis et al., 1991;Boyle, 1994; Flowerdew and Boyle, 1992; Ford, 1999).7

This argument is born out when class distributions areanalysed against the classications of areas under theNational Statistics UrbanRural Area Classication. AsTable 1 shows, the service class constitutes a higherproportion of the class classied population in outputareas designated as Less sparse hamlets and isolated

Fig. 4. The relative signicance of the middle class in rural areas in England a

and Urban Area Classication 2004, National Statistics website: www.statistics

Controller of HMSO.

7Service class capture might hence be seen as characteristic of

surburbanization and metropolitan de-concentration as opposed to

clean-break counterurbanization, although as people such as Champion

(1998), Lewis (1998) and Ford (1999) have observed, such distinctions may

be extremely difcult to draw in a clear-cut way.Studies 23 (2007) 283304dwellings and Less sparse villages, areas which may all beseen to fall within a peri-urban/urban fringe countryside,than they did in Sparse hamlets and isolated dwellingsand Sparse villages, areas which by denition areremote from surrounding population concentrations.Furthermore, the concentration of service class residentswas greater in the two categories of less sparse countrysidethan it was within the urban and town, although thelater also showed a very clear sparse/less sparse difference.Indeed it was areas distant from surrounding populationcentres, whether town, village or hamlets and isolateddwellings, which had, as a group, the lowest proportion ofservice class residents. In these areas of remote countryside,the term service class capture would not seemappropriate, with the so-called intermediate class, denedas NS-SEC 3 and 4, forming the predominant groupin the sparse countryside, while the so-called workingclass (NS-SEC 5-7) formed the largest group, albeit by asmall margin over the intermediate class, in sparse townand fringe areas.

nd Wales, 2001 Census. Sources: as Fig. 3, plus National Statistics Rural

.gov.uk. Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the

ARTICLE IN PRESSralM. Phillips / Journal of RuCategories such as intermediate class are notoriouslyindistinct and often ambiguous, with the ONS itselfwarning that the aggregation of NS-SEC 3 and 4 is not

Fig. 5. The relative signicance of the service class in rural are

Table 1

Proportion of reduced NS-SEC in England and Wales, 2001 Census

National Statistics RuralUrban Area Classication No of OA polygo

Urban 410KSparse and Less Sparse 139037Town and FringeLess Sparse 15771

Town and FringeSparse 1157

Hamlet and Isolated DwellingsLess Sparse 5482

Hamlet and Isolated DwellingsSparse 999

VillageLess Sparse 11854

VillageSparse 1438

Total 175738

Sources: as Fig. 4.Studies 23 (2007) 283304 291appropriatey because the self-employed are distinctive intheir life chances and behaviour, and because it ies in theface of the theoretical and measurement principles of the

as in England and Wales, 2001 Census. Sources: as Fig. 4.

ns Mean % of classied population

Service Class Intermediate Class Working Class

36.33 32.19 31.48

36.50 33.42 30.09

27.21 36.35 36.43

42.38 37.94 19.68

30.77 46.29 22.94

42.08 34.92 23.00

30.61 40.39 29.00

36.78 32.84 30.38

ARTICLE IN PRESSralM. Phillips / Journal of Ru292new classication (Ofce of National Statistics, 2005,p. 15). This is not withstanding the ONS itself creatingtwo reduced class schemas that aggregate these twogroups. Additionally, as noted earlier, the concept of theservice class whilst central to the NS-SEC has beencriticised for combining together groups that theoreticallymight be seen as quite distinct. Savage et al. (1992), inparticular, have been keen to differentiate professional andindustrial/managerial middle classes, claiming that eachhas distinctively different contexts of formation, relating tomoral regulation and the organisation of capitalistproduction, respectively (see also Savage (1991), Phillips(1998a, b); cf. Goldthorpe (1995)).Mention has been made of the possibilities built into

NS-SEC for reconguring the analytical classes andoperational groups in ways other than that outlined inthe class classication. Amongst the ways which it can berecongured is to allow for some differentiation betweenprofessionals and industrialists/managers by, for instance,taking analytical classes 1.1 as representing managers and

Fig. 6. The relative signicance of managers and industrialists in rurStudies 23 (2007) 283304industrialists while analytical class 1.2 relates to higher-grade professionals. Figs. 6 and 7 map out the resultantdata and whilst the spatial distribution of both groups are,as should be expected, broadly consistent with that of theservice class shown in Fig. 5, there are signicantdifferences. Professionals, for instance, seem to show awider spatial distribution than the managers and indus-trialists, with Wales, central northern England and Devonand Cornwall showing signicant concentrations. For bothgroups there are rather more output areas with well aboveaverage distributions, although as Table 2 shows, therelative size of both groups is signicantly smaller than thatof the middle or service classes as a whole. Table 2 alsosuggests that, just as for the service class as a whole, bothmanagers/industrialists and higher-grade professionalshave their strongest presence in the relatively accessibleLess sparse countryside and are least signicant numeri-cally in the Sparse town and fringe areas. Industrialistsand managers are also notably low in areas of Sparsevillages and in Sparse hamlets and isolated dwellings,

al areas in England and Wales, 2001 Census. Sources: as Fig. 4.

