atkinson- 2007 - beck- individualization and the death of class- a critique

Beck, individualization and the death of class:a critique1

Will Atkinson

Abstract

Ulrich Beck has argued that the changing logic of distribution and, more impor-tantly, the ‘individualization’ of social processes in reflexive modernity have killedoff the concept of social class and rendered the analysis of its effects a flawedendeavour. The present paper takes issue with this perspective by exposing its keyweaknesses, namely its ambivalence and contradiction over what exactly consti-tutes individualization and the extent to which it has really displaced class, itsinconsistent and caricaturized description of what actually constitutes class, itserroneous and unsatisfactory depiction of class analysis, and its self-defeatingreasoning on the motors of individualization.The intention is not to conservativelydeny that social change is occurring nor to advocate any particular model of class,but only to illustrate the aporias of Beck’s position with the aim of vindicating theenterprise of class analysis.

Keywords: Beck; class; individualization; reflexive modernity

Introduction

Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim’s theory of ‘individualization’,first forwarded in Germany over twenty years ago, is increasingly being rec-ognized as a force to be reckoned with in English-speaking sociology. Nodoubt this is due in part to the publication in 2002 of the jointly authoredIndividualization, a text which sought to rectify the overemphasis on risk inEnglish-speaking commentaries on Beck’s corpus by lifting individualizationout of its easily overlooked position in the middle pages of Risk Society (Beck1992) and reasserting it, as a component of the wider process of ‘reflexivemodernization’, as nothing less than a multifaceted and far-reaching challengeto the domain assumptions of sociology. Class, full employment, gender roles,the ‘traditional’ family – all the categories with which the discipline supposedly

Atkinson (Department of Sociology, University of Bristol) (Corresponding author email: [email protected])© London School of Economics and Political Science 2007 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online.Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2007.00155.x

The British Journal of Sociology 2007 Volume 58 Issue 3

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continues to proceed have, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue, ceased to offer aframe for individual identities, biographies and life situations in reflexivemodernity. Instead, agents are compelled by the very mechanisms of modern-ization to make themselves the masters of their own destinies.

Recent efforts to grapple with the theoretical and empirical content ofindividualization have thus far surfaced mainly in the sociology of the family(e.g. Smart and Shipman 2004) or work (e.g. Mythen 2005a) – both areascentral, of course, to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s oeuvre (see e.g. Beck andBeck-Gernsheim 1995; Beck 2000a). But this has left cursorily examined orunduly relegated to a subsidiary consideration a fundamental – yet highlycontentious – aspect of the theory developed particularly by Beck: the ideathat social class, a concept so often pronounced deceased, has died or, as heprefers to say, become a ‘zombie category’.2 This is not to say that it has beenignored altogether. Indeed, as the recent special issue of Sociology dedicatedto ‘class, culture and identity’, in which he was cited as a ‘detractor’ of classdeclaring the demise of collective identities and traditional constraints inyouth transitions (Gillies 2005: 836; MacDonald et al. 2005: 874; Woodin 2005:1004), demonstrated, Beck is coming to be seen as a key opponent of classanalysis. Yet whilst many have, in the course of their discussions of Beck or inresearch addressed to broader currents of thought, declared the continuedsalience of class and either rejected individualization outright or depicted it asrefracted through the prism of existing stratification arrangements (e.g.Roberts, Clark and Wallace 1994; Elliott 2002; Goldthorpe and McKnight 2006;Brannen and Nilsen 2005; Mythen 2005a), a thorough engagement with the fullbreadth, complexity and logic of Beck’s many-sided argument is yet to emerge.Gabe Mythen’s (2005a, b) recent interventions, for example, by far the mostsustained attempts to illustrate Beck’s blindness regarding the persistence ofsocio-economic inequalities, focus overwhelmingly on the risk-related ele-ments of his theory and engage with individualization only in so far as itpertains to employment. Even those within the ‘culturalist’ strain of classtheory, who have justly accused Beck of not only ignoring the perniciousimpact of differential access to resources in transmuting individualization intoa process of social differentiation and distinction but of attempting to univer-salize the very particular experiences of the affluent middle classes (Savage2000: 107–8; Skeggs 2004: 52–4), have refrained from providing any kind ofdetailed conceptual critique or assessment of the coherence and consistency ofhis theory.

The present paper, then, seeks to remedy this state of affairs by tacklinghead-on Beck’s position on the death of class. In what follows its key facets andtheir place in his broader thesis of reflexive modernization will be unpackedand exposited, focusing particularly on the central plank in his attack: thetheory of individualization. Thereafter, it will be demonstrated that not only isBeck’s theory inconsistent across its component parts and ambivalent to the

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point of serious contradiction but that it also rests on a number of flawedarguments and caricatures, both of the past and of class analysis, that substan-tially weaken its credibility. It should be stated from the outset, however, thatmy intentions here are not to deny the reality of social change – indeed, manyof Beck’s other points are timely and thought-provoking if nothing else. Nor,importantly, are they to champion any particular conception of class. Rather,the aim is to provide a defence of class analysis in toto by elucidating the errorsand internal aporias peppered throughout Beck’s work that stand regardlessof the definition of class one subscribes to.

