Economic Class != Social Class, and why.
January 25, 2016 10:38 PM Subscribe
Ever confused about why it's so hard for Americans (US) to talk about class issues? LJ blogger Siderea has some answers for you, having to do with the distinction between social and economic class.
It has long been commented that discussing class is basically taboo in American culture: but, specifically, the class which it is taboo to discuss is social class. This presents a problem for Americans because social class is a real phenomenon, an important phenomenon around which huge amounts of American policy, politics, and culture organizes. It's the elephant in the American living room.
Social class is taboo to discuss, but economic class is not, and that presents an obvious "solution": Americans conflate social and economic class so they can talk about social class under the guise of talking about economic class.
Note: unlike many other such articles, it's mostly safe to read the comments.
It has long been commented that discussing class is basically taboo in American culture: but, specifically, the class which it is taboo to discuss is social class. This presents a problem for Americans because social class is a real phenomenon, an important phenomenon around which huge amounts of American policy, politics, and culture organizes. It's the elephant in the American living room.
Social class is taboo to discuss, but economic class is not, and that presents an obvious "solution": Americans conflate social and economic class so they can talk about social class under the guise of talking about economic class.
Note: unlike many other such articles, it's mostly safe to read the comments.
Well, here in the US everyone has the same opportunity to advance their standing in society, so we're all basically one class. Right?
Right?
posted by gottabefunky at 11:28 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
Right?
posted by gottabefunky at 11:28 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
Hm. Social class is class, isn't it? And the fact that it derives from an uneasy combination of wealth, education, and occupation - the mix being potentially a source of confusion and ambiguity - is page one of the introductory class manual?
I am English, admittedly.
posted by Segundus at 11:42 PM on January 25, 2016 [6 favorites]
I am English, admittedly.
posted by Segundus at 11:42 PM on January 25, 2016 [6 favorites]
gottabefunky: "Well, here in the US everyone has the same opportunity to advance their standing in society, so we're all basically one class. Right?"
I get the sarcasm, but even given the sarcasm it seems that whole joke is predicated on the same misunderstanding being addressed. To break down the joke (always a wonderful idea, eh?): "Some people pretend that there are no classes, because everyone can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and achieve the same economic results. However, that's not actually true, economic classes exist and people don't have the same opportunities."
But what the article is pointing out is that even if everyone really did have the same economic opportunities and everyone really could achieve the same economic success — heck, even if the US suddenly implemented a policy where every single person got the exact same income — there would still be classes, because economic classes and social classes are not the same thing.
posted by Bugbread at 11:47 PM on January 25, 2016 [25 favorites]
I get the sarcasm, but even given the sarcasm it seems that whole joke is predicated on the same misunderstanding being addressed. To break down the joke (always a wonderful idea, eh?): "Some people pretend that there are no classes, because everyone can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and achieve the same economic results. However, that's not actually true, economic classes exist and people don't have the same opportunities."
But what the article is pointing out is that even if everyone really did have the same economic opportunities and everyone really could achieve the same economic success — heck, even if the US suddenly implemented a policy where every single person got the exact same income — there would still be classes, because economic classes and social classes are not the same thing.
posted by Bugbread at 11:47 PM on January 25, 2016 [25 favorites]
I think overall social mobility has definitely gone down. I think it's partly because of massive and rapid inflation. You can see it with young people unable to buy homes etc.
posted by Tfreeman at 12:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Tfreeman at 12:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
Do read through to Section VII:
The second was a lack of vocabulary with which to make their instruction as explicit as they would have preferred. This was remedied by the publication of Fussell's Class the year I turned twelve. My mother assigned the book to my sister and I and from then on, we had a common language to discuss the family's primary preoccupation. ("Mom, is this shirt too prole?")
posted by thelonius at 12:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
The second was a lack of vocabulary with which to make their instruction as explicit as they would have preferred. This was remedied by the publication of Fussell's Class the year I turned twelve. My mother assigned the book to my sister and I and from then on, we had a common language to discuss the family's primary preoccupation. ("Mom, is this shirt too prole?")
posted by thelonius at 12:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
The author's Barista example is where the model breaks down, because classes aren't anthropological categories in which each person can only belong to one of, but rather social roles that people perform. Everything is interconnected; there are no real categories.
The author still believes that some classes are "better" than others. And I believe that's the wrong, reductive conclusion to draw.
It's good that contemporaries are starting to touch on these issues, but at times it triggers my shibboleth, when I feel like people are just reinventing the wheel when they could have just read Marx or Zizek (and I'm saying, obviously, they couldn't have!).
posted by polymodus at 12:11 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]
The author still believes that some classes are "better" than others. And I believe that's the wrong, reductive conclusion to draw.
It's good that contemporaries are starting to touch on these issues, but at times it triggers my shibboleth, when I feel like people are just reinventing the wheel when they could have just read Marx or Zizek (and I'm saying, obviously, they couldn't have!).
posted by polymodus at 12:11 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]
I think it's partly because of massive and rapid inflation. You can see it with young people unable to buy homes etc.
These things are opposed to each other. Inflation is what allows young people to buy homes by devaluing the savings of older buyers and devaluing the debts of younger buyers.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 12:20 AM on January 26, 2016 [17 favorites]
These things are opposed to each other. Inflation is what allows young people to buy homes by devaluing the savings of older buyers and devaluing the debts of younger buyers.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 12:20 AM on January 26, 2016 [17 favorites]
I have read this thing twice, because my experience is so 180 degrees from what is stated, I'm convinced I must be reading it wrong.
In my extended social group*, social class/behaviour is explicitly favoured over economic class in deciding membership.
No one would ever dream of discussing openly how much money that doctor is pulling down, or how much the plumber bills yearly, but they certainly have strong opinions on how it is used.
Tacky, nouveau riche, "It's a bit much, isn't it?" are all comments on class, not money.
"That's kinda weird, isn't it?" (Said of a doctor who enjoys monster trucks)
"Wonder what that's all about?" (Said of an electrician with ballet tickets)
* Parents of your kids school friends, your neighbor, that guy you chat with at the gym, etc.
posted by madajb at 12:22 AM on January 26, 2016 [11 favorites]
In my extended social group*, social class/behaviour is explicitly favoured over economic class in deciding membership.
No one would ever dream of discussing openly how much money that doctor is pulling down, or how much the plumber bills yearly, but they certainly have strong opinions on how it is used.
Tacky, nouveau riche, "It's a bit much, isn't it?" are all comments on class, not money.
"That's kinda weird, isn't it?" (Said of a doctor who enjoys monster trucks)
"Wonder what that's all about?" (Said of an electrician with ballet tickets)
* Parents of your kids school friends, your neighbor, that guy you chat with at the gym, etc.
posted by madajb at 12:22 AM on January 26, 2016 [11 favorites]
The author still believes that some classes are "better" than others. And I believe that's the wrong, reductive conclusion to draw.
What conclusion do you draw, then? There has to be some reason why certain social classes are generally seen as the ones to aspire to, for yourself or your descendants, and others are the opposite. Even if it's just because being in those classes gives you easier access to money, power, comfort, fame, etc, those do sound like "better" conditions than the alternatives.
posted by Rangi at 12:24 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
What conclusion do you draw, then? There has to be some reason why certain social classes are generally seen as the ones to aspire to, for yourself or your descendants, and others are the opposite. Even if it's just because being in those classes gives you easier access to money, power, comfort, fame, etc, those do sound like "better" conditions than the alternatives.
posted by Rangi at 12:24 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think this is much more visible to immigrants, where we pretty much either choose or are adopted by certain social classes. Specifically I think being Asian American, there are actually several distinct choices--in my own family my siblings did not choose similarly.
posted by danny the boy at 12:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [21 favorites]
posted by danny the boy at 12:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [21 favorites]
But, see, that's not what the author remotely meant by "better". The author meant this b.s.:
I empathize when social classes not mine find themselves on the short end of the stick, such as in the above account of smoking regulations, but that doesn't mean I'd do anything to change that outcome.
The article fails to escape/resituate its own classism. It contains distortions.
posted by polymodus at 12:56 AM on January 26, 2016
I empathize when social classes not mine find themselves on the short end of the stick, such as in the above account of smoking regulations, but that doesn't mean I'd do anything to change that outcome.
The article fails to escape/resituate its own classism. It contains distortions.
posted by polymodus at 12:56 AM on January 26, 2016
And (sorry, one last point) I'll point out that far from "anything", what the author did was write that article for people to read.
posted by polymodus at 12:58 AM on January 26, 2016
posted by polymodus at 12:58 AM on January 26, 2016
The Three Ladder system of class that's linked in there is a very interesting article in its own right as well.
What I’ve called the Labor, Gentry, and Elite “ladders” can more easily be described as “infrastructures”. For Labor, this infrastructure is largely physical and the relevant connection is knowing how to use that physical device or space, and getting people to trust a person to competently use (without owning, because that’s out of the question for most) these resources. For the Gentry, it’s an “invisible graph” of knowledge and education and “interestingness”, comprised largely of ideas. For the Elite, it’s a tight, exclusive network centered on social connections, power, and dominance.posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:16 AM on January 26, 2016 [34 favorites]
These things are opposed to each other. Inflation is what allows young people to buy homes by devaluing the savings of older buyers and devaluing the debts of younger buyers.