ARTICLE IN PRESSM. Phillips / Journal of Ruralalthough professionals are much better represented in bothtypes of areas.A further feature evident in Table 2 is the high

proportion of petite bourgeois present in areas of Sparsehamlets and isolated dwellings and also, albeit to a lowerextent, in Less sparse hamlets and isolated dwellings andSparse villages. The petite bourgeois category is calcu-lated from Class 4 in NS-SEC, which is ofcially describedas Small employers and own account workers (see Fig. 2),which is directly equatable with Goldthorpes petitebourgeois Class IV of proprietors, small employers, self-employed and own-account workers.8 This group is oftenseen as a very traditional element of the middle class bothin the sense of being a long-standing element and also interms of their cultural values, and arguably is often over-

Fig. 7. The relative signicance of higher-grade professionals in rur

8The precise terminology has varied across the different incantations of

the class schema, although the constituent elements have remained largely

unchanged.Studies 23 (2007) 283304 293looked as research has focused on the identication of arange of new middle classes, including the so-calledservice class. However, empirical studies have identiedthe petite bourgeois as a signicant element in thecontemporary middle classes of Britain. Savage et al.(1992, p. 48), for instance, remark that this class has been apersistent presence in Britain, and is strongly present in theSouth West, East Anglia and Wales, a distribution whichthey argue may well reect the role of family farming(p. 165). Hoggart (1997, p. 267) similarly identies acontinuing abundance of the traditional middleclassesthe petite bourgeoisie in areas of remote country-side, although he also notes that these classes may be moreabundant in rural areas and remote areas generally thanthey are in England and Wales as a whole, ndings whichare borne out in Table 2. So, for instance, the highestproportion of petite bourgeoisie is to be found in areas ofSparse hamlets and isolated dwellings, whilst villages,both in Sparse and Less-sparse areas, together with Less

al areas in England and Wales, 2001 Census. Sources: as Fig. 4.

ARTICLE IN PRESSralTable 2

Proportion of middle classes in England and Wales, 2001 Census

RuralUrban Area Classication No of OA polygons

M. Phillips / Journal of Ru294Sparse hamlets and isolated dwellings and Sparse townand fringe areas, also have above average representationof this class. It is in urban and Less Sparse town andfringe areas where the petite bourgeoisie are least present.These arguments gain further support when the relative

Urban 410KSparse and Less Sparse 139037Town and FringeLess Sparse 15771

Town and FringeSparse 1157

Hamlet and Isolated DwellingsLess Sparse 5482

Hamlet and Isolated DwellingsSparse 999

VillageLess Sparse 11854

VillageSparse 1438

Total 175738

Sources: as Fig. 4.

Fig. 8. The relative signicance of the petite bourgeoisie in ruralMean % of classied population

Studies 23 (2007) 283304size of the petite bourgeoisie is presented cartographically.Fig. 8 suggests that this class has a radically differentdistribution to the other middle class distributions pre-sented previously, with the north of England, Wales andthe South West guring as areas of high presence, while the

Professionals Industrialists and managers Petite bourgeoisie

6.79 4.35 8.54

6.12 4.83 10.56

3.94 2.49 15.56

8.57 6.17 20.38

5.93 2.83 30.33

8.00 6.26 15.40

5.21 2.99 21.37

6.83 4.55 10.0

areas in England and Wales, 2001 Census. Sources: as Fig. 4.

areas bordering London appear as areas of below averagepresence.Examination of the NS-SEC data produced as part of

the 2001 Census suggests that the notion of middle classcapture as outlined by Hoggart (1997) is, as he himselfargues, in need of detailed investigation. If the concept ofmiddle class is seen as a broad amalgam of professionals,managers and industrialists, and petite bourgeois employ-ers and own-account workers, then much of the Englishand Welsh countryside, and indeed much of the urban areaof these countries, does appear to be dominated demo-graphically by this class. However, as both Hoggart (1997)and Abram (1998) have suggested, albeit employing quitedifferent lines of argument, the value of such a practicemight be questioned.

4. NS-SEC and the rural class debate

For Hoggart the problem with the concept of middle

aggregative middle class does suggest a high middle classpresence in most rural areas, analysis of particular middleclass groups highlights major differences in spatial dis-tribution, particularly with respect to constituents of theso-called service class and a traditional petite bourgeoismiddle class.At the very least this analysis, like that of Hoggart, seems

to point to presence of signicant variations in theemployment-related social relations performed in differentparts of the countryside. Whether these variations warrantascription as class variation is clearly a more complex issueinvolving theoretical reection on the meaning of class andconsideration of the relative signicance of work-place-based relations vis-a`-vis other relations. As notedearlier a large range of alternative conceptions have beenadvanced, although in contrast to the Registrar Generaland NS-SEC schemas, most have not been enrolled withsystems of governmental data collection and hencesubstantive studies clearly involve much more work to

ARTICLE IN PRESS

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M. Phillips / Journal of Rural Studies 23 (2007) 283304 295class capture of the countryside lies with the theoreticalvalidity of an aggregational view of the middle class whichseems necessary to sustain such a perspective and also therepeated slippage within contemporary rural studiesbetween this term and more theoretically specied conceptssuch as the service or new middle class. He warns thatsuch aggregation risks creating supercial descriptions ofthe social character of rural areas and a neglect of spatialvariability. More specically he argues that whilst areassuch as the rural South East do have rising proportions ofservice class residents, this does not as yet equate tonumerical domination and in many rural areas outside ofSouth East England it is the traditional middle classesthat predominate. The analysis of NS-SEC data for the2001 Census certainly seems to lend support to thesearguments, it being revealed that whilst mapping an