Reflexive modernization and the demise of class

Attempting to tread a theoretical path between the nihilistic tendencies of anover-zealous postmodernism and the myopia of a bankrupt faith in modernity,Beck argues that contemporary Western societies are entering a second,‘reflexive’ phase of modernization in which the basic categories and assump-tions of the first phase – essentially coterminous with the development ofnationally-bounded industrial society and the unconstrained implementationof instrumental techno-scientific reason – are being torn apart as a result of itsown dynamism (Beck 1992, 1994, 1997; Beck, Bonss and Lau 2003; Beck andLau 2005). It is, in other words, the very process of modernization itself that is,for him, undermining the foundations of industrial society through its cumu-lative side-effects and bringing into being a nascent stage of history charac-terized by radically new social forms. Two aspects of this rather broaddevelopment are particularly pertinent for our purposes: the changing logic ofdistribution from wealth to risk as a product of the side-effects of technologicaldevelopment (developed in Beck 1992: 19–50; cf. Beck 1995: 128–57) and, moreimportantly, the dissolution of large-group categories, such as class, in the wakeof an individualization of social inequality produced by the welfare state.

The logic of distribution

In the industrial societies of the first modernity, the axial principle was, Beckargues, the social production and distribution of wealth, though this was nec-essarily accompanied by a distribution of the risks produced by techno-scientific development. Both wealth and risk distribution followed essentiallythe same fault lines and led to the emergence of contradictions and conflictsbetween the ‘two great hostile camps’, as Marx and Engels (1992[1848]: 3) putit, of labour and capital, that is, between classes (Beck 1995: 137). With theonward march of modernization, however, this process has been reversed: therising affluence and protections of welfare societies and the unleashing ofhazards and threats on an unprecedented scale as a result of expanding

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production have rendered the logic of wealth distribution subordinate to thelogic of risk distribution (Beck 1992: 19). Class position no longer apportionsthe primary problems and conflicts with which one must deal; this has beenreplaced by one’s position in relation to new global risks – chemical poisoning,food contamination, nuclear disaster and so on – and the latter, Beck stresses,does not follow the logic of classes:

. . . in the water supply all the social strata are connected to the same pipe.When one looks at ‘forest skeletons’ in ‘rural idylls’ far removed fromindustry, it becomes clear that the class-specific barriers fall before the air weall breath. In these circumstances, only not eating, not drinking and notbreathing could provide effective protection . . . Reduced to a formula:poverty is hierarchic, smog is democratic. (Beck 1992: 36)

Even the wealthiest and most powerful of society’s denizens are ‘caught in themaelstrom of hazards’ (Beck 1992: 37), not least because of the ‘boomerangeffect’ – the reacting back of risks on those who produced them – and theprogressive devaluation of property (Beck 1992: 37–9). Accordingly, newantagonisms, new interests and new political movements cutting across classdivisions emerge, dissolving the old boundaries and uniting all victims of risk.‘Risk societies’, Beck concludes, ‘are not class societies’ (1992: 47).

Individualization

This is not, however, the only way in which class is being eradicated from thesocial landscape in reflexive modernity, for accompanying the transforminglogic of distribution is a thoroughgoing erosion of the social forms and large-group categories of industrial society as the anchors of identity, life situationsand inequality with the onset of individualization. At the heart of this phe-nomenon, Beck contends, is the dual process whereby, under conditions ofreflexive modernity, individuals are disembedded from ‘historically prescribedsocial forms and commitments’ (Beck 1992: 128), including those related toclass, and subsequently re-embedded in new ways of life in which they ‘mustproduce, stage, and cobble together their biographies themselves’ (Beck 1997:95). The chief mechanisms responsible for this, he continues, are the institu-tions and welfare state regulations of industrial societies themselves, for these,he argues, are not geared to group interests but instead ‘presume the individualas actor, designer, juggler and stage director of his or her own biography,identity, social networks, commitments and convictions’ (Beck 1997: 95).3 Inparticular, he notes the impact of the expanding education system, which‘recasts and displaces’ traditional lifestyles and ways of thinking with ‘univer-salistic’ forms of knowledge and language (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002:32), furnishes individuals with a capacity for self-reflective knowledge andcredentializes them on the basis of individual performance; the increased

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demand for and expectation of mobility and competition in the labour marketwhich undercuts the formation of community and kinship support networksand forces agents to ‘take charge of their own life’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim2002: 32); the ‘democratization of formerly exclusive types of consumption andstyles of living, such as private cars, holiday travel and so on’ (Beck 1992: 95,emphasis removed) as a result of increased standards of living, coupled with ageneral shift away from a cultural value system in which professional andfinancial well-being, a stable family life and a respectable house and car sym-bolize success to a new focus on ‘self-fulfilment’ and ‘individuality’ (Beck 1998:39–54); the extension of employment insecurity and instability and, as a con-sequence, potential poverty right across the socio-economic spectrum with thegradual disappearance and flexibilization of work (Beck 2000a); the juridifi-cation of labour relations; and the dynamics of new urban housing projectswhich serve to shatter ‘ascriptively organized’ neighbourhoods (Beck andBeck-Gernsheim 2002: 35).