Inflation above and beyond wage increases, particularly in entry-level jobs, is not what allows young people do anything except constantly get poorer.
posted by Dysk at 1:19 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
Inflation above and beyond wage increases, particularly in entry-level jobs, is not what allows young people do anything except constantly get poorer.
posted by Dysk at 1:19 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
The author meant this b.s.:
That sounded to me like a relative statement, though, not an absolute one? I don't think the author is saying their social class is better than the one being hurt by a smoking ban; they're saying that all people sympathize with their own social class, and do not naturally work against their own interests. If someone proposed a smoking-sections-required bill, the working class would be for it. One class is "better" than another to the extend that things like laws and social customs are tilted in favor of that class (which is why nobody's proposing a smoking-sections-required bill).
posted by Rangi at 1:19 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
That sounded to me like a relative statement, though, not an absolute one? I don't think the author is saying their social class is better than the one being hurt by a smoking ban; they're saying that all people sympathize with their own social class, and do not naturally work against their own interests. If someone proposed a smoking-sections-required bill, the working class would be for it. One class is "better" than another to the extend that things like laws and social customs are tilted in favor of that class (which is why nobody's proposing a smoking-sections-required bill).
posted by Rangi at 1:19 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
It also seems to me that both social and economic class are discussed sometimes and also sometimes considered inappropriate to discuss in America. I don't have a complete theory of which times are which. But the line about fleeing a lower social class forever sure does remind me of, say, my mom's family. Though she was more in the position of the author and me the next generation I think.
posted by atoxyl at 1:19 AM on January 26, 2016
posted by atoxyl at 1:19 AM on January 26, 2016
And the way race fits into that is definitely worth talking about. The story in my family is a very classic postwar one but I'm fairly certain it's mostly a story of white people (or on the other side white-looking Jewish immigrants).
posted by atoxyl at 1:23 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 1:23 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
(not that that class mobility only happens for white people but the particular way it happened was a lot easier)
posted by atoxyl at 1:25 AM on January 26, 2016
posted by atoxyl at 1:25 AM on January 26, 2016
These things are opposed to each other. Inflation is what allows young people to buy homes by devaluing the savings of older buyers and devaluing the debts of younger buyers.
Inflation above and beyond wage increases, particularly in entry-level jobs, is not what allows young people do anything except constantly get poorer.
That doesn't make any sense. Inflation is by definition paying more for the same work. It is wage increases for entry-level jobs. It is absolutely something that young people with debts want, and something that old people with savings want to avoid.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 1:51 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
Inflation above and beyond wage increases, particularly in entry-level jobs, is not what allows young people do anything except constantly get poorer.
That doesn't make any sense. Inflation is by definition paying more for the same work. It is wage increases for entry-level jobs. It is absolutely something that young people with debts want, and something that old people with savings want to avoid.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 1:51 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
Inflation is by definition paying more for the same work. It is wage increases for entry-level jobs.
Inflation is measured in consumer prices, not average wages. They are not necessarily correlated. It wouldn't make sense to talk about changes in real wages (i.e. inflation-adjusted) otherwise.
posted by Dysk at 1:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [5 favorites]
Inflation is measured in consumer prices, not average wages. They are not necessarily correlated. It wouldn't make sense to talk about changes in real wages (i.e. inflation-adjusted) otherwise.
posted by Dysk at 1:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [5 favorites]
That's a fair point. Nevertheless, inflation is going to affect old people much more than young people since wages should follow (somewhat) inflation.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 2:02 AM on January 26, 2016
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 2:02 AM on January 26, 2016
The second was a lack of vocabulary with which to make their instruction as explicit as they would have preferred. This was remedied by the publication of Fussell's Class the year I turned twelve. My mother assigned the book to my sister and I and from then on, we had a common language to discuss the family's primary preoccupation. ("Mom, is this shirt too prole?")
That is a seriously interesting and cool mom. Hmm, gotta find my old copy so I can turn my son onto it in a couple of years.
posted by emmet at 2:18 AM on January 26, 2016
That is a seriously interesting and cool mom. Hmm, gotta find my old copy so I can turn my son onto it in a couple of years.
posted by emmet at 2:18 AM on January 26, 2016
These things are opposed to each other. Inflation is what allows young people to buy homes by devaluing the savings of older buyers and devaluing the debts of younger buyers.
Also: increasing the value of the investments (real estate and other) of the older people selling their houses. Real estate value increasing faster than average wages makes real estate a great investment (retrospectively, looking back 30 years ago), and also freezes out younger people from buying starter houses.
posted by theorique at 2:20 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
Also: increasing the value of the investments (real estate and other) of the older people selling their houses. Real estate value increasing faster than average wages makes real estate a great investment (retrospectively, looking back 30 years ago), and also freezes out younger people from buying starter houses.
posted by theorique at 2:20 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
the author starts off with a not very useful definition of "economic class" as the amount of money you make, rather than how you make your money. specifically, do you live based on payment for the labor you perform or on earnings from capital you control. the reason why this distinction is important is that these two "classes" are in conflict because the only way to "earn" money from capital is to extract it from the value of the labor performed by someone else. this conflict between people who perform necessary labor and people who extract money from ownership is different entirely from the question of how much money you make for your labor.
however, a person could ask why "professionals" often make more than "blue collar" types. the answer usually comes down to the process by which the people who own things decide how to extract money from labor but ultimately everyone involved in a business is taking money from the same pot. so, by "bettering yourself" by getting a college degree you are signaling your desire to take more money from that pot than someone else by allying yourself with the people who set the wages.
professionals have chosen the other side in that "class" conflict, which explains the resentment...
posted by ennui.bz at 2:35 AM on January 26, 2016 [8 favorites]
however, a person could ask why "professionals" often make more than "blue collar" types. the answer usually comes down to the process by which the people who own things decide how to extract money from labor but ultimately everyone involved in a business is taking money from the same pot. so, by "bettering yourself" by getting a college degree you are signaling your desire to take more money from that pot than someone else by allying yourself with the people who set the wages.
professionals have chosen the other side in that "class" conflict, which explains the resentment...
posted by ennui.bz at 2:35 AM on January 26, 2016 [8 favorites]
Fussell's book is pretty interesting, but it too does not escape its own classism. It's also hilariously wrong, in that it talks about how thanks to unions, working class people can, like, afford boats and nice houses and stuff and so there really isn't meaningful inequality anymore - a thing that wasn't true even when the book was written and certainly isn't true now. It's characteristic of elites that they see anything short of grinding poverty among working people as a sign that there "isn't inequality".
One thing that I don't think anyone does very well: talking about working class intellectuals/working class smart people. The assumption is that if you're a smart working class person, you will want to express your intelligence in ways that match up with middle/upper class expectations and you'll also move up, class-wise. This does not match what I have actually observed.
One of the points made in Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (which I thought was interesting but very "third way" for a book that purported to critique that sort of thing) was about a shift in US discourse on class. The book asserts that the primary discourse among working class people through the 1970s was that the working class rises or falls together - social interventions like unions and legal reform were the best ways to improve life for working class people. The popular understanding was that you deserved a decent life as a mill worker or check-out clerk.
Then the book traces a shift (in the chapter on Saturday Night Fever, actually) to an idea that what's important is not decent things for everyone but the opportunity to rise out of the working class - it doesn't matter if most working class people get marginalized as long as some marginalized people can get rich and join the middle class. And that this is a mass culture idea but also a policy idea. (Which we certainly see today with all the "everyone should have the opportunity to get a good job by getting a college degree, because college degrees magically produce good jobs" business.)
Honestly, I feel like this LJ entry is very much the same thing, especially toward the end - class we will always have with us and what's important is the ability of the "better" sort of working class people to stop being working class.
There's a lot of fragmentation in terms of how supposedly "class-bound" ideas are expressed. With this whole "the proles love to smoke and oppose smoking bans" thing: in my social circles, the most ardent restaurant smoking ban proponents were working class wait staff and barristas, because they spent their shifts in smokey restaurants - again, when you start bringing actual labor in, things look different.
posted by Frowner at 2:41 AM on January 26, 2016 [57 favorites]
One thing that I don't think anyone does very well: talking about working class intellectuals/working class smart people. The assumption is that if you're a smart working class person, you will want to express your intelligence in ways that match up with middle/upper class expectations and you'll also move up, class-wise. This does not match what I have actually observed.
One of the points made in Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (which I thought was interesting but very "third way" for a book that purported to critique that sort of thing) was about a shift in US discourse on class. The book asserts that the primary discourse among working class people through the 1970s was that the working class rises or falls together - social interventions like unions and legal reform were the best ways to improve life for working class people. The popular understanding was that you deserved a decent life as a mill worker or check-out clerk.
Then the book traces a shift (in the chapter on Saturday Night Fever, actually) to an idea that what's important is not decent things for everyone but the opportunity to rise out of the working class - it doesn't matter if most working class people get marginalized as long as some marginalized people can get rich and join the middle class. And that this is a mass culture idea but also a policy idea. (Which we certainly see today with all the "everyone should have the opportunity to get a good job by getting a college degree, because college degrees magically produce good jobs" business.)
Honestly, I feel like this LJ entry is very much the same thing, especially toward the end - class we will always have with us and what's important is the ability of the "better" sort of working class people to stop being working class.
There's a lot of fragmentation in terms of how supposedly "class-bound" ideas are expressed. With this whole "the proles love to smoke and oppose smoking bans" thing: in my social circles, the most ardent restaurant smoking ban proponents were working class wait staff and barristas, because they spent their shifts in smokey restaurants - again, when you start bringing actual labor in, things look different.
posted by Frowner at 2:41 AM on January 26, 2016 [57 favorites]
Or use Donleavy's The Unexpurgated Code. You might not actually climb socially, but you'll enjoy yourself anyway.
Upon Not Being To The Manner Born
When this unpleasant remark is made about you, stand up, making sure your flies are closed and announce in a firm voice.
‘To hell with that shit.’
posted by chavenet at 3:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]
Upon Not Being To The Manner Born
When this unpleasant remark is made about you, stand up, making sure your flies are closed and announce in a firm voice.
‘To hell with that shit.’
posted by chavenet at 3:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]
Have you ever observed rich people involved in some kind of minor commercial or social dispute? This is where the power of entitlement shines. They have never, not once, in their entire lives, considered it to be a possibility that they will be ignored or see their interests dismissed. They talk and act like that and it works, it gets results.
posted by thelonius at 4:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [17 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 4:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [17 favorites]
That's a fair point. Nevertheless, inflation is going to affect old people much more than young people since wages should follow (somewhat) inflation.