Approach Primary Question

Lay concepts Distributional location

Bourdieu Life Chances

Goldthorpe (neo-Weberian) Life Chances

Weber Historical variation

Sorenson Antagonistic relations

Neo-Durkheimian (Grusky) Subjectively salient group

Pakulski (death of class) Subjectively salient group

Wright (Neo-Marxian) Emancipation Fig. 9. Wright analysis of anchoring questions in class analysis. Source: Base

question? In: Wright, E.O. (Ed.), Approaches to class analysis. Cambridge Unimplement, particularly at anything above the local arealscale. However, even those favouring other concepts ofclass may nd value in NS-SEC given that, as Sayer (2005,p. 72) has noted, classications of class are, rst, notnecessarily mutually exclusive but may share somecommon or commensurable elements, and, second, mayrefer to different aspects of the social world, as aconsequence of which they can be used for different, butpossibly compatible explanatory purposes. Class classi-cations may hence be used within complementary as well ascommensurable theorisations (Phillips, 2002, 2004), apossibility which is signalled clearly within Wrights(2005c) review of approaches to class analysis whichdistinguishes between primary and secondary anchoringquestions within lay and academic interpretations of class(see Fig. 9).

econdary Questions Other Questions

ife Chances Antagonistic conflicts Subjectively salient groups

istributional location ubjectively salient groups Antagonistic conflicts

istributional location Antagonistic conflicts Subjectively salient groups

ife Chances Antagonistic conflicts Distributional location Subjectively salient groups

istributional location ife Chances Subjectively salient groups

istributional location ife Chances Antagonistic conflicts

ntagonistic conflicts istributional location istorical variation ife Chances

-

ntagonistic conflicts istorical variation ife chances

Distributional location Subjectively salient groups d on Wright, E.O., 2005. Conclusion: if class is the answer, what is the

iversity Press, Cambridge, Table 7.1.

Wright suggests, for instance, that neo-Weberian classanalyses such as those of Goldthorpe, and by implicationtherefore the NS-SEC, see class primarily as a mechanismfor explaining inequalities in life chances and materialstandards of living (Wright, 2005b, p. 185). He adds,however, that this question plays a role in one way or

may be used in a complementary manner. With referenceto commensurability, Wright (1997, p. 182) has argued thatamongst the class analysis frameworks commonly used instratication research, it is Goldthorpes that bears theclosest to resemblance to his, in large part because [a]s in

ARTICLE IN PRESSM. Phillips / Journal of Rural Studies 23 (2007) 283304296another, in virtually all approaches to class analysis(Wright, 2005b). This implies some commensurabilitybetween the neo-Weberian class analyses and other formsof class analysis, albeit that these have other primaryanchoring questions, such as in Wrights own classanalysis which, he now suggests, is focused primarily onquestions concerning emancipation from relations ofoppression and exploitation.9 Furthermore, Wright arguesthat neo-Weberian class studies have other, secondaryanchoring questions, many of which are also signicant inother approaches to class. He suggests, for instance, thatneo-Weberian approaches draw in a secondary way onnotions of class as a position in the hierarchical distribu-tion of material inequality, a problematic which is, hesuggests, present, albeit to a signicantly lesser extent, inhis own theoretical arguments on class analysis, as well asguring prominently in lay understandings of class.The arguments of Sayer and Wright suggest that

insufcient attention may have been paid to the multi-dimensionality of class theorisations and the degree towhich there may be both points of commensurabilitybetween class classications and lines of complementaryincommensurability within them. This neglect in large partmay reect the legislative focus of much of the debates that,as noted earlier, have tended to revolve around theoreticaland empirical adjudications as to the relative value ofalternative concepts of class (see also Phillips, 1998a). As aconsequence emphasis has tended to be placed on singularlines of difference between class classications. If classclassications are, as Sayer and Wright argue, multi-dimensional and in some aspects highly commensurable,then it may well be that they can be used in combination.So, for instance, whilst the NS-SEC may not be con-structed in accordance with the primary aspects of class asconstrued within Wrights neo-Marxist approach it maystill be of value in addressing some of the latters secondaryanchoring presuppositions and questions: indeed Wright(2005c, p. 27) suggests that Weberian class analyses may beseen as nested with the Marxist model. This claim is likelyto be resisted by many,10 but even if Weberian and Marxistschemas are more distinct than Wright suggests, they mayhave more commensurability than is often supposed and

