I was ambivalent about retiring but not worried at the prospect. Grieving occurs when something irrevocably ends, and for academics there is often a prospect of continuing to work, but in such a manner that it is no longer seen or experienced as ‘work’. In my case I was set on doing some more lecturing/teaching and continuing to write. But the actual process of retiring was intrinsically interesting. I announced my decision to retire on 1 October 2013, which was accepted without demur. Paul Higgs generously said he would like to organise a leaving ‘do’ and asked me which speakers I would like him to invite. Graham Hart equally generously said he would supply the necessary funding. Unsure who might say what but concerned not to put anyone into a difficult spot, I opted for a balance of longstanding colleagues I had taught alongside – David Blane and Ray Fitzpatrick – and others I had come to know well and whom I thought broadly sympathetic to my kind of sociology, namely, Nicky Britten, James Nazroo and Gareth Williams. Fiona Stevenson told Paul that she would like to say a few words too, which delighted me.
They all spoke kind words to an impressive audience replete with professorial peers. David Blane ruminated on our joint teaching at Charing Cross, the projects we had devised, the textbook (first edition, 1982, second edition, 1986, third edition 1991, fourth edition 1997, fifth edition 2003, sixth edition 2008, and seventh and latest – and maybe last – post-retirement edition 2018), and our joyful experiences teaching the Intercalated B.Sc in Sociology as Applied to Medicine over many years. Ray recalled contributing a chapter on Claus Offe to my edited collection Sociological Theory and Medical Sociology which he insisted had never been cited. He was actually incorrect since I have cited his excellent chapter more than once myself. He concluded by suggesting that my recent publications had been ‘more polemical’. When all the speakers had done their bit, I felt obliged to return to this statement briefly at the rostrum. It raised an issue that I will only allude to here as I return to it in more depth later. I did not then, and do not now, accept the underlying premise that sociology is a value-neutral or non-normative discipline. For me, any worthwhile sociology is/should be oriented to the betterment of society, which was all I thought I was doing.
Nicky Britten and James Nazroo recollected some joint experiences before discoursing on their own intriguing research, on prescribing practices and ethnicity and health respectively. Nicky remembered a time when she, Myfanwy Morgan and Charlotte Humphrey had attended a handful of seminars/discussion groups on the evolution of social theory that I led when I was still based at the Middlesex (‘how often do three professors attend seminars led by a colleague?’ she asked, rhetorically). James called to mind another incident from the past. He was undertaking research for his Ph.D with my old supervisor George Brown at the time. I think he must have asked me to attend a meeting he was due to have with George. Anyway, attend I did, and I listened to George hold court, expounding his work ethic to James: James should only take alternate weekends off. James said it was the only time he ever saw me angry. I do remember telling George that unions were formed because of people like him! All water under the bridge now, but the upshot was that I became James’ Ph.D supervisor in place of George and saw his excellent study through to completion.
I was not to know it at the time, but his partner Eva later told me that Gareth Williams’ talk was to be the last he gave before his stamina failed him and he became progressively more ill. Another first-class speaker, he spoke entertainingly about possible derivations of the name ‘Scambler’, and was complimentary about my attempts, not least via the ‘greedy bastards hypothesis’, to fuel public debate and discussion about health inequalities. Finally, Fiona Stevenson spoke about our teaching of medical students at UCL and what a good team she, Paul ad I made. After responding gently to Ray’s comment on my ‘new polemics’, I thanked Paul, Graham and all the speakers for coming and for their kind, informative and entertaining words. As we sipped wine and consumed nibbles I was able to rove around and chat to friends and colleagues. It was a particular pleasure to see two medical students, Rita Issa and Timesh Pillay, both of whom I’d taught and who had expanded their interest in medicine to become vigorous political activists (they still are). When all was done a group of us went to a local restaurant and we were treated to a meal and more relaxed conversation.
So my retirement was announced and celebrated by a ‘do’. I mentioned to Graham Hart in passing that I was surprised that I had heard nothing from UCL’s powers-that-be. A while later I had a letter from UCL’s then-Provost, Michael Arthur. Unfortunately, he included in his missive an apologetic reference to the fact that he had forgotten to note, let alone respond to, my retirement; he clearly had no idea who I was. It was all rather self-defeating.