"Should" does not mean "does". In practice, because of inflation being much higher than wage increases in no small part due to the appreciation of property (largely held by older people rather than younger people) as well as things like senior pay levels rising much faster than junior pay levels, that is quite simply not true in practice.
posted by Dysk at 4:15 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
"Should" does not mean "does". In practice, because of inflation being much higher than wage increases in no small part due to the appreciation of property (largely held by older people rather than younger people) as well as things like senior pay levels rising much faster than junior pay levels, that is quite simply not true in practice.
posted by Dysk at 4:15 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
aren't anthropological categories in which each person can only belong to one of, but rather social roles that people perform. Everything is interconnected; there are no real categories.
If only there was a mathematical framework by which membership degree across multiple sets could be defined on a continuous scale.
posted by cromagnon at 4:34 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
If only there was a mathematical framework by which membership degree across multiple sets could be defined on a continuous scale.
posted by cromagnon at 4:34 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
Nevertheless, inflation is going to affect old people much more than young people since wages should follow (somewhat) inflation.
Wages have not kept pace with inflation for some years now.
This means that every hour of your labor has less purchasing power as inflation continues.
In other words, if your wages are stagnant, and most people's wages are, it will be increasingly difficult to buy a house or other big-ticket items that get increasingly expensive.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:43 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
Wages have not kept pace with inflation for some years now.
This means that every hour of your labor has less purchasing power as inflation continues.
In other words, if your wages are stagnant, and most people's wages are, it will be increasingly difficult to buy a house or other big-ticket items that get increasingly expensive.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:43 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
This isn't a hard piece to nitpick details as well as criticize larger points, but I thought it was a good effort and raised some interesting points.
This may come as a rude shock, but while most people would appreciate more money, not everybody wants to perform middle-classness. There are probably quite a lot of people who would prefer to move up the economic ladder not by going to college and taking up desk work and changing how they dress and speak, but by getting raises and being paid overtime when they work it and not having to endure wage theft and getting to dress and speak as they are accustomed.
I see this a lot in the people I work with. A very small number of them made that transition through going to school and crossing into professional work, but most did not and aren't interested in doing so at all. And there are benefits to never taking on that kind of managerial/professional role in terms of work/life balance and job flexibility, though also costs both physical and financial; it's also a difficult and risky transition to attempt and the costs of failure can be life-alteringly high.
One thing that I don't think anyone does very well: talking about working class intellectuals/working class smart people. The assumption is that if you're a smart working class person, you will want to express your intelligence in ways that match up with middle/upper class expectations and you'll also move up, class-wise. This does not match what I have actually observed.
The edge cases are to me the most interesting ways to see class in action. The author is a highly educated and culturally middle class person who says she is earning a very low income, for example, or the working class intellectual that you mention. Those are the kinds of cases where the pieces don't "fit" in the expected way and where the sausage making of class gets exposed.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:57 AM on January 26, 2016 [13 favorites]
This may come as a rude shock, but while most people would appreciate more money, not everybody wants to perform middle-classness. There are probably quite a lot of people who would prefer to move up the economic ladder not by going to college and taking up desk work and changing how they dress and speak, but by getting raises and being paid overtime when they work it and not having to endure wage theft and getting to dress and speak as they are accustomed.
I see this a lot in the people I work with. A very small number of them made that transition through going to school and crossing into professional work, but most did not and aren't interested in doing so at all. And there are benefits to never taking on that kind of managerial/professional role in terms of work/life balance and job flexibility, though also costs both physical and financial; it's also a difficult and risky transition to attempt and the costs of failure can be life-alteringly high.
One thing that I don't think anyone does very well: talking about working class intellectuals/working class smart people. The assumption is that if you're a smart working class person, you will want to express your intelligence in ways that match up with middle/upper class expectations and you'll also move up, class-wise. This does not match what I have actually observed.
The edge cases are to me the most interesting ways to see class in action. The author is a highly educated and culturally middle class person who says she is earning a very low income, for example, or the working class intellectual that you mention. Those are the kinds of cases where the pieces don't "fit" in the expected way and where the sausage making of class gets exposed.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:57 AM on January 26, 2016 [13 favorites]
Having grown up as a child of parents from two vastly different social classes, I've always been very aware of the differences. My dad is from a hilltop mining town in Pennsylvania while my mom grew up in a fancy apartment tower in Riverdale with a live-in maid. They both ended up in NJ as teenagers and weren't that far off economically by that time but there was always a huge gap class-wise. Shuffling back an forth between visits to relatives of both sides during the holidays were always a surreal experience and I never felt like I belonged to either class.
Money was a component but there was always obviously much more than going on than just income. It didn't matter how much money my dad could make, there was no way that his in-laws were going to accept him. My mom's mom was very much not racist or even homophobic (which in retrospect is amazing for someone born in 1907) but she was so very classist and dad was never going to measure up.
posted by octothorpe at 5:07 AM on January 26, 2016 [7 favorites]
Money was a component but there was always obviously much more than going on than just income. It didn't matter how much money my dad could make, there was no way that his in-laws were going to accept him. My mom's mom was very much not racist or even homophobic (which in retrospect is amazing for someone born in 1907) but she was so very classist and dad was never going to measure up.
posted by octothorpe at 5:07 AM on January 26, 2016 [7 favorites]
That's a fair point. Nevertheless, inflation is going to affect old people much more than young people since wages should follow (somewhat) inflation.
"Should" does not mean "does". In practice, because of inflation being much higher than wage increases in no small part due to the appreciation of property (largely held by older people rather than younger people) as well as things like senior pay levels rising much faster than junior pay levels, that is quite simply not true in practice.
Yes, it does. "Real wages" have been stagnant for a really long time. E.g. [Link]
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 5:24 AM on January 26, 2016
"Should" does not mean "does". In practice, because of inflation being much higher than wage increases in no small part due to the appreciation of property (largely held by older people rather than younger people) as well as things like senior pay levels rising much faster than junior pay levels, that is quite simply not true in practice.
Yes, it does. "Real wages" have been stagnant for a really long time. E.g. [Link]
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 5:24 AM on January 26, 2016
From that link: "For most U.S. workers, real wages — that is, after inflation is taken into account — have been flat or even falling for decades [...] What gains have been made, have gone to the upper income brackets."
That supports the idea that younger people - generally in more junior positions, earning less - have not benefited from inflation in the suggested way, because wages quite simply have not followed inflation, particularly for those at the bottom.
And as far as this as economic principle goes, the world is bigger than the US. If the theory that wages follow inflation held generally, to the benefit of young people, this would be impossible.
posted by Dysk at 5:35 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
That supports the idea that younger people - generally in more junior positions, earning less - have not benefited from inflation in the suggested way, because wages quite simply have not followed inflation, particularly for those at the bottom.
And as far as this as economic principle goes, the world is bigger than the US. If the theory that wages follow inflation held generally, to the benefit of young people, this would be impossible.
posted by Dysk at 5:35 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
You know who really understands class? Whoever puts the ads at the bottom of web pages.
I just spent a good half-hour pondering class issues, and was congratulating myself on my ability to move seamlessly between classes (I now live in a DC suburb that is "classier" than the Detroit suburb I grew up in).
Then I saw it: an ad at the bottom of the page, for boots at JC Penny.
You can fool some of the people, some of the time, but you can't fool the algorithm that serves up the ads.
posted by selfmedicating at 5:37 AM on January 26, 2016 [41 favorites]
I just spent a good half-hour pondering class issues, and was congratulating myself on my ability to move seamlessly between classes (I now live in a DC suburb that is "classier" than the Detroit suburb I grew up in).
Then I saw it: an ad at the bottom of the page, for boots at JC Penny.
You can fool some of the people, some of the time, but you can't fool the algorithm that serves up the ads.
posted by selfmedicating at 5:37 AM on January 26, 2016 [41 favorites]
In the UK, class has been a sort of pseudo-ethnicity for a while. It is possible to identify as working-class despite being the child of a doctor and a university lecturer, because one's grandfather was a postman or a coal miner. It's a little like the phenomenon of identifying as a Catholic despite being nonreligious, in the sense of both being formed by outside perception of oneself.
There is a fascinating book titled “Consumed”, by Harry Wallop (himself the descendant of impoverished landed gentry on one side and a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant who made his fortune selling clothing on the other side) which attempts to sort out how self-identified class works in the UK. Wallop's thesis, in a nutshell, is that, while in the old days, class used to be about what you produced, now it's about what you consume, and that the classes of the UK are distinct cultures/tribes identified by consumer choices, habits, dress and such. The ones he listed included “Sun Skittlers” (who play skittles and read The Sun; i.e., close to traditional working-class), “Wood-Burning Stovers” (well-off types who fetishise simplicity), “Asda Mums” (poorer people struggling to give their kids a push up) and “Portland Privateers” (the wealthy people who live in exclusive luxury apartments; named after an exclusive maternity hospital where they have their children). Wallop mentions the anthropological differences between these cultures and what they regard as declassé.
posted by acb at 6:06 AM on January 26, 2016 [8 favorites]
There is a fascinating book titled “Consumed”, by Harry Wallop (himself the descendant of impoverished landed gentry on one side and a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant who made his fortune selling clothing on the other side) which attempts to sort out how self-identified class works in the UK. Wallop's thesis, in a nutshell, is that, while in the old days, class used to be about what you produced, now it's about what you consume, and that the classes of the UK are distinct cultures/tribes identified by consumer choices, habits, dress and such. The ones he listed included “Sun Skittlers” (who play skittles and read The Sun; i.e., close to traditional working-class), “Wood-Burning Stovers” (well-off types who fetishise simplicity), “Asda Mums” (poorer people struggling to give their kids a push up) and “Portland Privateers” (the wealthy people who live in exclusive luxury apartments; named after an exclusive maternity hospital where they have their children). Wallop mentions the anthropological differences between these cultures and what they regard as declassé.
posted by acb at 6:06 AM on January 26, 2016 [8 favorites]
the author starts off with a not very useful definition of "economic class" as the amount of money you make, rather than how you make your money.
