Patterns of Social Consciousness amongst the Middle Classes

Abstract

A common feature accompanying the development of capitalist industrial societies is the increase in the proportion of professional, technical and managerial employees amongst the occupied population. The actual extent of this apparent occupational ‘upgrading’ has been contested (Braverman, 1974; Crompton and Jones, 1984), but that there has been an increase in occupational complexity at the upper end of the hierarchy cannot seriously be doubted. This chapter will argue that, as the proportion of the occupied population in higher-level professional and managerial occupations increases, so does the heterogeneity of this grouping, and thus the diversity of social consciousness within it. Before developing these arguments, however, previous sociological commentaries on these occupational developments, focusing in particular on those relating to the ‘service class’, will be briefly examined.