Social Class Identity Flashcards
Status
- A role someone plays in society
- Can be achieved or ascribed
Social class identity
- A person’s identity based on social, cultural and economic capital
- Upper class - high S capital, C and E capital
- Middle class - high S, medium C and E capital
- Working class - medium S and C capital, low E capital
High culture
- Linked to elite, upper class society
- Small proportion of society can access high culture - need to be economically and socially connected
- Polo - need economic and social capital to join club - discussed by John Scott
- Opera - Bourdieu would suggest children who have access to theatre would have increased cultural capital
Popular culture
- Culture of the people and accessible to the masses
- McDonald’s, Primark, sitcoms etc.
- often seen as trivial or basic and designed for general population
Consumer culture
- Culture related to what we buy or consume in society
- UK and Western societies have growing and large consumer cultures
- Saunders - suggest media targets middle age as they have highest disposable income and often define identity by what they own and show off
- Different forms of shopping available - large shopping centres, online shopping etc.
Theoretical approach
Sociologists have different approaches to the existence of the classes e.g: Marxists
Two-tiered triangle - those who own means of production at top and those who sell their labour power at bottom
Descriptive approach
Ranking people into a hierarchy based on social indicators e.g: the NS SEC or the Registrar Generals Scale
Registrar-General’s Scale
M 1. Professional (accountant)
M 2. Intermediate (teacher)
M 3. Skilled non-manual (secretaries)
W 4. Skilled manual (bricklayers)
W 5. Semi-skilled manual (agricultural workers)
W 6. Unskilled manual (refuse collectors)
NS SEC
- Higher managerial and professional occupations
- Employers and managers in large organisations (Bank managers)
- Higher professionals (Doctors)
- Lower managerial and professional occupations (Police)
- Intermediate occupations (Secretaries)
- Small employers and own account workers (Farmers)
- Lower supervisory, craft and related occupations (Plumbers)
- Semi-routine occupations (Traffic warden)
- Routine occupations (Cleaners)
Upper Class: Trad.
- extravagant
- leisure unavailable to majority of population
Middle Class: Trad.
- class over expense
- has branded products but subtly
- variety of different middle class people - lawyers and bankers to nurses and teachers
Working Class: Trad.
- community atmosphere
- obvious branding
Super Rich: New
- scores highest in economic, social and cultural capital
- ‘elite’
- greatest privileged group in UK
New Middle Classes: New
-scores high in terms of social and cultural capital
New Working Class: New
- medium economic capital
- socially and culturally active
Underclass: New
- deprived
- low social and cultural capital
SCOTT (Workplace)
Old boy network - old ‘boys’ use their network to advantage them in securing business deals and promotions. Social closure by employing those with a shared background in an upper class background
SCOTT (Peer Groups)
- Upper class socialise with upper class contacts they have met at private schools and elite universities - ‘The Old Boy Network.’
- They gain social capital by being seen/invited to the ‘right’ events that are exclusive and closed to others.
SCOTT (Family)
Family operates social closure by:
- Encouraging inter-marriages
- Immersing children into a culture of privilege through their types of names, socialisation into high culture, participation in blood sports and a concern for etiquette.
SCOTT (Education)
- public/private schools and Oxbridge socialise children into a culture of privilege.
- hidden curriculum teaches values such as superiority, conservatism and acceptance of authority
- justify their privilege in terms of public service and common good.
BOURDIEU (Education and Family)
Suggests school helps socialise people into middle class identities through role models, imitation, rewards and sanctions - whole environment of school being similar to aspects of home
BOURDIEU (Education) x2 points
Suggests middle classes have values, knowledge, leisure interests, levels of language and skills at home that are similar to how school is set up, and this serves to advantage their children in the education system. Referred to middle class parents advantaging their children educationally by having social and economic capital.
SAUNDERS (Media)
Media targets middle classes because they have the highest disposable income and they often define their identity by what they own (conspicuous consumption (buying things to attain social status e.g: jewellery, clothes, cars))
WILLIS (Family, Workplace, Education)
- valued manual work over mental work
- anti-school subculture
- ‘having a laff’ being objective of school day
- followed their fathers’ footsteps
- jobs key sources of identity for both the lads and their fathers
SKEGGS (Workplace)
Working class women had instrumental attitudes towards work - jobs were a means to an end
GOODWIN (Peer Groups)
- Suggests that many middle class mothers define their identities by peer approval.
- The new breed of ‘Yummy Mummies’ are no longer passive or traditional types of hegemonic females, but are now defined by peer approval on maternal capabilities, glamour and the ‘style’ of their children.
PAKULSKI AND WATERS - Postmodernist (Changes to identity)
Suggest there has been a shift from production to consumption in the defining of identities
We are now defined by what we buy, not what we do