Stuck in the middle with who? The class identity of knowledge workers

Abstract

The coming of the information age has been associated with widespread social transformation and new, or dissolved, class structures. Central to this claim is the emergence of `knowledge workers' including information technology professionals. While previous discussion has focused on the paradox faced by IT workers as both professionals and employees, this article, using empirical data from five software organizations in Scotland, examines their perceptions of class structure and their own class position. It finds that participants clearly retained varying class models of society but expressed conflict between their own self-rated class identity and that which they awarded to their occupation and profession.