The result, Beck asserts, is that the old certainties, constraints and determi-nations of class have, to borrow a phrase, melted into air and given way toindividual agency, choice and volition in the constitution of life situations(Beck and Willms 2004: 24). People are increasingly forced to construct theirown biographies and self-identities from the diverse options available and toanxiously navigate their way through the perilous social system armed withnothing but their own capacity for reflexive decision making. This does not,however, lead to an unfettered ‘self-creation of the world’ by emancipatedindividuals, for individualization is, according to Beck, accompanied by a ten-dency towards ‘the institutionalization and standardization of ways of life’(Beck 1992: 90).4 In reflexively constructing their biographical trajectories andsense of self agents have become wholly dependent on the dictates of thelabour market, the education system and the consumption of ‘genericallydesigned housing, furnishings, articles of daily use, as well as opinion, habits,attitudes and lifestyles launched and adopted through the mass media’ (Beck1992: 132), whilst the search for self-fulfilment and its ‘infinite regression ofquestions’ (‘am I really happy?’, ‘am I really fulfilled?’)

. . . leads into one new ‘response mode’ after another, which can then bereformed in a variety of ways into markets for experts, industries and reli-gious movements. In the search for fulfilment, people thus metamorphoseunder certain conditions into products of mass culture and massconsumption. (Beck 1998: 48)

It should be clear that individualization is not, as some writers have arguedit to be (e.g. Furlong and Cartmel 1997), simply a subjective phenomenonconcerning self-identities and attitudes alone, but a structural phenomenontransfiguring objective life situations and biographies. As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002: xxii; cf. Beck and Willms 2004: 63) put it:



Individualization can no longer be understood as a mere subjective realitywhich has to be relativized by and confronted with objective class analysis.Because individualization not only effects the Überbau – ideology, falseconsciousness – but also the economic Unterbau of ‘real classes’ . . . [it] isbecoming the social structure of second modern society itself.

Western societies are still capitalist, and yes, Beck contends, inequality ofincome remains stable. But it is ‘capitalism without classes’ (Beck 1992: 88),and inequality of income firmly detached from its old moorings in classcategories. But then how, one might ask, is inequality distributed in a socialstructure of individualization? Well, says Beck, inequality and poverty inreflexive modernity should be seen not as differentially distributed betweengroups, as they were in the past, but between phases in the average work life(Beck 1997: 26; Beck and Willms 2004: 102). People come and go into economichardship for a variety of (non-class related) reasons at different stages of theirlives – as university students, as pensioners, after redundancy, following divorce– and this applies to the (temporarily) rich and poor, managers and manualworkers alike. Consequently, individuals can hardly been seen as occupyingstatic positions in a rigid class structure ‘handed down from one generation toanother’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 51). Rather, they occupy precari-ous, ambivalent positions that are ‘subject to cancellation’ in a structure con-ceived not in terms of locations at all, but in terms of movement (Beck andBeck-Gernsheim 2002: 51).

Zombie categories

In sum: ‘Society can no longer look in the mirror and see social classes. Themirror has been smashed and all we have left are the individualized fragments’(Beck and Willms 2004: 107). Yet, Beck notes, the concept of class continues tobe discussed and debated in mainstream sociology as if it were alive and well.Sociologists, it seems, remain, in their attempts to superimpose classes on aclassless society, hopelessly attuned to the first modernity and its obsoletelarge-group categories. For this reason he dubs class – along with other con-cepts of first modernity such as the family, full employment and so on – a‘zombie category’: ‘the idea lives on even though the reality to which it corre-sponds is dead’ (Beck and Willms 2004: 51–2; see also Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 201–13).

To make matters worse, Beck adds, the analyses produced by contemporaryclass researchers are deeply flawed because they actually depend on otherzombie categories for their definition and operationalization of their flagshipconcept. One example is the idea of a household. This, he argues, conceptual-ized as a traditional conjugal family supported by the income of a (usuallymale) breadwinner, forms the basic unit of class analysis and is taken as

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something of a given (Beck 1997: 95; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 207;Beck and Willms 2004: 20). Yet in the process of ‘the normal chaos of love’(Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995) so characteristic of reflexive modernity, thatis, divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, and co-ordinating two careers as womencontinue to infiltrate the labour market, exactly what constitutes a householdhas become decidedly unclear, rendering it, like class in general, a conceptfrom the crypt. And ‘if you can’t define a household’, the basic unit of analysis,then, Beck insists, the inevitable consequence is that ‘you can’t tell us anythingdefinitive about . . . class’ (Beck and Willms 2004: 20).

