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The Deferential Dialectic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Howard Newby
Howard Newby
Affiliation:
University of Essex
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Extract

For more than a decade, the most decisive influence on the empirical study of the British class structure has been the three consecutive electoral victories of the Conservative Party during the 1950s. The widespread belief that these events reflected some underlying change in the stratification of British society stimulated a new examination of the political attitudes and behaviour of the working class. In sociology this led to the exploration of the ‘embourgeoisement’ thesis culminating in the ‘affluent worker’ study by Goldthorpe and his colleagues and it is, perhaps, a comment on the state of sociological research into the British class structure that this study, together with its associated papers, remains the centre around which much of the debate on social stratification in contemporary Britain continues to revolve. In political science, however, the investigation took a different track. Instead of seeking an explanation of the Conservative electoral successes in terms of the working class becoming more middle class, political scientists sought an explanation in terms of increased working-class ‘deference’. Bagehot was enthusiastically resurrected (a new edition of The English Constitution appeared in 1963), and a spate of studies attempted to assess the ‘deferential’ component of English political culture.

Type
Social Stratification
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 1975 , pp. 139 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1975

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References

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27 See Converse, P. E., ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’ in Apter, D. E., ed., Ideology and Discontent (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1964), pp. 206–61,Google ScholarMann, M., ‘The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 35, 3, 1970, pp. 423–31, also the papers collected in M. I. A. Bulmer, ed., Working Class Images (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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32 R. Groves, op. cit., J. Arch, op. cit., Horn, P., Joseph Arch (Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1971). J. P. D. Dunbabin, ‘“The Revolt of the Field”: The Agricultural Labourer's Move ment in the 1870's’, Past and Present, No. 26, 1963, pp. 68–97 gives a comprehensive list of references.Google Scholar

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34 See C. Bell and H. Newby, op. cit., for an elaborated illustration of the argument.

35 See D. Lockwood, op. cit., pp. 252–3, F. Parkin (1971), op. cit., p. 85, R. McKenzie and A. Silver, op. cit., p. 249.

36 Cf. D. Kavanagh, op. cit., pp. 356–8.

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40 Ibid., pp. 124–5.

41 This is an aspect of Weber's theory of stratification that has not been appreciated by subsequent commentators. This paragraph owes a good deal to an unpublished paper by Michael Mann, ‘Economic Determinism and Structural Change’ (University of Essex, Department of Sociology, 1973).

42 M. Weber, op. cit., p. 125 (my emphasis).

43 Weber, M., in Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. W., From Max Weber (London: Routledge and KeganPaul, 1948), p. 188.Google Scholar

44 See E. Shils, op. cit., p. 116.

45 Ibid.

46 Hence Shils fails to demonstrate the ‘inevitability’ of ambivalence in deference and exactly what are the springs of anti-authoritarianism in society from within his own model; see Ibid., pp. 123–4.

47 See, for instance, Homans, G. C., ‘Social Behavior as Exchange’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 63, 1957–8, pp. 597–606CrossRefGoogle Scholar and his book Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1961).Google Scholar Also Blau, P. M., ‘Social Integration, Social Rank and Processes of Interaction’, Human Organization, Vol. 12, 4, 1959–60, pp. 152–7:CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘A Theory of Social Integration’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 65,1959–60, pp. 545–56:Google Scholar‘Patterns of Choice in Interpersonal Relations’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 27, 1962, pp. 41–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Blau's book, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: Wiley, 1964).Google Scholar

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49 Simmel in K. H. Wolff, op. cit., p. 261. This misreading seems all the more remarkable for the fact that Homans in an earlier work has exhibited a consummate understanding of exactly this point. In discussing the relationship between lord and vassal in feudal England, he writes as follows: ‘The legal mythology of the Middle Ages likened the grant of land to a tenant by a lord, followed by the render of services and rents to the lord by the tenant, to a simple exchange, as if it were something like a render of money in a market by one man to another in exchange for goods. But the two transactions were not the same. In a market a man gives another man something substantial, money, in exchange for something substantial, goods. In the exchange between lord and man nothing of the sort occurred. Whereas the man ren dered the lord something substantial enough, namely rents and services, the return the lord made, namely the grant of land, was purely verbal. The lord said he granted the land to the tenant. … But in point of fact the tenant's forefathers had usually held and tilled the land for generations. They had been in continuous possession. The larger share of the wealth produced in the society which went to the lord was made up by the rents paid by his tenants and the work they did in tilling his demesne, but they were said to pay these rents, render these services in return for a grant of land which was not real but a fiction …