I think this is really quite important. What it raises for me is the need to think through why we talk about social class. I feel like it's very easy to get into "class is best understood by amusing taxonomy a la Fussell (or perhaps Wallop?)" but then you end up with the question of why you care. After all, you might as well taxonomize different teen subcultures, or different varieties of punk house, or get into the difference between preppy men's style bloggers and tech-influenced ones.
It seems like one might try to understand class in order to understand how inequality is perpetuated, and there it seems like while culture is an aspect of class policing, the analysis is useless unless you have a theory about what different economic classes are, what kind of power they have and how they relate to each other. So someone who "has capital" has different social power and different constraints (far fewer - they don't have to fear being fired or blacklisted!) than someone who is, even, a very skilled professional. Some people have direct access to political power through being economically able to run for office or to personally get the ears of elites; others have powerful professional associations even if they can't do much personally; others may have unions, maybe; many have nothing.
One might even argue that a strict culturalist theory of class basically obscures the determining economic relationship.
A lot of discourse about the "rules" of class are basically "how sad it is that people are prevented from moving up". That's definitely the discourse that I grew up with, and how I understood my own experience - that it is sad/snobbish/unfair that I did not have access to the social knowledge I needed to go from being a clever but basically upper working class college student to negotiating all the stuff you need to know and do to get a proper professional class job. How sad that I was excluded and am now condemned to pink collar labor! (I am pretty sure that I am held up as a bad example for the children of some senior people here - I went to the same college that their children are attending and did extremely well there, but I'm only a principal secretary and not a professional.)
(The truth is, pink collar labor would be pretty sweet if it were more fairly compensated and led to a secure retirement - which is entirely possible; that it does not is a policy choice.)
But the fact is that most people like me can't change classes, because the system functions by having a large, economically vulnerable working class. That's how we get rich people. No matter what people like me do or learn, the system will always adjust itself so that most of us stay where we're born.
posted by Frowner at 6:28 AM on January 26, 2016 [17 favorites]
I think this is really quite important. What it raises for me is the need to think through why we talk about social class. I feel like it's very easy to get into "class is best understood by amusing taxonomy a la Fussell (or perhaps Wallop?)" but then you end up with the question of why you care. After all, you might as well taxonomize different teen subcultures, or different varieties of punk house, or get into the difference between preppy men's style bloggers and tech-influenced ones.
It seems like one might try to understand class in order to understand how inequality is perpetuated, and there it seems like while culture is an aspect of class policing, the analysis is useless unless you have a theory about what different economic classes are, what kind of power they have and how they relate to each other. So someone who "has capital" has different social power and different constraints (far fewer - they don't have to fear being fired or blacklisted!) than someone who is, even, a very skilled professional. Some people have direct access to political power through being economically able to run for office or to personally get the ears of elites; others have powerful professional associations even if they can't do much personally; others may have unions, maybe; many have nothing.
One might even argue that a strict culturalist theory of class basically obscures the determining economic relationship.
A lot of discourse about the "rules" of class are basically "how sad it is that people are prevented from moving up". That's definitely the discourse that I grew up with, and how I understood my own experience - that it is sad/snobbish/unfair that I did not have access to the social knowledge I needed to go from being a clever but basically upper working class college student to negotiating all the stuff you need to know and do to get a proper professional class job. How sad that I was excluded and am now condemned to pink collar labor! (I am pretty sure that I am held up as a bad example for the children of some senior people here - I went to the same college that their children are attending and did extremely well there, but I'm only a principal secretary and not a professional.)
(The truth is, pink collar labor would be pretty sweet if it were more fairly compensated and led to a secure retirement - which is entirely possible; that it does not is a policy choice.)
But the fact is that most people like me can't change classes, because the system functions by having a large, economically vulnerable working class. That's how we get rich people. No matter what people like me do or learn, the system will always adjust itself so that most of us stay where we're born.
posted by Frowner at 6:28 AM on January 26, 2016 [17 favorites]
This is an incredible article, but I think where it really shines is talking about how social class members use the law to protect the interests of their class. The smoking ban is a big one, but it shows in so many other legislative struggles as well.
posted by corb at 6:29 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by corb at 6:29 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm hopelessly middle-class by Paul Fussell's definition, as I think about class an awful lot. Most of this is because, danny the boy, I didn't grow up in the US, and thus the fact that social class exists here as a system apart from (though intertwined with) economic class is more obvious. Also, I grew up in India, where no one even tries to pretend that there aren't social classes, and where I'd say we were pretty firmly in the upper middle-class. For example, take Antilia, Mukesh Ambani's home, which is the world's second most expensive private residence. When my parents' friends talk about how ugly it is - they're making a class judgment. Ambani may have a lot of money, but he doesn't have taste, according to the norms of my parents' class.
In the US, I see these judgments all the time. If an interviewee is so gauche as to ask what the limit is for food when we take them out to lunch or to order the most expensive thing on the menu, that's a mark against them, because the interviewers are operating from middle-class norms. Wearing clothes with a lot of logos or bling is definitely a lower class marker, and everyone knows it, even if they pretend they don't. Of course, the most upper class marker of all is not caring what other people think, because you are secure in your own social position, which is why I'm incredibly aware that I'm not upper class in the US -- because I do care and I do observe. In India, I would never think twice about wearing the rattiest of flip flops to go shopping in expensive stores - here I don't have that luxury.
posted by peacheater at 6:33 AM on January 26, 2016 [18 favorites]
In the US, I see these judgments all the time. If an interviewee is so gauche as to ask what the limit is for food when we take them out to lunch or to order the most expensive thing on the menu, that's a mark against them, because the interviewers are operating from middle-class norms. Wearing clothes with a lot of logos or bling is definitely a lower class marker, and everyone knows it, even if they pretend they don't. Of course, the most upper class marker of all is not caring what other people think, because you are secure in your own social position, which is why I'm incredibly aware that I'm not upper class in the US -- because I do care and I do observe. In India, I would never think twice about wearing the rattiest of flip flops to go shopping in expensive stores - here I don't have that luxury.
posted by peacheater at 6:33 AM on January 26, 2016 [18 favorites]
You only have to be 3rd or 4th generation Irish-American to realize that "lace-curtain" or "shanty" might as well be tatooed on your forehead for all their mutability as categories.
posted by Chitownfats at 6:34 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Chitownfats at 6:34 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
You know who really understands class? Whoever puts the ads at the bottom of web pages.
That's because the best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. (Or at least they were five years ago, but that hasn't changed.)
posted by madcaptenor at 6:44 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
That's because the best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. (Or at least they were five years ago, but that hasn't changed.)
posted by madcaptenor at 6:44 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm starting to see Paris Hilton's The Simple Life in a new light.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:20 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:20 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
The author still believes that some classes are "better" than others. And I believe that's the wrong, reductive conclusion to draw.
I think the author's point is that:
1) Social classes are [sub]cultures
2) Cultures are a set of value judgements
3) People have value judgements that mostly align with a particular culture
4) A value judgement expresses a view of whether something is good or bad
If those things are true, then it becomes inevitable that the constellation of one's own value judgements express a preference for a class. That's not necessarily the one you were born into although since these are unspoken judgements you'll find it hard to perfectly fit into a much higher or lower class even if you try.
If that's true then they're just being honest about not just their own, but anyone's, inability to not believe that some classes are better than others.
I guess the question is whether believing that just because you share virtually all your value judgements with one culture and not with another means that believe that yours is better. If "believing that culture is A is better than culture B" means that "A should be allowed to dominate B" or "B should have fewer legal rights" then of course it doesn't mean that. If it just means that "subjectively, A's value judgements are better" while recognising that this doesn't reflect objective reality then there exists a way of (subjectively) ranking cultures and subcultures.
posted by atrazine at 7:44 AM on January 26, 2016 [11 favorites]
I think the author's point is that:
1) Social classes are [sub]cultures
2) Cultures are a set of value judgements
3) People have value judgements that mostly align with a particular culture
4) A value judgement expresses a view of whether something is good or bad
If those things are true, then it becomes inevitable that the constellation of one's own value judgements express a preference for a class. That's not necessarily the one you were born into although since these are unspoken judgements you'll find it hard to perfectly fit into a much higher or lower class even if you try.
If that's true then they're just being honest about not just their own, but anyone's, inability to not believe that some classes are better than others.
I guess the question is whether believing that just because you share virtually all your value judgements with one culture and not with another means that believe that yours is better. If "believing that culture is A is better than culture B" means that "A should be allowed to dominate B" or "B should have fewer legal rights" then of course it doesn't mean that. If it just means that "subjectively, A's value judgements are better" while recognising that this doesn't reflect objective reality then there exists a way of (subjectively) ranking cultures and subcultures.
posted by atrazine at 7:44 AM on January 26, 2016 [11 favorites]
You only have to be 3rd or 4th generation Irish-American to realize that "lace-curtain" or "shanty" might as well be tatooed on your forehead for all their mutability as categories.
Huh? Really? Because, well, I am fourth-generation Irish-American, and my dad's 3rd, and I have often thought that there needs to be an Irish-Catholic-American version of "WASP" to describe many of the people I grew up around. (I actually had to Google to figure out what "lace-curtain" was--it's not something I ever heard growing up, nor was "shanty," despite my dad's family in particular being really proud of being Irish-American. It's that taboo to talk class among the people I grew up with.) They're certainly not words that I was raised with.
