Sociology Plus
Dual Consciousness Definition
Dual consciousness is a term describing the worldview of people who simultaneously hold two apparently inconsistent sets of beliefs. Developed by Michael Mann to characterize working-class attitudes toward society, it refers to the way workers accept the dominant values of the middle class while at the same time developing their own oppositional attitudes. Holding these two sets of attitudes at once is, on this account, a normative feature of the proletariat — resolving, for example, the apparent contradiction that workers generally agree individuals are free to withdraw their labor, yet also believe they should not strike.
Origins of the Two Belief Sets
In the sociological debates of the 1970s about the class consciousness of industrial workers, the phenomenon was traced to two distinct sources. One set of beliefs is formed by the dominant culture, received through general socialization and especially through the educational system. The other is generated by the practical experience of work and working-class life, which often runs counter to received ideas about society. The working class is held to be particularly prone to dual consciousness precisely because everyday experience so frequently contradicts official accounts: workers may agree that strikes are usually caused by malcontents, extremists, and agitators — the received belief — while attributing strikes at their own workplace to genuine grievances known at first hand.
Abstract Beliefs versus Practical Activity
A further insight of this literature concerns how the two consciousnesses reveal themselves. Beliefs derived from the dominant culture typically surface in questionnaire research posing abstract questions, whereas experience-based beliefs show most clearly in practical activity. Many people tell social surveys they disapprove of strikes, yet participate in strikes at their own workplace — a divergence between what is said in the abstract and what is done in practice that survey researchers ignore at their peril.
Parkin’s Value Systems
Frank Parkin’s Class Inequality and Political Order (1972) captures the same distinction with the terms “dominant value system” and “subordinate value system.” The former arises because the social and political definitions of those in dominant positions become objectified and enshrined in the major institutional orders, providing the moral framework of the entire social system. The subordinate value system is generated in the local working-class community and is, in Parkin’s words, “essentially accommodative”: its representation of class structure and inequality emphasizes modes of adaptation, rather than either full endorsement of, or outright opposition to, the status quo. The concept connects closely with the dominant ideology thesis and debates over how far ruling ideas actually penetrate subordinate classes.