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An approach to a study of small shopkeepers and the class structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Frank Bechhofer  and
Brian Elliott
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Extract

For a good many years now the distribution of effort in the field of social stratification has been noticeably biased in the direction of analysis and description of the position of the working class. Much theoretical discussion has revolved around the possible changes that may have taken place in advanced industrial societies as a result of the relative prosperity of the post-war years. Investigators have examined political sympathies and ideologies, consumption patterns, aspirations, and relational patterns of groups within these societies and attempted to relate these to broad structural changes. But, influenced by Marxian writers and their opponents, both theoretical and empirical work has been directed very largely to change as it affects the working class. In consequence we now have a good deal of data on and discussion of sociological problems concerned with the working class, but no comparable corpus of data obtains for other classes nor, in this country at least, has very much attention been given to the identification of theoretical problems relating primarily to these other classes (1).

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , November 1968 , pp. 180 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1968

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References

(1) Such work as has been done is mainly concerned with professionals, managers and clerks or white-collar employees in industry. The latter has of course been a major theme in France and Germany.

(2) Klein, J., Samples from English Cultures (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), vol. I, p. 311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(3) Most notably Lockwood, David, The Blackcoated Worker (London, Allen and Unwin, 1958).Google Scholar

(4) Goldthorpe, J., Lockwood, D. et al. , The Affluent Worker, Sociology, I (1967), 11–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamilton, R. F., The Marginal Middle Class, American Sociological Review, XXXI (1966), 192–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(5) Clearly such definitions are to a large extent arbitrary, but it is worth noting the proportion of all retailing that falls within our definition. According to the Census of Distribution (1961)Google Scholar, of 508, less 529 retailers in the United Kingdom, 49.9% employed only 1 or 2 persons. For the United States we find in Bunzel, J., The American Small Businessman (New York, Knopf, 1962), p. 33Google Scholar: “Three fourths of all American businesses had fewer than four employees in 1956 and 40 per cent had no paid employees at all”.

(6) See Rushforth, M., “The Market Situation of Small Shopkeepers: First Approaches”Google Scholar, unpublished working paper, University of Edinburgh, 1968, in mimeo. We are concerned here only with the distribution of recent ‘gains’. Clearly, even the most marginal of the small businessmen enjoy considerable advantages in market and work situations if one compares them with many working class groups.

(7) Immediately below the small shop keepers lay the clerical workers in prestige hierarchies. But it must be admitted that in the nineteenth century this ranking was by no means clear. At least some sections of the clerical work force would have been rated above shopkeepers. By the 1940's it is plain that for those sons of shopkeepers who entered clerical jobs this constituted a form of downward mobility. See Lock-wood, (1958), op. cit. pp. 24, 107–108Google Scholar. Furthermore, all modern status ranking scales have placed business proprietors above clerical workers.

(8) Mills, C. Wright, White Collar (Oxford, Oxford U. P., 1951), p. 24.Google Scholar

(9) Table

from Fulop, C., Competition for Consumers (London, Allen and Unwin, 1966)Google Scholar. See also Levy, H., Retail Trade Associations (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1942), p. 59.Google Scholar

(10) The response is not unlike that of some small farmers in America during the last century. In order to re-establish some measure of independence they formed co-operative organisations to control those industries which affected them most directly, See Lipset, S., The Background of Agrarian Radicalism in Bendix, R. and Lipset, S., Class, Status and Power (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1963), p. 557.Google Scholar

(11) Levy, H., The Shops of Britain (London, Routledge, 1948), p. 69.Google Scholar

(12) Lipset, S. and Bendix, R., Social Mobility in Industrial Society (London, Heinemann, 1959), p. 173Google Scholar. Also Mills, C. W., White Collar (Oxford, Oxford U.P., 1951), p. 24.Google Scholar

(13) Levy, H., The Shops of Britain, p. 10.Google Scholar

(14) Klingender, F. D., The Little shop, Current Affairs, no 127, 3rd 03 1951, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

(15) Davis, Dorothy, A History of Shopping (London, Routledge, 1966), p. 152:Google Scholar

Some features of the work situation of those involved in shopkeeping appear not to have changed much since the seventeenth century. Trade came before everything else, before leisure, before comfort, probably even before health. But this was not slavery; this was the accepted way into a lucrative profession, and he followed the same regimen when he owned his own shop, sleeping in it for many years to be always on call, rising at dawn for a short walk before breakfast as his only recreation, devoting (except on Sunday) every working hour to business.

(16) Mills, C. W., op. cit. p. 30.Google Scholar

(17) Some details of the numbers of shops which have dwelling accommodation are given by McClelland, W. G., Costs and Competition in Retailing (London, MacMillan, 1966), p. 112Google Scholar. See also Parker, H. J. H., The Independent Workers and his Small Family Business, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (1932). pp. 535, 541–542.Google Scholar

(18) Wilensky, H., The Uneven Distribution of Leisure, Social Problems, IX (1961)Google Scholar. See also McClelland, W. G. (1966), op. cit. p. 65.Google Scholar

(19) We are aware that there are dangers in over-emphasizing this. The security of many manual workers is still relatively poor and evidence on shopkeepers difficult to obtain.

(20) Sofer, C., Buying and Selling, Sociological Review, XIII (1965), 183–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(21) As pointed out by Davis, Dorothy (op. cit. p. 262)Google Scholar many shops in urban areas even in the 19th century still “catered only for the upper and growing middle classes. The working classes had shops to go to but they were few, meagrely stocked and struggling to counter-balance bad debts by high prices […] the poor in cities did most of their shopping of every kind in the street”.