In his recent diatribes against ‘methodological nationalism’ in sociologyBeck has also claimed that class analysis rests upon the existence of aterritorially-defined nation state as a ‘container’ for the class structure and itsconflicts (see Beck 2000b, 2002). Class concepts, he argues, are ‘deeply, intrin-sically depend[ent] on the ontology of the nation state’ (Beck and Willms 2004:104). This is true, he notes, even of Pierre Bourdieu’s subtle reworking of classin terms of the distribution of different forms of capital in a social space: theidea of capital and its exchangeability, after all, ‘functions only in a nationalframework’ (Beck and Willms 2004: 105).Today, however, when individuals onall rungs of the socio-economic ladder lead more transnationally mobile, ‘cos-mopolitan’ lives as a result of globalization, the idea of a nation state as animpermeable container is also becoming a zombie category. People often findthemselves simultaneously embedded in more than one national framework,each of which positions them in starkly contrasting locations (economicmigrants are the obvious example), and this throws into considerable doubtthe ability of ‘class’ to reveal anything substantial about individuals’ lives. InBeck’s words: ‘The categories of class are simply not differentiated enough tocapture such interlocked relationships of border-spanning, multi-perspectivalinequality’ (Beck and Willms 2004: 105). When sociology does adopt the req-uisite ‘cosmopolitan perspective’ (Beck 2000c), moreover, it becomes clearthat to focus on national (’small’) inequalities, as class analysts have beendoing for the past century, obscures the analysis of more pressing global(‘large’) inequalities between different parts of the world and, to some extent,even legitimates them (Beck 2005: 24ff).

Critical comments

Beck’s position is, to say the least, comprehensive, bold and dramatic in itsimplications – effectively urging class analysts as they continue today to giveup the ghost. But these exhortations have gone largely unheeded. In fact,researchers of class have hit back and labelled his theory ‘data free’, empiri-cally devoid and without any firm mooring in the social world (Marshall 1997;Goldthorpe 2002; Skeggs 2004; Brannen and Nilsen 2005), seemingly justified



by even a cursory glance at some statistical indices revealing the continuedinfluence of class on income, access to consumption goods, health and, perhapsmost sadly of all, the chances of living beyond infancy (see the overview inScott 2006: 39–49). Yet as convincing as they are to the faithful such statisticscan only be so effective in countering Beck’s claims, for one can well imaginethe kind of riposte he might muster: they are static snapshots that fail to revealthe biographical redistribution of inequality, they do not evince class con-straints but the outcomes of reflexively constructed biographies, they cannotcapture the full range of phenomena encapsulated in the idea of individual-ization, to use class categories is to impose zombie concepts on the data and soon (see, for instance, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 30–1). This is not to saythat class analysts should cease their evidence-marshalling, but if Beck couldattempt to nullify empirical findings with his theoretical apparatus thenperhaps a good way forward is to supplement the efforts of class researcherswith a primarily conceptual critique capable of dismantling this defence.Without further ado, then, let us attempt to do just this.

Ambivalence and contradiction

Ambivalence is a key theme for Beck and, as such, often finds itself attachedas an adjective to a whole host of familiar sociological categories in his writ-ings, including inequality, social structure and even society itself (see Beck andBeck-Gernsheim 2002: 42–53). It is perhaps ironic, then, that it abounds in hisown work in terms of, firstly, what exactly individualization is and, secondly, itsprecise consequences for class. On the first count, there are a number ofinstances in which Beck outlines the characteristic features of individualiza-tion only to confuse matters by contradicting himself elsewhere – sometimeswithin a matter of pages. So, for example, we are told that the end of classsociety will consist of a steady process of ‘individualization and atomization’(Beck 1992: 99; cf. Beck and Willms, 2004: 88), but elsewhere that individual-ization most certainly does not involve atomization (Beck 1997: 95); thatindividualization spells the end of sociology’s ‘virtual fixation’ with groups andcollectives (Beck 1997: 21), but that we can identify and should investigate‘cultures of individualization’ and ‘collective life situations’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 207); and that individualization does not mean each indi-vidual is becoming ‘more of an “authentic I” ’ (Beck and Willms 2004: 67) butthat the ‘main activity of the self-chosen life is a search for one’s true self’(Beck and Willms 2004: 73). More centrally, however, we are told in someplaces that the crux of individualization consists of disembedding followed byre-embedding (Beck 1992: 128; Beck 1997: 95; Beck 1998: 33; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 203), in the way described above, but in others that individu-alization actually consists of disembedding without re-embedding (Beck andBeck-Gernsheim 2002: xxii; Beck and Willms 2004: 63). Now, even if this can be

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put down to an undisclosed change of mind over time – though it should benoted that the discrepancy appears within the leaves of one book (Beck andBeck-Gernsheim 2002) – it involves a very different imagery. Re-embeddingconjures the idea that individuals are being re-rooted in new social forms, newsocial relations and ties,and new modes of‘reintegration and control’ (Beck andBeck-Gernsheim 2002:203) involving institutionalization and standardization –hence the term ‘institutionalized individualism’; whereas permanent disembed-ding, bringing Beck much closer to Bauman’s (2000, 2001) view on individual-ization in liquid modernity, indicates a more free-floating existence. Suchregular inconsistency, contradiction and incoherence makes it difficult to com-prehend exactly what individualization is supposed to consist of and,ultimately,serves to undermine its credibility as a description of contemporary processes.

