Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
SOC1 Social class, class remains central to the constitution and meaning…
SOC1 Social class
Bev Skeggs
TV culture aimed at working class women
"You are what you eat" ads
"To smoke, drink, be fat and
publicly fight and/or participate in loud hen parties is a national sin."
Pure white and dirty white
The rhetoric reveals that whiteness does not naturally predispose people
to social privilege and success while making the figural association between
black and working class disappear (Haylett, 2001).
Property
Property is no longer a thing, a
relationship between a person and a thing, or a network of relationships
between persons with respect to things, or even a bundle of rights
Instead, property is determined as a set of entitlements, which are exclusive to an owner,
or to the holder of the proprietary interest.
Only some people can utilize culture
as a form of property in themselves, and only some are entitled to the culture
of others.
culture has become a property invested in the middle-class person in the tradition of possessive individualism and institutionalized through law
investigation into how some people make investments in their cultural characteristics, which can then be used to realize value in areas (such as the economic), protected by legal property rights.
What is significant in the use of culture
as a resource in self-making is how different forms of subjectivity are made available to different groups;
subjects with and without value; different forms
of subjectivity therefore constitute and display class differences.
Exclusion from, and access to, objects, people and
practices to propertize, are central to both the formation of middle-class subjectivity
(in its various new configurations) and the exclusion of others from
recognizable worth, that is, proper personhood).
The decision to propertize or
not constructs the object as property. So the ethical imperative is propertized
when some people are proper and others not.
Studies of the new middle class, such as Featherstone (1991) and Savage et
al. (1992), have shown how central culture is to increasing the exchange-value
of one’s overall volume and composition of capitals.
The self
a plurality of forms of selfhood are represented
as solutions to the dilemmas of existence.
It is up to the individual to ‘choose’ their repertoire of the self.
Others do not have access to ‘choice’, all they can display is ‘lack’; lack of access to the techniques for telling themselves and lack of access to the
right culture; they cannot perform the good self because they do not have the cultural resources to do so.
Class, for Frow, is not a pre-existing slot to which we are assigned, but
a set of contestable relations
it is not a given, but a process.
It is the process of evaluation, moral attribution and authorization in the production of subjectivity
Skeggs would argue, is central to understanding contemporary class relations.
Understand class as
how they are being defined through the responses and
power of others
Bourdieu's What Makes a Social Class?
On Marx
Although he uses (notably in La distinction) Marxist terms such as “petite bourgeoisie”, Bourdieu clearly distinguishes himself from the Marxist approach to classes, whose “substantialism” he rejects.
Guided above all by political motives, Marx was indeed more pre-occupied with the concern for distinguishing and constructing classes, rather than with understanding the processes by which a group comes to exist as a class.
Therefore, contrary to Marx, Bourdieu underlines that social classes do not exist, what exists is a social space
in chap 2 of La Distinction, Bourdieu denounces the tendency to have a unidimensional view on social classes and by representing them from the econ dimension
disapproves of expressions like social climbing, social decline because they represent a vertical view of the social space
Marx purely structural-economic and relational
Not interested in life-style and life-opportunity chances
Conception of the social space
Social space structured by 3 dimensions that distribute agents
volume of capitals
related to quantity so obviously the dominant classes are those that dispose of more capitals
resources are rare and unequally distributed which leads to certain profist — it is because there are differences that the accumulation of capitals are valued (speaking a correct French that has a value on the school ‘market’ — link to possible language in anthropology)
Measured and carries through our ways of occupying the world — or lack therof
Structure and composition of capitals
the social space is therefore structured according to Bourdieu in chiasmus
to the economic capital of some is opposed the cultural capital of others (prof vs industry owners)
but of course the capitals are still related (for example to go to museums one still needs to have cultural capital to understand on the one hand and econ capital to pay the entrance and transportation fees, on the other)
social hierarchy also intimately linked with geographical hierarchy
Evolution of these 2 dimensions in time
In relation to social reproduction
Within the social space, the domination that is permitted by the holding of a capital is an issue of struggle
there are therefore different factions in the same class
Impose and limit access to the resource they possess the most
For example, industry leaders will not vote for politicians that advance programs in favour of cultural capitals in fear that the power balance will tip to the faction with more cultural capital
class relations are not just economic
relations but also relations of superiority/inferiority, normality/abnormality, judgment/shame’
Theoretical class
Theoretical classes are first defined in relation to the position occupied by individuals in social space.
only virtual
Constructed class
the actualization of certain virtualities at the end of a specific construction work. Bourdieu is structural insofar as he introduced 2 concepts ^^ to explain society as a space with multiple dimensions
Habitus:
“structured and structuring structure" because the ‘structured structures’ are shaped by our social construct, but it’s also a ‘structuring structure’ because our habitus is no longer a consequence, it will be a cause; in other words, it’s in our habitus that we will take our social conducts to adapt to new circumstances.
Fields:
division of labour is at the origin of specialised domaines that Bourdieu calls fields
space of competition where individuals endowed with resources (or capital) compete for the monopoly of legitimacy
It is therefore a struggle above all symbolic. Thus there is no single central conflict for Bourdieu but a multiplicity of social struggles
However, it is not enough to have sufficient resources or to be in the same field to constitute a class.
a class is a group mobilized by and for the defense of its interests and can only achieve social existence at the end of a collective work of construction that is inseparably theoretical and practical.