If I was not unduly put out by the idea of retiring, the process required a level of adjustment. Courtesy of Paul and Fiona, I was invited to teach sociological theory – Marx, Weber, Foucault and Bourdieu from memory – which was to last until COVID-19 forced zoom onto UCL’s staff and students and I opted out. It is worth a passing mention that UCL had outsourced the organisation and remuneration of non-permanent staff to a company that declined to recognise my emeritus professorial status and demanded that I repeatedly identify and justify myself and put in for payment session by session. Without the diligent help of one of the secretaries I would probably have drawn the experiment to a close early on. I did a few other invited talks and, thanks to Aksel Tjora, Annette and I still made our annual trip to Trondheim, and occasionally to Oslo and Tromso, to meet ever-friendly Norwegian medical sociologists. Writing in 2022, I confess that I still miss regular contact with undergraduates. As opposed to Arthur’s understandably casual, dashed-off lines marking my retirement, I treasure the ‘top teacher awards’ generated by UCL’s medical students for each of my final five years lecturing there. How unlikely such recognition for a sociologist teaching medical students would have been when I began my stint at Charing Cross in the mid-1970s.
Without ever planning it, my writing continued into retirement. Writing books assumed its old importance, but I have also submitted what for me is a goodly stream of academic articles. The statistics are interesting. Compare my final nine years in employment with the nine years between my retirement and the time of writing. In the period pre-retirement I authored or edited five books and wrote or co-authored 27 chapters and 30 peer-review articles. In the period post-retirement I authored or edited six books, and wrote or co-authored 22 chapters and 16 peer-review articles. Okay, so my productivity – statistically – has dropped off a bit, but what is surprising in many ways is that I have been as productive as I have in the absence of the spur or threat of institutional pressure. But has the content changed? I think it has, if only as a matter of degree. In Ray Fitzpatrick’s terms, I have likely become (even) more polemical. I have sought to underpin and add substance to my evolving sense of what ‘doing sociology’ should encompass. I have increasingly promoted sociological engagement in the politics of phenomena like health inequalities and the weaponizing of stigma by the state.
One further point might usefully be aired before the issue of retirement is confronted in all its intellectual and emotional complexity. As a certain level of academic seniority, either achieved or ascribed, invitations to delivery plenary lectures and papers and to contribute chapters or papers to special issues of journals usually increase. This can spell danger. It is of course gratifying to feel wanted, the more so when in retirement and whilst dwelling in the quiet seclusion of a rural village with London a far distant glow on the commuter horizon. The hazards as I see them are twofold. First, there needs to be a coming to terms with the fact that one’s CV has loosened its grip, unless that is a second career beckons (after all, 65 barely qualifies someone as a ‘third ager’ these days). Abandoning the longstanding addiction to the CV is easier said than done. If I quickly stopped appending items to a multifaceted list of putative accomplishments, I do nevertheless still record my publications on my website. But I think I can claim at least to be in remission with respect to my CV. The second hazard concerns how easy it is to be flattered by invitations that, when paired down to basics, are to repeat oneself. I have come to realise, possibly belatedly, that there is a limit to what I am able to say, on stigma and health inequalities for example, without simply duplicating ideas I have already made accessible. More recently I have tried to circumvent this trap by focusing more on the philosophical and macro-theoretic context of such phenomena and the role of specific causal or generative mechanisms in delivering and shaping the ‘fractured society’.
Back to the appurtenances and ramifications of retirement. Grieving, I have suggested, is associated with terminal absence. The fact that I could continue with selected activities, notably in my case teaching and writing, removed any necessity to grieve. Yes, I missed, and miss, standing at the podium of a UCL lecture theatre and addressing 360 medical students, odd though this might seem to some of my colleagues. I wish COVID-19 had not stymied other opportunities for face-to-face seminars, but, again, I have moved on. As for writing projects, it will be apparent that I have continued these with what is possibly untypical enthusiasm and vigour. But writing is not quite the practice it was. So what has changed, other than the diminishing salience of my CV? There is one predictable ongoing tension, since writing no longer constitutes ‘work’. I have certainly discovered a newfound freedom to express myself, and this has spawned different kinds of media outputs, perhaps most surprisingly involving the sphere of the virtual.