Secondly, Beck is rather equivocal on exactly how far class is being effacedin reflexive modernity. This is especially apparent in his discussion of thealtered logic of distribution, in which he explicitly concedes that some risks willstill be distributed along class lines and strengthen class society (Beck 1992: 35):even in the risk society, he maintains, ‘the rule continues to hold that wealthrises to the top while risks sink to the bottom’ (Beck 1995: 137). But surelythere are no class lines left for risk to be distributed along? What with indi-viduals going in and out of poverty so much, surely any risks operating onsocio-economic criteria cannot be described as being class-based? Why use theterm if it has no structural manifestation?5 But then Beck’s view on this ishardly unambiguous either, for whilst he has energetically argued that patternsof social inequality have shifted out of the class paradigm by being distributedaccording to phases of life rather than groups, he has also conceded that ‘nomajor change in the relations of inequality between major groups in oursociety’ has taken place (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 205). More strik-ingly still, he has argued that, in fact, ‘[c]lass differences . . . are not reallyannulled in the course of individualization processes’ at all, but only ‘recedeinto the background relative to the newly emerging “centre” of the biographi-cal life plan’ (Beck 1992: 131, emphasis added; cf. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim2002: 31). This, alongside the similar admission that the changes brought byindividualization currently ‘exist more in people’s consciousness, and on paper,than in behaviour and social conditions’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002:203), contradicts and thus saps the credibility from his bold declaration thatindividualization is no ‘mere subjective reality’ but a structural phenomenon ofsecond modern society.

The conceptualization of class

It is not, then, particularly clear what is supposedly coming into existence orhow radical it really is, but neither is it clear what exactly is being eroded. Beckexpends few words actually describing what class was, and where he does he



seems to vacillate between definitions to suit his line of argument. Sometimeshe is fighting against Marx, as in his discussion of the changing logic of distri-bution and statements that classes ‘have their foundation in the position of aperson in the industrial production process, in the antagonism of labour andcapital’ (Beck 1997: 23) but that ‘immiseration, as the condition for the forma-tion of classes predicted by Marx, has been overcome’ (Beck 1992: 96). In otherplaces he invokes as the image of the past to be shattered by the present theWeberian definition of class, holding that whilst the ‘unity of shared life expe-riences mediated by the market and shaped by status, which Max Weberbrought together in the concept of social class’ applied up until the 1950s, it hassince begun to ‘fall apart’: ‘Its different elements (such as material conditionsdependent on specific market opportunities, the effectiveness of tradition andof pre-capitalist lifestyles, the consciousness of communal bonds and barriersto mobility, as well as networks of contact) have slowly disintegrated’ (Beckand Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 34).

Elsewhere class is defined simply as income level (Beck 1992: 131), but mostoften, and somewhat at odds with the actual Weberian (or for that matterBourdieusian) conceptualization of class in which such phenomena are rela-tively contingent, it appears in terms of materially-organized collective soli-darity, culture, identity, community and political action.6 This last rendering,however, coupled with the question-begging argument that biographies of oldwere always relayed in the language of ‘blows of fate’, ‘objective conditions’and ‘outside forces’ ‘overwhelming’ and ‘compelling’ individuals compared tocontemporary individualized biographies speaking only of agents’ decisions,capacities and compromises (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 25), amounts tolittle more than a caricature of the past in an attempt to make the theory ofindividualization appear more credible. As Marshall et al. (1988) demonstrate,the type of homogeneous and solidary ‘proletarian culture’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 42) posited by Beck has never really existed except as aconstruct of ‘dualistic historical thinking’ wishing to set up a straw man, for theworking class has always, to some degree, been perforated by sectionalism,instrumentalism and privatism (see also Savage 2000: 105).

In contrast to many others who turned against class in the course of the lastdecade (e.g. Pakulski and Waters 1996), then, Beck has no consistent or con-vincing conception of what is supposed to have died. This inevitably raises thequestion of how he can claim class is a zombie when what it looked like aliveand well is vague; how, in other words, he can confidently identify class as awalking corpse when he is not sure what the living, breathing body looked like.