9As with Goldthorpe, but even more explicitly, Wrights has undertaken

a series of retheorisations and reclassications of class. For details see

particularly Wright (1985, 1989a, 1997).10Wrights arguments have previously been criticised not only by

exponents of various neo-Weberian class analysis (e.g. Rose and Marshall,

1986; Marshall et al., 1988; Breen, 2005), but also from Marxist analysts

who have claimed, amongst other things, that Wrights analysis hasbecome a pale resemblance to Marxs original categories (Carchedi, 1989,

p. 114).my class categories, Goldthorpe recognises the importanceof property, expertise and managerial power. IndeedWright goes on to suggest, in terms of managerialauthority, Goldthorpe and I share virtually the sameconceptual criterion (Wright, 1997, p. 87). Given suchclaims it is not surprising that studies such as Cloke andThrift (1987) have suggested that certain of Wrights classgroups (specically expert managers, expert supervisorsand expert managers) can be equated with Goldthorpesservice class.However, as discussed earlier, questions have been raised

about the coherence of Goldthorpes service class, not leastby Wright (1997, p. 180) who suggests that a major point ofdifference between their classications is the conceptualheterogeneity of Goldthorpes Class I whereby Gold-thorpes inclusion of large-scale employers alongside high-er-level professionals and managers is seen to collapsetheoretically important differences between property, ex-pertise and managerial/organisational power. Wright inparticular is keen to stress the signicance of the foremostof these, as large-scale employers clearly have a degree ofproperty ownership and control that is not available toothers. The NS-SEC shares in this conation with respectto the formulation of its analytical class 1 but, as has beenillustrated in the foregoing analysis, does allow for somedifferentiation of owners, professionals and managers viaits operational groups. Not only may this produceanalysis which is more commensurable with the classica-tion of Wright but also, as discussed previously, might alsoconnect to other related theorisations of class such as thatof Savage et al. (1992).11

Whilst the NS-SEC was explicitly constructed to accordwith Goldthorpes class schema it may, particularlythrough re-congurations of its operational groups, alsoexhibit reasonable commensurability with other contem-porary theorisations of class. Furthermore, even wherethere are clear lines of difference between classicationsthese may still be of value in developing complementaryforms of analysis whereby different classications are usedin combination because they produce rather differentimpressions of a situation. In earlier work (Phillips,1998b, 2001), for instance, I have suggested that Wrightsclass schema might be used to explore differences inempowerment within Goldthorpes service class, such that

11The asset-based approach to class expounded by Savage et al. (1992)

explicitly draws on the work of Wright, albeit identifying serious problems

with his concept of skill/expertise and preferring instead to utilise the

notion of cultural assets and, in the process, emphasise differentiations

between professional and managerial positions and relations. The

operational groups of the NS-SEC appear quite commensurable withsuch differentiation and may therefore be used to investigate some of its

spatial dimensions even though not explicitly constructed for this purpose.

rural areas might be experiencing colonisation not only byprofessionals and managers but also by a feminised serviceproletariat. Amongst the implications of this analysis isthat there may be further lines of class related differentia-tion than those acknowledged with Goldthorpes classica-tion and indeed within the NS-SEC. Hence not only might

within so-called modernistic/legislative approaches toclass there has long been widespread recognition ofinterpretative nature of class classication: indeed as notedearlier, class analysis has arguably been brought to crisis

ARTICLE IN PRESSM. Phillips / Journal of Rural Studies 23 (2007) 283304 297the term middle class capture be more appropriatelyreferred to as capture by the middle classes, so indeedmight the concept of distinct service classes usefullydisplace reference to a singular service class.Abrams complaints against the notion of the country-

side as a middle class territory are, as noted earlier, ratherdifferent in focus. Abram (1998, p. 372) argues that whilstHoggart may be right to criticise the short-comings of ruralresearchs focus on middle class territory what he failsto do, which in her view he should, is to examine the veryvalidity of the categorisation of class itself. If he or otherrural researchers were to do so, Abram argues, then thewhole value of class comes into question. SpecicallyAbram develops three lines of critical argument; rstcriticising the notion of objectivity she associates with classanalysis; second questioning the value of analysis based onlarge-scale extensive data sets such as the Census; and thirdexpressing scepticism about the overall analytical value ofthe concept of class, suggesting that class analysis is lackingin predictive or explanatory power, conates a series ofsubtle transformations more valuably analysed separately,and, for Abram perhaps most crucially, is a term whichlacks meaning for people in the performance of theireveryday lives.With respect to the rst line of argument, Abram claims

that class is not an objective category but rather is adiscursive concept whose meaning is not static and thuscannot be specied (Abram, 1998, p. 373), at least in ageneralised way implied in standardised class classicationsused in large-scale social surveys. Such classications, sheargues, are normative categorisations that reect particularassumptions, or common prejudice, and are certainly noreection of the social activities of those being described.She suggests that class classications are often viewed asobjective representations, and that such a view acts toobscure the machinations of knowledge and its ties topower (Abram, 1998, p. 373).There is much in Abrams rst argument with which to

agree, and indeed as Hoggart (1998) notes, it reproducesquite widely accepted viewpoints. In particular, whilst thereare some notable class analysts who persist in seeking toattach connotations of objectivity to their analysis,12 even