When I retired my daughter Rebecca suggested that an online presence might help fill a gap in my intellectual life. As a talented freelance website designer herself, she offered to launch me into cyberspace. As an only partially reformed Luddite this proved an eye-opener for me. I slithered effortlessly from having my own website to enter the arenas of Twitter and, later, Facebook (and now Mastodon). For all the real and actual fissures and cacks into which one can fall in these virtual fields, I have also encountered benefits. Maybe these should be split into two basic if heterogeneous categories. First, I have found both Twitter and Facebook repositories of information and expertise. Given the post-Thatcher establishment-co-option of the print and other mainstream media, Twitter has proved a vital resource, not least in the form of ‘leaks’ of otherwise clandestine corporate and state initiatives. Academics are also generous in sharing their work and pointing others in the direction of up-to-date publications and data. Reciprocal support, not least emotionally, is another dimension of online activity. I have admittedly also come up against the downside, especially of Twitter. I was repeatedly attacked as a ‘fucking racist’, for example, for calling out the pro-Israeli weaponizing of antisemitism to undermine the bid for government of the resolutely anti-racist but pro-Palestinian Jeremy Corbyn. But I have been spared excessive trolling to date. Facebook has proved a good way of re-establishing lost contacts and sharing views and experiences with a valued closed network of ‘friends’, some old, some new.
The second category is blogging. It was only in retirement that I was coaxed into considering writing blogs as well as material for more orthodox forms of publication. What I have enjoyed about it is the freedom to ‘think out loud’ that it affords. Importantly, I am no longer concerned – if I ever was, which I doubt – that people might nick and elaborate on any thoughts I might have. As I sit today in a café on Piazza Garibaldi in Sinalunga, I note that I have so far posted no fewer than 419 blogs. These fall into discrete classes: café and bar society; critical realism; critical theory; education/careers; general sociology; health/medicine; interventions; notebook series (ideas in progress); poems; sociological autobiography; sociological theorists; sociologists; sport; travel; village life; and ‘greedy bastards’ (a technical term defined in previous sketches). Anyone tempted can find these at: www.grahamscambler.com. There is no single format that my blogs conform to, excepting that I like to restrict their length to around 1,000 words. Routine academic-style publishing aside, blogging has settled in as a significant way of communicating ideas. Moreover, it has an extended reach. It compares very favourably with that of academic publications. I find it staggering but checking today I find that there have to date been no fewer than 335,000 views of my website to date, mostly people accessing my blogs. I am led to wonder how long it will be before this additional metric will figure in university assessments of both accomplishment and public engagement (not that UCL would likely look positively on some of the forms of ‘public engagement’ that I indulge in or commend).
I am reproducing two blogs here and the ones I have selected are not jottings of my own thinking but explications of research conducted by Bukodi and Goldthorpe and taken from their exemplar of good quantitative sociological research. The blogs themselves date from 2019. I’ve opted for this duo too because their findings speak to my own lifecourse. I am including them verbatim.
(1) Shifting Work Patterns
In a new book by Erzebet Bukodi and John Goldthorpe, entitled Social Mobility and Education in Britain, the class (as defined by NS-SEC) distributions of economically active men and women are calculated at the census years of 1851, 1971, 1991 and 2001. Why is this relevant to my ‘sociological autobiography’? And does this Weberian conceptualisation of class not offend my longstanding Marxian sensibilities? Well, it’s horses for courses.
NS-SEC critically ‘absents’ what I have come to call the capitalist executive in general, and the miniscule minority of well under 1% comprising capital monopolists in particular, and is thus unhelpful in investigating how an ever more concentrated hard core of capital-owners have become increasingly well placed to buy political power to shape policy in their interests.
Notwithstanding this absence, NS-SEC remains an appropriate tool for indicating changing degrees of absolute and relative social mobility.
Analyses deploying NS-SEC graphically illustrate the stark changes in the distribution of work over my lifecourse (I was born in 1948 and have just now turned 70). And much follows on from these changes, hence this rather technical fragment.