The conceptualization of class analysis

It is not only Beck’s understanding of class that is debatable, however, but alsohis understanding and rejection of class analysis. In particular, his repeated

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assertions that class analysis is flawed because it rests on the fellow zombiecategories of household and nation-state are highly problematic. First of all,the notion that class analysis depends on the existence of conjugal householdsrecalls the dated and rather protracted debates that took place between JohnGoldthorpe and others generally sympathetic to his approach over the correctunit of analysis (Goldthorpe 1983, 1984; Heath and Britten 1984; Stanworth1984; Marshall et al. 1988; Dex 1991; McRae 1991). Goldthorpe, of course, wasdefending on both theoretical and empirical grounds the so-called ‘conven-tional’ view that indeed, as Beck suggests, the appropriate unit of class analysisshould be the family household based on the work and market situation of thechief breadwinner, subsuming eo ipso all other family members under theirclass position. But the fact that this perspective was contested by a number ofclass researchers who, with the intention of wrestling women from the shadowof their husbands’ class position in light of their increased labour marketparticipation, wished to (and indeed did) take individuals as the analytical unitrather than households would seem to undermine Beck’s argument that thelatter constitute the irrevocable foundations of any viable class analysis. Beckhas, however, noted this debate, citing Heath and Britten’s contribution (whichincidentally was one of the only interventions that did not advocate the indi-vidual approach), and argued the incorporation of women in class analysis tobe doomed to failure for the simple reason that it necessitates a ‘splitting ofsocial structure’ which can then ‘never be put back together again in a singleimage’ (Beck 1994: 14). But this argument makes little sense. It seems topresume that to include women is to construct two separate and incompatibleclass structures – one for men and one for women – rather than one includingboth sexes, a procedure which clearly none of the participants in the debatesuggested.

Outside of the Goldthorpe affair, which perhaps Beck takes to be thetemplate of (English-speaking) class analysis, there is ample evidence that thehousehold does not form the basis upon which class analysis depends. InWright’s (1979) early investigation into income determination, for example, itis individuals who fill the ‘empty spaces’ of class positions, regardless of theirgender, and thus it is they who constitute the unit of analysis rather thanhouseholds. Similarly, in Bourdieu’s (1984) construction of class as individualsclustered in regions of a social space of relations dependant upon their pos-session of economic and cultural capital, both men and women find themselvesplotted as capital-holding subjects. In either case, the fragmentation of tradi-tional families and the proliferation of ways of living (remaining single, cohabi-tation, etc.), the occurrence of which have not been contested here, bythemselves pose no intrinsic difficulties for the investigation of class processes.

As to the idea that class analysis is ‘ontologically dependant’ on the anach-ronistic vision of a territorially-defined nation state, this seems – at first – to bea more telling criticism. This is especially so, it appears, as regards Bourdieu’s



theory of class – the ideas of social space, cultural capital and symbolic capital,after all, only really work in a national frame, even if this does not necessarilypreclude the consideration of influences on these concepts of internationalaffairs such as information flows, immigration or the global spread of neo-liberalism, a target of scolding criticism in Bourdieu’s later years (Bourdieu1998). However, once the real nub of Beck’s argument is exposed it begins, likeso many of his other propositions, to look less convincing. As seen above, themain thrust of his critique on this front consists of the contention that indi-viduals increasingly lead ‘cosmopolitan’ lives nestled in more than onenational system, and that consequently class fails to illuminate salient forms ofexistence. Now this can be questioned on at least two counts. First of all, it mustbe asked: how many people can be said to actually live in such a way? Whenglobe-trotting elites and economic migrants – the obvious examples of cosmo-politans which Beck no doubt has in mind when forwarding this argument –are subtracted from the equation, exactly who is left leading this dual exist-ence? Do not the majority continue to live firmly entrenched within onenational stratification system alone, however much it might be interpenetratedby global processes? As Bauman (2002: 83) has pointed out, citing the researchof others, 98 per cent of the world’s population never move to another place tosettle, whilst even in Britain 50 per cent of people still live within five miles ofwhere they were born. Secondly, why, exactly, must class be abandoned simplybecause some people live in more than one national class system and mayoccupy contrasting positions in each? Why, simply because an individual mightbe a marginalized migrant in one system and a respected middle-class citizenin another, does this mean that class analysis is irrelevant? Surely rather thanspelling the end of the study of class it actually raises interesting and viableareas for investigation with the tools of class analysis, such as, for example, howthe disjunction caused by going from well-respected and economically securein one system to the bottom of the hierarchy in another is experienced andmaps into individual practice. Beck’s claim tagged to his argument that class isnot ‘differentiated enough’ to comprehend this is specious and, as such, heleaves no persuasive reason for believing that class analysis is a flawed venture.

The motors of individualization

The final weakness of Beck’s position emanates from his account of the causesof individualization. It will be remembered that the central mechanismsdriving individualization are, for him, the institutions of Western welfare soci-eties which disembed individuals from their old collective ‘forms of life’, to useWittgenstein’s phrase, and compel them to shape their own destinies. Theproblem is, however, that Beck fails to acknowledge the ways in which some ofthe key institutions he heralds as the slayers of class may be hindered in theirallotted role by the fact that they are riddled with class processes themselves,

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aggravated further by the fact that he himself, once again falling victim to hisown contradictions, indicates that this may be the case. Some examples shouldmake this clear.

