koganbot | Help me figure out what I mean by "social class"

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Help me figure out what I mean by "social class"

Help me ~~write my next column~~ figure out what I mean by the phrase "social class"!

--What do people mean when they say "class"?
--What do I mean when I say "class"?
--What should I mean when I say "class"?

I do not necessarily mind that my own and other people's use of the term is vague and inconsistent and contrary, but I do think I should be more specific about the various different species that my inconsistency and contrariness suggest and my vagueness covers up.

--Mapping one way of classifying stuff (stuff?) onto another. E.g., mapping musical genre ("rock 'n' roll") onto a group of people ("teenagers" or "working-class" or, um, black people? white people? Southerners? urban dwellers? hicks?)
--Do people belong to classes, or are classes just roles they play? Or some mixture? "White person" is supposedly a role I play 24/7, whether I want to or not, but is this true? What about roles I was playing ten years ago: "technical editor"? "Support staff"? "Office temp"? Twenty years ago I'd divided punks up into two broad categories: "office-temp punks" and "bike-messenger punks" (obv. each was a synecdoche (??) (er, metaphor) for a bunch of similar ways of earning money).
--You know, power and stuff: people who pay wages and earn profits as opposed to people who are paid wages and are told what to do. But actual roles don't divide up so easily. Anyway, most people are in the latter category (the category "are told what to do"), but the Get-Tolders, being the vast majority of human beings, divide up into classes themselves.
--Etc.
--Do you know any good books or articles I should read on this subject - not just that discuss "class" but that notice that the term is problematic?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

step one is possibly use "category" instead of "class"?
(cz "class" is loaded in a marxist sense, which you will always have to be fighting?)

I really LIKE class in the loaded sense. You'll only be fighting Marxists if the Marxists are stubborn and refuse to see the multiplicity of the word, which might be common in theory but probably not a major concern in the column (the potential K-punk bomb will happily explode itself elsewhere).

yes i didn't actually mean fighting actual real marxists, i meant fighting ppl who aren't marxists but hear it that way first (bcz it is a dominant sense) and misread your point, so that step two will always be "no actually i meant..."

all you need to defuse the actual real marxists is to say the magic word GRAMSCI at them!

(fact: gramsci was a hunchback dwarf! sadly his first name was not samwise)

Surely he should have been called Gramsci Son Of Groin or something?

I deliberately chose "class" rather than "category," the loadedness of "class" being my very reason, "conflict" being a hoped-for connotation. Don't think that "What's Wrong With Pretty Girls?" would have been nearly as powerful if I had not used the word "class."

While browsing the stacks found a Marxist who was saying that "middle class" is a huge problem for people like him, and that his easy way out had been to say that the middle classes were playing and forced into multiple rules in relation to domination (both dominated and dominating). The reason he wasn't satisfied with his own previous solution was that domination does not necessarily entail antagonistic class interests (e.g., a parent can dominate a child while not being averse to the child's interests), and it loses the central characteristic of Marx's class analysis, which is exploitation. Of course, I, not being a Marxist, don't buy the idea that capitalism is necessarily exploitative. But I do feel an affinity to the idea that interests are often antagonistic, and that sometimes groups are antagonistic not only because of conflicting interests but because they like conflict anyway.

multiple rules = multiple roles

ok so marxist usage sez "classes = conflict; all conflict = conflict of class interests"; yr sayin "classes = conflict; some conflict = a social value in itself"

maybe you're right and you need to get to the statement -- and exploration -- of incommensurability

ps there are lots of stupid marxists in the world but marx wasn't one of em

Hm...one question might be "what do people mean when YOU say class," because one issue that's come up for you is that there is a class where others don't (explicitly) name one. When I use The War on Lindsay, I'm talking about certain classesque characteristics that refer only to a select handful of people -- so most people talk about the handful and don't think there are "underlying assumptions" that could apply to MORE than those couplea people.

Interesting question on your last column, re: "don't unattractive girls listen to BSBs," which kinda missed your point but also kinda didn't -- it's nice to think that there's this slight resentment or, more generally, distaste for "cheerleaders," say, but it doesn't really get into the ambiguities of how these various social clusterings really work. In my experience, the pretty girls don't always all hang out together because they're pretty, in fact usually have a couple of unattractive friends in the group who share similar ideas/interests/etc.

But my point here (I think, if I have one, maybe I'm just bored!) is that "class" both is and isn't. I'm reading Bill Bryson's ridiculously simplified summary of THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING IN IT (i.e. the only summary I could possibly hope to understand), and he talks about a distinction between quantum (micro) and relativity (macro) physics that might relate to this class idea you're getting at.

That is, you run up against a seemingly unsolveable paradox when you talk about class: like an electron field, you can either see class swirling around in the abstract (the "taste" of the class: greasers, skaters, punks), or you can locate it specifically (the taste of the Frank), but you can't necessarily do both at the same time. So Frank-the-punk can't simultaneously be in the general and the specific at the same time, hence you (seem to) hit a block when you discuss our individual (visceral, personal history-based, etc.) responses versus the activity of the class.

Celeb culture kind of wants to have it both ways, both a hyper-focusing on the individual (almost to the point of taking a microscope to the ol' pores) while insisting that there is something about "these people" that makes them worth our study (and scorn): the pap wouldn't want the lens turned on THEM personally, though "normal people" can become celebs in the blink of an eye (reality TV).

Don't know if any of this makes sense, but quantum/relative theory (in its oversimplified digestible state!) just BLEW MY EFFIN' MIND in the coffee shop!!!!!

So maybe my metaphor here is that you're Einstein looking for a Unified Theory of Class when there isn't necessarily one to be found? Or is physics just really cool?