It is for example through a process of political delegation that a group exists through its spokesperson.
As Bourdieu demonstrated, it was the French Communist Party that allowed the working class to exist at the same time that the latter made it exist. We are therefore witnessing a “circular” process of construction of classes and more generally of groups.
the signified, that identified with the signifier, the individual, the spokesperson, the bureau, the local, the committee, or the council which it represents.
sets of agents who, by virtue of occupy similar positions in social space (that is, in the powers), are subject to similar conditions of existence ing factors and, as a result, are endowed with similar which prompt them to dev similar practices
How class inequalities translate into social inequalities
Transmission of the cultural capital
common conception that the USA is the country for social mobility and the country of the "self made man" which Bourdieu rejects
in the US, inequalities linked to cultural capitals are equal if not greater than in France
As demonstrated by the unequal access to university (expensive and cultural)
Inequalities perpetuate
Linked to the growing equality in France during the Trente Glorieuses
The three decades of strong post-war growth indeed produced a temporal dynamic of reduction in inequalities in the standard of living which materialized in particular in the development of mass consumerism
Reducing of the petite and medium bourgeoisie as evidenced by H. Mendras
Faced with the "Averaging of society" the thesis of Boudon and Bourdieu concerning the conversion of Econ capital to solar capital — cultural capital
This was considered as normal and it was legitimated by the myth of meritocracy that the education system produces
Correlatively, in a context of—relative—reduction of inequalities in standard of living, inequalities in the endowment of cultural capital were called upon to produce a disparity in lifestyles capable of consolidating the boundaries between social groups threatened by the dynamics of the years of growth, but also by improving the status of salaried work.
Social space isn't continuous
The social world and space aren't in a perpetual movement with permanent changes. It is dynamic, sure, but there are certain stability and inertia
The access to capitals aren't geographically uniform
The disparity between the spatial distribution of groups in geographical spaces also translates into ruptures and barriers within the social space
For ex cultural products are harder to access if you're a farmer
Social hierarchy is intimately linked to geographical hierarchy
social space is traversed by diverse tensions (conflictual, symbolical, historical) that forces agents to take actions and bring new answers with the risk of losing their positions
Distribution of symbolic value that legitimises certain practices
Compared to Boudon
Inequality of chances
Difference in prob for students to attain the highest level of education based on their social origins
Due to the cultural heritage but also the demand for education
More cultural resources on the one hand
but the demand for longer education for wealthier families while working class in shorter educations
So for working class families having
any
diploma is already a good start because it serves to conserve or even surpass kids/parents
Boudon vs Bourdieu: cultural heritage has very little effect on the social trajectory and that it is mainly on the side of economic inequalities that we must seek explanations
Durkheim's The Division of Labour in society
Traditional vs industrial
Simple and bounded together by norms customs and moral beliefs that produced conformity
Complex division of labour linked to occupational specialisation thus making individuals dependent on each other
Division of natural talents and social functions assigned to them
Class issue where talented members of working class were denied opportunities that were being held by higher class
Unequal contracts between the groups
Unequal bargaining positions
1 group living from the acceptance of services while the other can afford to do without them
Culture is bad for you
Who produces culture reflects social inequality.
Henna case study
Talk about social capital in the film industry as a SEA woman
Consuming culture
Social classes
Have different conceptions because they are trying to explain different things
Not mutually exclusive
Imogen Tyler and Bruce Bennett
Thesis
class remains central to the constitution and meaning of celebrity.
celebrity culture is not only thoroughly embedded
in everyday social practices, but is more radically constitutive of contemporary social life.
the ways in which celebrity produces
and sustains class relations
Celebrity is a key vehicle through
which value is distributed in public culture, and is instrumental in practices of distinction-
making between individuals and groups in everyday life.
Scholars in media and cultural studies have long argued that social classifications are complex political formations characterized by representational struggles.
Link to Bourdieu's representation and spokesperson thesis
other social cues such as accent, ways of
dressing, eating habits, television viewing habits, as a means of making class judgements
central role of celebrity culture in legitimating often virulent class antagonisms in contemporary Britain.
Imogen Tyler explored the ways that a new
vocabulary of social class had emerged in Britain in which the word ‘chav’ has become a ubiquitous term of abuse for white working-class subjects.
celebrity has become an important means of
identifying class distinctions, precisely because older forms of class distinction no longer operate effectively.
social class is not only the unacknowledged framing device through which individual celebrities are judged and valued, but the central axis from which this entire field of cultural production unfolds.
A better understanding of the ways in which celebrity stories, bodies and identities are used and exchanged in the processes and circuits of class-making
not only enables a greater awareness of the lived inequalities reproduced by these processes of social classification
but also enables prejudice to be identified and challenged.
Thesis
Class still matters because it serves to understand power and inequality
Those with power claim that class doesn't exist (but it's not true it is organised in favour of certain grp)
a reversal of Marx, moving beyond (but still with) the economic into understanding how class is made through cultural values premised on morality, embodied in personhood and realized (or not) as a property value in symbolic systems of exchange.
it hotly disputes the debates that suggest class is in decline; rather, it suggests class is so insinuated in the intimate making of self and culture that it is even more ubiquitous than previously articulated, if more difficult to pin down, leaking beyond the traditional measures of classification.