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The Petite Bourgeoisie Edinburgh Studies in Sociology THE PETITE BOURGEOISIE EDINBURGH STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY General Editors: Frank Bechhofer, Patricia JefTrey, Tom McGlew The Edinburgh Studies in Sociology se ries publishes sociological works from the Department of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. The majority of the books in the series will be founded on original research or on research and scholarship pursued over aperiod oftime. There will also be collections of research papers on particular topics of social interest and textbooks deriving from courses taught in the Department. Many of the books will appeal to a non-specialist audience as well as to the academic reader. Titles already published Kathryn C. Backett: MOTHERS AND FATHERS: A Study of the Development and Negotiation of Parental Behaviour Frank Bechhofer and Brian Elliott (editors): THE PETITE BOURGEOISIE: Comparative Studies of the Uneasy Stratum Tom Bums: THE BBC: Public Institution and Private World Anthony P. M. Coxon and Charles L. Jones: THE IMAGES OF OCCUPATIONAL PRESTIGE: A Study in Social Cognition Anthony P. M. Coxon and Charles L. Jones: CLASS AND HIERARCHY: The Social Meaning of Occupations John Orr: TRAGIC DRAMA AND MODERN SOCIETY: Studies in the Social Theory of Drama from 1870 to the Present John Orr: TRAGIC REALISM AND MODERN SOCIETY: Studies in the Sociology of the Modern Novel Forthcoming titles Brian Elliott and David McCrone: PROPERTY AND POWER IN A CITY Harvie Ferguson: ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY THE PETITE BOURGEOISIE Comparative Studies of the Uneasy Stratum Edited by Frank Bechhofer and Brian Elliott © Frank Bechhofer and Brian Elliott 1981 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First edition 1981 Reprinted 1983 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS L TD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-35072-0 ISBN 978-1-349-06769-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06769-5 The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in wh ich it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Contents Notes on the Contributors vii Preface ix List of Abbreviations xiii Agrarian Petit-Bourgeois Responses to Capitalist Industrialisation: The Case of Canada: J. F. Conway 2 Farming for Survival: The Small Farmer in the Con­ temporary Rural Class Structure Howard Newby, David Rose, Peter Saunders and Colin Bell 38 3 The Uses of the Traditional Sector in Italy: Why Declining Classes Survive Suzanne Berger 71 4 The Petite Bourgeoisie in Socialist Society Bronislaw Misztal 90 5 The Petite Bourgeoisie and the New Middle Class: Differen­ tiation or Homogenisation of the Middle Strata in Germany Franz Urban Pappi 105 6 The Petty Commodity Producer in Third W orld Cities: Petit Bourgeois or 'Disguised' Proletarian? Chris Gerry and Chris Birkbeck 121 7 Artisanal Bakery in France: How it Lives and Why it Survives Daniel Bertaux and Isabelle Bertaux- Wiame 155 8 Petty Property: the Survival of a Moral Economy Frank Bechhofer and Brian Elliott 182 Author Index 201 Subject Index 204 v Notes on the Contributors Frank Bechhofer was Junior Research Officer in the Department of Applied Economics, Cambridge, from 1962 to 1965. He then became Lecturer in Sociology at Edinburgh University until 1971 when he became Reader in Sociology. He has written several articles on research methods, industrial sociology and stratification. He is co-author of The AfJluent Worker and editor of Population Growth and the Brain Drain and is preparing The Small Shopkeeper in the C/ass Strueture (with Brian Elliott). Colin Bell is Professor of Sociology at Aston U niversity. In addition to the works with Howard Newby he is author of Middle C/ass Families; co-author with Margaret Stacey, Anne Murcott, and Eric Batstone of Power, Persistenee and Change, and co-author with Sol Encel of Inside the Whale. Suzanne Berger is Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute ofSociology. She is the author of Peasants against PolWes, The Freneh Politieal System, and Dualism and Diseontinuity in Industrial Societies (with Michael Piore). She is also editor of Organizing Interests in West Europe. Daniel Bertaux is Charge de recherche au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He works at the Centre d'Etudes des Mouve­ ments Sociaux in Paris and is the author of Destins personneis et strueture de c/asse and numerous papers. He is also editor of Biography and Soeiety. Isabelle Bertaux-Wiame is Attachee de recherche au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and works in the Groupe de Sociologie au Travail, Universite de Paris VII. Trained as an historian she is now using an oral history approach to the dynamics of socio-historical change and has published articles in this area. Chris Birkbeck graduated in Geography from Oxford