A cursory outline of the class breakdowns in NS-SEC reads as follows:
Class 1: Higher managers and professionals (eg general managers in large companies and organisations, higher-grade civil servants and local government officials, architects, lawyers, medical practitioners, professional engineers, scientists, university teachers)
Class 2: Lower managers and professionals (eg general managers in small companies and organisations, site managers, office managers, workshop managers, lower-grade civil servants and local government officers, librarians, nurses, physiotherapists, school teachers, social workers, surveyors)
Class 3: Ancillary professional and administrative (eg computer maintenance staff, draughtpersons, library assistants, nursery nurses, paramedical staff, cashiers, clerical workers, data processing operators, personal assistants, secretaries)
Class 4: Small employers and own account workers (eg garage proprietors, builders, café proprietors, craftsmen, market traders, publicans, shopkeepers)
Class 5: Lower supervisory and technical occupations (eg foremen and site and works supervisors, auto-engineers, heating engineers, instrument technicians, laboratory technicians, printers, took and pattern-makers TV and video engineers)
Class 6: Semi-routine occupations (eg care assistants, caretakers and housekeepers, chefs and cooks, chemical process workers, crane drivers, factory machinists, fitters, postal workers, receptionists, sales assistants, store controllers and despatchers, traffic wardens)
Cass 7: Routine occupations (eg bus and van drivers, construction site and other labourers, craftsmen’s mates, food process workers, counter and bar staff, house and office cleaners, kitchen assistants, packers and fillers, porters and attendants, refuse collectors, warehouse workers)
You can see why NS-SEC is conspicuously unhelpful in considering capital ownership and power. Ok, horses for courses. But I also feel compelled to add that this categorisation is no measure of the value added to society by those working in the clusters of occupations it specifies. For example, care workers are undoubtedly a positive for our collective wellbeing, financiers no less indisputably a negative (I’ve blogged on this elsewhere).
Bukodi and Goldthorpe offer the following summary statements. As far as men are concerned, they write:
In 1951 the wage-earning working class, as represented by NS-SEC Classes 6 and 7, was predominant, accounting for well over half the active male population. In contrast, the managerial and professional salariat, as represented by Classes 1 and 2, accounted for little more than a tenth. But over the period covered the working class contracts and the salariat expands, and especially rapidly between 1951 and 1991. Thus, by 2011 the working class is reduced to less than a third of the active male population while the salariat comprises around two-fifths. The three intermediate classes NS-SEC Classes 3, 4 and 5, remain more stable in size, although some slight decline is indicated in the proportion of men in Class 3, that of employees in ancillary professional and administrative occupation.’
And for women:
‘In the care of women, the distributions change for the most part in the same way as with men, even if somewhat more slowly, and in particular the increase in the proportion in the higher-level managerial and professional positions of NS-SEC Class 1 is less marked. The one major difference from men comes with NS-SEC Class 3, which between 1951 and 1971 expanded so as to account for over a third of the active female population but then contracted so as to account for only a quarter by 2011 – reflection chiefly of the rise and fall of the office secretary and typist.’
If it’s not too esoteric or rude, I’d like to include a table. It records the class, NS-SEC, distributions (%) of economically active populations, 1951-2011. Here goes:
| MEN | ||||
| CLASS | ||||
| 1 | 4 | 10 | 15 | 18 |
| 2 | 7 | 15 | 20 | 22 |
| 3 + 4 + 5 | 10, 10, 14 | 8, 10,12 | 8,10,12 | 7,13,10 |
| 6 + 7 | 55 | 45 | 35 | 30 |
| 1951 | 1971 | 1991 | 2011 | |
| WOMEN | ||||
| CLASS | ||||
| i | 2 | 4 | 7 | 8 |
| 2 | 6 | 10 | 20 | 22 |
| 3 + 4 + 5 | 30, 6, 6 | 36,4,4 | 30,4,4 | 25,6,4 |
| 6 + 7 | 50 | 42 | 35 | 35 |
| 1951 | 1971 | 1991 | 2011 |
Such has been the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial social formation that I’ve lived through.
I will – and accept I must – return to the much misunderstood distinction between absolute and relative social mobility in a subsequent contribution. For now I want to register the much-altered workforce with which my predecessors, consociates and successors have been faced, are facing, or will be facing. In this respect among many others, my mum and dad, Annette and I and our four daughters have inhabited/inhabit different eras. Annette and I graduated in 1971, beneficiaries of the exceptionally mild, tamed era of welfare state capitalism. Not that life even then was without its challenges!
(2) Relative Mobility
This is the second of a two-parter and cannot be properly grasped on its own. In the last blog in this seemingly interminable series I drew on Bukodi and Goldthorpe’s excellent research to show that the changes of absolute social mobility over the course of my lifetime (I was born in 1948). But as these authors make clear, there is crucial, if often neglected, distinction to be drawn between absolute and relative social mobility.
In the proverbial nutshell, absolute mobility refers to ‘the proportion of individuals moving between different class positions’, and this can be shown in terms of percentages (see my last blog for reservations about the concept of ‘class’ deployed here – I shall cavil no more!). Absolute rates are conditioned by two independent factors: first, by the structure, and changes in the structure, of the class positions between which mobility occurs; and second, by relative rates of class mobility.
