Educational experiences and perceptions of occupational hierarchies: The case of the Norwegian working class

Abstract

In this article we present the experiences of members of the Norwegian working class in the educational system and show that the findings contradict established theories in the sociology of education in a way that calls for a re-examination of the function of societal hierarchies in such studies. Secondly, we report how working-class individuals comprehend society’s valuation of their work and whether these experiences affect their own judgments and evaluations of work. The findings reveal an enlightened working class when it comes to conventional occupational hierarchies, but also show that members of the working class classify status in their own, distinctive way. The egalitarian cultural configuration we observe deviates in certain ways from what is reported in comparable studies for Britain, the United States (USA), and France. We argue that the key to the understanding of such variability is knowledge about how education is penetrated by social hierarchies in different social formations.