My guess is that Nathan was using "pretty girls" somewhat generically (see Meltzer: "Shit, if you wanna go Orthodox New Wave on me and claim there actually is such a thing lemme just say the Topanga Canyon incarnation (getting merely generic this time, I know it's tiresome, but perhaps they're actually from Malibu) is, if possible, even more corrupt, gawky, and anachronistic than such regional stalwarts of '60s revisionist NW as the Pop, the Naughty Sweeties, and 20/20..."). That is e.g. in times and places when "skater" becomes the name of a social group it can include many people who don't skate, and "jock" can include people who don't do sports, etc. So let's say twenty years ago a "pretty girl" would be a girl who hung around with and dressed like the type of girl Molly Ringwald played in The Breakfast Club, one of the "popular" girls ("popular" also generic since it means popular with preppy types, not people who are popular with other types), and you don't have to be pretty, just signify "pretty girl type." But I suspect that actual prettiness can sometimes give you an entré into this group. And then of course you can be pretty like Ally Sheedy but dress dark not "pretty" hence not be a "pretty girl."

What you use as "class" I tend to think of (cos of my job) as "segment". A lot of the job of (certain types of) market research is to define a set of segments and then work out what other things might or might not map onto them - the more stuff that maps onto them, the stronger and more predictive the segmentation is.

Have been running around UConn stacks for the last hour and have discovered (1) that class is considered problematic by many people who use it, (2) there was a guy called Marx, (3) there was a guy called Weber.

my worry re marxist usage vs koganist usage is i guess that the usages are potentially incommensurable -- that if you adopt the latter you have to exclude all coherent reference to the former from the discussion ALTOGETHER, which is i think unfortunate, as widespread ideas that are wrong need to be taken to bits, while widespread ideas that are not wrong need to be taken on board (he said circumspectly)

(tho i guess you cd always just restate marxist claims in other terms and maybe it wd be good discipline to do so -- and maybe always say "economic class as marxists understand define it" when that's what you meant) (mutatis mutandis for weberians, tho i know bvgger all abt weber)

"Incommensurable" not necessarily incompatible (esp. since there isn't a particularly thoughtout Koganesque usage); e.g., what I wrote about cookery and botany on the Kuhn thread: the same person could use the word "fruit" differently in depending on whether he were doing botany or doing cooking. But anyway, I don't think that my usage is incommensurable with a Marxist's, that there's some great difference in mode of thought surrounding our usage of the word "class" (as opposed to a Copermican's and a Ptolemian's uses of the word "planet," which were masssively different). That is, both the Marxist and I can understand that a class can be a category for this or that purpose and can also be a category of people whose economic and political interests coincide, while I and the Marxist can disagree on how class works and what's really worthy of being called a "class issue" and what class interests are and what deserves to be called a class. I don't see really that I'm excluding anything, or why I would be forced to.

aren't you excluding the claim -- which i think is what makes marxist analysis of class marxist -- that ALL social conflict is ("ultimately") an expression of class conflict (where class is defined in economic terms)?

Not sure what you mean by "exclude," actually. Was Xhuxk excluding from Stairway to Hell the idea that some people would consider a lot of the music covered in the book not to be metal?

The "Marxist" position you describe is pathologically extreme, and seems more like an article of faith than an idea that one can actually put to use. I mean, you could say that all social conflict is due to the activity of elementary physical particles (if you happen to believe that everything is due to the action of elementary particles) but there's nothing you can do with that idea. In any event, I don't see how a Marxist (or anyone else) could argue that Bloods vs. Crips is an expression of conflict between economic classes. But he could say that the battle of Bloods Vs. Crips occurs in a society in which there's a lot of economic class conflict, and that this overall societal class conflict influences and maybe even helps to shape Blood Vs. Crips. (But then he'd have to say what the influence is.)

isn't saying "can't be put to use" a statement of exclusion? isn't this the sign of yr thought's incommensurability with (what i'm saying is) marxism's?

it is a "pathological extreme" but no more so than darwinism's argument that ALL evolution is by natural selection: it's the shaping claim of a discipline -- nor is it true i don't think that it's an intrinsically unusable claim, cz it leads to two kinds of activity...
i. show how apparently tricky cases (bloods vs crips; the evolution of the eye) fit the theory
ii. hunting for examples which overthrow the theory

the first world war took marxists by huge surprise: they had to explain why do the working classes of different nations accepted the call to kill one another when their interests wd clearly be to band together internationally and take arms against their economic overlords -- explanations that arose included lenin's theory of imperialism; gramsci's theory of hegemony

neither of these are useless (or even pathologically extreme) theories: they are both useful and useable tools for exploring how influence might work, and that's what they do (they also form the core structuring faiths of political movements and parties: and maybe give those movements and parties momentum against the consensus or unconscious drift of the rest of politics; this difference of direction may be of social value not bcz the faith is correct or well justified, but bcz the consensus is causing or obscuring unexplored harms -- the political friction being where those harms manifest visibly, or palpably, or whatever)

i like pragmatism's resistance to generalisation -- i think it's good for it to be resisted -- but without a pathology (the pathology of generaiising over-strongly) to resist it in turn, isn't the danger that you explain any particular situation's dynamics purely in terms of local conditions and drives, and don't see (bcz you decline to look for) wider pressures? if you accept that maybe not all evolution is by natural selection -- that there's maybe some other mechanism you don't know about yet -- doesn't it put you in a situation where you can just out problem cases on one side cz you don;t have the whatever to work on them yet (ok admittedly this doesn't happen in science cz it's not the culture, but it DOES happen in politics...) (you don't have the VOTES to work on them yet)