The postwar expansion of the education system was, for Beck, ‘one of thebiggest revolutions that happened in the 1960s and the 1970s’ (Beck andWillms 2004: 72), and so it is no surprise that he grants education pride of placeas a central ‘motor’ of individualization equipping individuals with universalforms of knowledge and self-reflective capacities. There is, however, a criticalrider to this passed over, it must be said, with some haste: the successfulacquisition of universal knowledge and self-reflection is, Beck admits, depen-dent on both the duration and the content of the individual’s education (Beckand Beck-Gernsheim 2002: 32). But what is likely to influence whether anindividual decides to stay on at school or proceeds to university, the content orquality of the education they receive and, on top of that, their ability orinclination to absorb it? Beck remains silent, no doubt because it is hard todeny that, despite educational expansion, middle-class youth, whether becausetheir families can mobilize economic, social or cultural resources to theiradvantage (Reay 1998; Ball 2003; Devine 2004), because they have the requi-site ‘linguistic code’ (Bernstein 1971) or ‘symbolic mastery’ (Bourdieu andPasseron 1977) to succeed as a result of their socialization, or simply becauseit is broadly ‘rational’ given the resources and opportunities inherent in theirposition (Goldthorpe 2000: 160–205), continue to undertake post-compulsoryeducation, to study more ‘abstract’ disciplines and to attend private schoolsand prestigious universities at a higher rate than their working-class counter-parts, with the result, perhaps, that it is they who are disproportionately morelikely to leave education with the ‘universal’ and self-reflecting knowledge thatallows them to be reflexive in their labour market trajectories.7 This possibilityis overlooked by Beck, who instead portrays education, in spite of his tellingconcession that not all leave it equally reflexive, to be a remarkably ‘class free’institution experienced in a uniform manner regardless of one’s background.

A second problematic propellant of individualization in Beck’s theory,chiming in different ways with analyses of postmodern culture (e.g. Bauman1988; Crook, Pakulski and Waters 1992) and the lambasting of the ‘cultureindustry’ by the Frankfurt school (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997), is theexpansion of consumption beyond its class-specific forms into a standardizingmass phenomenon as a result of increased societal affluence and the new ethicof self-fulfilment and individuality. Some aspects of this argument are trueenough: home-ownership, for instance, has spread considerably amongst theBritish population following the introduction in the 1980s of the right to buycouncil houses by the Thatcher government (on this see Saunders 1990), andliving standards have, on the whole, increased, allowing extended access to arange of consumer goods. The issue, however, is over the new ethic of self-fulfilment, and once again Beck appears to trip himself up with a fatal



concession: ‘this development does not include all population groups equallyby any means’, he writes, but is instead a product ‘of better education andhigher income’ – the poorer and ‘less well-educated’ ‘clearly continue to betied to the value system of the 1950s and its status symbols’ (Beck 1998: 47).This statement, especially in light of the contradiction noted above regardingwho is more likely to attain a ‘better education’, almost amounts to an admis-sion that the new ethic is essentially a phenomenon reserved for the middleclasses. Now this has important consequences in terms of consumption, for ifBeck’s argument is considered fully then it leads away from the idea of anundifferentiated ‘mass consumerism’ and posits instead the existence of aconsumption cleavage mapped along class lines: on the one hand, a poorersection who strive to consume conventional goods in a conventional manner,and on the other, a more affluent and educated section who, in their quest forself-realization, flit between attitudes, activities and goods like bees in searchof pollen. In fact, a strikingly similar – though more complex – argument wasforwarded by Bourdieu in Distinction, where he identified an emerging ‘newpetite bourgeoisie’ whose lifestyle is characterized by a search for identity andself-expression and a refusal to be assigned to a class – all demonstrated in thevast number of practices they undertake, from aikido to yoga, astrology toweaving, dance to transcendental meditation (Bourdieu 1984: 354–71). Thisclass fraction, comprised mainly of producers and propagators of symbolicgoods (those in sales, marketing, advertising) and consultancy and socialassistance professions (such as social workers, counsellors, youth leaders,therapists) was, for Bourdieu, ascendant and its lifestyle becoming morecommonplace. The point is, whatever the many differences between Bour-dieu’s position and Beck’s on this, Beck’s vision of consumption, far fromdepicting the erosion of class differences, effectively, and against his inten-tions, re-establishes class as a primary division in reflexive modernity in a wayaltogether compatible with existing class theory.