Yet to suppose that there was not something real involved on the lord's side would be absurd. Let us consider what would happen if a tenant refused to pay his rents and render his services. The lord would declare his land forfeit, grant it to someone else, and eject the holder with force if necessary. And if any large number of tenants joined together in refusing their rents and services, the matter would be treated as rebellion and once more would be put down by armed forces. … In effect a lord said to his men: “If you do not render me rents and services, I shall punish you with force of arms to the utmost extent of my power”’. Homans, G. C., English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (New York: Russell and Russell, 1960), pp. 341–2.Google Scholar

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52 These terms are analogous to the concepts of ‘fission’ and ‘fusion’ used by Dumont in his analysis of the Indian caste system. See Dumont, L., Homo Hierarchies (London: Paladin, 1972), especially Ch. 2.Google Scholar

53 My use of the term tension-management is not to be understood in the functionalist sense, as referring to the integration of sub-systems into the over-arching social system, but as an active strategy by the ruling elite of a society to maintain the stability of the social hierarchy.

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56 M. Weber (1964), op. cit., pp. 346–51. The use of the term ‘paternalism’ suggests that the archetypal location of these modes of control is to be found in the family. Family relationships could be profitably studied in terms of the deferential dialectic.

57 M. Weber (1964), op. cit., p. 153.

58 A. Livingston, ‘Theory of a Gentleman’, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. VI.

59 W. L. Burn, op. cit., pp. 257–9. Its symbol was the duel. Later the carnage was wreaked on those who could not fight back: by the 1840s foxhunting ‘had become an elaborate, ritual istic and exclusive cult. … As a social institution foxhunting was an effective assertion of gentlemanly leadership and the bonds of deference’. J. F. C. Harrison, op. cit., p. 121 et. seq. Also see F. M. L. Thompson, op. cit., pp. 136–50. The metamorphosis of the gentlemanly ethic is described in Coleman, D. C., ‘Gentlemen and Players’, Economic History Review, Vol. XXVI, 1973, pp. 92–116,Google Scholar particularly pp. 96-8. Also Kelso, R., The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929),Google ScholarBrauer, G. C., The Education of the Gentleman: Theories of Gentlemanly Education in England, 1660–1775 (New York: Bookman, 1959),Google Scholar and Wilkinson, R. H., ‘The Gentlemanly Ideal and the Maintenance of a Political Elite’ in Musgrave, P. W., ed., Sociology, History and Education (London: Methuen, 1970), pp. 126–42.Google Scholar

60 J. F. C. Harrison, op. cit., p. 126.

61 D. C. Coleman, op. cit., p. 98. Also G. Best, op. cit., pp. 245–63, F. M. L. Thompson, op. cit., passim, W. L. Burn, op. cit., pp. 253–67, Davidoff, L., The Best Circles: ‘Society’, Etiquette and the Season (London: Croome Helm, 1973),Google Scholar particularly Ch. 3. For a contemporary account see Perrott, R., The Aristocrats (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968).Google Scholar

62 F. M. L. Thompson, op. cit., p. 15.

63 W. L. Burn, op. cit., p. 254; R. Perrott, op. cit.

64 G. Best, op. cit., p. 247.

65 C. C. Coleman, op. cit., p. 97.

66 For the contrasts between the ‘aristocratic ideal’ and the ‘entrepreneurial ideal’, see H. Perkin, op. cit., Ch. VII.

67 W. L. Burn, op. cit., p. 254.

68 G. Best, op. cit., pp. 253–4.

69 Ibid., p. 165. On the role of the public school in fusing the two ideals see D. C. Coleman, op. cit., Ward, D., ‘The Public Schools and Industry, in Britain after 1870’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 2, 2, 1967, pp. 37–52,CrossRefGoogle ScholarMack, E. C., Public Schools and British Opinion, 1780–1860 (London: Methuen, 1938).Google Scholar

70 See D. C. Coleman, op. cit., p. 98. The key to gentility for the ‘lower orders’ was respectability, a watered-down version of gentility adapted to the economic circumstances of the poor. The respectable, it goes without saying, were also deferential. See G. Best, op. cit., pp. 256-63 and L. Davidoff, ‘Mastered for Life …’, op. cit. Also Mogey, J., Family and Neighbourhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956),Google ScholarStacey, M., Tradition and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960),Google Scholar Ch. 6., Roberts, R., The Classic Slum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971), Ch. 1.Google Scholar I take this to be the content of the ‘deferential’ image of society outlined by D. Lockwood, op. cit., pp. 252–3.

