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This research note examines class identification in the Norwegian population. A simple causal framework is presented where subjective class is seen as the result of experiences in origin family, the educational system and current family. It is argued that direct effects of family background and family earnings on class identification should interact with life-cycle period. To test expectations we use a Norwegian national survey from 1982 (N = 1376). Parameters are estimated by ordinary least squares regression. The overall analysis shows clear and significant effects of origin family's social standing, respondent's education, current family's social standing and earnings. Lifecycle analyses support our expectations concerning interactions: effects of family background gradually fade as people get older, while family earnings have an effect only in the mid-period. No other variable, however, seems to be as important as education for explaining class identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way of life and essence of the Finnish new middle class are discussed in this article. Within a theoretical framework that one might call Bourdieuan, the analysis is based on a questionnaire by Pierre Bourdieu in his book La Distinction and an interview material consisting of life stories of Finnish new middle class people. As a preliminary conclusion, it is argued that taste is by no means as important as a criterion for the new middle class in Finland as it is in France. In the Finnish middle class emphasis is rather on subjectivity, on personal relations and their therapeutic nature, that is on the way of life in a broader sense. Also, it is argued that the so-called ambivalent type of the new middle class is something specific with regard to both class ad modernity. The problem of the new middle class is a problem of commitment: to whom ought one be loyal? One aspect of this is the phenomenon found in the typology in this article: the new middle class seems to be gliding on the one hand towards a proletarian resignation, on the other hand towards a traditional petty bourgeoisie. But what is most distinctive about the new middle class's position is its floating, obscure, transient nature.

This paper discusses middle managers and administrators--a sizeable and developing stratum in the contemporary capitalist society. Their contradictory class situation leads one to regard them as belonging to the middle strata. Changes in their material conditions in the last decades are briefly considered, and shifts in their moods and attitudes in greater detail. Four main types of their social orientations are suggested. The author concludes that the growing identification of middle managers with their own social group--and the corresponding weakening of identification with the employer's interests--is an advance in their historical development. Winning over middle managers and administrators is rather important for the success of the struggle of the working class for deep-going democratic exchanges in society, for socialism. In practice, however, this involves great difficulties. Middle management has strong social ties with the capitalist establishment. The confrontation between managers and managed, rank-and-file workers, cannot disappear under capitalism, though it may attenuate considerably and is already attenuating. At the same time, changes occurring in the attitudes of managerial cadres create opportunities for an alliance with them or, at least, for a drift of a significant part of them from pro-capitalist to neutral positions.