Class identity Flashcards
What is the definition of Identity?
Sense of ‘who you are’ made up of a range of influences
Identity encompasses personal, social, and cultural factors.
Define Habitus.
Way of life for a social class
Habitus refers to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that individuals acquire through their life experiences.
What does Symbolic capital refer to?
Being wealthy in terms of status – having high status
Symbolic capital can influence social interactions and perceptions.
What are Nike identities?
WC invest in brands to create a WC identity
Refers to working-class individuals using brand affiliation to shape their social identity.
Define Symbolic violence.
Where the behaviour or habitus of others is devalued as inferior
Symbolic violence often reinforces social hierarchies.
What is meant by Social suicide?
Where not conforming to style standards leads to negative responses from peers
This concept highlights the social pressures to conform to group norms.
What does Self-exclusion mean?
Take yourself out of a situation
Self-exclusion can be a coping mechanism in response to social pressures.
Define Policing identity/shaming.
Where other pupils label and exclude people for not conforming to expectations
Policing involves maintaining social norms and expectations within a group.
What is the primary focus of sociologists regarding pupils’ class identities?
How pupils’ class identities formed outside school interact with the school and its values to produce educational success and failure.
Which researchers focus on the interaction between working-class pupils’ identities and school?
Archer et al (2010).
What concept do Archer et al (2010) draw on to understand the relationship between working-class pupils’ identities and school?
Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus.
True or False: One class’s habitus is intrinsically better than another’s.
False.
What power does the middle class have regarding its habitus?
To define its habitus as superior and to impose it on the education system.
What does the school value more according to Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital?
Middle-class tastes and preferences.
Fill in the blank: The interaction between working-class pupils’ identities and school leads to _______.
underachievement.
What is linked to Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital?
The school putting a higher value on middle-class tastes and preferences.
What is symbolic capital according to Bourdieu?
Status and recognition gained from school due to middle-class tastes and preferences
Pupils socialised into middle-class habits are valued more in educational settings.
How does the school system view working-class habits?
The school devalues the working-class habitus, deeming their tastes tasteless and worthless
Examples include clothing and accent.
What term does Bourdieu use to describe the withholding of symbolic capital from the working class?
Symbolic violence
This concept refers to the reproduction of class structures by defining working-class tastes as inferior.
What impact does the clash of habitus have on working-class pupils in education?
They feel the need to change how they talk and present themselves to succeed
This often leads to a sense of losing one’s identity.
What did Archer find about the aspirations of working-class pupils regarding higher education?
They felt unable to access ‘posh’, middle-class spaces such as university and professional careers
They perceived these opportunities as ‘not for the likes of us’.
Fill in the blank: Symbolic violence reproduces the _______ structure.
class
This mechanism keeps lower classes ‘in their place’.
True or False: Symbolic capital is equally distributed among all social classes in educational settings.
False
Middle-class pupils gain more recognition compared to working-class pupils.
What is symbolic violence in the context of school identity?
It is the way schools look down on certain pupils, leading them to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth.
