Will Barratt
As I move forward in my thinking about social class on
campus I have occasion to revisit some past thoughts and writings. This makes me realize that some people will
be starting to read about class now, and that I need to reprise some basic
notions. Toward that end, here is a
primer on multiple ways to think about social class and a few key concepts to
use when working with social class on campus.
Abstract and personal paradigms for class
There are two primary ways
that social class appears in the literature: First that social class is
abstract. Second that social class is
personal. The idea that social class is
personal doesn’t yet have much literature, but that area is growing. These are two very different approaches to
social class, and both are very useful.
As a professor I appreciate the abstract, the generalization, the
simplification of combining the many into the one. On the other hand, none of my students and none
of my colleagues are an abstract, they are people. I appreciate the personal view of social
class also. Obviously a combination of
personal and abstract views of class will give us a richer and more complete
view.
Two abstract views of social class
There are two primary
schools of thought dealing with the abstract idea of social class: First is sociological. Second is economic. Again, both of these have contributions to
make and insights into social class.
Looking at aggregations of people, at societies, leads to certain types
of abstractions. Looking at aggregations
of people, at economies, leads to other types of abstractions. I am sure there are more lenses also.
Even within the economic
models of social class there are all manner of ways to examine it. Macroeconomic and microeconomic models of
social class come to mind. Even within
sociology multiple models of social class come to mind, systemic, structural,
and interpersonal models. There are more
economic and sociological lenses also.
Six personal views of social class
There is no definitive
list of personal views of class. I
propose six views of social class as personal:
Class as capital, class as identity, class as culture, class as enacted
role, class as educational attainment, and finally class as occupation. While I am sure there are more, this is a
good and mostly inclusive list. One advantage
of this list is that most of us can remember six things.
Social class as capital. Bourdieu’s (1986)
enumerates three forms of capital as he expanded on the traditional Marxist
view of economic capital by adding cultural capital and social capital. His article is short and well worth reading
so I will not repeat his words here. A
moment’s reflection comes up with some of the limits of his list of three forms
of capital. This is akin to recognizing
the limitations of six ways to think about social class as personal. Other forms of capital are context specific,
like academic capital, or leadership capital, or even spiritual capital. All forms of capital are important.
One issue that I have with
Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural and social capital is that there is prestige
cultural capital and prestige social capital, as well as non-prestige cultural
capital, and non-prestige social capital.
Prestige cultural capital reflects the knowledge, skills, and trappings
of the prestige class, and non-prestige cultural capital reflects the
knowledge, skills, and trappings of the underclass. Similarly, social capital is class bound. Knowing people who can help you with your financial
portfolio is different than knowing people who can help you fix your car. Both your financial portfolio, if you have
one, and your car, if you have one, are important. It is just that a financial portfolio has
higher prestige.
Social class as identity. We each have
a social class of origin, a current felt social class, and an attributed social
class. Where we came from, what we think
of ourselves, and what others think about us.
As with gender identity and ethnic identity our social class of origin
identity formed early at home and in the social settings we were in as
children. Our current felt social class
reflects the experience we have had with social class and in our ability to
compare ourselves to others. While most college
students will identify as middle class, this is probably not the appropriate social
class identity for those who, if they graduate, will be among the 30% most well
educated people in the US. If they have
a graduate degree they are then among the 10% most well educated in the US, and
are nowhere near the middle of the educational attainment distribution. One of the challenges for members of the majority
social class on campus is creating a realistic current felt social class based
on awareness and knowledge of the other social classes in the US.
Social class as culture. Cultures, and
subcultures, share norms, expectations, values, and many more things. Social class can be seen as a collection of
sub-cultures arranged in a hierarchy of prestige. Recent research has indicated clear cultural
differences between social class groups.
A trip to the three tiers of grocery stores or restaurants in a midsized
city will illustrate this point better than 1000 words. Kraus, Piff, and Keltner recently (2011) published
a piece titled Social class as culture:
The convergence of resources and rank in the social realm which includes a
great array of material from a social-psychological perspective on social class
as culture.
