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Created: January 23, 2002
Latest Update: January 23, 2002
Faculty:
jeannecurran@habermas.org
Olivier at tapcourse@yahoo.com
takata@uwp.edu

Class in 21st Century America

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, January 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on a PSN thread on social class. Class doesn't make a lot of sense as a conceptual approach in conservative capitalist society because an underlying unstated assumption is that access is unlimited to those who have the creative ability to succeed. But in critical theory and postmodern theory class is today a complex concept obscured by the complicity of denial in the dominant discourse of the West.

I like Lauren Langman's phrase, "while my Frankfurter side does not give central priority to class, my Marxist side does." Me, too. Class, race, and gender keep rearing their tousled heads in most of our social issues. So it behooves us to consider them in good faith from all perspectives.

No time to work on essay today, but these are the posts we'll be referring to:

On Tuesday, January 22, Stephen Philion posted to PSN:

Subject: Re: Class in America, Copyrights

what was this idea that Felski had about Marxists not studying some obscure phenomenon called the 'middle class'? If I were a Chronicle editor I might have asked her had she ever heard the name Barbara Ehrenreich. On the LBO list Justin Schwartz wondered if she had ever read Eric Olin Wright.

Felski seems to share the popular, and rather ideological, notion that class has something to do with income, which only adds to the general confusion about the topic....

Steve

On Wednesday, January 23, 2002, Lauren Langman posted to PSN:

Subject: Re: Class in America, Copyrights

Dear Steve,

While I was just relaying info, it was felt that the issue of class should be discussed-and sometimes psn discussions move to areas where we have less expertise. The issues of class, inequality, stratifiaction, poverty etc are central to sociologists from mainstream to our neck of the woods, and much of this impacts policy. It is important that we make our central point that inequaity/poverty are inherent to capitalism, and while the Welfare State may cushion some of the adversity, capital can never foster income equality, or, more the point of her post, recognition and dignity as per Sennett +Cobb or more recently Axel Honneth. With globalization, much poverty has been exported to 3d world countries.

While we need to remember that class is a relation to productive forces, relations to income are ambiguous. As many on the list know, a union construction worker, say a plumber, may make more than many jr faculty, esp the adjuncts, visitors etc aka gypsy scholars. Similarly, many lower middle class business people, contractors, restuarant owner for example, often make 6 figure incomes, and even in a few cases seven figures. The point is that while on the one hand, "middle class" in America is an ideological fiction to mystify class difference, our analyses today must be more sophisticated than simply a capitalist-bourgeoisie dichotomy. Wright's concern with class fractions and ambiguous locations, eg engineers, are they proles or upper bourgeois?? or whatever. Anyhow, while my Frankfurter side does not give central priority to class, my Marxist side does. So I hope that those who do such research and/or theory can share some of their insights.

Cheers,
Lauren