Of course, that may be down to people who are culturally upper-middle class not wanting to discuss the realities of class itself. My experience with class has been that, as peacheater pointed out, paying attention to class is in and of itself viewed as a class marker... but it goes deeper than that, as I've met a whole bunch of socially upper/upper-middle class people who refused on any level to consider class as anything but current monetary status. Not "it's not polite," but actually responding with anxiety or anger if the topic came up and refusing to think about it. I don't think it's necessarily confidence about class that makes upper-class people not pay attention to class markers; I think it's just as likely to be guilt and refusal to admit that relative status is not earned.
posted by sciatrix at 7:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [8 favorites]
Huh? Really? Because, well, I am fourth-generation Irish-American, and my dad's 3rd, and I have often thought that there needs to be an Irish-Catholic-American version of "WASP" to describe many of the people I grew up around. (I actually had to Google to figure out what "lace-curtain" was--it's not something I ever heard growing up, nor was "shanty," despite my dad's family in particular being really proud of being Irish-American. It's that taboo to talk class among the people I grew up with.) They're certainly not words that I was raised with.
Of course, that may be down to people who are culturally upper-middle class not wanting to discuss the realities of class itself. My experience with class has been that, as peacheater pointed out, paying attention to class is in and of itself viewed as a class marker... but it goes deeper than that, as I've met a whole bunch of socially upper/upper-middle class people who refused on any level to consider class as anything but current monetary status. Not "it's not polite," but actually responding with anxiety or anger if the topic came up and refusing to think about it. I don't think it's necessarily confidence about class that makes upper-class people not pay attention to class markers; I think it's just as likely to be guilt and refusal to admit that relative status is not earned.
posted by sciatrix at 7:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [8 favorites]
The Three Ladder system of class that's linked in there is a very interesting article in its own right as well.
I was just coming here to post the same thing. On the subject of social class I like the author's assertion that, if you climb that particular ladder all the way to the very top - you find the global elite. To get in into that tiny clique you need to be super-determined and super similar to the others who are already there. And the nature of that similarity is thuggish, sociopathic evil: nothing to do with wealth or education or breeding or manners. As the author says: go all the way to the very top and you find nothing but cancer:
I was just coming here to post the same thing. On the subject of social class I like the author's assertion that, if you climb that particular ladder all the way to the very top - you find the global elite. To get in into that tiny clique you need to be super-determined and super similar to the others who are already there. And the nature of that similarity is thuggish, sociopathic evil: nothing to do with wealth or education or breeding or manners. As the author says: go all the way to the very top and you find nothing but cancer:
Whether you’re talking about a real person like Hitler, Stalin, Erik Prince, Osama bin Laden, or Kissinger, or a fictional example like The Joker, Kefka, Walter White, or Randall Flagg; when you get to the top of society, it’s always the same guy. Call it The Devil, but what’s scary is that it needs (and has) no supernatural powers; it’s human, and while one its representatives might get knocked off, another one will step up.posted by rongorongo at 7:58 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]
I thought that Three Ladders framework was fascinating, but I also think there's a category missing. It groups all classes into Labor, Gentry, or Elite -- but those all seem to be within the context of an industrialized nation. When I was thinking about my various family members and where they might fit, I realized that some of them were villagers, farmers, or poor folks from non-industrialized places -- which seems extremely different than anything in the Labor category as defined here. Should there be a fourth Ladder for the peasant (for lack of a better word) classes?
posted by ourobouros at 8:43 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by ourobouros at 8:43 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
This may come as a rude shock, but while most people would appreciate more money, not everybody wants to perform middle-classness.
This is something I was thinking about this morning. It's maybe not even about money--though of course who wouldn't want more economic power. I think it's really about the privilege that belonging to a specific social class confers. When I (not exactly consciously) chose what class I wanted to belong to, I could have chosen any one (I had access to) and would in each one have a good shot at making money. But I chose the one that would give me the most privilege. Which being an immigrant, I am also pretty sensitive to.
I was invited to have dinner with friends of friends, at restaurant week in Oakland. The draw for them was the low cost prix-fixe which included a "bottomless glass of wine". When the second course came out I asked for a different wine. My friends both assumed the bottomless glass was limited to one kind of wine. I assumed I could get whatever I wanted.
My main takeaway from this article, is not how economic class isn't social class, but that economic equality is distinct from social equality.
posted by danny the boy at 10:34 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
This is something I was thinking about this morning. It's maybe not even about money--though of course who wouldn't want more economic power. I think it's really about the privilege that belonging to a specific social class confers. When I (not exactly consciously) chose what class I wanted to belong to, I could have chosen any one (I had access to) and would in each one have a good shot at making money. But I chose the one that would give me the most privilege. Which being an immigrant, I am also pretty sensitive to.
I was invited to have dinner with friends of friends, at restaurant week in Oakland. The draw for them was the low cost prix-fixe which included a "bottomless glass of wine". When the second course came out I asked for a different wine. My friends both assumed the bottomless glass was limited to one kind of wine. I assumed I could get whatever I wanted.
My main takeaway from this article, is not how economic class isn't social class, but that economic equality is distinct from social equality.
posted by danny the boy at 10:34 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
Petty note out of the way first: I would love to know what class signifier I'm displaying when I note how bothered I am by the author choosing to write "IIII" instead of "IV," or that she never indicates that the full name and author of the text she mentions is Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell (a MeFi favorite, as a casual Google search will reveal).
That said: I would have a better grasp on this piece if I had some more context about the author and her reading on the subject. Has she read and assessed Ruby K. Payne's work? What did she think of when she read Nelson Aldrich's Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America? Or William A. Henry III's In Defense of Elitism? She mentions higher education as the one trojan horse which allows aspirants to sneak into higher social classes -- has she read Alfred Lumbrano's Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams or C.L. Dews' This Fine Place So Far From Home? How did this parse with her experience and observations? Did she read the NYT's Class Matters series? How does that journalistic examination of social class in the U.S. fail where her essay succeeds, in her estimation?
The glib criticism is "show your work." But the author doesn't show any, and I think that's what bothers me about this essay. There is a growing body of journalism and scholarship on how we (or don't) address class in the U.S., and I see none of it referenced here. I don't dispute the author's central premise, but it bothers me that this is presented as some sort of social analysis when it's really a personal essay about how the author perceives the world and crafts a contextual framework to explain her perceptions.
posted by sobell at 10:43 AM on January 26, 2016 [9 favorites]
That said: I would have a better grasp on this piece if I had some more context about the author and her reading on the subject. Has she read and assessed Ruby K. Payne's work? What did she think of when she read Nelson Aldrich's Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America? Or William A. Henry III's In Defense of Elitism? She mentions higher education as the one trojan horse which allows aspirants to sneak into higher social classes -- has she read Alfred Lumbrano's Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams or C.L. Dews' This Fine Place So Far From Home? How did this parse with her experience and observations? Did she read the NYT's Class Matters series? How does that journalistic examination of social class in the U.S. fail where her essay succeeds, in her estimation?
The glib criticism is "show your work." But the author doesn't show any, and I think that's what bothers me about this essay. There is a growing body of journalism and scholarship on how we (or don't) address class in the U.S., and I see none of it referenced here. I don't dispute the author's central premise, but it bothers me that this is presented as some sort of social analysis when it's really a personal essay about how the author perceives the world and crafts a contextual framework to explain her perceptions.
posted by sobell at 10:43 AM on January 26, 2016 [9 favorites]
I would love to know what class signifier I'm displaying when I note how bothered I am by the author choosing to write "IIII" instead of "IV"
I admit that I got really hung up on "assigned the book to my sister and I." My snobbery training runs deep.
posted by naoko at 10:59 AM on January 26, 2016 [7 favorites]
I admit that I got really hung up on "assigned the book to my sister and I." My snobbery training runs deep.
posted by naoko at 10:59 AM on January 26, 2016 [7 favorites]
I admit that I got really hung up on "assigned the book to my sister and I." My snobbery training runs deep.
Aaaaaannnnd, that's how we keep people from working class backgrounds firmly in their intellectual places.
Of course, there's also the "why did you write this if you haven't read all these books? It's all very well for George Will or someone to write without reading (and of course, to get paid for it) , but not you, prole!"
posted by Frowner at 11:10 AM on January 26, 2016 [10 favorites]
Aaaaaannnnd, that's how we keep people from working class backgrounds firmly in their intellectual places.
Of course, there's also the "why did you write this if you haven't read all these books? It's all very well for George Will or someone to write without reading (and of course, to get paid for it) , but not you, prole!"
posted by Frowner at 11:10 AM on January 26, 2016 [10 favorites]
I add that I've definitely seen very bright friends stay silent when they had interesting - even if not perfect! - things to add to various conversations, because they were sure that they would say things wrong, hadn't read the right books, would be looked down on by all the other higher class people in the room, etc.
On another note: this is why social movements fail. This is how actual working class people are kept out or driven out of social reform projects, because the cultural bias against them is so pervasive. How often have I seen people who are absolutely necessary to various projects driven out or marginalized! Pretty often, that's how often.
posted by Frowner at 11:14 AM on January 26, 2016 [19 favorites]
On another note: this is why social movements fail. This is how actual working class people are kept out or driven out of social reform projects, because the cultural bias against them is so pervasive. How often have I seen people who are absolutely necessary to various projects driven out or marginalized! Pretty often, that's how often.
posted by Frowner at 11:14 AM on January 26, 2016 [19 favorites]
Of course, there's also the "why did you write this if you haven't read all these books? It's all very well for George Will or someone to write without reading (and of course, to get paid for it) , but not you, prole!"
That wasn't my intention at all. My initial point -- which I didn't make well, if the takeaway is that I apparently read George Will and give him a free pass? -- was that if you're going to make sweeping declarations about how we treat social class versus economic class in the U.S., maybe show your work.
I apply this metric to any writing. Just because someone has a high-status byline (cough, cough, Maureen Dowd) doesn't exempt them from proving that they know what they are talking about.
posted by sobell at 11:16 AM on January 26, 2016
That wasn't my intention at all. My initial point -- which I didn't make well, if the takeaway is that I apparently read George Will and give him a free pass? -- was that if you're going to make sweeping declarations about how we treat social class versus economic class in the U.S., maybe show your work.
