ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that the shopkeepers' claim to be middle class rested upon peculiar features of their market and work situations. It looks at the position of this group within the British social structure. The chapter examines how their social position affects the life-chances of the petits bourgeois and what part they play in the maintenance and transmission of patterned inequality. It performs how they fare in the struggle for economic rewards. The chapter suggests earlier that the general approach to business affairs might be described as 'economic traditionalism'. It regards the occupation 'shopkeeper' as placing the owner in the 'petite bourgeoisie' or less satisfactorily 'the middle class', it is obvious that this is compatible with the maintenance of 'working-class' normative and relational patterns. The chapter argues that the petit bourgeois stratum is the repository of many of the traditional values upon which a capitalist social order was built.