Life Chances and Poverty: Devine, Townsend, Murray

Now test it against the evidence

You have already met three explanations of why society is unequal, and you found that they are not three separate opinions but one argument: about what inequality is for, and who it is for. This part of the course is that argument tested against evidence, and that is a useful way to hold it together. Two things happen here. First, sociologists went and looked. Devine retested a well-known claim about how working-class people had changed, and found no support for it, which is a genuine finding and not a failure. Second, the argument moves to poverty, where the disagreement is sharper than anywhere else you have studied. Townsend argued that poverty is a material condition: a matter of lacking resources, and therefore something you measure. Murray argued for something cultural: a group whose situation he attributed to dependency created by policy. Those two are not describing the same thing, and they do not agree about the cause. Your job in the exam is not to decide who is right. It is to state each position accurately, attribute it to the person who argued it, and give the criticisms of both. This module treats poverty as a subject studied by sociologists who disagree, which is exactly what your specification asks for.

Words for chances and poverty

Six terms to use precisely. Notice that three of them are ways of describing poverty that do not mean the same thing, which is the heart of this topic.

What life chances actually means

Two people have very different outcomes in health, education and work. What does a sociologist mean by calling these differences in life chances?

• That their likely opportunities and outcomes are patterned by social factors, so the differences are predictable rather than random
• That some people are luckier than others
• That some people have worked harder than others
• That one of them earns more money than the other

The seven factors in full

Your specification names seven factors affecting life chances, and a strong answer knows all seven rather than the two or three that come to mind first. They are: social class; gender; race and ethnicity; sexuality; age; disability; and religion or belief. Two things are worth noticing about that list. First, it is broader than most students expect. Class is the factor sociology has studied longest and the one most likely to appear in a question, but it is one of seven, and an answer that treats stratification as being only about class has missed most of what the specification asks for. Second, these factors do not act separately. A person is not affected by their class and then, separately, by their gender: the factors combine, and the position somebody occupies is the result of several of them at once. That is why a question asking you to explain differences in life chances rarely has a single-factor answer, and why naming more than one factor and saying how they interact is usually what lifts a response.

Match each factor to how it shows

A retest, and what it found

Devine (1992) is on your specification for a reason worth understanding, because it teaches something about how sociology works. In the 1960s, Goldthorpe and Lockwood had studied better-off manual workers and produced the thesis of privatised instrumentalism: the claim that such workers had become home-centred and individualistic, treating their jobs simply as a means to money rather than as a source of community. Devine set out to test that thesis again. She studied workers at a car plant in the late 1980s, a comparable group to the original study, and she found no evidence for it. The workers were not as home-centred and individualistic as the thesis predicted. They were also not as communal as the traditional working class was said to have been. She therefore rejected the idea of a distinct "new working class", and she denied that these workers had uncritically accepted capitalism, even though their living standards had risen. Notice the shape of that. A study that finds nothing is not a study that failed. Devine's finding is that a widely accepted description of a group was not supported when it was checked, and being able to say what a study did NOT find, and why that matters, is exactly the kind of evaluation a top answer contains.

Which two describe what Devine found

Select the TWO statements that accurately report Devine's findings.

• The workers were not as home-centred and individualistic as the thesis of privatised instrumentalism predicted
• She denied that the workers had uncritically accepted capitalism, despite their rising living standards
• She confirmed the existence of a distinct new working class
• She found the workers were exactly as communal as the traditional working class

Devine in a sentence

Devine (_____) retested the thesis of privatised _____, which had claimed that better-off working-class people were home-centred and individualistic. Studying comparable workers in the late 1980s, she found _____ evidence for it. She rejected the idea of a new working _____ and denied that the workers had uncritically accepted _____, despite rising living standards.

Townsend's three, in his order

Townsend (1979) set out three ways of defining poverty, ending with the one he preferred. Put them in that order.

• The state's standard: official statistics and entitlement to benefits, which Townsend regarded as arbitrary
• The relative income standard: having an income below the average household income, which does not account for the welfare available or for lifestyle
• Relative deprivation: lacking the resources for the diet, activities and living conditions widely available in one's society. His preferred measure

The gap the definition makes

Townsend measured poverty both ways and got very different answers: more than 22% of people were in poverty by his preferred measure of relative deprivation. Roughly what percentage were counted as in poverty by the state's standard? Give the number only.

The sentence that mixes the measures

Four sentences about Townsend. Select the ONE that describes his measures inaccurately.

• Townsend preferred relative deprivation, which asks whether people lack the resources for the diet, activities and living conditions widely available in their society.
• Townsend argued the state's standard was arbitrary, since it rests on official statistics and entitlement to benefits.
• Townsend used relative deprivation, meaning an income below the average household income.
• Townsend found that far more people counted as being in poverty by his preferred measure than by the state's standard.

Material or cultural

The central disagreement in this part of the course. Both positions are set out as their authors argued them, and both carry the criticisms made of them. Your task in an exam is to report both accurately, not to choose between them.

Write the attributed claim

Assemble a sentence that reports a contested position without adopting it.

Recall drill: the named studies

Answer from memory. The named studies and their years are examinable, and so are Townsend's three definitions in full.

Answering on poverty

A question asks you to discuss sociological explanations of poverty. Work out how to handle it.

• You want to open the answer. What is the strongest first move?
• You need to bring in Murray. How should you write it?
• You want to use Townsend's figures. What makes them worth including?
• You have a conclusion to write. What earns most credit?

Explain life chances and poverty

Explain what sociologists mean by life chances, and discuss the different ways poverty has been explained. Attribute every position to the sociologist who argued it.

• Define life chances, and say why they are patterned rather than random
• Name at least four of the seven factors your specification lists
• Explain what Devine retested and what she found, including what she rejected
• Set out Townsend's three definitions of poverty, ending with the one he preferred
• Use his two figures to explain why the choice of definition matters
• Report Murray's underclass argument accurately and attribute it to him
• Give the criticisms of Murray's account as well as of Townsend's
• Finish by weighing the material and cultural explanations against each other