(viz assume bloods vs crips is a prblem that needs dealing with: it can be defused how? is it a problem of local negotiation, local punitive action, of stuff that can be enacted within the community it directly affects? or is the entire community under an outside stress which means whatever is done within it, a version of bloods vs crips will once more arise) (if it's a bit abstract thinking like this abt bloods vs crips, then think of of criminal warlordism eg in haiti? are there outside forces which cause it? (where yes, the chain of causality has to be explored...)

ps my getting stuck a bit unhelpfully on this issue is a good example of who/why "filibusters" (or incompletion of ideas) arise: i am caught up in this question bcz i am writin a big giant thinkpiece abt the use -- and dangers -- of avant-garde movements, which cluster round some technique or faith or obsession or THING (and its justification); the "broad" or "social" justification is that they are out-of-step, and it is valuable for ppl to be out of step -- which is a hindsight rationalisation of "where society ends up" when the conflict between the avant-garde and the mainstream is "resolved" (whether pragmatically or otherwise)... where society has moved to when the conflict is resolved is better than where it was when the conflict was raging, but this "where" that we've ended up in may only have very oblique connection to the shape of the justification the avant-garde gave for its obsessive crankiness

so anyway, this is what i'm currently thinking about and what i want to use frank's questions for -- and (to frank's annoyance) i will drop out of the discussion not when frank's questions are answered, but when i get useful energy and shape for MY project

I probably shouldn't have said "useless," since obviously people who have beliefs use them, and the question is to what effect. I haven't read much Lenin and Gramsci, but surely they're not saying that the ONLY conflict in WWI was that between economic classes. Or maybe they are, but I'd like to know what their argument is. It seems to me you don't have to be so pathologically extreme to be a Marxist; all you have to say is that the general evolution of society through history is directed by the relations among economic classes. You don't have to say that every single social conflict is entirely caused and can be entirely explained by conflict between classes. E.g., a Marxist can agree with me that the conflict back in high school between freaks and greasers really was a conflict between freaks and greasers and - though fraught with tensions having to do with economic class - that it can't be (and doesn't need to be) mapped directly or entirely onto the conflict between bourgeousie and proletariat. I still think the Marxist would have his work cut out for him in trying to show how the bourgy-prole conflict is the deeper underlying conflict and how the bourgy-prole rather than the greaser-freak-prep thing (it was at least a triad) is THE engine for societal change. But when you go for a detailed analysis of what's going on with greasers vs. freaks, I don't know that my analysis and his would be all that different.

I still don't know what you mean by "incommensurable," or, if you think there is something incommensurable (rather than just "somewhat different") between me and the Marxist, why this is a problem for me.

I also don't know what you mean by "pragmatist." For what it's worth, my philosophical ideas and my social ideas don't match up, since my philosophical ideas are basically a critique of philosophy that leaves philosophy dead; but the critique doesn't tell me either what social role philosophy plays (or played) or what my social ideas should be. I think that the fact I used the term "pathologically extreme" both for philosophy (in my book) and for the idea that all social conflict is economic conflict may have confused you into thinking I had a similar critique of each. But actually my attack on philosophy is something else. And if you want to learn what it is you'll have to stop abandoning conversations.

to be clearer about this than the last time i posted on it (my "marx not stupid" post), i've completely changed my mind about all this being a bad reason for using the word "class" -- i agree with you (and dave), i think it's a GOOD reason to use the word class, bcz it means you GET the argument i'm referring to as ii. "ii. hunting for examples which overthrow the theory"

ie it's only a problem for you if you're going to get tired of explaining to certain respondents that your usage doesn't easily dovetail with theirs; or until you ensure that YOUR usage is the dominant one

what i am meaning by pragmatism is (i think) the move you make to defuse words like "contradiction" and "dichotomy" -- i am arguing that with science and politics, words like this are deployed to flag up PROBLEMS WHICH MUST BE SOLVED (ie logically and therefore socially intolerable situations); and what you sometimes have done, when you argue that they're not really dichotomies or contradictions, is make a handwave gesture to the web of socials conditions which the alleged dichotomy" exists in, to demonstrate is NOT logically intolerable (and this slightly skates away from its social urgency) (which the word "contradiction" may indeed not well express but does highlight as a problem)

(ie i am associating pragmatism with "defusing the situation", and setting it against political strategies which by contrast "sharpen the contradictions" or intensify the situation)

i guess by incommensurable i mean something a bit more psychological than i perhaps ought to -- viz you occasionally step away from particular arguments w.particular betes noires on the grounds that yr opponent is "paranoid" or whatever, and that yr debate wd become "codependent", which i take to mean that their commitment to a given line is fanatical and closed, rather than formal, speculative and open

closed: the default commitment in terms of politics that will get changes made? (absolute stubbornness a pre-requisite of effectiveness)
open: the default commitment in terms of discussion, conversation, thought?

and you would be able to converse with the latter but perhaps not the former? in other words you are making a judgement that you (personally) are psychologically incommensurable with certain potential debate opponents, and that this reflects an incommensurability of "political philosophy" (which may indeed be rooted in stubborn unthought habit or character trait, and not anything "deep" at all)

saying that economic conflict is the underlying cause of greaser-freak-prep isn't at all the same as saying greaser-freak-prep must somehow MAP ONTO bourgy-prole conflict -- nor would any (non-stupid) marxist claim this