71 L. Davidoff, The Best Circles …, passim.

72 G. Best, op. cit., p. 256.

73 M. Weber (1964), op. cit., pp. 341–2.

74 Percy, E., Some Memories (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958),Google Scholar cited in Spring, D., ‘Some Reflections on Social History in the Nineteenth Century’, Victorian Studies, Vol. IV, 1960–61, p. 58. For an outstanding analysis of swinging the norms of immemoriality see R. Williams, op. cit. The only way in which manifest changes in a traditional system could be accommodated was by the cultural device of ‘retrospective regret’ that has dominated the English ideology of rural life: ‘The English landowning class, which had changed itself in changing its world, was idealised and displaced into an historical contrast with its own real activities. In its actual inhumanity, it could be recognized only with difficulty by man linked to and ‘dependent on it’, and the great majority of the poor and oppressed were without a connecting voice to make clear the recognition that was their daily experience. Thus a human instinct was separated from society; it became a sympathy and a pity, after the decisive social events. The real ruling class could not be put in question so they were seen as temporarily absent, or as the good old people succeeded by the bad new people—themselves succeeding themselves. We have heard this sad song for many centuries now: a seductive song, turning into retrospect, until we die of time’,Google Scholaribid., p. 83. See also Williams, R., ‘Literature and Rural Society’, The Listener, November 16, 1967, pp. 630–1.Google Scholar

75 H. Perkin. op. cit., p. 37. Also H. Newby, op. cit., and C. Bell and H. Newby, op. cit.

76 D. Lockwood, op. cit., p. 254, F. Parkin, op. cit., pp. 82-8, C. Bell and H. Newby, op. cit.

77 The classic interpretation is that of Burke; see summary in W. L. Guttsman, op. cit., pp. 66–9.

78 For the intimate connection between power and territoriality see L. Dumont, op. cit., Ch. 7, and H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, op. cit., Ch. VI.

79 Vinogradoff, P., The Growth of the Manor (London: Allen and Unwin, 2nd edition, 1911), pp. 214,Google Scholar 307–8. On the links between feudal power and territoriality see also Bloch, M., Feudal Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), Vol. II, passim. The echoes of this military protection are still present in attentuated form as part of the ideology of‘paternalism’.Google Scholar

80 See ten Broek, J., ‘California's Dual System of Family Law: Its Origin, Development and Present Status’, part 1, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 16, 2, 1964, pp. 251–81.Google Scholar Also Hilton, R. H., The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England (London: Macmillan, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Given the importance of ideological control the fact that the parish was the unit of settlement may also be significant—see Jordan, W. K., Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

81 E. J. Hobsbawm and G. Rudé, op. cit., Ch. 2. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rural landlords and employers attempted to discredit ‘agitators’ by branding them as outsiders. This was the dominant theme of the head-on clash of 1874–see Clifford, F., The Agricultural Lock-Out of 1874 (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1875) especially p. 128.Google Scholar

82 H. Perkin, op. cit., p. 42, L. Dumont, op. cit., p. 198, Darwin, B., ‘Country Life and Sport’ in Young, G. M., ed., Early Victorian England, 1830-1865, Vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934). p. 263. Each individual could therefore claim his own sphere of influence in which he was owed deference except from those at the very bottom, vagrants, paupers, wives, unmarried daughters, who could be controlled by coercive methods when the need arose. Thus ‘A determination to have both place and privilege respected was common to all ranks of society’, A. P. Thornton, op. cit., p. 256.Google Scholar

83 See the discussion in Bell, C. and Newby, H., Community Studies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), Ch. 2.Google Scholar

84 H. Perkin, op. cit., passim, Bendix, R., Work and Authority in Industry (NewYork: Harper and Row, 1963).Google Scholar

85 Nisbet, R., The Sociological Tradition (London: Heinemann, 1966),Google Scholar Ch. 3, Wolin, S., Politicsand Vision (London: Allen and Unwin, 1961), Ch. 10.Google Scholar

86 Birch, A. A., Small Town Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), M. Stacey, op. cit., R. S. Moore, ‘Religion as a Source of Variation in Working class Images of Society’, in M. I. A. Bulmer, ed., op. cit.Google Scholar

87 T. Lane and K. Roberts, op. cit., R. Martin and R. H. Fryer, op. cit., A. S. Birch, op. cit., D. Lockwood, op. cit., Watson, W., ‘Social Mobility and Social Class in Industrial Communities’ in Gluckman, M., ed., Closed Systems and Open Minds (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, (1964),Google ScholarRoger-Power, E. R., ‘The Social Structure of an English Country Town’, Sociological Review, old series. Vol. 34, 1937, pp. 391–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Towner, L. W., ‘“A Fondness for Freedom”: Servant Protest in Puritan Society’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, Vol. XIX, 1962, pp. 210–11.Google Scholar