12Goldthorpe and Marshall (1992, p. 393), for instance, explicitly

promote the concept of class analysis as a eld of empirical sociological

enquiry freed from entanglements with the philosophy of history and

critical theory, in the process, as Crompton (1993, p. 116) observes,

effectively claiming the status of detached scientic observers. In this and

other work Goldthorpe has been explicitly critical of Marxist perspectives

(see Goldthorpe, 1972, 1990, 2000b, 2002), claiming that amongst otherthing it fuses normative and positive claims in a way that I y ndunacceptable. He has also been highly critical of some qualitative work,point by the diversity of conceptions of class and repeateddebates as to their relative merits. The emergence of theNS-SEC may itself be seen as demonstration of this as itrested on both recognition of criticisms of the RegistrarGenerals class schema and acceptance of a new construc-tion of class. Furthermore, the acceptance of the newclassication may be indicative of how transitions inknowledge construction are entwined in the performanceof power. Given that the contested and congested characterof class conceptions has arguably contributed to bringingacademic class analysis to crisis point, and the repeatedfailure of earlier criticism to displace the Registrar GeneralClass Schema in governmental statistical production, theproduction of the NS-SEC may well be more indicative ofthe ability of certain class analysts to enrol governmentalagencies than the theoretical power of the chosenclassication. Attention has, for instance, already beendrawn to the role that exponents of Goldthorpian classanalysis played in the review of governmental classclassications and the subsequent development of NS-SEC. It is therefore perhaps not unexpected that theresultant class classication exhibited clear and explicitconnections to the Goldthorpe classication, although asargued above, this does not necessarily mean that theclassication is of no value for exponents of other classperspectives.On the other hand, some aspects of Abrams argument

can be questioned. First, recognition of discursive con-struction does not mean that these constructions arenecessarily, as Abrams seems to suggest, simply reitera-tions of common prejudice. Hoggart (1998, p. 382) hasargued that Abram ignores the wealth of empiricalanalysis y accompanied by signicant theoretical devel-opment associated with Goldthorpes class schema, whichAbram dismisses as a hierarchical stratication of occupa-tions that simply reproduces the widely held assumptionthat there is a hierarchy of jobs running from the wealthyto poor (Abram, 1998, p. 371). As discussed earlier, one ofthe purposes of Goldthorpes classication was to chal-lenge an hierarchical class schema in which incomedifferentials were seen to correspond to an hierarchicalordering of occupations. Whilst Goldthorpes classica-tion, and by implication the NS-SEC, may be seen to retainoccupational gradational orderings, these are by no meansthe only components, nor indeed are the explicit foci of theclassication, a point which is well made by Wrights

(footnote continued)

explicitly arguing for a reaction against the reaction against positivism

(Goldthorpe, 2000a, p. 12) and has also called for class analysis to berescued from both the theory and methods of exponents of the cultural

turn (Goldthorpe, 1995, p. 322).

ARTICLE IN PRESSral(2005b) differentiation of primary and secondary anchor-ing questions within class analyses (Fig. 9).Wright includes popular or lay understandings in his

discussion of approaches to class analysis, a feature whichis even more strongly evident in Skeggs (2004) and Sayer(2005) who both explicitly argue that there is need toencompass lay attitudes within the ambit of class analysis.They argue that such attitudes have too often either beendeated and demeaned within academic class analysis, orelse, where they accord with the views of academic analystsof class, elevated to a position of unwarranted epistemo-logical authority. Wright (2005b, p. 183) claims that layconcepts of class tend to centre on questions of distribu-tional locationor how people are positioned withdistributions of material inequalityand present class asa gradational and hierarchical concept, a characterisa-tion which clearly echoes Abrams description of thecommon view of class as an income hierarchy. However,not only is this feature present in many of the academicconcepts of class discussed by Wright (2005b), but as ishighlighted in Eders (1993) identication of three distinctethoi of class (see Phillips, 2001; Cloke et al., 1995, 1998),lay attitudes to income hierarchies may themselves be seento take a range of different forms. More generally, just asacademic constructions of rurality may be seen to be drawupon layycommonsense, intuitive idea[s] of the rural(Halfacree, 1993, p. 31), so one might expect that academicconstructions of class would not be entirely divorced fromlay understandings but instead would connect to them,albeit in complex and multiple ways. Abram herself makesthis very point, exclaiming that class is a symbolicreference, a multiple-layered sign whose meaning isencapsulated in encounters and signicant tastes andattributes (Abram, 1998, p. 272). She adds, however, thatclass is not a position on a scale, a claim which fails toacknowledge that, as her own arguments highlight, formany people, both academic and non-academic, this isprecisely what class does mean, or at least means in part.With respect her second line of criticism, Abram (1998,

p. 373) argues that analyses based on large-scale surveyssuch as the Censuses are a tool for disguising power andknowledge and that [n]o amount of statistical data canconvey the insight gained through a trusting conversationgained through detailed familiarity with the actors inquestion. As noted earlier, statistical data such as theNS-SEC can be clearly seen to be a product of power, andalso potential vehicle in the exercise of power. However,the same may be said of qualitative data and whilst Abrammakes much of the machinations of power in theconstruction of quantitative data, the machinations of theacknowledged lengthy process of building of relationshipsof trust with informants, by contrast, remain largelyhidden from view. Murdoch (1995b), however, argues for arecognition of how conceptions of class come to producednot only through social surveys, but also through theoris-