"would have his work cut out" -- of course what's always frustrating here is that oodles of this work have been done (whether successfully or convincingly or correctly is another matter) but we only ever ENCOUNTER it by plunging deep into the weeds of some very particular little niche of avant-garde scholarship (complete with ugly self-protective jargon viz "base vs superstructure" zzz; ugly self-protective behaviour etc etc)

very vague loose handwavey version of marxist "explanation" of ww1: the economic system (viz free market capitalism) led to intense unstable conflict between bourgy and proles in industrialised nations as of the 1840s-50s; the solution was COLONIALISM -- the nations in question set up empires as smash-and-grab raids on the resources of the third world, thereby buying off and semi-co-opting the working classes in said nations, defusing the "contradition"; HOWEVER, by accident of geography and uneven development, these empires were not evenly spread among the various nations, and latecomers (mainly germany) had to seek THEIRS in territories great britain and france had earlier decided were HANDS-OFF (viz the balkans, belgium, russia, etc etc) --- the result was a catastrophic high-tech war BETWEEN the advanced nations, even though it wasn't apparently in anyone's interest (bourgy or prole) in those countries... except of course that the need for hugely intensifed technological war production (and the mass destruction) created vast and powerful new market opportunities

so the argument was that a nation could be in the grip of its markets and corporations -- and that these were pushing it into a situation where the interests of its PEOPLES (not just working class) were entirely secondary, which meant that the wars-as-they-occurred (between nations) occurred as an "expression" [the word i used above, which is not ideal at all] of the class conflict at the root of the story, yet appear to manifest in a way which (as you are saying) exactly FAILS to map onto conflicts of economic classes

Re: do people *belong* in classes or are they roles etc. I think they are both- they are the social strata which someone feels comfortable identifying with, thus adapts their role to make themselves more like, to make sure that they absolutely belong there. I think class is a lot more transient than people make out, too, because class is basically an ideological thing in terms of how you can perceive and what you can do, so it can change as much or as little as you do.

I think, though, that class, like your family, is the involuntary upshot of various decisions possibly beyond your control, which is how it varies from, say, 'lifestyle.'

Well, I think a lot of "class" is both in and not in your control. Um, "control" maybe too strong a word; what I mean is, if you're from a blue collar family you nonetheless can be a preppy but only if other preppies are willing to befriend you (which of course is just as true if you're from a rich family, but chances are if you're from a rich family you've been hanging around preppy types for a while and are more likely to have a knack for acting preppy); same for the rich kid who wants to be a skater. And if you want to be a heavy metal kid, or something that's in the near neighborhood - goth or emo, let's say - you can because there are other kids to hook up with who are classified as metal or goth or emo. Whereas if you're a fan of country rock, you're not likely to become a country rock kid, because you don't have people identifying as "country rock," even if there are as many country rock fans as there are metal fans. So you don't have anyone to hook up with in a "class" way. But does that mean that you're affinity with other country rock fans has nothing to do with class or category, just because there's no name and no group identification?

Notice, I'm thinking of high school kids here. It's not as if "class" has nothing to do with adults, but they're not getting labels dropped on them in quite the same way - maybe because their identities are not so much in flux. I don't know.

important-seeming elements of 'class', or whatever you want to call it:

how the group imagines itself
how the group imagines itself ideally
how the group imagines its antagonists and enemies

- allows for variance from reality (e.g. overinflation of some problems, ignorance of real causes of problems)
- allows for examination of 'how the group imagines...' in terms of the imaginative constructions inside the songs, and in terms of what they use the songs for
- might reflect the complexity better by having all three together?

frank, i know i neglected to say anything to you in my email earlier today, but here's one thing that struck me about my country music adventure: i swear that between the songs and the radio station presentation of them (commercials with testimonials from listeners e.g.), it felt like the music which above all today most aggressively defines its audience, directly, at almost every turn, within the songs. and i think it seemed so strong to me because it hit all three of the above elements of 'class' so hard, at the same time. i am aware you will immediately provide counterexamples. but i think a lot of them are either more indirect about defining their audience, or leave a great deal indeterminate so that it's up to the listener to decide that they count as 'an X listener', or that the music is for them, or the singer is talking to them, or about them.

another good element of koganian 'class': what you have to do to become an X (if it's up to you at all). or to stop being one.

survey of favored koganian classes:
any group term that other people can use as an insult
any racial or sexual category (which has a name)
names of certain musical genres (but not just any)
professions and job titles

Country is also obsessed with defining what "country" is at least as much as indie/undie hip-hop goes on about what real hip-hop is. Rather interesting that a music that is doing so well commercially still (sometimes) views itself as a put-upon, minority taste.

One thing though is that country often creates a real tension between proclaiming "what we're like" and proclaiming "what we value." Treatment of alcohol in country music is crawling in complications; on Eric Church's Sinners Like Me alcohol leads both to rambunctious roughhousing (good, shows our spirit) and sin (bad, but human).

Class is a word I try scrupulously to avoid -- probably due to having read so much ham-fisted (or perhaps cloth-eared would be better) quasi-Marxist lit crit. However I will use it in the following specific circs:

1) When talking about an 'intellectual' or 'artistic' class. This is a deliberate provocation, to remind analysts and critics that they have 'interests' too, which can't be identified with any of the particular 'classes' about which they are talking. i.e. the marxist critic has more in common with his right-wing opponent than with the 'working classes' he claims to speak on behalf of. This only really works when dealing with people who attribute 'cultures' to 'classes' and is part of an attempt to reclaim the element of bildung in the term culture, i.e. culture names a development relative to a prior position.