89 The term is taken from Douglas, M., Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967); also U. Dumont, op. cit.Google Scholar

90 Park, R. E., Race and Culture (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950), p. 258.Google Scholar

91 Goffman, E. (1972), op. cit.Google Scholar

92 Ibid., p. 63.

93 Ibid., see also the studies cited in J. M. Beshers, E. H. Mizruchi, and Perrucci, R., ‘Social Distance Strategies and Status Symbols: An Approach to the Study of Social Structure’, Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 4, 1963, pp. 311–24.Google Scholar

94 See Beattie, J., ‘Ritual and Social Change’, Man, n.s. Vol. 1, 1, pp. 60–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is some evidence that subordinates use similar strategies to reduce the impact of their symbolical affirmed inferiority; for instance, Tumin, M., Social Class and Social Change in Puerto Rico (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 480,Google ScholarDollard, J., Caste and Class in a Southern Town (New York: Doubleday, 1957),Google ScholarPatterson, O., The Sociology of Slavery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967).Google Scholar

95 L. Davidoff, ‘Mastered for Life …’.

96 See R. Perrott, op. cit.

97 C. Bell and H. Newby (1973), op. cit.

98 V. Sackville-West, The Edwardians, cited by R. Perrott, op. cit., p. 159.

99 Marquand, J. P., Point of No Return (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), pp. 31–2.Google Scholar

100 Notably in Malinowski, B., Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London: Routledge, 1922).Google Scholar

101 Mauss, M., The Gift (London: Cohen and West, 1970),Google ScholarLevi-Strauss, C., ‘The Principle of Reciprocity’ in Coser, L. and Rosenberg, B., eds., Sociological Theory (New York: Macmil-lan, 1965),Google Scholar Simmel's essays on ‘Exchange’ and ‘The poor’ in D. N. Levine, op. cit., and on ‘Faithfulness and Gratitude’ in K. H. Wolff, op. cit. For two recent contributions see Titmuss, R. M., The Gift Relationship (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970)Google Scholar and Schwartz, B., ‘The Social Psychology of the Gift’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 73, 1, 1967–8, pp. 1–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

102 M. Mauss, op. cit., p. 72.

103 G. Simmel, in K. H. Wolff, op. cit., pp. 379–95.

104 J. ten Broek, op. cit., p. 278. For a general critique see A. Sinfield, ‘Poor Laws and Poor History: A Suitable Case for Retreatment’, paper presented to the Social Administration Association annual conference (Nottingham, 1972).

105 By far the best discussion of this is in Jones, G. Stedman, Outcast London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) especially part III.Google Scholar

106 M. Mauss, op. cit., p. 15. See also Owen, D., English Philanthropy, 1660–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 138ff, E. C. P. Lascelles, ‘Charity’ in G. M. Young, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 319-22, and Brian Harrison's important summary article, ‘Philanthropy and the Victorians’, Victorian Studies, Vol. 9, 1965–6, pp. 353–74.Google Scholar

107 Cited by D. Owen, op. cit., p. 143.

108 E. C. P. Lascelles, op. cit., p. 322.

109 See G. Stedman Jones, op. cit., part III, B. Harrison, op. cit., p. 372.

110 Cited by E. C. P. Lascelles, op. cit., p. 337.

111 Cited by Woodroofe, K., From Charity to Social Work (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 55.Google Scholar

112 Letter by Lady Stradbroke to The Times, April 16, 1874, reprinted in Thirsk, J. and Imray, J., Suffolk Farming in the Nineteenth Century (Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1958), p. 143.Google Scholar

113 In addition to the references already cited further material can be found in G. Best, op. cit., pp. 133-48, Simey, M. B., Charitable Effort in Liverpool in the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1951),Google ScholarRose, M., The Relief of Poverty, 1834–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1972),Google ScholarRoberts, D., Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960)Google Scholar and McGregor, O. R., ‘Social Research and Social Policy in the Nineteenth Century’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 8, 1957, pp. 146–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

114 Discussed in C. Bell and H. Newby (1973), op. cit., also H. Perkin, op. cit., pp. 38–62. I have used the term ‘charity’ so as to include ‘patronage’, indeed ‘patronage’ was probably the most characteristic form of pre-industrial charity. See D. Owen, op. cit., pp. 92–3. For, as Simey points out, ‘The system of local responsibility for local distress required as its foundation a stable society with a clear conception of the rights and duties of its various members.’ (op. cit., pp. 23–4). Otherwise it would encourage the great Malthusian bogey of early industrialism, pauperism.

115 An example of this in the area of education is R. H. Wilkinson, op. cit.