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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?
--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?
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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!!!!!
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