2) I refuse to accept that the idea of 'class consciousness' is useful except when describing a specific situation in which it is created. I have the same quibble about the idea of national consciousness -- i.e. I don't believe that members of groups are necessarily aware of themselves as members of certain groups, except in certain situations when they are forced to take sides, or at least align themselves in relation to a field of social conflicts. This is my long-winded and cautious way of affirming the idea that class is, in the language of cultural theory, 'relational' rather than 'essential'. (And yes, 'essential' is meaningless, since no-one interesting believes that class is anything other than relational, but this doesn't stop the term functioning in people's arguments as if it was some fundamental constituent of identity). This is why I am suspicious of social research which asks people how they identify (eg. do you feel 'more British than Scottish' or whatever) on the grounds that this feeling is brought into being in the context of the research and can't be taken to be representative... yet forms the basis for arguments like 'since devolution, more Scots identify as Scottish than they did before' (i.e. missing out: 'when confronted in an interview situation with all the attendant power relations, expectations etc. which may mould their response').

This is probably all clear in the schoolyard example: I only become a skater because the neds are threatening me and my friends all laugh at the emos, despite the fact that I quite like My Chemical Romance and fancy that chick with the eyeliner. (OK, ALL the chicks). At home I'm declassé, but as soon as I walk into school my baggy jeans locate me within the field of social conflict.

Anyway, I don't think that these are anything other than quite obvious points.

I don't think I see a necessary connection between 'class' and 'taste'. Some people I think expect to read one off from the other, and there may be correlations, but a) it would never be in the form 'members of X like Y' so much as 'a member of X might position his tastes in relation to an argument between Y and Z'; and b) I see 'taste' in modern society as a specific site of other conflicts which can't be reduced to political and / or social ones, and I see the concept of class as deriving from the attempt to confuse the political with the social. (This can be a political move -- 'arise workers, we have so and so in common' -- or an analytical one -- 'workers have so and so in common'.).

I think Mark is right that 'class' comes freighted with Marxist baggage, but I think Frank is right that its use in sociology and cultural studies has been so constant as to strip it of any necessary connections with Marxism (obviously there is a forgotten / repressed link among the sociologists, and a 'critical' tool has become a functional/methodological one -- perhaps there reservations about the term are symptomatic of their awareness of this loss, or a sense of the awkwardness of using the term in this way).

Josh talks sense.

'their reservations' doh!

'relational', that's good

my baggy jeans locate me within the field of social conflict but my position keeps changing without my doing anything about it!

Finally getting around to responding to this. The reason I think I need the word "class" isn't because it's constantly in use in sociology and cultural studies but because people in everyday conversation about music feel class as an issue even though they tend not to use the word or to be particularly clear about what the class issues are. Of course, if they're not using the word or identifying just what the class issues, one can argue that people don't feel a class issue, just vaguely feel social issues related to music's role as a vague social marker. But I think "class" is the word because it implies inequality - of wealth, or power, or prestige, etc. - and it implies conflict related to those inequalities. If the pretty girls have no social standing, and the record company has no power, then my friend Nathan's criticism of the New Kids and the Backstreet Boys has no point. And as I said in my livejournal post about my Hero Story, the story demands that the Hero be daring, and one doesn't get called daring by appearing to align with the strong at the expense of the weak. But if you think of Heroism as one route to prestige, and if you get to be a Hero by fighting power, then prestige and power can be at odds.

what about using a different term of classification for
(i) the types of type we are that some have no choice in
(ii) the types of type we are that all have choice in ???

(marx eg specifically distinguished between the working class, which was an analytical category, and the proletariat, which is alert to its situation and engaged in its transformation -- ie a political category) (other marxists have been much less clear about the implications of this distinction)

plainly lots of categories and identities are transient -- but "being poor" may not be one of them, however much you want it to be

the relationship between what's voluntary and what's not is totally part of frank's project, of course: "does the music choose me? how and why?" has animated several if not all of his columns to date

so if there are class types -- economic? racial? -- which can't be changed just by yr own (individual) choice, which can only be changed at "yr" behest by "yr" participation in political activity (which if it succeeds in changing the shape of society may succeed in changing the shape of the meanings of its seemingly fixed classes/categories), hoiw does this factor into yr decisions about which identity-attractions you will pursue, and which shake off?

haha diff. btwn (i) + (ii) the mystery of western culture (but you WOULD think someone would've come up with good words for them: like 'natural' and 'conventional' eh?)

yeah but economic class ISN'T "natural", it's conventional also, it's just that the conventions are hardwired into a structure (the structure changes, tho it's it's a moot point so far if it can "be changed", at least into something where economic class isn't still an imposition imposed by the structure)

i didn't say economic class was natural! and yes that is the tricky thing about conventions.

it's my sense that on the internet, where communities gather by elective affinity, a great deal of rage and mutual resentment is stoked by community A's assumptions about the generalised reasons behind community B's affinities (ie "we" came together as a wide-ranging bunch of freethinking friends, to explore interesting ideas; "they" band together in confused and deluded panic round the fetishised ephemera that keep them from seeing themselves as they are)

I'm still not convinced that Frank's "class" is that heavy on the self-definition -- usually when "social class" becomes a self-proclaimed category (e.g. PUNK), it becomes more ambiguous as to what exactly makes this a definable "community." Hence my weird uncomfortableness btw. the "class" and the individual, and any definition of class trying to make room for how the individual is trying to define him/herself. To me, class usually entails something that is decided for you, even if you have made decisions that put you in line with the class. But maybe this is just my own weirdness as someone who's always bristled at being easily categorized in a group (including "brain" and "poptimist" and "rock critic" and "Koganette" and other classes that I actually like and enjoy being crammed into on occasion).