So what of relative social mobility? This, Bukodi and Goldthorpe argue, is more difficult to define. Their initial stab is:
‘ … it may be sufficient (as a starting point) to think of relative rates as ones that ‘compare the chances’ of individuals of different class origins being found in different class destinations, and that thus reflect social processes which, as they operate within the class structure, generate the absolute rates that are actually observed. The class structure sets the context of class mobility; relative rates determine how, within this context, absolute rates are realised.’
The general picture painted by the data is of ‘constant social fluidity’ over the course of my lifetime. This confounds many a myth, most notably those postulating long-term increases or decreases in social mobility.
I cannot do any justice here to the statistical subtlety of the analyses presented in Social Mobility and Education in Britain. I will have to resort to summarising some of the more striking findings and conclusions. These pertain to politics and policy – and political and policy failure – as much as to the nature of the changes that have occurred. These can be listed as follows:
- equality of opportunity, and its expression via social mobility, ‘appears to be systematically compromised by inequalities of condition’;
- there is a significant disconnect between political and policy approaches to and assessments of social mobility and sociological research. While the former targets inequalities of opportunity, the latter teaches us that it is inequalities of condition that needs targeting;
- notwithstanding a significant postwar rise in the overall educational level of the British population, this has had ‘very little effect in weakening the association that exists between individuals’ class origins and their class destinations;
- if education is going to play a role in promoting social mobility, the association between individuals’ social origins and their educational attainment must weaken;
- rather than focusing on employers’ recruitment practices, focusing on their promotion practicesmight show a greater return: ‘that is, with the aim of discouraging credentialism that effectively blocks promotion from below for those without some, perhaps quite arbitrarily determined, level of qualification, and of encouraging the wider development of internal promotion programmes and associated training provision’;
- political and policy identifications of social mobility ‘cold spots’ in different parts of the country often overlook ‘the possibility that in such areas working-class children, especially, may very well grow up with a fatalistic sense that people, or at least people of their kind, do in fact have little control over what happens to them in their lives, which them limits the extent to which they actively seek to translate such educational success as they may achieve into such labour market opportunities as may exist’ (the implicit reference here is to what psychologists call an ‘external locus of control’);
- opportunities for lifelong learning provide ‘second chances’ not so much ‘for men and women whose disadvantaged social origins have had limiting effects on their educational attainment prior to labour market entry, but more for those of more advantaged origins who while in full-time education have not realised their advantages to the full extent that they might;
- when Britain is compared to other (European) countries, what stands out is that the balance of the upward and downward components of the mobility rate is less favourable than in many other countries. In west-central European countries upward mobility still predominates over downward. Not so in Britain. Moreover, the kind of remedial policies likely to be effective ‘will require political intervention of a kind likely to meet with strong opposition.’
So there has been no decline in absolute intergenerational mobility over the course of my lifetime (if treated in terms of class, as defined by NS-SEC). BUT, social ascent in Britain no longer predominates over social descent (a key point for me); and in this sense younger people now face less favourable mobility prospects than I and my babyboomer consociates did. This change is primarily the result of the course of development of the class structure – in particular, of the slowing down of the previous rate of growth of the managerial and professional salariat.
This precis dies scant justice to what I regard as outstanding sociological research on the part of Bukodi, Goldthorpe and colleagues (and there are always colleagues). But it is my sociological autobiography, so I feel free to – and must – append a few comments at the risk of repeating myself.
The first may seem ungrateful to Bukodi and Goldthorpe, but it isn’t. Nothing in their study surprises me. Inequalities of condition, for me the issue of enduring capitalist class structures or relations, as defined in neo-Marxist rather than NS-SEC terms, ineluctably intrude into people’s lifeworlds in the guise of ladders or snakes. Post-1070s financial capitalism has altered this not one jot.
Second, I must refer once again to the class/command dynamic and governing oligarchy. Capital, ever more concentrated in the hands of the capitalist executive in general and capital monopolists in particular, buys power from the power elite straddling the apparatus of the state to make policy in the interests of its further accumulation. It’s (very nearly ALL) down to the ruling class innit?
I was fortunate to pass the 11+ and to attend Worthing High School for Boys. My father knew the significance of the 11+ while I just wanted to be with my friends. But I’ve written of this before in earlier fragments. Time to move on. But times have indeed changed for successor generations.
The second blog ends here. There is little I would alter had I not committed to reproduce them verbatim.