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CULTURAL MEDIATION OF POLITICAL RESPONSES TO UNEMPLOYMENT: A COMPARISON OF SPAIN AND THE UK

Jose Luis Alvaro (Department of Social Psychology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Catherine Marsh (Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, University of Manchester)

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

ISSN: 0144-333X

Article publication date: 1 March 1993

122

Abstract

Should the unemployed be viewed as an underclass at the bottom of the stratification heap in modern societies? In the 1930s, the answer given by social scientists was unambiguously negative. The unemployed could not be considered as a social class; they were “a mass numerically not socially” who showed no group or class consciousness (Zawadsky and Lazarsfeld, 1935, p.2). The people who were unemployed at any one point in time, the argument ran, were a mixed collection of individuals who did not necessarily share a common view of society. The attitudes of the unemployed varied according to previous experience at work (Bakke, 1933) and individual and family financial situation (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld and Zeisel, 1932: 45). Similar arguments have been presented more recently: the responses of the unemployed to their condition depend critically on their previous political socialisation, for example, argues Bergere (1990).

Citation

Luis Alvaro, J. and Marsh, C. (1993), "CULTURAL MEDIATION OF POLITICAL RESPONSES TO UNEMPLOYMENT: A COMPARISON OF SPAIN AND THE UK", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 13 No. 3/4, pp. 77-107. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013171

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1993, MCB UP Limited

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