M. Phillips / Journal of Ru298ing and by qualitative methodologies such as ethnographicresearch, although he does suggest that the links betweensociological representations of class may have becomeseparated from the actual dynamics of social life(Murdoch, 1995b, p. 1226), at least in part through theuse of large-scale social surveys through which individualsand localities become incorporated into a researchnetwork whereby the centre can now speak for theothers that have been deprived of a voice, that have beentransformed from objects that spoke for themselves intomere shadows of their former selves (Murdoch, 1997,p. 328); quote from Law and Whittaker (1988). Byimplication quantitative social surveys are irrevocablydetached from the lives of the people surveyed.In making his arguments, Murdoch draws extensively on

actor-network theory (ANT) and sociology of knowledgestudies, both of which highlight the effort and transforma-tions that are effected in creating knowledge. Murdoch, forinstance, points to Latours (1987) analysis of censuses as asociology of translation involving a series of inscriptionsand translations whereby various materials and activitiesare transformed into a new product and previous concernsforgotten or black-boxed. The number, range and form ofinscription devices employed clearly exert an effect on theforms of knowledge produced, a point very evident withrespect to the 2001 UK Census where there was explicitenrolment of GIS technology into the collection, proces-sing, representation and dissemination of information(see Martin, 1998a). Not only was GIS technology usedin the design of the enumeration districts and output areasused in the generation of the Census data, but also to fosterwider use of GIS by a range of user groups (see Martin,1998b). Key to this later aim was the growth of computerprocessing capacity and the rise of the Internet, whichtogether enable the download of GIS compatible datasetsand their incorporation into computer generated maps ofsome scale and complexity, even by those people, such asmyself, who would make no claims as to great technicalcompetence in GIS or computing. This has clearlyempowered the production of new representations, butalso quite clearly a whole series of knowledges andassociated practices have been lost in the sociologies oftranslation.The issues raised by ANT and studies of the sociology of

knowledge have clear resonances not only with thearguments of Abram and Murdoch, but also with thosemade by advocates of an interpretative approach to class.Skeggs (2004, p. 44), for instance, has argued that class isalways a matter of inscription and it is via processes ofcitation that the meaning of class comes to emerge. Sheclaims, in a very similar manner to Murdoch and Abram,that class should be seen as a cultural construction createdby a series of agents including, but by no means only,academics who construct class classications. She examineshow class is spoken about within the mass media (see alsoPhillips et al., 2001) and within political and policydiscourses, as well as within academic class analyses and

Studies 23 (2007) 283304critiques of class (see also Savage, 2000). Studies in ANTand the sociology of knowledge, and the argument of

ARTICLE IN PRESSralAbram, also suggest that attention needs to be paid to howacademic representations and perspectives come to beproduced, and what is being lost in the various forms ofinscription and translation undertaken.However, ANT and sociology of knowledge studies do

not, in themselves, imply that qualitative methods arenecessarily superior to quantitative, not least because someof these, such as Latour and Woolgar (1979), explicitlyemphasise that notions of inscription and translation areimplicated in the construction of qualitative research. Theimplication for class analysis of such work is that attentionneeds to be paid to the chain of translation undertaken inany account, be that qualitative or quantitative. This is notto say that methodological differences do not matter;rather that none of them create unmediated and untrans-formed access to that which they purportedly represent.Abrams nal line of criticism of class analysis is that the

concept of class lacks any overall analytical value, beingimpotent to predict or explain peoples beliefs or actions, inpart because class categories are so general that theyconate and obscure important differences between people,and because the discourses of the people being researchedthemselves make little or no reference to class. These twoclaims are combined in a concluding suggestion that ruralresearchers might abandon the concept of class and makeuse of a more specic and popularly identied constructs ofsocial differentiation, such as income, employment orlocal-incomer/commuter.The rst of these two claims connects in quite an

immediate way to the work of Hoggart (1997) and to thespatial analysis of NS-SEC presented in this paper. On theone hand these studies can be viewed as concordant withAbrams arguments in the sense that they both concludethat the concept of the middle class may be overlygeneralised and that interesting questions about the spatialcomposition of the rural populace emerge when morenarrowly delimited class classications are employed. Onthe other hand, these analyses still couch their arguments ina language of class groups that Abram appears ready toabandon in favour of more disaggregated and consciouslyself-evident categories such as income and occupation. Toborrow the phraseology of Grusky and Weeden (2001),Abram appears to want to disaggregate or decomposeclass the extent that signals the death of class.Grusky and Weeden (2001, p. 203) also argue for a

disaggregation of class, suggesting that analysis needs to beratcheted down to the analytical level of real socialgroups, a call that has clear parallels with Abram work,which as Hoggart (1998, p. 383) notes, comes to focus onthe formation of social groups in particular locations.Furthermore just as Hoggart suggests that Abram focuseson the identication of groups which share identity(Hoggart, 1998, p. 383), so Wright (2005b, pp. 183184)argues that Grusky and co-workers (e.g. Grusky andSorensen, 1998; Grusky and Weeden, 2001) focus on