Social class as enacted role. This comes
from Irving Goffman (1959) and the idea that any social role has dialog, blocking,
costumes, and stage dressing. Social
classes each have distinct features, and fashion, or costumes, is an easy way
to see the differences in enacted role.
International Suit Up Day, October 13, is appropriate costuming holiday for
a small range of social classes. Similarly big box discount stores have
costumes, or uniforms, appropriate for their clientele, as well as stage
dressings, or rather home furnishings. Similarly
there are more prestigious varieties of English and less prestigious varieties
of English that guide our dialogs and monologs.
Social class as educational attainment. Members of the
majority social class in the US do not have a college degree. While half of US citizens over 25 have some
experience in college, and about 10% have an Associate’s Degree, the college
educated minority who have a degree have the prestige. Add on graduate and professional degrees and
you have a hierarchy of social class. In
reality the minority who is college educated normalizes that world view. What is not normal must be abnormal, deviant,
bad, or negative in some way.
Social class as occupation. Some of the
first work I found on measuring social class was from August Hollingshead
(1975) and involved educational attainment and occupational prestige. I updated his work with some more modern
research on occupational prestige, but the central point remains: Occupations
are prestige ranked. Ganzeboom and
Treiman (1996) have a list that provides an international perspective on
occupational prestige rankings.
Four Key Concepts
Measuring social class.
Some models of class, like
income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige are easy to measure,
and others like identity and culture are not.
Because income, education, and occupation are easy to measure, they get
measured. In some ways this biases
definitions of social class toward those measurable views of social class,
ignoring identity, culture, role, and even ignoring other forms of capital.
The idea of prestige,
while it can be measured and is often measured inadvertently in college
rankings, is often omitted when taking the measure of social class. Prestige is in some ways a synonym for social
class. Prestige goods like handbags with
designer labels known to be expensive and therefore prestigious are a good
example. Occupations are ranked by
social scientists into a hierarchy of prestige.
Asking “How prestigious is this?” is the same as asking “What social
class is this?”
Below are three ways to
quantify social class with easily counted and measured concepts related to
social class. You can use this to calculate
your social class of origin by ranking your parents, or you can use this to
calculate your attributed social class by using your own data. There are five social class groups numbered 1
through 5, so feel free to assign whatever names you want. You may not, in good conscience, refer to the
top group using any term like middle or upper-middle.
Use the three tables below to calculate the social status
for your family of origin or your own attributed social class. The data below are based on a US population.
Annual Family
Income Groups. Estimated combined
parental income. People in single parent
households are at an obvious disadvantage. US Census 2009, Table F-1
|
Lowest 20%
1
|
2
|
Middle 20%
3
|
4
|
Highest 20%
5
|
|
Under $26,934
|
$26,934 to
$47,913
|
$47,914 to
73,338
|
$73,339 to
$112,540
|
Over $112,540
|
Educational
Attainment Groups. Calculate for the
most well educated parent. US Census
2010, Educational Attainment in the United States: 2010 – Detailed Tables,
population over 25
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
|
13%
No High School
Diploma
|
31%
High School
Diploma
|
17%
Some college, no
degree
|
9%
AA, AS
|
19%
BA, BS
|
8%
MA, MS
|
3%
PhD, MD, or JD
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Occupational
Prestige Groups. Calculate for the
highest prestige parental occupation. If you do not find your parent(s)
occupation then please select something similar.
|
Physician, attorney, professor, chemical and aerospace
engineer, judge, CEO, senior manager, public official, psychologist,
pharmacist, accountant.
|
5 - Top
|
|
Mechanical, nuclear, and electrical engineer, educational administrator, veterinarian,
military officer, elementary, high school and special education teacher,
|
4.5
|
|
Nurse, skilled technician, medical technician,
counselor, manager, police and fire personnel, financial manager, physical,
occupational, speech therapist.
|
4
|
|
Supervisor, librarian, aircraft mechanic, artist and
artisan, electrician, administrator, military enlisted personnel, buyer.
|
3.5
|
|
Machinist, musician, bookkeeper, secretary, insurance sales,
cabinet maker, personnel specialist, welder.