I apply this metric to any writing. Just because someone has a high-status byline (cough, cough, Maureen Dowd) doesn't exempt them from proving that they know what they are talking about.
posted by sobell at 11:16 AM on January 26, 2016
It's also worth noting the cultural difference in posting to a Livejournal, where the audience is generally assumed to be mostly following you for a while or to be coming in as a friend-of-a-friend. In general, that's where I'd ascribe some of the missing things that the author might assume are basically context.
Seriously, who gives a shit if the Roman numerals are accurate? Little pedantry snipes like that don't serve any purpose except to mark in-group vs. out-group and draw attention to cultural signifiers. If there's another point to them, I've missed it--and I say that as someone who has a background in classics myself.
posted by sciatrix at 11:18 AM on January 26, 2016 [8 favorites]
Seriously, who gives a shit if the Roman numerals are accurate? Little pedantry snipes like that don't serve any purpose except to mark in-group vs. out-group and draw attention to cultural signifiers. If there's another point to them, I've missed it--and I say that as someone who has a background in classics myself.
posted by sciatrix at 11:18 AM on January 26, 2016 [8 favorites]
Aaaaaannnnd, that's how we keep people from working class backgrounds firmly in their intellectual places.
Yeah, I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that so flippantly. I meant it as a critique of myself and a piece of evidence supporting the author's point.
posted by naoko at 11:24 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that so flippantly. I meant it as a critique of myself and a piece of evidence supporting the author's point.
posted by naoko at 11:24 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
I think that people who do have access to and a background in a field (or even access to academic process generally) really don't understand how inaccessible a lot of that stuff seems to people outside it. So "why didn't you, amateur LiveJournal blogger, read and cite the primary texts you would encounter if you were taking a maybe sophomore year class in this subject"...that's an unhelpful starting point.
I have a college degree and various random grad credits. I work at a university. I have about a gazillion books. I have favorite subject areas. I know my way around an academic library, and you can drop me at the Seminary Co-op and I'll know enough about stuff I'm interested in to browse happily. Even so, I am constantly struck by how difficult it can be to make a good solid start on reading contemporary material about something that interests me - I can easily miss the readable, accessible books and end up with the one difficult, dry text that I'm not really ready for; I can miss out on key scholars or key arguments; I can miss out on important facts because my reading is of necessity patchy. Why, only today I found out a really important fact about early Russian science fiction that had escaped my notice despite the fact that I've read a couple of books on the topic and read a reasonable amount of the science fiction itself.
I add that keeping up even with pop-scholarly material when you have a totally unrelated day job is challenging.
I'm not saying that one should just ignore incorrect assertions because the person making them has already made a good effort given the constraints that they face. And it would be pretty sad to refrain from suggesting interesting books on the theory that the person would have to make a substantial effort in order to access and read them.
It's just that it's very off-putting to take something that a non-academic has put a lot of thought into and that isn't even especially wrong and respond by pointing out how they haven't read all the scholarship. Of course they haven't read all the fucking scholarship - that's because the academy is virtually a closed shop.
posted by Frowner at 11:30 AM on January 26, 2016 [31 favorites]
I have a college degree and various random grad credits. I work at a university. I have about a gazillion books. I have favorite subject areas. I know my way around an academic library, and you can drop me at the Seminary Co-op and I'll know enough about stuff I'm interested in to browse happily. Even so, I am constantly struck by how difficult it can be to make a good solid start on reading contemporary material about something that interests me - I can easily miss the readable, accessible books and end up with the one difficult, dry text that I'm not really ready for; I can miss out on key scholars or key arguments; I can miss out on important facts because my reading is of necessity patchy. Why, only today I found out a really important fact about early Russian science fiction that had escaped my notice despite the fact that I've read a couple of books on the topic and read a reasonable amount of the science fiction itself.
I add that keeping up even with pop-scholarly material when you have a totally unrelated day job is challenging.
I'm not saying that one should just ignore incorrect assertions because the person making them has already made a good effort given the constraints that they face. And it would be pretty sad to refrain from suggesting interesting books on the theory that the person would have to make a substantial effort in order to access and read them.
It's just that it's very off-putting to take something that a non-academic has put a lot of thought into and that isn't even especially wrong and respond by pointing out how they haven't read all the scholarship. Of course they haven't read all the fucking scholarship - that's because the academy is virtually a closed shop.
posted by Frowner at 11:30 AM on January 26, 2016 [31 favorites]
While I take your point on the barrier to entry regarding entry-level reading materials versus deep scholarship, kindly explain to me how a series in the New York Times is somehow "the academy."
It's just that it's very off-putting to take something that a non-academic has put a lot of thought into and that isn't even especially wrong and respond by pointing out how they haven't read all the scholarship. Of course they haven't read all the fucking scholarship - that's because the academy is virtually a closed shop.
I believe my original response was: "I don't dispute the author's central premise, but it bothers me that this is presented as some sort of social analysis when it's really a personal essay about how the author perceives the world and crafts a contextual framework to explain her perceptions."
I apologize if my response to the essay was off-putting to you. Your comments have been very helpful in this thread, and I appreciate your advocacy for the perspective you're presenting in each of them.
posted by sobell at 11:44 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's just that it's very off-putting to take something that a non-academic has put a lot of thought into and that isn't even especially wrong and respond by pointing out how they haven't read all the scholarship. Of course they haven't read all the fucking scholarship - that's because the academy is virtually a closed shop.
I believe my original response was: "I don't dispute the author's central premise, but it bothers me that this is presented as some sort of social analysis when it's really a personal essay about how the author perceives the world and crafts a contextual framework to explain her perceptions."
I apologize if my response to the essay was off-putting to you. Your comments have been very helpful in this thread, and I appreciate your advocacy for the perspective you're presenting in each of them.
posted by sobell at 11:44 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
Fussell's book is, in fact, very interesting, and quite revealing about the author. Most people who write about class are deeply class-conscious in a don't-want-to-be-mistaken-for-a-'lower'-class way. It's not just education; people from more upper- backgrounds still note the distinction between themselves and 'lower-'class but better or equally educated folk.
In real life, class is divided even more finely. Southern white rednecks would not perceive themselves at the same class level as urban poor from, say, California, Class has many distinctions because tribes have lots of ways to identify their own vs. outsiders.
I would not assume that everyone wants to rise in class status. That's why Fussell created an X class designation. I doubt that anyone enjoys being snubbed, but class as an indicator of who I want to hang out with isn't very reliable.
posted by theora55 at 11:46 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]
In real life, class is divided even more finely. Southern white rednecks would not perceive themselves at the same class level as urban poor from, say, California, Class has many distinctions because tribes have lots of ways to identify their own vs. outsiders.
I would not assume that everyone wants to rise in class status. That's why Fussell created an X class designation. I doubt that anyone enjoys being snubbed, but class as an indicator of who I want to hang out with isn't very reliable.
posted by theora55 at 11:46 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]
it bothers me that this is presented as some sort of social analysis when it's really a personal essay about how the author perceives the world and crafts a contextual framework to explain her perceptions
What do you think social analysis is but a framework to explain our perceptions after we have engaged in various ways of collecting data about the world?
The difference between "a personal essay" by someone who has experienced a lot of the world, and a "qualitative social analysis" paper written by a sociologist is often a matter of accreditation and formal writing. Undervaluing the former because it's not the latter is exactly the kind of class barriers Frowner is talking about.
posted by corb at 11:49 AM on January 26, 2016 [11 favorites]
What do you think social analysis is but a framework to explain our perceptions after we have engaged in various ways of collecting data about the world?
The difference between "a personal essay" by someone who has experienced a lot of the world, and a "qualitative social analysis" paper written by a sociologist is often a matter of accreditation and formal writing. Undervaluing the former because it's not the latter is exactly the kind of class barriers Frowner is talking about.
posted by corb at 11:49 AM on January 26, 2016 [11 favorites]
Sobell - to me, the way you led with a criticism of the author's citation practices, followed by a long list of the things she either hadn't read or cited came across as a bit snippy, honestly.
But on the other hand, I think I come across as snippy on this website pretty regularly and thus probably shouldn't throw any stones, and lord knows I've certainly made many criticisms that I meant as either gentle or at the very least friendly and had them come across as harsh and judgmental.
Perhaps we could write it off as mostly the difficulty of trying to communicate nuance in writing on the internet?
I think if folks were having this conversation face to face, even the stuff about the grammar would probably come across very differently due to tone and setting.
Actually, I think there is a bit of a class and culture angle on this - I observe quite a lot of verbal rough and tumble among academics (for instance) that seems to me very hostile and anxiety-producing but that obviously doesn't prevent people from going to the bar with each other afterward. I feel like there's class-linked norms about how you criticize people, and where there isn't class solidarity/familiarity, maybe it is easy to misread someone's style.
posted by Frowner at 12:10 PM on January 26, 2016 [5 favorites]
But on the other hand, I think I come across as snippy on this website pretty regularly and thus probably shouldn't throw any stones, and lord knows I've certainly made many criticisms that I meant as either gentle or at the very least friendly and had them come across as harsh and judgmental.
Perhaps we could write it off as mostly the difficulty of trying to communicate nuance in writing on the internet?
I think if folks were having this conversation face to face, even the stuff about the grammar would probably come across very differently due to tone and setting.
