Bio: (1935-) British sociologist. John Goldthorpe studied at the London School of Economics and later taught at Oxford. Throughout his career, Goldthorp studied classes within the Weberian approach. In his work, he combines the empirical and theoretical study of classes.

Goldthorp, Lockwood, Bechhofer, and Jennifer Platt conducted a large-scale study from 1963 to 1964 to test the hypothesis of a "bourgeoisization" of the working class. that is, whether wealthy manual workers are becoming more and more like the middle class. The research was conducted in the city of Luton, and workers from three large companies were interviewed. The results of this research were published in the book The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (1968-1969), which was published in three volumes. Although most of the surveyed workers had high salaries, even higher than some members of the white collar, the original thesis was not proven. Differences like market situation, the possibility of career advancement, attitude towards work, social attitudes, and political affiliation continued to separate "rich" workers from members of the middle class who had similar salaries. This study also concludes that administrative staff workers are in a position between the working class and the middle class.

Goldthorp developed a sevenfold class scheme for the needs of the Oxford Class Mobility Study, the empirical part of which was conducted in England and Wales in 1972. The results and conclusions of the study were published in the book Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (1980). In this book, Goldthorp presents the following class scheme going from the top to the bottom: 1) the most successful professionals, directors, and managers, as well as big capitalists; 2) professionals, middle managers, and managers; 3) routine non-manual employees; 4) smaller owners, farmers and the self-employed; 5) lower technical staff, supervisors of manual workers; 6) skilled manual workers; 7) unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers in industry and agriculture.

Several criteria were used in the construction of this scheme: source and level of income, economic security, market situation, as well as the level of autonomy in work. Although Goldthorp took over the market situation from Max Weber as the most important aspect of class position, he did not, unlike Weber, distinguish between owners and non-owners when making his scheme. Goldthorp calls the first two highest classes a service or service class, while members of the third and fifth classes are called an intermediate class. When studying mobility between these classes, a high rate of class mobility was found, higher upward than downward mobility, as well as an increase in the chances of those who come from the working class to leave it.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Goldthorp and Robert Erikson developed a “core model” of social mobility that they applied to the study of the situation in several countries. This model of social mobility uses a somewhat modified, sevenfold class scheme previously developed by Goldthorp. The essence of this model, presented in the book The Constant Flux (1992b), is the assumption of the existence of standard patterns of social fluidity, that is, that in all industrialized countries, with a free market, the patterns of social mobility are essentially the same. After a mathematical analysis of data from different countries, they concluded that the model is fully applicable to Britain and France, while it is necessary to make minor adjustments to the model to be applicable to other countries. The authors also conclude that at the end of the twentieth century, the influence of class affiliation on political attitudes decreased, and also that the influence of class relations on the formation of class identities decreased.  

Main works

The Affluent Worker in The Class Structure, 3 vols (1968-1969);

„The Study of Social Stratification in Great Britain: 1946-1976”, in Social Science Information (1977);

Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (1980); 

The Uses of History in Sociology: Reflections on Some Recent Tendencies (1991);  

Revised Class Schema (1992a);

The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies (1992b); 

‘‘Class Analysis and the Reorientation of Class Theory.’’ British Journal of Sociology (1993);

 Rational Choice Theory and Large-Scale Data Analysis (1996);  

On Sociology: Numbers, Narratives, and the Integration of Research and Theory (2000);  

The Economic Basis of Social Class (2004); 

Sociology as a Population Science (2016).