Dimensions of class identification? On the roots and effects of class identity.

Throughout the 20th century, objective class position was a strong predictor of both class identity, political preferences and party choice, but since the 1980s, the relationship between objective and subjective dimensions of class has supposedly vanished-according to some as the result of a fundamental blurring of class relations. However, others suggest that this result may be partly due to the use of outdated class schemes. Although still basically focused on inequality of life chances, class relations today are complex and include more than labor market position, such as different forms of cultural resources (e.g., education). As a result, class identity may also have become more complex, and possibly dependent upon the salience of different resources and types of group relations-both in itself and in its relationship with political preferences. Very few contributions, though, test such claims. Using two independent Danish surveys, this paper investigates to what extent class identification is multidimensional and how any such dimensionality is related to, on the one hand, different dimensions of objective class relations and, on the other hand, different dimensions of political conflict. The analyses show that despite changes at the overall, societal level, class identity remains a primarily unidimensional concept both in its structural origins and its relationship with politics.

In the eye of the beholder: What determines how people sort others into social classes?

Contrary to much conventional wisdom, this article shows that class is still used by people to sort others into groups, that this sorting is largely on the basis of income and occupation and that it occurs in conditions of both high and low income inequality. Uniquely, we use both open-ended survey questions and a factorial survey experiment to show that people from high (Britain) and low (Denmark) inequality countries are willing to define classes and they do so mainly in terms of job and income. Even though people in the two countries classify others using somewhat different class labels - with working class labels being used more frequently in Britain than in Denmark - we find a common underlying pattern to the classification. This indicates that class categorization takes place according to a strong underlying mental schema.

The class pictures in citizens' minds.

Social class has traditionally played a key role in explaining social behaviour and cognition. However, recent analyses have been dominated by the view that the relevance of class for behaviour has dwindled in advanced industrial societies. We contest this view by focusing on the subjective components of class consciousness. Using a national survey of Danish citizens, we show that individuals continue to hold meaningful conceptions of classes, to identify with them and, moreover, to perceive substantial levels of differences between them with these latter beliefs being strongly structured by respondent class identification. These results are all the more intriguing because they stem from a high affluence/low inequality national context that should be a particularly good case for failing to find such rich class perceptions.

Education effects on authoritarian-libertarian values: a question of socialization.

Over the past decades an authoritarian-libertarian value dimension has become increasingly important to electoral behaviour across western countries. Previous analyses have shown that education is the most important social antecedent of individuals' positions on this value dimension; high education groups tend towards the libertarian pole and low education groups tend towards the authoritarian pole. It remains an open question, however, what aspects of education cause this relationship. The article examines a range of explanatory models: a psychodynamic, a cognitive, a socialization, and an allocation effects model. The results strongly favour the socialization model in which the relationship between education and authoritarian-libertarian values is explained as a result of differences in the value sets transferred to students in different educational milieus. The value differences between the educational groups should thus not be seen as reflecting economic differences between the groups but rather as the result of a more fundamental value conflict.