Actually, I think there is a bit of a class and culture angle on this - I observe quite a lot of verbal rough and tumble among academics (for instance) that seems to me very hostile and anxiety-producing but that obviously doesn't prevent people from going to the bar with each other afterward. I feel like there's class-linked norms about how you criticize people, and where there isn't class solidarity/familiarity, maybe it is easy to misread someone's style.
posted by Frowner at 12:10 PM on January 26, 2016 [5 favorites]
Also, it shouldn't matter if the author has read Y, only whether the arguments in Y are either addressed or irrelevant.
octothorpe, smallholding peasants seem like L1 to me, in that their 'income' is proportional to their labor (after the weather and pestilence take their cut, instead of the economy for wage laborers). And landless peasants fit into the unattached unfortunate class at the very bottom. No?
posted by clew at 12:11 PM on January 26, 2016
octothorpe, smallholding peasants seem like L1 to me, in that their 'income' is proportional to their labor (after the weather and pestilence take their cut, instead of the economy for wage laborers). And landless peasants fit into the unattached unfortunate class at the very bottom. No?
posted by clew at 12:11 PM on January 26, 2016
This got me thinking about to what extent social class is visible online. G2 can be quite visible of course; we have plenty of evidence of that just above. But differentiating between G3-4, L2-4, and even E2 online must involve more subtle clues than proper citations and latin. Probably it comes down more to the venue attracting different groups. Facebook simply mirrors the real world social network. Hacker News is an often strained mix of G1-4 and E3-4. And Metafilter..?
When I'm dealing with unknown/anonymous people in email, bug reports, etc, they could be a member of any of the social ladders, and really only the subject matter gives a hint. But I know my software has users ranging all the way from the underclass to E1, having met a few such in person. So maybe I can't differentiate much online. I partly like that, and partly worry about having blinders on.
(Used to have blinders on in real life, despite my dad coming from L4 and my mom from G2. Then I moved to an area where I'm way outside the normal ranges and these divisions have been coming clearer.)
posted by joeyh at 12:56 PM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
When I'm dealing with unknown/anonymous people in email, bug reports, etc, they could be a member of any of the social ladders, and really only the subject matter gives a hint. But I know my software has users ranging all the way from the underclass to E1, having met a few such in person. So maybe I can't differentiate much online. I partly like that, and partly worry about having blinders on.
(Used to have blinders on in real life, despite my dad coming from L4 and my mom from G2. Then I moved to an area where I'm way outside the normal ranges and these divisions have been coming clearer.)
posted by joeyh at 12:56 PM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's all very well for George Will or someone to write without reading (and of course, to get paid for it)
No it's not. It's not alright at all that George Will gets paid.
posted by atoxyl at 2:07 PM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
No it's not. It's not alright at all that George Will gets paid.
posted by atoxyl at 2:07 PM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
That's why Fussell created an X class designation.
It's been quite a while since I've read Class, but I was never sure whether Fussell meant what he wrote about the the "X" class to be taken at face value. I read it that way initially and identified to a large extent with that class, but then it occurred to me that perhaps this was a bit convenient and self-congratulatory, and maybe something like that was actually his point with that chapter.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 2:36 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
It's been quite a while since I've read Class, but I was never sure whether Fussell meant what he wrote about the the "X" class to be taken at face value. I read it that way initially and identified to a large extent with that class, but then it occurred to me that perhaps this was a bit convenient and self-congratulatory, and maybe something like that was actually his point with that chapter.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 2:36 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
sciatrix: It might come down to where on the Lace-Curtain--Shanty continuum one originated. As a 4th generation Chicago Irish-American (my grandmother was carried across the Chicago River as an infant during the Great Fire) I heard these terms quite often growing up. Truth to tell, though, it has been quite a while since the last time. Borg-like assimilation?
posted by Chitownfats at 3:12 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Chitownfats at 3:12 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
We melted right into the military for two generations, which might also be part of it.
posted by sciatrix at 3:21 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sciatrix at 3:21 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
"A lot of discourse about the "rules" of class are basically "how sad it is that people are prevented from moving up".....
But the fact is that most people like me can't change classes, because the system functions by having a large, economically vulnerable working class. "
But when classes as functioning well (i.e. effectively as classes) then its not that people "can't" change classes, its that they don't even want to. One of the key points in Bourdieu's Distinction - which I thought was THE sociological text on class of the 20thC is that class members do not desire to move classes. That the other classes become somewhat incomprehensible.
And I do find it odd that Pierre Bourdieu has not been mentioned? Do you not read him in the USA because he's too french or something?
posted by mary8nne at 3:22 PM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
But the fact is that most people like me can't change classes, because the system functions by having a large, economically vulnerable working class. "
But when classes as functioning well (i.e. effectively as classes) then its not that people "can't" change classes, its that they don't even want to. One of the key points in Bourdieu's Distinction - which I thought was THE sociological text on class of the 20thC is that class members do not desire to move classes. That the other classes become somewhat incomprehensible.
And I do find it odd that Pierre Bourdieu has not been mentioned? Do you not read him in the USA because he's too french or something?
posted by mary8nne at 3:22 PM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
People do read Bourdieu - yea verily, even I have read some Bourdieu - but I don't think that particular aspect of Bourdieu applies as strongly to US class discourse as it does to Western Europe and particularly to France. We have a very, very strong discourse about the desirability and possiblity of class mobility (and that could almost be a song!) that is really one of the foundational ways that the US understands itself. It's very clearly articulated at the policy level, at the individual level, in popular movies, etc.
posted by Frowner at 4:05 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 4:05 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
And we have very little "your class is a very good class indeed, you solid artisan!" stuff, either.
posted by Frowner at 4:06 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Frowner at 4:06 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
Great topic; I've had friends & acquaintances who for some reason think of themselves as working class even though their parents paid for their education, and some whose parents gave them real estate, yet they love the mythos (like all of us amercians do) of bootstraps, Horatio Alger and all (especially in the era of punk). When I was in college, it was very fashionable to be considered working class, even though duh, you're in college. But some of us were paying for it and some of us not and it was sort of the elephant in the room. Perfectly middle class kids played poor and it annoyed; a big one was 'country'-- that if your parents had a house in the country somehow you came from a Steinbeck novel* or were real salt of the earth country-folk (!) (Americana/Alt country was very big back then)
Personally, I always had what I'd call 'class panic' in that I feared like all death of being working class because for a woman that meant likely single-motherdom and shitty jobs and dead ends. Thus I bought into the fake-upper-middle class pretenses of my bankrupt father, who also had the same class panic as he came from working class Irish parents yet moved up via the GI bill. I call it 'panic' because (probably like a lot of people) I really never knew where I belonged socially; I was poor economically but academically, I had mobility to some degree that some kids didn't have. And it doesn't hurt to be white. Also, my parent's tendency to buy on credit meant that sometimes we lived middle class, sometimes not. I wouldn't be surprised if this confusion and anxiety is the norm and not the exception.
A very insightful British author once said in (I believe) Newsweek, that what kept English people together during their economic downturn was a solid class identity, that when the shit hit the fan, people were ok to some extent when mobility died because they could revert to their old social class and have a sense of community and identity. S/he said that when that happens in America (this was the early 90s), that we probably wouldn't be so lucky because social mobility is in our narrative and we don't have a fixed class identity, we're all 'middle class'. S/he predicted we'd all go a little nuts when avenues of social mobility floundered, and I think of that quote all the time. **
*a bit of pissy exagerration on my part
**Sorry I can't link it; been looking for it for years. On the off-chance anyone knows, I'd love to see it again to see if it was as prescient as I remember it.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 4:06 PM on January 26, 2016 [10 favorites]
Personally, I always had what I'd call 'class panic' in that I feared like all death of being working class because for a woman that meant likely single-motherdom and shitty jobs and dead ends. Thus I bought into the fake-upper-middle class pretenses of my bankrupt father, who also had the same class panic as he came from working class Irish parents yet moved up via the GI bill. I call it 'panic' because (probably like a lot of people) I really never knew where I belonged socially; I was poor economically but academically, I had mobility to some degree that some kids didn't have. And it doesn't hurt to be white. Also, my parent's tendency to buy on credit meant that sometimes we lived middle class, sometimes not. I wouldn't be surprised if this confusion and anxiety is the norm and not the exception.
A very insightful British author once said in (I believe) Newsweek, that what kept English people together during their economic downturn was a solid class identity, that when the shit hit the fan, people were ok to some extent when mobility died because they could revert to their old social class and have a sense of community and identity. S/he said that when that happens in America (this was the early 90s), that we probably wouldn't be so lucky because social mobility is in our narrative and we don't have a fixed class identity, we're all 'middle class'. S/he predicted we'd all go a little nuts when avenues of social mobility floundered, and I think of that quote all the time. **
*a bit of pissy exagerration on my part
**Sorry I can't link it; been looking for it for years. On the off-chance anyone knows, I'd love to see it again to see if it was as prescient as I remember it.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 4:06 PM on January 26, 2016 [10 favorites]
I admit that I got really hung up on "assigned the book to my sister and I." My snobbery training runs deep.
Addressed in the comments as an artifact of editing process; the sentence started out as "My sister and I were..." and was reworked later. So feel free feel snobbish about it, but it's not a class marker on the author's part, just a mistake.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:36 PM on January 26, 2016
Addressed in the comments as an artifact of editing process; the sentence started out as "My sister and I were..." and was reworked later. So feel free feel snobbish about it, but it's not a class marker on the author's part, just a mistake.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:36 PM on January 26, 2016
What I’ve called the Labor, Gentry, and Elite “ladders” can more easily be described as “infrastructures”. For Labor, this infrastructure is largely physical and the relevant connection is knowing how to use that physical device or space, and getting people to trust a person to competently use (without owning, because that’s out of the question for most) these resources. For the Gentry, it’s an “invisible graph” of knowledge and education and “interestingness”, comprised largely of ideas. For the Elite, it’s a tight, exclusive network centered on social connections, power, and dominance.
I thought there already was existing literature that described exactly this kind of social stratification. Why does the author seem to claim that this model is his? For all the talk about graphs of ideas, I don't get the impression that the author is particularly interested in tracing the paths of the graph. I do get the impression of the same pseudointellectual trap of yet again putting simplified people into unproven categories. Seems more like an exercise in ideological dominance. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any good sociologists or anthropologists who think like this.
posted by polymodus at 8:14 PM on January 26, 2016
I thought there already was existing literature that described exactly this kind of social stratification. Why does the author seem to claim that this model is his? For all the talk about graphs of ideas, I don't get the impression that the author is particularly interested in tracing the paths of the graph. I do get the impression of the same pseudointellectual trap of yet again putting simplified people into unproven categories. Seems more like an exercise in ideological dominance. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any good sociologists or anthropologists who think like this.
posted by polymodus at 8:14 PM on January 26, 2016
And we have very little "your class is a very good class indeed, you solid artisan!" stuff, either.