Of course I just thought of about fifty examples to sorta contradict myself, but not...MYSELF -- i.e., I understand how one would take pride in defining themselves as: Democrat, Christian, gay, black, woman, Argentine, etc. etc. etc; but I personally always get uncomfortable being defined (or self-defining) in such a group way. (I suspect Frank does as well.)

Somewhat relates to a problem we had in a politics seminar back in college, where my teacher wanted to discuss institutional questions of racial definition thru history (from Columbus to Dinesh D'Souza) while most of the class wanted to talk about what sortsa hyphens they could put in front of "American" (or whatever nationality). Problem being, the cops/people on the street/institutions etc. don't necessarily see you how you see yourself, and no great political challenge will come (only) through self-definition (in fact, we discussed at great length the extent to which multi-culturalism, not a bad thing by any means, had undone or undermined or deflected institutional changes effected by the civil rights movement by suggesting equal -- but clearly distinct along racial/cultural lines -- "classes" of sorts.

I guess I'm just dancing around my general discomfort with identity politics in the face of what I think is the more pressing and interesting issue of group definition from the outside. How one is labeled, not nec. how one labels him/herself (hence my interest in the War on Lindsay, esp. as it relates to the agency of these 'slebs in perpetuating their own negative image).

Midwest Airlines is a classless carrier. All the seats are the same size.

When I hear class I first always think of managing classrooms full of 25 to 30 hormone-addled, pop culture-distracted teenagers. Then I think of rich and poor; urban and rural (and exurban?); college educated and non-college educated; salaried professionals and hourly wage workers; people who went to Harvard or Yale and people who didn’t. I certainly don’t think first of the alt-rockers and preppies and jocks and burnouts in my classes, but perhaps they are subsidiaries in some way, although I can think of many of them who defy any overly simplistic class distinctions, like the above.

Historically, I think, first, class referred to a family or bloodline. It’s a characteristic of the rise of agriculture and city-based civilizations: nobility, clergy, warriors, peasants, etc. You were born into and died in these classes. Over the last few hundred years, thanks to Marx, it’s come down to making a more narrow distinction between the capitalists (whom control the means of production) and the proletariat (those who produce stuff). The important change here is that while still hierarchical, and essentially antagonistic, class has become more permeable in the sense that the working stiff could become a capitalist in the American dream, for instance.

Anybody who looks at it closer, as you are now doing, will find many sub-class distinctions, I’m sure. But it does seem to me that a key to the heft or usefulness of class as a social distinction is that it is not something that you can put-on or take-off like a new set of duds or a hairstyle. It’s something you’re born into, absorb from the neighborhood, pick-up from the circumstances you grow up in. It’s not fixed (and never has been, strictly speaking), of course, the son of a dockworker might become a college president. You may not die in the class you were born into anymore— but you’ll take it with you wherever you go, these habits of mind, the nagging voice, the invisible knapsack of privileges and expectations.

So there is something heavier about class, bound by education and economics, than high school freaks and geeks. Actually, despite the intense popularity contest of high school there might exist there (and in bohemia?) more options for making up who you are than anywhere else in life. I read a study once that showed how the American dream of class mobility was largely a myth. Alt-rockers and preppies might be more kind of consumer lifestyle choice than a class distinction. Perhaps pop culture is a great leveler and a ruse as well in that attaining the right tennis shoes or brand names are within almost every kid’s reach but will make little difference when it comes down to getting into and paying for a good college education.

Keep going. I'd ask you to ponder this:

(1) Do people put on and take off a new set of duds or a hairstyle as if they were a new set of duds or a hairstyle? It seems to me that most fashion choices are variations on previous choices, and you can't make wholesale changes in them any more than you can make wholesale changes in your mannerisms or your accent. If your clothes don't match your mannerisms, people can tell.

(2) You can't be a prep or a burnout without the cooperation of other preps and burnouts. So yes you have some choices, but how far you can go with them depends on previous choices and circumstances.

(3) "Prep" and "jock" and "burnout" and "skater" have different meanings and impacts in different times and places (and maybe the words are obsolete and have been replaced by others) but my guess - and this is a guess, and I don't know if there have been any studies - is that where these are major groups in a school (preps and jocks on one side, burnouts and skaters on the other), membership in them is a better predictor of the students' future income and social role than would, say, their parents' current income and social role. But then, a majority but by no means all preps will have parents who are salaried professionals, and a majority but by no means all burnouts will have parents who are blue-collar workers.

(4) High school seems crucially important to a discussion of class and music, but why? I'd speculate that, especially in what in the U.S. are called "public schools" (and what in Britain are called "state schools"), a wider range of people are thrown together doing similar things than you get among adults on the job and in their day-to-day life, and the students pretty much have to be there and the school pretty much has to take them (obv. kids can choose to drop out or to a limited extent choose a different kind of school; and schools can expel a few students and in effect force out others, but not a huge amount of them). And teenagers haven't figured out who they are yet, so "class" (or whatever) is more up for grabs, so people think about "classes" more and give them names.

(5) Where arty-boho types are prominent in a school (in times past were called "freaks," or "punks," maybe still are) things go a bit kerblooey, because the freaks are confident and obnoxious enough to challenge the status of preps and jocks as top dogs (ha! we're better) but also to challenge the status of the burnouts as the main refusal group. Freaks can be as closed-minded and exclusive as anyone else, but their attacks on the preps and the burnouts oddly enough open the doors for preps and burnouts to jump to the freak category, since the freaks are modeling a new kind of status that people can emulate. Also, the freaks provide a motive for the preps and the burnouts to absorb freak characteristics (which is how bohemian ideas get pulled into the mainstream).

