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Embourgeoisement thesis

 

 
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Embourgeoisement thesis
 
 
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Embourgeoisement is the process of migration of individuals into the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie is a classification used in analyzing human societies to describe a social class of people. Historically, the bourgeoisie comes from the middle or merchant classes of the Middle Ages, whose status or power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those whose power came from being born into an aristocrati...
 as a result of their own efforts or collective action, such as that taken by unions in the US and elsewhere in the 1930 thru 1960s that established middle class status for factory workers and others that would not have been considered middle class by their employments, allowing increasing numbers of what might traditionally be classified as working class people to assume the lifestyle and individualistic values of the so-called middle classes and hence reject commitment to collective social and economic goals.






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Embourgeoisement is the process of migration of individuals into the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie is a classification used in analyzing human societies to describe a social class of people. Historically, the bourgeoisie comes from the middle or merchant classes of the Middle Ages, whose status or power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those whose power came from being born into an aristocrati...
 as a result of their own efforts or collective action, such as that taken by unions in the US and elsewhere in the 1930 thru 1960s that established middle class status for factory workers and others that would not have been considered middle class by their employments, allowing increasing numbers of what might traditionally be classified as working class people to assume the lifestyle and individualistic values of the so-called middle classes and hence reject commitment to collective social and economic goals. The opposite process is "proletarianization".

Background

Charles E. Hurst

describes this change to be a result of the post-industrialization of society, in which there are far fewer manual labor jobs, which is the main classification of blue-collar work. With post-industrialization, former upper-level blue-collar workers are moving to white-collar work because of the decreased availability and prestige of manual labor jobs. Even when their actual jobs do not change, their lifestyles based on their job situation often change into a lifestyle that according to Mayer and Buckley, more closely resembles the lower-middle class than the rest of the lower blue-collar workers. The result of this idea of embourgeoisement is that more people are incorporated into the middle-class. As a result, there is decreased class consciousness and declining working class solidarity

. This in turn could lead to less group action among the lower class if trying to get more rights or changes within their job field. The topic was widely discussed in academic circles in the 1960s following the publication of The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure ISBN 0-521-09533-6 by John H. Goldthorpe in 1963.

The situation in Great Britain
Great Britain

Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the List of islands by area, and the largest in Europe. With a population of 58.9 million people it is List of islands by population....
 is described in the book Must Labour Lose?, written by Mark Alexander Abrams
Mark Alexander Abrams

Mark Alexander Abrams was a British public opinion researcher and the establisher of Research Services Limited.He went to school at the Latymer School in Edmonton, North London, and studied at the London School of Economics, under R....
 and Richard Rose
Richard Rose (political scientist)

Richard Rose is an United States Political science who is currently Director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy and Professor of Politics at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland....
.

See also

  • classlessness
  • class consciousness
    Class consciousness

    Overview Class consciousness, literally, is consciousness of one's social class or economic rank in society. From the perspective of Marxist theory, it refers to the self-awareness or lack thereof, of a particular class, its capacity to act in its own rational interests, or a measure or assessment of the extent to which an individual o...
  • proletarianization
    Proletarianization

    Proletarianization is a concept in Marxism and Marxist sociology. It refers to the social process whereby people move from being either an employer, or self-employed, to being employed as wage labor by an employer....


External links

  • entry at the University of Canterbury Glossary of Sociological Terms