University and is now Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Studies. He is author of various articles on crime and employment in Colombia. J. F. Conway is Associate Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department ofSociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina, vii viii Notes on the Contributors Saskatchewan. Originally trained as a psychologist he obtained his Ph.D. in Political Science and Sociology at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of a number of articles on Populism. Brian Elliott was Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow from 1963 to 1965. He then moved to Edinburgh University where he was Lecturer in Sociology until 1979 when he became Senior Lecturer. He was also Visiting Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University ofBritish Columbia, 1973-74. He has written several articles on urban sociology and social stratification and is currently writing Property anti Power in 4 Cityand The Modern City (with D. McCrone) and The Small Shopkeeper in the Class Structure (with Frank Bechhofer). Chris Gerry is Lecturer in Development Studies at the Centre for Development Studies, University of Swansea. An economist, he has written on petty production and capitalism and is editor (with Ray Bromley) of Casual Work and Poverty in Third World CWes. Bronislaw Misztal is Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy ofSciences, Warsaw. He is the author of four books in Polish 'Peer groups in Urban Culture'; 'Problems ofSocial Participation and Co-operation'; 'Urban Sociology'; and 'Changes in Small Town Communities under Urbanization and Industrialization'. Howard Newby is Reader in Sociology at the University of Essex. He is the author of The Deferential Worker and Green and Pleasant Land?; editor of International Perspectives in Rural Sociology; co-author with Colin Bell of Community Studies; co-editor with Colin Bell of The Sociology of Community and Doing Sociological Research; and co­ author with Colin Bell, David Rose, and Peter Saunders of Property, Paternalism and Power. Franz Urban Pappi is Professor of Sociology at the Institut für Soziologie der Christian-Albrechts-Universität 'at Kiel. He is co-author with Edward O. Laumann of Networks of Collective ANion; editor of Sozialstruktur-analysen mit Umfragedaten; and author of numerous articles on social stratification, voting behaviour, methodology and survey research. David Rose is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex and co­ author of.Property, Paternalism and Power. Peter Saunders is Lecturer in Sociology at the University ofEssex. He is author of Urban PolWes: A Sociological Interpretation and co-author of Property, Paternalism and Power. Preface This book has been a long time in the making. Not so much in the business of commissioning the papers, reworking some of the trans­ lations and generally editing - though that has taken long enough. But in a sense this book dates back to 1968 when we published a paper on small shopkeepers (Bechhofer and Elliott, 1968). At that time we were planning an empirical study - which we subsequently carried out - in which we construed them as 'marginal' members ofthe middle elass. The rather sparse literature on retail trade and indeed on small business in general available at that time led us to identify a difficult market situation, unpleasant work situation redeemed only by independence, and a status situation which located shop keepers shakily in the middle elass. As we subsequently wrote 'the shopkeepers' elaim to be middle elass rested upon peculiar features of their market and work situations. In particular, the ownership of modest amounts of capital and the element of autonomy at work seemed to provide the major reasons for distinguishing them from manual workers and placing them with the traditional bourgeois elements of our society. At the same time, it was obvious that the self-same factors marked them ofT from most of the other groups conventionallY labelled "lower middle class'" (Bechhofer et al., 1974). A decade ago at the time of the publishing of the AjJluent Worker studies and before the Marxist revival changed the face of British sociology, it seemed a reasonable strategy to further the study of the British elass structure by examining a group wh ich lay elose to the 'margin' of the middle elass in the same sort of way as affluent workers were said to lie elose to the 'top' of the working elass. Even today this notion does not seem entirely silly, as the debate on the labour aristocracy in nineteenth-century Britain shows. In the course of that decade, both everything and nothing has changed. We have come to see our problem somewhat difTerently, no longer in terms of marginality but as the location, composition and political significance of the petite bourgeoisie in capitalist and state socialist society.
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