The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (62 page)

rather unusual, even odd, kind of political activity. Whereas many forms of

political activity, especially those which appear to transform or modify social

structures ± revolutions, protest movements, reform campaigns, etc. ± involve

mobilization and organization, voting in most contemporary liberal democracies

has been constructed as an inherently individualized act. People vote in private booths, secretly. It need not be so. In early nineteenth-century Britain voting took place in a communal, public realm, where people's votes were openly recorded,

and where elaborate rituals and ceremonies accompanied the process of polling

(Vernon, 1993). However, as part of the general processes by which liberal

capitalist states individualize citizenship rights and obligations (Turner, 1993a; Hay, 1996; Runciman, 1997), the act of voting, as the formal embodiment of the

link between citizen and the polity, has been stripped of these communal under-

pinnings.

This process of thèìndividualization'' of politics has also come to define

politics as increasingly an activity for the middle classes. One of the best

instances of this argument comes from studies of political activism. There has

been dramatic convergence between the two main parties in the social back-

ground of party activists. Seyd and Whitley's research indicates that in both

Labour and Conservative parties a clear majority of party activists ± 58±60

percent ± come from thè`salariat.'' The only difference between the two parties

in their social class composition is that Labour has a larger tail of manual

working-class activists (18 percent of the total), while the Conservatives have

rather more self-employed petit bourgeois aboard (14 percent of their total).

This point can be broadened if all kinds of activism are included. Parry et al.

(1992) show that the middle classes are consistently most likely to be activists of one kind or another. Parry et al. (1992) attribute this not to the role of class as such but to the way in which active individuals are able to draw on resources

such as those linked to education, money, and social contacts. This argument has overlaps with the idea of ``social capital,'' which the American political scientist Putnam (1993) claims to be a key determinant of the efficacy of democratic

institutions. Putnam defines social capital primarily in formal institutional

terms. Social capital is related to the existence of voluntary associations, where people meet others, so allowing them to have resources that enable people to act politically. In his well known study of political culture in Italy, Putnam argues 262

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that the long history of civic associations in the north of the country allows the emergence of a democratic polity that it not possible in the south, which lacks

the requisite social capital. Putnam stages a reconciliation between an American Tocquevillian approach to political mobilization, which places emphasis on the

role of voluntary associations as a guarantor of democracy, and network

approaches to social mobilization, whereby attention can be directed toward

the sorts of connections people can forge to allow them to act collectively in

various ways.

What is lacking from Putnam's perspective, as well as Parry et al.'s (1992)

account of the resources necessary for political activism, is a sense of the relational character of social capital, and a recognition that the social capital of some groups may be at the expense of others. This is an issue that Bourdieu

(1979) squares up to, in his recognition that social capital is related to cultural and economic capital. Bourdieu emphasizes that the political field is one that

only those with social capital feel comfortable operating within. Rather than

search for class differences within the world of formal party politics, he defines formal party politics itself as an exclusive terrain.

[There are] social agents, occupying different positions in the field of class relations and defined by a greater or lesser specific political competence ± a greater or lesser capacity to recognize a political question as political and to treat it as such by responding to it politically. . . this capacity is inseparable from more or less strong feelings of being competent in the full sense of the word, that is socially recognized as entitled to deal with political affairs, to express an opinion about them or even modify their course. (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 399)

Bourdieu's argument is that social capital is not a neutral resource. The creation of social capital involves social closure that excludes some as it empowers others.

If we take this line of argument it becomes possible to argue that contemporary

organized politics has increasingly been structured as a field in which only those with economic or cultural capital are able to participate. Older forms of political activism which allowed popular entry to the political field have been increasingly eviscerated and diminished, with the result that organized politics has

become largely a province of ``middle-class'' activism.

This is consistent with much research on political activism. Parry et al. (1992) show that that maximum political involvement for the vast majority (77 percent)

of the British population is voting. Rather than being seen simply as lacking the resources to become politically active, they might be seen as excluded from

the political field, since those with social and cultural capital define politics as an activity for those with particular kinds of attributes and resources. There is ample historical evidence pointing to significantly higher levels of political

participation in earlier periods (Savage, 1987; Vernon, 1993; Lawrence,

1998).

The general conclusion would appear to be that the world of formal party

politics is largely inhabited by members of the middle classes and that little

popular energy is expended through this kind of political form. The limited but

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significant presence of the working class in the polity which can be demonstrated in the middle years of the twentieth century has largely been eclipsed. Very large numbers of people thereby have only very slight connections with politics of any kind, while the political field itself is differentiated between different fractions within the middle classes. It is possible to argue that the difference between party activists can best be seen as embodying tensions between those drawing upon

economic capital (predominantly Conservative or Republican), and those draw-

ing upon cultural capital (predominantly Labour and Liberal Democrat or

Democrat). Party politics can thereby best be seen as embodying rival claims

concerning the respective values of these two capitals. This is consistent with the observed differences in voting between state professionals and private sector

managers. Historically, the Conservative Party represented the established pro-

fessional middle class, and presented itself as the party of cultural distinction.