Tradespersons, family businesses etc. are endlessly fetishized in political discourse, in an otherwise empty way.
posted by atoxyl at 8:42 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
Tradespersons, family businesses etc. are endlessly fetishized in political discourse, in an otherwise empty way.
posted by atoxyl at 8:42 PM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]
Tradespersons, family businesses etc. are endlessly fetishized in political discourse, in an otherwise empty way.
Yeah, but those occupations are all over the place, class-wise, and the discourse about them isn't really a class discourse. There was a local family jewelry business in the town where I grew up and they'd been part of the town's elite forever, endowed a local museum, etc. They weren't working class or even middle class. The degree of wealth, social influence and independence enjoyed by a tradesperson/small business person can vary so widely - it's not at all like talking about miners generally, or small farmers generally, etc. If anything it's an explicitly anti-class discourse, since it collapses, like, the woman who does hair out of her home with the woman who runs an elite independent stylist business.
posted by Frowner at 8:57 PM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
Yeah, but those occupations are all over the place, class-wise, and the discourse about them isn't really a class discourse. There was a local family jewelry business in the town where I grew up and they'd been part of the town's elite forever, endowed a local museum, etc. They weren't working class or even middle class. The degree of wealth, social influence and independence enjoyed by a tradesperson/small business person can vary so widely - it's not at all like talking about miners generally, or small farmers generally, etc. If anything it's an explicitly anti-class discourse, since it collapses, like, the woman who does hair out of her home with the woman who runs an elite independent stylist business.
posted by Frowner at 8:57 PM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]
Sure but I was responding to your use of the word "artisan."
posted by atoxyl at 10:13 PM on January 26, 2016
posted by atoxyl at 10:13 PM on January 26, 2016
And we have very little "your class is a very good class indeed, you solid artisan!" stuff, either.
I mean I feel like we do have this but usually as blatant pandering, invocation of nostalgia, celebrating "roots" in a moralistic story that's actually about class *mobility*. But maybe the presence of that last bit is actually what you meant.
posted by atoxyl at 10:21 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
I mean I feel like we do have this but usually as blatant pandering, invocation of nostalgia, celebrating "roots" in a moralistic story that's actually about class *mobility*. But maybe the presence of that last bit is actually what you meant.
posted by atoxyl at 10:21 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Three Ladder system of class that's linked in there is a very interesting article in its own right as well.
I thought the end part with the malthusian lens was especially intriguing, though I would like to see it extended with a consideration of global limits to growth and humanity's ecological niche. Wendell Berry might have something to say about Church's characterization of the agricicultural technology revolution as "a good thing, undeniably".
posted by maniabug at 11:36 PM on January 26, 2016
I thought the end part with the malthusian lens was especially intriguing, though I would like to see it extended with a consideration of global limits to growth and humanity's ecological niche. Wendell Berry might have something to say about Church's characterization of the agricicultural technology revolution as "a good thing, undeniably".
posted by maniabug at 11:36 PM on January 26, 2016
It's been quite a while since I've read Class, but I was never sure whether Fussell meant what he wrote about the the "X" class to be taken at face value. I read it that way initially and identified to a large extent with that class, but then it occurred to me that perhaps this was a bit convenient and self-congratulatory, and maybe something like that was actually his point with that chapter.
I always assumed it was a clever in-joke that he gave his readers as a little parting gift.
posted by atrazine at 10:25 AM on January 27, 2016
I always assumed it was a clever in-joke that he gave his readers as a little parting gift.
posted by atrazine at 10:25 AM on January 27, 2016
I always assumed it was a clever in-joke that he gave his readers as a little parting gift.
A joke in the sense that most any reader considering him/herself to be educated/intelligent will think "oh of course that's what I am then," or in some other sense?
posted by Juffo-Wup at 1:02 PM on January 27, 2016
A joke in the sense that most any reader considering him/herself to be educated/intelligent will think "oh of course that's what I am then," or in some other sense?
posted by Juffo-Wup at 1:02 PM on January 27, 2016
I found this a really interesting essay, though deeply flawed, because while the distinctions between social and economic classes are important, she does seem to miss (cough Marxism cough) that there are a lot of people who talk about this already — the note about "show your work" is an apt one.
The other reason this was fascinating, in a whipsaw between love and loathe, is because I'm an inveterate code switcher. My family was poor; I grew up in a poor neighborhood, and while my dad eventually hit a middle-class wage, he was held back for a long time by a lack of a college degree. But I grew up in a college town and my parents fought for me to get into a magnet school, which was (and is) generally a bastion for liberal-minded posh tots and strivers. I still remember getting my ass kicked for wearing Pro-Wing shoes (the Payless house brand). I went to a commuter college after community college, and her point is somewhat valid on norming — I didn't go to the big school in town because I was afraid I wouldn't get in and wouldn't be able to afford it, and people still assume I went there (which has become awkward in the past when dealing with wealthy alums). But because I took a lot of poli sci classes, that means that I'm pretty familiar with the core of a classics curriculum — after all, The Republic is one of the cheaper books that you can assign, and I was lucky that my grandparents were strivers enough to have bought themselves the Great Books library on subscription. They'd grown up rural Indiana poor and made it to the middle class eventually.
But despite coming from a neighborhood where I took inordinate pride in being told that I said "motherfucker" like a black kid, I remember being at an awards event for the non-profit I used to work at, making small talk with a donor. He was the head of HR for a major entertainment non-profit, and was talking about living in a neighborhood near La Crescenta, talking about how they prided themselves in keeping their housing prices very high and having zero homes publicly listed — "You know, to keep the wrong sort of people out. People not like you and me." If not to the manner born, I can at least pass as a parvenu.
It's really disappointing to see her allege that the Left treats the distinction of social and economic classes with an "Orwellian doublethink" and consigns the distinction to invisibility — it doesn't. To the contrary, leftist discourse usually explicitly affirms the intersectional nature of economic and social class, and that blindspot is readily apparent throughout the essay. Hell, where does she think the phrase "bourgeois values" comes from? Has she missed the wide-ranging discussion of hipsters as affluents affecting Bohemian lifestyles?
Finally, the explicit prohibition of discussing race in this context is, while indicative of her privileged position, deeply unfortunate. That AAVE is considered lower-class, that President Obama took slings for "acting white," these things aren't accidents. The deep history of racism and white supremacy in America inflects all discussions of both economic and social class, and precluding it from discussion precludes any discussion of solutions or justice with regard to unfair class distinctions. (One of the things that was oddly helpful in recognizing how arbitrary so many of these things are was taking classes in copy editing. Once you get over the idea that AP is right and Chicago is wrong, or vice versa, you begin to realize that so many bits of communication are governed by arbitrary social signifiers that are devoid of actual value — they exist largely to signal meta-communication, not to clarify or condense.)
posted by klangklangston at 4:01 PM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]
The other reason this was fascinating, in a whipsaw between love and loathe, is because I'm an inveterate code switcher. My family was poor; I grew up in a poor neighborhood, and while my dad eventually hit a middle-class wage, he was held back for a long time by a lack of a college degree. But I grew up in a college town and my parents fought for me to get into a magnet school, which was (and is) generally a bastion for liberal-minded posh tots and strivers. I still remember getting my ass kicked for wearing Pro-Wing shoes (the Payless house brand). I went to a commuter college after community college, and her point is somewhat valid on norming — I didn't go to the big school in town because I was afraid I wouldn't get in and wouldn't be able to afford it, and people still assume I went there (which has become awkward in the past when dealing with wealthy alums). But because I took a lot of poli sci classes, that means that I'm pretty familiar with the core of a classics curriculum — after all, The Republic is one of the cheaper books that you can assign, and I was lucky that my grandparents were strivers enough to have bought themselves the Great Books library on subscription. They'd grown up rural Indiana poor and made it to the middle class eventually.
But despite coming from a neighborhood where I took inordinate pride in being told that I said "motherfucker" like a black kid, I remember being at an awards event for the non-profit I used to work at, making small talk with a donor. He was the head of HR for a major entertainment non-profit, and was talking about living in a neighborhood near La Crescenta, talking about how they prided themselves in keeping their housing prices very high and having zero homes publicly listed — "You know, to keep the wrong sort of people out. People not like you and me." If not to the manner born, I can at least pass as a parvenu.
It's really disappointing to see her allege that the Left treats the distinction of social and economic classes with an "Orwellian doublethink" and consigns the distinction to invisibility — it doesn't. To the contrary, leftist discourse usually explicitly affirms the intersectional nature of economic and social class, and that blindspot is readily apparent throughout the essay. Hell, where does she think the phrase "bourgeois values" comes from? Has she missed the wide-ranging discussion of hipsters as affluents affecting Bohemian lifestyles?
Finally, the explicit prohibition of discussing race in this context is, while indicative of her privileged position, deeply unfortunate. That AAVE is considered lower-class, that President Obama took slings for "acting white," these things aren't accidents. The deep history of racism and white supremacy in America inflects all discussions of both economic and social class, and precluding it from discussion precludes any discussion of solutions or justice with regard to unfair class distinctions. (One of the things that was oddly helpful in recognizing how arbitrary so many of these things are was taking classes in copy editing. Once you get over the idea that AP is right and Chicago is wrong, or vice versa, you begin to realize that so many bits of communication are governed by arbitrary social signifiers that are devoid of actual value — they exist largely to signal meta-communication, not to clarify or condense.)
posted by klangklangston at 4:01 PM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]
Church's 3 ladder theory explains Gilmore Girls.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:41 PM on February 2, 2016
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:41 PM on February 2, 2016
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posted by town of cats at 11:21 PM on January 25, 2016 [23 favorites]