Class & Identity

Question 1

How can class be defined?

Answer 1

A group that share a similar economic and social situation.

Question 2

What did Bourdieu say about the ruling class?

Answer 2

They have the power to shape what knowledge and skills are valued, and ensure them and their children are in the best position to acquire them.

Question 3

What are the three types of capital according to Bourdieu?

Answer 3

• Cultural: the knowledge, attitudes, skills, education and advantages a person haves, giving them higher status
• Economic: economic resources
• Social: resources based on group membership, relationships, networks of influence and support

Question 4

What type of capital is the most important according to Boudieu, and why?

Answer 4

Cultural capital
- By transmitting knowledge and attitudes needed to succeed (like knowledge of high culture and social situations) those with high levels of cultural capital will be in a position to accumulate the others as well

Question 5

What things would you consider when determining someone’s class?

Answer 5

• Income
• House
• Holidays
• Occupation
• Accent

Question 6

Who are the upper class?

Answer 6

Those with inherited wealth, often in the form of land.

Question 7

Who pointed out the main key feature of the upper class is their invisibility?

Answer 7

Mackintosh and Mooney

Question 8

What do the upper class operate according to Mackintosh and Mooney?

Answer 8

‘Social closure’, meaning that their education, leisure time, and lives are separate and partially invisible to the rest of the population, as it’s inaccessible or unknown
E.g polo, hunting and opera.

Question 9

Why can it be said that the upper class is waning in numbers and power?

Answer 9

There’s a new ‘super rich’ based on achieved rather than ascribed status which is more significant

Question 10

What are the middle class?

Answer 10

Majority of the population. Traditionally associated with those who had professional careers, university educated, and owned their own homes.

Question 11

How has the middle class grown in size?

Answer 11

Access to home ownership and university education has spread.

Question 12

How are the middle class seen to be a very diverse group?

Answer 12

There’s a big difference between public sector professionals and private sector professionals
Fox: discusses ‘upper middle’ ‘middle middles’ ‘lower middles’ to highlight the differences in class.

Question 13

Who are the working class?

Answer 13

Traditionally made up of manual workers and those with trades

Question 14

What does Hutton discuss?

Answer 14

Decline in trade union memberships, the manufacturing sector and the dispersal of working class communities has eroded the working class identity.

Question 15

Who discussed the erosion of the working class identity?

Answer 15

Hutton

Question 16

How are the working class described?

Answer 16

Hardworking, straight talking, ‘salt of the earth’

Question 17

Who studied the treatment and experiences of working class women?

Answer 17

Skeggs

Question 18

What did Skeggs find when studying working class women?

Answer 18

They felt humiliated by how they were treated by teachers and doctors who judged and dismissed them due to their background.

Question 19

How did working class women react to being mistreated?

Answer 19

They took care in how they dressed, and decorated their home a certain way to make themselves ‘respectable’

Question 20

Who are the underclass?

Answer 20

Those who are at the bottom of society, that lacked opportunities through education, health and earning.

Question 21

What does Murray say about the underclass?

Answer 21

Benefits encourage a dependency culture where people don’t take responsibility for themself. They are seen as lazy.

Question 22

How may class be seen as unimportant?

Answer 22

• the media has broken down class barriers and enabled access to the range of cultural experiences and information.
• contemporary UK has given choices and opportunities to everyone through university and owning your own home. Was limited to the privileged in the past.
• Postmodernists Pakulski & Waters suggest there has been a shift from production to consumption in the definition of identities - we are now defined by what we buy, not what we do.
• Offe: few people share a common experience of full time work, the experience that used to shape the culture of social classes. We now don’t really have a job for life, and we are able to create our own identities regardless of our job or qualifications.

Question 23

How is class still important today?

Answer 23

• Social class can be the most significant indicator of outcomes through education, health and life expectancy
• The ability to make choices often depends on money

Question 24

What two postmodernists discuss how class perhaps no longer matters?

Answer 24

• Pakulski & Waters: production to consumption
• Offe: full time work