The shift of the professional middle class away from the Conservative Party

(Savage et al., 1992; Heath and Savage, 1995) appears to be due to the way that

Thatcherism challenges the close association between the welfare state and the

reproduction of cultural privilege, and has led to a reconciliation between the

Labour and Liberal Democratic parties and the professional middle classes. Such

a process has helped to marginalize the position of working-class activists in

those parties.

Bourdieu's argument suggests that we might be better off searching for mean-

ingful class divisions in the political realm not so much between political parties but between orthodox formal politics, on the one hand, and other, informal

political modes, on the other.

Social Movements and Political Sociology

In this section I briefly touch on how social movement theory (which has

developed largely autonomously from political sociology in the past two dec-

ades) may contribute towards a re-energization of political sociology. There

are two contrasting ways of viewing social movements from the perspective

I have used in this chapter. One way is to see social movements as offering

an alternative to established politics. If organized modern politics is premised on specific kinds of ``middle-class'' cultural competencies, there may be alternative forms of political mobilization that allow the otherwise excluded groups

access to the polity. Piven and Cloward (1979), for instance, argue that work-

ing-class Americans, largely excluded from the American polity, have organized

in ``poor people's movements'' that allow them to press their political agendas

in different ways. There are parallel discussions about the role of new social

movements as conduits for new kinds of political claims. Giddens (1991) sees

new social movements as creating a new agenda based on ``life politics,'' in

place of thèèmancipatory'' politics associated with class. On the other hand,

another view of ``new social movements'' would be to see them as a form of

``middle-class'' politics (Parkin, 1963; Eckersley, 1989; Bagguley, 1995). If this argument is true, it dovetails with my observations in the previous section

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concerning the dominance of the middle classes within the political field as a

whole.

In reality, it would seem that a more nuanced view of social movements is

required, which emphasizes their role in generating particular repertoires of

mobilization. Repertoires are modes of activity which become recognized as

effective ways of politically mobilizing. They arèà limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out through a relatively deliberate process of

choice. Repertoires are cultural constructions but they do not descend from

abstract philosophy or take shape as a result of political propaganda: they

emerge from struggle'' (Tilly, 1994, p. 42). Tilly argues that Britain invented

the first modern social movements. In the period between 1790 and 1830 new

modes of political activism developed, which included the public meeting, the

petition, the demonstration, the single establishment strike, and the national

social movement, and which marked the onset of modern modes of mobilizing.

These movements escaped from parochial, local politics, and built up support

between places: ``such a form as the public meeting transferred with relative ease from group to group, place to place, issue to issue. In comparison with the

relatively parochial, particular and bifurcated eighteenth century forms of action they were cosmopolitan, modular and autonomous'' (Tilly, 1994, pp. 61±2).

These repertoires emerged at the same time that the industrial working class

developed as a major political force in British society. Tilly's argument is, in fact, rather similar to that of E. P. Thompson, who showed how the formation of the

British working class depended on the development of new forms of organiza-

tion ± such as the formal association with ``members unlimited'' ± which came to be the main mobilizing vehicle for radical politics. It is striking that today many of the repertoires which are still routinely used by protesters in diverse forms of social movement are those which were first developed two hundred years ago,

around recognizably ``working-class'' politics. The meeting, the petition, and the demonstration all remain in common use, and indicate the power of the political

movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in setting the

mold for subsequent political action. This suggests that social movements and

more organized political forms develop in interaction, not as alternatives to each other. In viewing the importance of current trends, we should see the emergence

of new kinds of social movements as indicating the transformation of the

political field itself, rather than the simple eclipse of working-class by middle-class politics.

One way of developing this point is to show how repertoires of political

mobilization can ``slip'' between social groups. A fundamental point about the

Labour movement is that its strategy depended on mobilizing large numbers of

people, whether this be to organize effective strikes, to force collective bargaining arrangements, or to elect Labour candidates to elected offices. It therefore was not simply a class-based movement. It also sought to make alliances to

maximize its command over numbers (Przeworski, 1977).

As Offe and Wisenthal (1980) show, this explains why trade unions placed

such emphasis on maximizing their membership, since this was the crucial way

in which they could try to outsmart their opposition. In the period from around

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1900 to the 1960s there was a congruence between working-class political

repertoires and the mobilization of large numbers of workers into coherent

and organized interest groups. However, there are now indications that this

congruence has come to the end of its useful life, and with it, the classic working-class repertoire for political action.

There are a number of reasons why this repertoire is fading, but this also

relates to my earlier point that working-class politics as organized through the Labour movement has been incorporated into formal party politics. Historically,

the Labour movement is best seen as embodying multiple political repertoires,

including local campaigns around the provision of services, neighborhood mo-

bilization, trade union struggles, and mobilization through national electoral

politics. However, the difficulties in sustaining trade union politics, with the defeat of the coalminers in 1984±5 being an especially important point, and the