M. Phillips / Journal of Rusubjectively salient groups. However in some contrast toAbram, Grusky and associates suggest that movementtowards disaggregation can be done in such a way thatdoes not imply the death of class analysis, although thedegree to which they are successful in this endeavour hasbeen questioned. Goldthorpe (2002, p. 213), for instance,argues that whilst he sees value in Grusky and Weedens(2001) focus on local structuration, he feels adopting theirdisaggregative approach would actually guarantee ratherthan stave off death, so far as class analysis is concerned(original emphasis). Hoggart (1998, p. 383) appears to takea similar view, suggesting that despite the clear merits ofAbrams programme of study, he is yet to be convincedthat what is being examined is social class. The argumentof Wright (2005b) is, however, that such work can be seenas a very specic form of class analysis focused on theformation of self-identities, although signicantly heidenties the well-known advocate of the death of classthesis, Jan Pakulski (see Pakulski and Waters, 1996), as anexponent of this approach (see Fig. 9).For Pakulski (2005, p. 153), as for Abram, class analysis

faces major challenges both with respect to its analyticalvalidity and its relevance. Palowski, however, sees sometheoretical and analytical potential of class constructseven though she considers that recent reformulations ofclass have reduced both the distinctiveness of particulartheoretical perspectives and the explanatory scope of classanalysis. For Pakulski, and also arguably for Abram aswell, the key problem appears to be primarily that ofrelevance: even if class relations do exist do they matter topeople, do they, as Abram (1998, p. 374) puts it, have anypower to predict or explain commonality or difference inbelief or purpose.It is not possible to directly address this issue through

analysis of the NS-SEC, although some interesting com-ments about public reactions to announcement of thescheme are made at the start of Wrights (2005a)Approaches to class. However, the question of relevanceis clearly a key aspect of broader context into which theNS-SEC has emerged, creating as noted here, the seeminglyparadoxical situation whereby a nationally produceddataset commensurable, to a greater or lesser degree, witha range of theoretical perspectives, may be left largelyunused by the academic community.Abram and Pakulski are not alone in expressing

scepticism about the relevance of class analysis: indeedGrusky and Weeden (2001, p. 203) argue that there hasbeen a long and growing wave of anti-class criticism, witheven the most prominent advocates now widely concedingthat class based formulations now apply in weakenedforms. However, the ow of argument may not be quite asuniform as they suggest, with the likes of Skeggs (2004),Reay (2005a) and Sayer (2002, 2005) all suggesting thatclass may connect to peoples identities rather more than isimplied in the anti-class literature. Amongst the argumentsraised are, rst, that class appears to be still quite widelyrecognised by people, even if there is considerable variation

Studies 23 (2007) 283304 299and uncertainty about what class may mean. Mention has,for instance, been made as to the common prejudice of

p. 152),13 which is often presented as both universal inthe sense of being a condition of contemporary (post)-modernity/post-society and as signalling an erosion of class(see also Cloke et al., 1995). For Skeggs such interpretationsare themselves class performances in that the attributesassociated with possessive individualism are far from attain-able by many and because lack of participation in this lifestyle

ARTICLE IN PRESSral Studies 23 (2007) 283304class as income differentiation and that whilst this may notaccord with how academics might primarily deneclass, it is implicated both as a secondary anchoringproblematic in many academic class analyses and as aprimary aspect of many lay understandings. Abram (1998,p. 370) makes the highly signicant point of calling forattention to be paid to how class is usedy by those verypeople being studied, even though she herself perhaps failsto recognise the presence of one such usage in her haste todevelop a critique of the class analysis of Goldthorpe andHoggart.The work of Skeggs (2004), on the other had, may be seen

as a fuller enactment of Abrams proposition in that Skeggsseeks to understand how class is represented and understoodacross a range of discursive contexts, including the massmedia, political debates, governmental policy, academicstudies, and the performance of everyday life. In each ofthese arenas, class is seen to be a signicant, although notuncontested presence, a nding that is also evident in avariety of other studies (e.g. Bonner and Du Gay, 1992;Bettie, 1995; Savage, 2000), including some rural studies. InPhillips (2002b), for instance, I recorded how a majority ofrural residents agreed with the notion that the Britishcountryside was becoming a middle class territory, as wellas highlighting how popular dramatisations of the Britishcountryside appeared to be constructed with clear classpresences, and absences (see also Phillips et al., 2001). It wasalso noted that particular groups may be more classconscious than others, with people such as Hoggart (1998)stressing recognition of class amongst the most empoweredand while other studies highlight recognition amongst themarginalised (e.g. Devine, 1992; Skeggs, 2004).It was further argued that expressions of classlessness, as

well as class-consciousness, need careful interpretation.Attention was drawn to Lamonts (1991) claim thatexpressions of classlessness may reect the strongpresence of class (Phillips, 2002a, p. 92), and also toOrtners (1991) argument that that class relationsmay be so enmeshed with other social relations thatpeople describe class identities through other identities,including those of incomer-local (see also Phillips,2002b). Skeggs (2004) develops similar arguments, suggest-ing that whilst class may be denied explicit existence it isoften referenced through a range of other discursiveconstructs, such as the excessive; the wasteful; theauthentic; entertainment and escapism; the tasteful; thenon-modern; the dangerous and unruly; the immoral; andthrough spatialised categories such as place and mobility/immobility.Skeggs, however, takes a further step, arguing that not

only is class often misrecognised in identity claims,but is now often denied any possibility of existence,an action which she says may itself constitute a class act.She suggests, for instance, that elements of a newmiddle class have adopted a form of possessive

