Hello Class; Introducing Social Class

Last unit we saw that people are shaped by the structures of society.  Family, school, peers, media all have profound effects on who we become.  This unit, we will see that these structures also create inequalities.  Often, these inequalities are overlooked because the dominant groups and structures look past these inqualities.  The first type of inequality we will examine is social class.

Brief Background of Social Class in Sociology

As sociology began to coalesce as a discipline in the 1800s, the changes of the industrial revolution created large disparities in health and income.  As we learned about the sociological perspective in unit 1, we saw the examination of inequalities was the focus for early scholars of sociology.

Karl Marx and the Inequalities of Capitalism

Marx studied these disparities and wrote about them.  For example, Marx points out that middle-class persons lived an average of 38 years, but laborers only made it 17 years.  Marx also wrote about earlier class systems such as feudalism and slavery.  His paradigm was focused on who owned the industries of the 1800s and who were the workers in those industries.  

Max Weber and Three-Component Social Class

Following Marx, Weber wrote about social class just before WWI.  Weber argued that social class was composed of multiple components, namely wealth, prestige and power.

Pierre Bourdieu and the Cultural and Social Reproduction of Class

Later still, in 1977 Pierre Bourdieu wrote "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" which was a study of French educational system.  Bourdieu made the claim that social class involves hidden assets that sustain one's class such as education, style of speech, how to dress, as well as how to conduct oneself to fit into a class system.   

Annette Lareau and Social Class, Race and Education 

In 1989, Annette Lareau published a seminal study that examined American education and social class and race. Here is an explanation from Lareau's publisher,

Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously―as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children.

Here is Lareau from the Stanford Center for Inequality:



And here is an Atlantic article (2012) explaining Lareau's research.

Summary
So this is the background with which sociologists approach social class.  Social class is complex and made up of various components that interconnect with each other.  These various components create opportunities and obstacles for the members of a society.  Not only does social class affect people's life chances, it also affects how people experience the world; it constructs their reality.