The Concepts of Classes and Nordic and Baltic societies in 1990

Abstract

Many observers consider the Nordic countries as representatives of affluent and well functioning welfare states. One special feature of the Nordic models has been a certain kind of class compromise between the main social forces, or ‘democratic’ class conflict. During this decade economic crisis has hit all the Nordic countries. As a consequence of the crisis class character of the societies has been become more visible. From the Nordic perspective classes are not dead, and there is a need for sociological class analysis. An other important feature of social change during the 1990s has been the growth of economically non-active population. Not only unemployment, but also all major groups out of work (students, housewives, pensioners) has increased. This process has set new challenges for class analysis too.
In this paper we ask how two main types of competing class theories, those of Wright and Goldthorpe, work in the Baltic and Nordic setting. The Baltic countries studied are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the Nordic countries are Finland, Sweden and Norway. The data used is comparative survey data from the middle of 1990s.