(6) A loner or a misfit who punches a time clock is classed as blue collar/working-class, but a loner or misfit in a high school is not a burnout; he's a loner or a misfit. To be a burnout he has to have burnout friends. And one can say that the preps in a high school are high status but you can't say the burnouts are at the bottom; the burnouts will have a lot of friends and esteem (as opposed to the misfits). But then, status can be very much in the eyes of the beholder. Note the difference in the words "loner" and "misfit."

Duh, I should have asked “class is the elephant in the CLASSroom”?

(1&2) Depends on what you keep in your closet? I agree here and wouldn’t want to say high school social groups can be put on and taken off like Bowie/Madonna career moves. I just wanted to suggest “Preppies” and “burnouts” seems like a kind of social category easier to put on and take off than an ed-econ class, so maybe we don’t want to call them classes?

(3) ‘"Prep" and "jock" and "burnout" and "skater" …this is a guess…membership in them is a better predictor of the students' future income and social role than would, say, their parents' current income and social role.” My guess is that your guess is mostly American dream myth and illusory but a very interesting question, nonetheless, both in terms of what are the links between the high school social groups and the “class” home you come from and in terms of which better predicts your future class prospects. I’ll snoop around for some literature.

(4) I agree, only, again, still I’m not sure you want to call these high school groups “classes.” Maybe because I’m afraid that doing so would fuck up how “class” fits into one of my Hero Stories?

(5) The arty-boho types or freaks have never been prominent enough in either the high school I attended eons ago or the few high schools I’ve worked in over the last decade. And this seems crucial to how I misunderstand some of your ideas about this stuff but also why they fascinate me so. Your thing about the freaks seems romantic and exciting and I wish I did attend or teach at such a high school. I’d love to try to work with the freaks. Note, I don’t say I would like to be or have been a freak. It seems unfathomable to me because of some weird shame and pride thing I feel about my family and class.

(6) Maybe the burnouts are “freaks” with low self-esteem?

(7) I think where we're going wrong in this discussion - which is partly my fault for the way I worded my original post - is in thinking about an individual's class characteristics. Imagine a factory with ten managers and one hundred subordinates. "Manager" and "subordinate" are classes whether or not there's a lot of upward and downward mobility, and whether or not individuals self-identify emotionally with the categories "manager" and "subordinate." Yet I'd call "freak" a class (albeit an unstable one) precisely because people want to identify with it or identify against it, and therefore "freak" has social force, can pull people towards it or away from it and can disrupt other social groups. What the group "freak" and the group "manager" have in common is power - and "burnout" has power too. And this is true even if as individuals we can fall in and out of the group and in and out of power. (And then of course there are power relations within groups. Think of the leader of the burnout pack [lots of power] as opposed to a marginal prep [little power, for the time being, even though the marginal prep has a better chance of getting into college].)

A person is always both an individual and a social phenomena. Maybe "freak" as a social force has more to do with us as individuals and class (based on education and economics) as a social force has more to do with us as social phenomena. Although, that is to say, I think, that in terms of "class" we have no power, or none individually, but only collectively. But I don't like the way that sounds.

But I gotta go for now. Too much sittin' on my butts, not enough get up and go.

that is to say, I think, that in terms of "class" we have no power, or none individually, but only collectively. But I don't like the way that sounds.

Maybe my hang-ups above were related to this uneasy feeling as well -- actually, this gets at what was going on in "Pretty Girls": we have a vague feeling something must be wrong, but often the crisis has more to do with how we've framed the situation (socially or through the language we use) than the situation itself (perhaps the situation isn't a "situation" as in problem-that-requires-solving, but is merely a situation-that-is). One benefit of using high school tags is that we get rid of (some of) the notions that class disparities must be changed or righted. More often (in the HS examples), they simply change as they change (depending on chance, stimuli from pop culture, opinion leaders, etc.) and there isn't some clear "line of action" to take to "fix" the situation. I.e., even if people tend to cluster around skater or prep or jock etc., there's no law saying that [econ bracket] must be [social role], etc. (The Marxist proletarian/bourgeois class split might be helpful in framing a discussion of institutional inequality, but I do wonder -- kind of in response to what Mark is saying above -- whether or not we need such an absolute framework to notice these problems, as if without simplification into clear-cut categories we won't notice that economic/gender/etc. disparities exist. Not rhetorical, either, I really do wonder this and I have about zero grasp of actual Marxist theory via academia 'cept in Hollywood film production.)

Might just be rephrasing some of the above points here. Where this gets a little complicated, I guess, is that there is a "law" of sorts that says "individual people group into classes of people," or more simply, "people group." (Whether or not they want to do it or have control in it is to some extent a side issue; I can wring my hands all I want about where I get grouped, but also can't deny that I'm getting group there, and also can't deny that I don't always mind being grouped, indeed often enjoy being grouped.)

No, I'm still wringing my hands. I just have this feeling that there's some kind of disconnect between the social implications of listening to the music we do as members of a "cluster" and those visceral responses that lead us to like or dislike what we do. Maybe one area that would be useful in "bridging" the insights on social class and visceral response (Metal Clusters versus Boney Joan?) is this idea of "learned taste," the process through which we teach/tell/rationalize to ourselves how to like something, and the processes through which other people facilitate this? Learning to dance, learning to ask the right questions, learning to pay attention or stop paying so much goddam attention -- in fact, I had the lattermost experience watching The Family Stone; about halfway thru the movie I realized I was literally causing myself undue agitation because I was leaning forward, analyzing constantly, "dissecting" it as if it was a Hollis Frampton film. This was totally inappropriate, and even though I still didn't really like the movie, I liked it more than I would have if I'd kept at the rigorous viewing. This varies more for me in music -- I find that I can pay lots of or little attention to Paris without it making much of a difference, but can't listen to most low-key techno outside of headphones; always end up paying a lot of attention to Ashlee when I listen to her, which can be unreasonably taxing depending on the song -- if I listen to "Pieces of Me" the way I listen to "Better Off," I drive myself nuts, in fact often end up skipping track 2 because I'm too invested in it and feel weirdly disappointed. Same experience with Aly and AJ's new alb, which I just bought and sounds GREAT in the background.