Conclusion

No doubt there are further problem areas in Beck’s perspective that couldhave been pinpointed, but enough has nevertheless been said to illustratesome of the flaws shedding doubt on its credibility: its damaging ambivalenceand contradiction as regards what exactly individualization is and how far ithas superseded class, its inconsistent and unsatisfactory depiction of what classwas before its membership of the living dead, its misguided portrayal of classanalysis, and, lastly, its self-defeating logic on the causes of individualization.Paradoxically, if Beck were to try to iron out these difficulties by making hisposition more consistent and coherent he could, in many ways, risk producingan even more problematic thesis. To rescue his reasoning on the motors of

362 Will Atkinson


individualization, for instance, he would seem to have to either retract thecaveats concerning self-reflective knowledge and the ethic of self-fulfilmentand forward the unrealistic argument that they are, in fact, more universal thanoriginally proposed, or else somehow explain, in the face of much sociologicalresearch (which he can no longer dismiss so easily), how their uneven mani-festation is unconnected to class processes. Furthermore, if he were to clear uphis conception of class this could, in effect, amount to arguing that individual-ization only really applies to that conception, leaving adherents to alternativemodels wondering why they should then take it seriously at all. But perhapsthis is underestimating Beck – he is, after all, a far from unsophisticated thinkerand, as such, might be able to circumvent the identified anomalies in a rathermore satisfactory way.

It is worth noting that Beck is hardly alone amongst contemporary socialtheorists in claiming the irrelevance of class. The 1980s, 90s and the start of thenew millennium have witnessed a vast proliferation of theoretical perspectives– from postmodernism and globalization theory to recent attempts to applycomplexity theory to the social sciences – aligning themselves to the view thatthe present is simply too fluid, too transient and too awash with turbulentglobal scapes, mobilities or networks to be comprehended with the static andclunky ontological categories of the past.As John Urry (2003: 95), an erstwhilecontributor to class theory, has recently insisted, in the new world of ‘globalcomplexity’ sociology must unremorsefully jettison its old theoretical schemes,including that of ‘class domination’, and effectively ‘start from scratch’. Yetwithin this influential stream of thought – which, as McLennan (2003) hasshown, has an unfortunate tendency to adumbrate a new conceptual apparatuswithout convincingly demonstrating the inadequacy of ‘traditional’ sociologyfor grasping its problematics – Beck’s perspective remains one of the mostexplicit and sustained efforts to illustrate exactly why and how class isoutdated. Exposing its errors whilst demonstrating class to be a more flexibleconcept than assumed might thus give good cause to question the claims ofthose theorists content to declare the redundancy of class on the basis of arather more cursory analysis.

(Date accepted: June 2007)

Notes

1. This paper arose out of doctoral workfunded by the ESRC, award number PTA-030-2005-00219. Many thanks are due toGregor McLennan, Paula Surridge and theanonymous referees for their helpful com-ments and suggestions on an earlier draft.

2. Comparable theories have been for-warded by Giddens (1990, 1991, 1994),Bauman (2000, 2001) and Honneth (2004).In many respects, however, these positionsare less radical than Beck’s: Giddens’ writ-ings, for example, continue to be suffused



with the language of class and are thus muchmore ambivalent (see Atkinson 2007),whilst Bauman places such an emphasis oneconomic resources in determining thewinners and losers of ‘liquid modernity’ thathe could actually be described as forwardinga new class theory (Gane 2001a, b). It shouldalso be noted that though Beck pushes thisaspect of the individualization thesis morethan Beck-Gernsheim, whose own work ismore concerned with its consequences forwomen and family life, the latter neverthe-less, as evidenced by their jointly writtencontributions, shares his viewpoint.

3. For this reason Beck often describesindividualization, borrowing a term fromParsons, as ‘institutionalized individualism’.

4. Thus individualization is not, asAnthony Elliott (2002) supposes, inherentlyinimical to Ritzer’s idea of ‘McDonaldiza-tion’, though Beck has rejected it elsewhere(Beck 2000b: 42–7).

5. This is not the only place Beck usesclass to denote a continued reality: through-out his conversations with Johannes Willms(Beck and Willms 2004) he refers to eclecti-cism at different ‘class levels’ (2004: 37) andthe extension of work insecurity to themiddle class (2004: 82).

6. For a flavour see e.g. Beck (1992: 13,48–50, 113), Beck (1998: 32–8, 171n6), Beckand Beck-Gernsheim (2002: 37, 42–3).

7. According to the latest edition ofSocial Trends (2006: 39–42), 76 per cent ofschool pupils whose parents were in higherprofessional occupations and 72 per cent ofthose whose parents were educated to atleast degree level achieved higher grade(A* to C) GCSEs or equivalent in 2004,compared with only 33 per cent of thosewhose parents worked in routine occupa-tions and 41 per cent of those whoseparents were educated below A level. Fur-thermore, 85 per cent of those whoseparents were in higher professional occupa-tions continued on to post-compulsory edu-cation compared with only 57 per cent ofthose with parents in routine occupations,and amongst those who did continue only31 per cent of the latter studied A levelsinstead of more ‘vocational’ qualifications(e.g. GNVQs) compared with 74 per centof the former. Finally, 44 per cent of 18year-olds with professional parents contin-ued on to higher education compared withjust 13 per cent of those with parents inroutine occupations.

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