M. Phillips / Journal of Ru300individualism centred on experimentation y out-con-textualisation and in-differentiation (Skeggs, 2004,becomes the source of moral denigration of those unable toparticipate. Latour (2005, p. 32) makes a similar argument,albeit couched in more general terms of the study of group-formation, when he suggests that attention should be paid notonly to established connections between group holders butalso to group makers, group talkers and y anti-groups,with this last group being those who are subject to suchlabelling as being empty, archaic, obsolete. Skeggs, however,pursues a more specic tack, suggesting that the possessiveindividualist denial of class is manifest within the argumentsof academic proponents of the death of class thesis. Sheclaims that whilst advocates of modernistic class analysis haveoften couched their arguments from a position of purportedobjectivity, and have been rightly critiqued for a failure torecognise the situated and partiality of their accounts,advocates of the death of class position are also guilty ofgeneralising from a positionality which is quite different fromthose occupied by many of those they study. She argues, forinstance, that the works of Urry, Beck and Giddens that haveemphasised mobility, individualism and reexivity as sourcesof de-traditionalism and de-socialisation (see Cloke et al.,1995), and in the process raised questions about the salienceof class, are far from neutral observations of some more orless universal dimension of contemporary societies, but ratherare expressions of the experiences and interests of aparticular, middle class group: theorists of mobility, sheargues, rely on a safe and secure place from which to speakand know which is dependant not only on theorizing andlegitimating their own experience of mobility but alsoinvolves claiming it as universal (Skeggs, 2004, p. 152).The relationship between positionality and knowledge

production is perhaps rather more complex than implied bySkeggs critique of mobility theorists, with a series of quitedistinctive positions on positionality (Phillips, 2000, p. 29)being advanced. At the very least, however, Skeggs workindicates that discussions over the future, or death, of classanalysis need to move beyond consideration of the extent towhich people identify, or do not identify, with notions ofclass, and move towards theorisation of the formation andeffects of both class and non-class identications.

13Skeggs argues that with the onset of processes of de-traditionalisa-

tion (Beck, 1992; Cloke et al., 1995b), people have become more reective

and self-fashioning as they continually have to make choices, of

viewpoints, of resources, of what to attach themselves to (Skeggs, 2004,

p. 152). In the process they come, she suggests, to perform a range of

identities by attaching and de-attaching themselves a series of cultural

signiers which both breaks down pre-existing lines of differentiation and

involves a cultural omnivorism whereby there is continual movement toaccess the cultural and resources of others and bring them into the

reformation of the self.

ARTICLE IN PRESSral5. Conclusions

This paper has identied and explored a paradox incontemporary class analysis, noting how the 2001 UKCensus saw the production of a new system of classclassication, the NS-SEC, which had clear connections tosome academic concepts of class, and yet at the same timeclass as a concept was viewed with increasing suspicionwithin academic discourse. There were clear rural dimen-sions to this paradox, with the classication beingdisseminated in forms that facilitate its spatial analysisboth at a localised level and with reference to urban andrural differentiation, and with rural studies both exhibitinga general narrative of middle class colonisation and aquestioning of the value of the whole notion of class.This paper discussed the origins of the NS-SEC and

presented an analysis of the social composition of ruralareas in England and Wales. The analysis lends support tothe arguments of Hoggart (1997) that the notion of thecountryside as a middle class territory utilises anaggregative concept of the middle class that appears toobscure important differences in the spatial distribution ofclasses. Analysis of the NS-SEC suggests that signicantdifferences exist in the spatial distribution of specicmiddle class groups, particularly between constituents ofthe so-called service class and a petite-bourgeois middleclass. Such analysis, however, does little to address theparadox of contemporary class analysis in that a series ofobjections have been raised about the value and relevanceof any form of class analysis.Section 3 explored this paradox in relation to debates

surrounding rural class analysis, specically questionsraised by Hoggart and Abram. It was noted that whilstthe NS-SEC is tied quite directly into the class schemas ofGoldthorpe, its production should not be seen as simply anoutcome of a legislative process that established thisunassailably as the best class classication either theoreti-cally or empirically, although certainly claims were made tothis effect. Attention is drawn to a range of criticisms madeabout Goldthorpes class schema and how these remaincontestable features of the new classication, and also tothe presence of over-laps between this classication andalternative schemas such as those of Wright. Recognitionof these over-laps not only raises the prospect that the NS-SEC may be of value to those who remain critical of theGoldthorpe schema, but also is revelatory of continuingincommensurability and ambiguity within the classica-tion. The emergence of the classication may perhapsspeak more to the capacity of particular class analysts toenrol their ideas into research and governmental institu-tions than it does to the intellectual coherence andempirical validity of the classication. There is here a clearlink to Abrams call for class analysts to consider the roleof power in the construction of knowledge, and alsoperhaps to Latours (1999, pp. 103104) concept of

M. Phillips / Journal of Rualliance building which emphases the signicance toknowledge construction of emplacement within non-academic contexts which are sufciently large and secureto enable it to exist and endure. The incorporation ofGoldthorpes work within NS-SEC involved considerablealliance building work by its proponents but once achievedclearly represented a signicant boost to this perspectivevis-a`-vis alternative theories, not least in terms of theavailability of data for research use.Latours work has previously been discussed here with

respect to methodological aspects of class analysis, andspecically Abrams criticism of large-scale quantitativebased class analysis. Drawing on arguments advanced byMurdoch (1995b, 1997) and Latour and Woolgar (1979), ithas been argued that whilst methodological approachesclearly impact on knowledge construction, none of themcreate unmediated and untransformed