I have the opposite reaction to "Pieces of Me." It's the one song I always take for granted (and since it was her only big hit in the U.S., it's the only one I don't think of as "ours" but rather as belonging to the world) - and then when I hear it I'm always surprised by how good it is: the slightly jazzy, soft but strongly rhythmic chords in the verse, the slightly jittery singing, and then the full warm flow of the vocals in the verse. In a way it's absolutely crucial to the album, since it's the track where she's marveling at the fact that she can actually be fully completely loved. Is it the music that leaves you wanting more, or the words? It's true that she says she's moody and restless without giving any examples - but the countdown of the days at the beginning - "On a Monday I am waiting, Tuesday I am fading, and by Wednesday I can't sleep" - coupled with the guitar, sets up a mood of restlessness, which the chorus relieves. And then there's the pang of knowing the eventual real-life unhappy ending, that a year later she'll tell us that ultimately the (broken) pieces of her drove Ryan away.

Is it that the song doesn't reveal new surprises with each listen?

I may be underestimating the second album because it has more songs where only one thing seems to be going on. "Catch Me When I Fall" and "Eyes Wide Open" are powerful powerful tracks with strong singing but each song is a single mood. (But then I rarely concentrate and analyze when I listen to music, so maybe there's much more there to hear; maybe if I analyze the music rather than the words everything will come to feel richer. Not that it needs to for them to be good songs.)

As for social classes, the thing is if you define a social class by particular elements ("hourly wage workers" as opposed to "salaried professionals") then of course everyone in the class will have those elements, whereas if you take a group like the freaks, it's sort of analogous to people who show up at a party: not everyone goes for the same reason and not everyone behaves the same way. So you're a freak if you hang around other people who are considered freaks without being compelled to have particular things in common with all of them, though you might, and of course it's still useful to make generalizations about the class. Or, as I said in the Hero Story thread, it's possible for all students in a high school to decide that people aren't in social classes (as if the classes were a social habitation) but rather freaks and preps etc. are types that people cluster more or less near, act as magnets, forces, shape the social landscape without necessarily defining the people who inhabit the landscape.

Is it the music that leaves you wanting more, or the words?

It's basically the words in conjunction with how smoothly the tune goes down. "Better Off" might be its opposite (in my mind, the way I hear 'em), because its breeziness almost completely belies the ambivalence that makes me listen more intently (even now that I know it very well from repeat listens). I suppose as part of an arc it's about as necessary (and, now that I think about it, serves a somewhat similar purpose as) "In Another Life" on the second album, which is similarly wanting in the lyrics department. Although the "pieces of me" is a much more striking metaphor than "another life," which just reminds me of the worst worst worst X-Files episode (non-Mulder/Scully seasons excluded) ever ("The Field Where I Died").

"PoM" is important at track two, which is also the only place to put it and the album would suffer without it for several reasons, not least because, like you said, it's the one track I associate with major airplay and her actual popularity (as opposed to the weird nether-realm of pseudo-popularity she seems stuck in now...saw a lovely post-op summer pic in some magazine and there was zero recognition). Funny that those particular Mon/Tues/Wed lyrics, when you write them out like that, are much more anxious than they sound -- but for some reason the ticking off of those days on the album itself is too clean, too "calendar montage," it's SO pleasant that the anxiety can't quite overcome the serenity. You even get the real-life unhappy ending(s) in the album -- even when you know the real-world chronology, "Surrender" is an important late track that seems to uproot with a kind of righteous anger a lot of what's come before ("I may be sweet but I'm still on the vine/ You couldn't wait, no you had to take your bite"...makes you wonder what the hell was happening before this experience), and "Undiscovered" is elegaic -- "don't walk away" is a pretty brutal way to end an album in my book, since its how I'd probably end my autobiography, too. (And between them is "Nothing New," bitter and jaded -- maybe the most telling precursor to I Am Me? Never thought about it that way before, anyway. And then "Giving It All Away," which is more interesting/weirdly pessimistic the more I think about the incongruity of that final verse with the first trite verse).

Reading Marooned (the Stranded sequel) now and I'm thinking Autobiography might be my desert island album at this point, in part because of the myriad ways I can listen to it. When I want to think, I can think, when I want to "shut off my brain" and go for a walk (or turn it back on and go for a walk) I can do that, too. And there's so much promise in it.

Will stew s'more about yer classes, which seem like a productive spot to be putting my brain energies (hm, parties and magnets both excellent metaphors, actually, not sure why I'm still being so resistant since I've been following the column itself just fine!). Return of the slight musings on 'slebs-as-class coming up this or next month (expanded on "mini-bling"), basically arguing that the result of knee-jerk class-y reactions even within pop have led to more modest signifiers of wealth in music (my examples are somewhat lacking but the idea is interesting, and Hilary and P!nk are good for a full column on this topic, anyway), to sort of mirror the weirdly apocalyptic vibe happening at the industry level these days.

"it" in first parag is "Pieces of You," serves a similar purpose arcwise as "In Another Life."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Help me figure out what I mean by "social class"

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empirical claim (dispute or disprove?):

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No matter the size of your butt...

class is the elephant in the room?

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Re: class is the elephant in the room? (Post Two)

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