About the data
In the early 1960's Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechhofer and Platt surveyed a sample of 'affluent workers' at Vauxhall Cars, Skefco Engineering and La Porte Chemicals. They studied the attitudes and behaviour of high wage earners in three mass or continuous flow companies. The firms and the area (Luton, UK) were prosperous and the research sought to explain worker attitudes and perceptions. Goldthorpe's findings revealed the nature and influences on instrumental attitudes and behaviour of the workers studied. Workplace satisfaction for affluent workers depended upon continued stability and prosperity with expectations of continuing growth. The data are based in the National Social Policy and Social Change Archive in the University of Essex Library, with a selection coded and digitised and held in the UK Data Archive.
How the data were used
For his project on Popular Social Identities in England, 1950-2000, Mike Savage undertook fieldwork involving the restudy of the archival data used in selected 'classic' works of post-war English sociology. Between 2002 and 2009 he made regular visits to ESDS Qualidata as part of a project examining social change in post-war Britain.
He re-read and coded up the data from Goldthorpe and Lockwood's 'Affluent Worker' to the coding frame he developed for his current research, providing evidence for his book. He also used Elizabeth Bott's Family and Social Network. The work arising from this Leverhulme Fellowship is published as: Savage, M. (2005) 'Working Class Identities in the 1960s: revisiting the Affluent Worker Studies', Sociology, Volume 39 (5), pp. 929-946 and Savage, M. (2010) Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method, OUP.
A key theme of his book is the need to celebrate the legacy of social research pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s. He contends that these researchers developed a critical perspective which sought not to stigmatise or pathologise deviant groups, but rather to find new ways to elicit people's ordinary lives.
About the author
Professor Savage is based at the University of York, having previously held a post as Professor at the University of Manchester for 15 years. His current interests are in the broad area of social stratification.
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