Current Sociology

Please welcome our Sociologist of the Month for August 2022, Guðmundur Ævar Oddsson (Department of Social Sciences, University of Akureyri, Iceland). His article for Current Sociology, Class in Iceland is Free Access this month.

Guðmundur Ævar Oddsson

Could you please tell us about yourself? How did you come to your field of study?

G. Oddsson: I am an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. My research focuses on social control, deviance and class inequality, particularly the subjective dimensions of class. I am also co-editor-in-chief of Íslenska þjóðfélagið, the journal of the Icelandic Sociological Association and book reviews editor of Acta Sociologica, the journal of the Nordic Sociological Association. In the spring of 2022, I was a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Department of Sociology, where, among other things, I delivered a research seminar on “Class in Iceland.” Before my family and I moved back to our home country of Iceland in 2017, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Northern Michigan University.

Ever since I was a teenager, I have been fascinated by the relationship between changing social contexts and individual and group outcomes. Taking Sociology courses at the University of Akureyri deepened my interest in this wonderful field of study, and I decided to pursue an academic career in Sociology as I was completing undergraduate degrees in Business Management and Socioeconomic Development and a Post-Graduate Certificate of Education. Subsequently, I moved with my family to the United States to pursue an MA and a PhD in Sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

What prompted you to research the area of your article, “Class in Iceland”?

G. Oddsson: Class analysis – particularly class awareness – has been my main research area since graduate school. Class analysis is a “big bowl to eat from,” as Amit Prasad, one of my PhD committee members, remarked. Iceland is an interesting case for class analysts as, arguably, the world’s most egalitarian country in the latter half of the 20th century. However, Iceland experienced surging inequality paralleling neoliberal globalization starting in the mid-1990s that foreshadowed the greatest financial crisis ever, relative to economic size, after Iceland’s banking system collapsed in 2008. Iceland’s economic boom, bust and recovery from an egalitarian base offers a compelling case – a microcosm – for class analysts. These considerable social changes and the fact that I have long researched the subjective dimension of class division in Iceland prompted me to write a review of class research on Icelandic society since the dawn of modernization organized around the themes of class structure, class politics, class inequality, class awareness and class culture.

What do you see as the key findings of your article?

G. Oddsson: Class analysts continue to demonstrate the persistence of class divisions. However, findings regarding class awareness are less conclusive (e.g., Savage, 2015). For many scholars, there is a growing divergence between class inequality and class awareness (Bottero, 2004). Contrary to the prominent argument that the socio-cultural changes of late modernity have dissolved class division and awareness (e.g., Beck, 2007), my article shows that class divisions, albeit transformed, persist and have, in some respects, deepened. Moreover, neoliberal globalization has heightened perceptions of class division, contradicting claims that class awareness has declined across the board in late modernity. Heightened class awareness in Iceland can be explained by the polarizing effects of neoliberal globalization, which represents a more significant shift for social democratic welfare states than other welfare regimes, because in the former, low inequality, comprehensive social citizenship and cultural homogeneity have long curbed perceptions of class division.

What are the wider social implications of your research in the current social climate?

G. Oddsson: My research supports the argument that there are various pathways to late modernity (Schmidt, 2006), including by welfare regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Based on Iceland’s case, I argue that the strength and trajectory of class awareness in late modernity vary by welfare regime and that theorists overgeneralize declining class awareness based on highly differentiated, liberal welfare states. This has implications for countries undergoing neoliberal restructuring during the current era of rising inequality (Chancel et al., 2021). Specifically, although neoliberal globalization increases within-country inequality in most, if not all, countries, I argue that perceptions of class division are most likely to be on the rise in comparatively egalitarian societies.

Do you have any links to images, documents or other pieces of research which build on or add to the article? Or a suggested reading list?

G. Oddsson:

Beck, Ulrich. 2007. “Beyond Class and Nation: Reframing Social Inequalities in a Globalizing World.” The British Journal of Sociology 58(4): 679–705.
Bottero, Wendy. 2004. “Class Identities and the Identity of Class." Sociology 38(5): 985–1003.
Chancel, Lucas, Piketty, Thomas, Saez, Emmanuel, and Gabriel Zucman (eds) (2021). World Inequality Report. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1990 The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Oddsson, Guðmundur and Jón Gunnar Bernburg. 2018. “Opportunity Beliefs and Class Differences in Subjective Status Injustice during the Great Recession in Iceland.” Acta Sociologica 61(3), 283–299.
Oddsson, Guðmundur. 2018. “Class Imagery and Subjective Social Location during Iceland’s Economic Crisis, 2008-2010.” Sociological Focus 51(1): 14-30.
Oddsson, Guðmundur. 2016. “Neoliberal Globalization and Heightened Perceptions of Class Division in Iceland.” The Sociological Quarterly 57(3): 462–490.
Oddsson, Guðmundur. 2010. “Class Awareness in Iceland.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 30(5/6): 292-312.
Savage, Mike. 2015. Class in the 21st Century. London: Pelican.
Schmidt, Volker. 2006. “Multiple Modernities or Varieties of Modernity?” Current Sociology 54(1): 77–97.