|
3 - Middle
|
|
Automobile mechanic, typist, locksmith, farmer,
carpenter, receptionist, construction laborer, hairdresser.
|
2.5
|
|
Painter, skilled construction trade, sales clerk, truck
driver, cook, sales counter or general office clerk.
|
2
|
|
Garbage collector, short-order cook, cab driver, shoe
sales, assembly line workers, masons, baggage porter.
|
1.5
|
|
Day laborer, janitor, house cleaner, farm worker, food
counter sales, food preparation worker, busboy.
|
1 - Bottom
|
(Income + Education + Occupation) divided by 3 ______
Social class contrast
The fish that lives
entirely in water may have no knowledge of that water. A fish that spends any time at all in the air
understands the existence of water based on the contrast with the air. Similarly students who have lived in a social
class bubble all of their lives will not have experienced social class
contrast. Consequently, they may think
themselves middle class when in fact they would rank in the 5 category on the
scales above.
Students whose parents have
little or no experience in higher education are at risk because of the
discomfort they feel on campus based on social class contrast. Research tells us that these students
graduate at half the rate of students with college educated parents.
Students whose parents
have experience in higher education come to campus with all manner of advantage
and privilege. The risk for them is that
they are the majority social class and experience little in the way of social
class contrast. Further complicating
this is first generation students seeking to class pass or blend in or
assimilate in order to appear to be like majority social class students. This further normalizes the majority social
class on campus. The risk for these
students is that the lack of contrast will warp their world view so that it
does not include the majority of US citizens with no experience in college and
no college education.
Multiple ways to be in the same social class
There are multiple ways to
be in the same social class. Astin’s
(1993) college student typologies, or any of the other college student
typologies, are ways to describe different students in the same group. Using my favorite example of Misty and Markey
from the majority class on campus there is fashionable Misty, athletic Misty,
academic Misty, and so on. In your
social class subculture athletic Misty may be more prestigious, and in mine academic
Misty may be more prestigious. I value
culture capital, so I value academic Misty.
Class is inherently a hierarchy, gender, ethnicity,
and GLBT are not
A classic way to pursue
multicultural education is to have students realize that there is not a
hierarchy among genders, between heterosexual students and GLBT students,
between men and women, etc.
Unfortunately the nature of social class is a hierarchy, so traditional
methods of multicultural education will not work. While students learn that all cultures are
equivalent, and social class is a culture, the culture of scarcity and the
culture of plenty are different in important and hierarchical ways.
What can you do?
You can spread awareness of social class on your campus,
in your life, and at your work. The
multicultural industry is mostly fixated on gender, on ethnicity, on sexual
orientation, and sometimes on religion. When
students come to campus they have been exposed to many hours of multicultural
programming. When students leave campus
they have, we hope, been exposed to many hours of multicultural
programming. Understanding and working
positively with our differences is a good thing, it is the heart of democracy
and the meaning of “E Pluribus Unum”.
As awareness of gender issues, of ethnic issues, of sexuality
issues is key, so is awareness of social class.
While we may keenly feel the injuries of gender, ethnic, and sexuality
discrimination, the injuries of class are deep and lasting and happen like the
unfelt cuts from a sharp blade.
References
Astin, A. W. (1993). An empirical typology of college
students. Journal of College Student
Development, 34, 36-46
Bourdieu, P. (1986).
The forms of capital. In J. R. (Ed.), Handbook
of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New
York: Greenwood Press.
Goffman, E (1959)
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life New York: Doubleday
Anchor
Ganzebook, H. B. G., & Treiman, D. J. (1996).
Internationally comparable measures of occupational status for the 1988
International Standard Classifications of Occupations. Social Science Research, 25, 201-239.
Hollingshead, A. B.
(1975). Four factor index of social status. New Haven, CT: Unpublished
manuscript. Department of Sociology, Yale University.
Kraus, M. W., Piff,
P. K., & Kelter, D. (2011). Social class as culture: The convergence of
resources and rank in the social realm. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 20(4), DOI: 10.1177/0963721411414654
