Julie Andrews tries to change her social class by changing her diction, this is known as ‘code switching’.
Is it possible?
Is it desirable?
First, the classic division in society is based on three classes: upper, middle and lower
In Marxist theory, the middle class (bourgeoisie) own the ‘means of production’. They own factories or farm land. They own resources under the ground and can access other people’s spare money to borrow to buy even more. The working class don’t own much, if anything. Instead, they sell their labour, their time and skills, to the middle class to make items that are bought. The price of the item for sale, however, does not equal the labour costs to produce it. It is sold for more than it cost to make, creating profit.
For someone in America in 1911, the class system existed to make society operate efficiently- a functionalist view of the purpose of class. By for a Marxist, or a conflict theorist, class exists to keep people in their place, to discipline to poorer workers to make sure they continue creating wealth for the upper classes.
There is now a more sophisticated (or complicated) way of explaining these classes. All of these groups have different socio-economic outcomes (education, jobs, income, health and length of life) depending on which class they are born into, regardless of their skills or abilities:
- Elite – the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals
- Established middle class – the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital
- Technical middle class – a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy
- New affluent workers – a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital
- Traditional working class – scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66.
- Emergent service workers – a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital
- Precariat, or precarious proletariat – the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22007058
This is all very interesting, but how do we, (and those involved in the social work world, like clients) use and employ class?
Well, in order to cope with complexity, we make the world simpler and put people into certain simple boxes. We then act towards individuals as if they are actually like their social class. This is the process of stereotyping.
If we think of class as a marker to distinguish groups from each other, and as a mechanism of control, we can see how class ‘snobbery’ or even John Major’s ‘classless society’ is the same set of controls.
Let’s look at how working class people are denigrated in the media.
Here’s the working class (or probably workless class) philosopher Frank Gallagher from the TV show Shameless on freedom and choice
I can’t embed the next clip, but here he is being a real philosopher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61qpV1GYHUc
When we turn from laughing at the working class in fiction, what are your emotional reactions when you see them depicted in (so-called) reality on TV documentaries?
Weber and Class
Weber thinks of class as determining the options we have in life: “We may speak of a “class” when (1) a number of people have in common a specific causal component of their life chances, insofar as (2) this component is represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets. This is “class situation.” Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society) (original – 1925)
In short, the kind and quantity of resources you own constrains and limits your opportunities for income in
market exchanges. Owning means of production (the capitalist class) gives a person different alternatives from owning skills and credentials (the “middle” class), and both of these are different from simply owning unskilled labour power (the working class).
Widening the idea of class beyond financial power to ‘social capital’
Marx’s concept of class stratification is primarily about money and financial resources, and the economic structures of society. Modern stratification of class divisions is more sophisticated than just ‘proletariat’ and ‘bourgeoisie’, as you can see in the BBC link above. Rather than just the financial power, we can now think of a wide variety of powers and resources that are deployed and used by individuals and powerful elites to control and restrain us.
For the French theorist, Bourdieu, ‘Social capital is the ‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (Bourdieu 1983: 249).
To put that in working class Anglo-Saxon rather than Norman English, we can reach over the Atlantic to the American writer Putnam: ‘Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to the properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. ’ (Putnam 2000: 19).
So the ‘class status’ of a person doesn’t just rely on financial wealth, but a whole wealth of resources (especially trust) that a person might have at the disposal to help them solve a problem, other than cash. They have position and authority given to them by other members of the same elite, and can influence people’s decisions according to who they are (or who they are born to) regardless of their real abilities. Their moral standing isn’t just about their ‘racial whiteness’ but also about to which families were they born.
Bourdieu, P. (1983). ‘Forms of capital’ in J. C. Richards (ed.). Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, New York: Greenwood Press.
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone. The collapse and revival of American community, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Activity
Your class is what you eat.
Which words do you most associate with?
Cow or Beef
Calf or Veal
Pig or Pork
Sheep or Mutton
Hen, Chicken or Poultry
Deer, Hart or Venison
Snail or Escargot
Dove or Pigeon
This may be interestin this link.
