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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?
Re: class is the elephant in the room?
(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."
Re: class is the elephant in the room?
(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?