(22) See Stacey's description of this process in Tradition and Change (Oxford, Oxford U. P., 1960)Google Scholar, passim. It is also interesting to note that in Glossop when the “old industrial families” disappeared, their place, at least politically, was taken by local tradesmen. See Birch, A. H., Small Town Politics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 116.Google Scholar

(23) Birch, A. H., op.cit. p. 90Google Scholar; Bonham, J., The Middle Class Vote (London, Faber groand Faber, 1954)Google Scholar, Table 10. It should be noted that in the nineteenth century the small business community did not identify itself so simply with the aims of one party. “Over generations Tory butchers have been locked in combat with Radical grocers”. See Vincent, J. R., How Victorians Voted (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1967), p. 16.Google Scholar

(24) Lipset, S., Political Man (London, Mercury Books, 1960), Ch. V.Google Scholar

(25) See for example Hoffman, Stanley, Le mouvement Poujade (Paris 1956)Google Scholar, where the support from small business and artisans is explained in terms of their weakening economic position, the concentration of business activities (particularly retailing) into the hands of a few large concerns, the increasing power of the manufacturers, and onerous and complicated taxes (pp. 9–22). Poujade attacked bureaucracy, big business and ‘corrupt’ government and constructed a political programme in defense of the middle class: “le petit commerce est l'épine dorsale de la nation” (p. 210). Trow, Martin, Small Businessmen, Political Tolerance and Support for McCarthy in Coser, L., Political Sociology (New York, Harper and Row, 1967)Google Scholar, provides similar comment on small business support for McCarthy, Fromm, E., Fear of Freedom (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960)Google Scholar, points to the fact that “it was not only the economic position of the lower middle class that declined more rapidly after the war, but its social prestige as well”, p. 185.

(26) Lenski, G., Status Crystallisation: A Non-Vertical Dimension of Social Status, American Sociological Review, XIX (1954), 405–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(27) Rush, G., Status Consistency and Right Wing Extremism, American Sociological Review, XXXII (1957), 86–92.Google Scholar

(28) Trow, M., op. cit. p. 191.Google Scholar

(29) See for example Glass, R., The Social Background of a Plan (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948), pp. 172, 174Google Scholar; and Braithwaite, D.and Dobbs, S., The Distribution of Consumable Goods (London, Routledge and Sons, 1932), p. 242.Google Scholar

(30) Bunzel, J. (1962), op. cit. states (p. 63) that:Google Scholar

In spite of the fact that the group consciousness of the small businessman has never been developed to the same degree as that of the farmer or the working man, the many economic pressures of the last two decades have necessitated, as far as many small businessmen are concerned, some consideration of the merits to be gained from joining forces.

(31) See Levy, Hermann, Retail Trade AssociationsGoogle Scholar. He distinguishes between the co-operative functions, promoting knowledge of trade among members and direct influence, i.e. seeking to limit competition through pricing policies and restrictions, on entry to trade.

(32) H. Levy, ibid. pp 22–24.

(33) Local Trade Associations do not seem to have been the subject of any intensive study. We have so far found no extended reference to them in the sociological and economic literature. The observations in the text are largely based on information from local newspapers.

(34) Goldthorpe, J. H. and Lockwood, D., Affluence and the British Class Structure, Sociological Review, XI (1963), 133–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(35) Bonham, J., op. cit. p. 161Google Scholar. See also, for America, Bunzel, J., op. cit. p. 112 and passim.Google Scholar

(36) We again take these terms from Goldthorpe, and Lockwood, , op. cit.Google Scholar

(37) See Merton, R. K. and Kitt, A. for the classic statement of the relationship between reference group theory and social mobility in Merton, R. K. and Lazarsfeld, P. F., Continuities in Social Research (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1950), pp. 84–95.Google Scholar

(38) See for instance the work of L. Wirth and in particular: Urbanism as a way of life, American Journal of Sociology, XLIV (1938), p. 24Google Scholar; Weber, M., The City (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1958)Google Scholar; and the work of Simmel, George for example, The Metropolis and Mental Life, in Wolff, K. H. (ed.), The Sociology of George Simmel (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1950).Google Scholar

(39) Stacey, M., op. cit., p. 31.Google Scholar

(40) Stone, G. P., City Shoppers and Urban Identification, American Journal of Sociology, LX (1954), 36–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(41) See McClelland, W. G., The Supermarket and Society, Sociological Review (1962), 133–144.Google Scholar

(42) The evidence from the literature is somewhat conflicting both on the question of the satisfactions the shopkeeper gains from contact with the public and his assessment of the importance of personal service. See Sofer, C., op. cit.Google Scholar; McClelland, W. G., The Supermarket and SocietyGoogle Scholar; Stone, G. P., op. cit.Google Scholar; Braithwaite, D. and Dobbs, S. P., op. cit. p. 241.Google Scholar

(43) See for instance Lipset, S. M. and Bendix, R., op. cit.Google Scholar chap, VI and VII; Davis, Dorothy, op. cit. pp. 60, 103, 151, 173Google Scholar; Levy, H., The Shops of Britain, p. 10.Google Scholar

(44) The concept of a ‘project’ is taken originally from Touraine, A. and Ragazzi, O., Ouvriers d'origine agricole (Paris 1961)Google Scholar, and examimplies the choice of a particular course of action by an individual with the intention of changing his life situation; the idea of a plan for the future is critical here.

(45) For the 19th century see for examimplies pie Davis, Dorothy, op. cit. p. 263Google Scholar and passim.

* We are grateful to a number of people who commented on an earlier draft of this paper, and especially to John H. Goldthorpe, Robert Gray and David Lockwood.