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School of Education |
Teaching Diverse Populations EDG 2701 Unit II Lesson VIII Classism | |||
Personal Information Associate Professor, Senior |
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Introduction to the Lesson The purpose of this eighth lesson in this second unit is to introduce the education student to the specific beliefs, values and attitudes rooted in fear and ignorance and are known collectively as Classism. The student will study the overarching concepts of social class, social mobility, social stratification, class prejudice, plutacracy, poverty, homelessness. There are several definitions of these concepts which will guide the discussions in this lesson. Social Class: Social class may be defined as a large category or group of people within a system of social stratification who have a similar socioeconomic status in relation to other socioeconomic segments of the society or community. A social class is not necessarily organized (but may become so, as in the case of the Marxian working-class), but the individuals who compose it are relatively similar in political, economic, educational, occupational, and prestige status. Those who are part of the same social class have similar life-chances. To Karl Marx, writing in the 1860s and 1870s, social class is defined as a group of people sharing common relations to labor and the means of production.
Social class is determined by the ownership (or non-ownership) of the "means of economic production" - i.e. those groups who own factories, farms, coal mines, raw materials etc., become a coherent group looking after their own interests. They live in similar surroundings, send their children to similar schools, and form a coherent "class" - he called them "capitalists" or "bourgeoisie" i.e. those who own the capital means of production. Those who work for these capitalists are called "proletariat" (an old German word meaning "worker"). So for Marx, private ownership of economic resources is the key factor. Accordingly, social history is nothing other than a record of past struggles between distinct social classes. In the modern, industrial world, the most significant classes are the bourgeoisie, people who own land, resources, factories, and other means of production, and the proletariat, people who work for wages. In its efforts to succeed, the bourgeoisie must constantly revise and renew the means of production, ensuring a constant infusion of capital by building larger cities, promoting new products, and securing cheaper commodities. As capital increases and the means of production expand, however, the labor of the proletariat becomes ever less valuable. Alienated from themselves and each other, workers have little political influence. Even small shopkeepers and skilled laborers are encouraged to join with the bourgeoisie in its drive for capital, instead of expressing their natural alliance with wage workers. To Max Weber, writing in the early 1900s, Marx's view was too simple - he agreed that different classes exist, but he thought that "Status" or "Social Prestige" was the key factor in deciding which group each one of us belongs to. So, where we live, our manner of speech, our schooling, our leisure habits, these, and many other factors, decide our social class - he called these different aspects of the way we behave our "Life-Style". Particularly important, he thought, was the way each person thinks about his/her "Life-Chances" - if we feel that we can become a respected and highly valued member of wider society, then this is likely to put us in a higher social class than some others e.g. a child who goes to a private School, live in a large house, has parents who are "professional" people, and has a "standard" American accent is likely (but not certain) to feel that he/she has a greater chance of becoming generally respected than a child who is educated in an inner city, crowded school, and who lives in the projects, and who speaks non-standard American English. According to Charles Levy: The concept of class has mostly been taboo in this country, due not only to its incompatibility with American values (belief in individual effort, equality of opportunity and hard work) but also the strength of capitalist ideology that refuses to place any blame on the economic system itself. Thus, class position has been brushed aside as a possible explanation for prejudice and discrimination in social policy. In fact, Robert Nisbet states rather confidently, "Today, as a sociological concept, class is dead" (Nisbet 1993: 91). What we must infer from this is that class in the Marxist sense, or the idea of class as an outcome of economic conditions, is a dead issue; race and sex are the all-encompassing issues that should really take precedence. This explanation makes it necessary to find an "individual" explanation for poverty, a lower class, and the need for more social programs that reform welfare policy. While there is no doubt that both structural and individual forms of racism and sexism exist and are extremely important in understanding stratification in American society, they focus more on specific segments of society rather than a broader category that encompasses both race and sex within it. Thus, it is proposed that racism and sexism are insufficient to completely explain the perpetuation of poverty as a whole in this nation as well as the aversion the upper and middle classes have toward "wasting" money on welfare and other social programs to aid those less fortunate.http://wizard.ucr.edu/~clevy/papers/8.html Social Mobility: SOCIAL MOBILITY describes the movement or opportunities for movement between different social groups, and the advantages and disadvantages that go with this in terms of income, security of employment, opportunities for advancement etc. Social mobility occurs whenever people move across social class boundaries, or from one occupational level to another. Mobility can be upwards or downwards.
The study of Social Mobility is important for a number of reasons:
FEUDAL and CASTE societies were CLOSED- A person's position was largely based on ascribed characteristics (such as family origin, gender or ethnic group). These ascribed characteristics are still socially significant in modern societies, but modern America tends to place greater emphasis on achievement, (what people can do). Thus we can describe America to some extent as a MERITOCRACY - where a position in the hierarchy is determined by individual merit. In a perfect world your background would be of no importance, since everybody would be competing for jobs under the same fair conditions. However as we know, there are marked differences in the social circumstances of classes, of men and women, and people of different ethnic groups. Social Stratification: According to Talcott Parsons, social stratification is the differential ranking of human individuals who compose a given social system and their treatment as superior or inferior relative to one another in certain socially important respects" (Parsons, Analytical Approach to Social Strat., 69) Stratification can be defined various ways, but most commonly refers to institutionalized inequalities in power, wealth, and status between categories of persons within a single social system (e.g., classes, castes, ethnic groups). Status inequalities between individuals are found everywhere, so how much inequality does it take to qualify as a stratified society? On one hand, inequalities based on personal qualities (charisma, economic or social skills, etc.) do not constitute stratification, since not defined by membership in a particular category. So if in a hunting band the best hunter or the healer/shaman is held in high regard and has preferential access to some resources, this ain't social stratification. On other hand, all human societies known to date exhibit institutionalized inequalities based on age, and most or all have gender-based inequalities as well; so by general definition given above, all known human societies are stratified. But most students of social stratification are really talking about differences between categories of persons other than age-classes or genders -- i.e., they exclude inequalities based strictly age and gender .http://courses.washington.edu/anth457/stratif.htm According to David Grunsky: The term "stratification system" refers to the complex of social institutions that generate observed inequalities of this sort. The key components of such systems are (1) the institutional processes that define certain types of goods as valuable and desirable, (2) the rules of allocation that distribute these goods across various positions in the division of labor (e.g., doctor, farmer, "housewife"), and (3) the mobility mechanisms that link individuals to positions and thereby generate unequal control over valued resources. It follows that inequality is produced by two types of matching processes: the social positions in society are first matched to "reward packages" of unequal value, and members of society are then allocated to the positions so defined and rewarded. Classism: According Barone, classism is the systematic oppression of one's group by another based on economic distinctions based on one's position within the system of production and distribution. At the institutional level, structure allows socially consequential power to be employed against the wills and efforts of individuals who are effected by the exercise of such power (Bowles and Gintis, 1986: 101). Class is a system of power and authority, of domination and subordination that is economically based. The concept of classism is not new; in the early part of the twentieth century explanations that were based almost solely on class explanations were quite popular with the growing socialist movement and radical labor leaders. These explanations then became less popular in the United States at the onset of World War II. Then, a reemergence of literature regarding the acknowledgment that class prejudice was as strong a force as race prejudice occurred in the late 1970's and early 1980's and then decreased until the early 1990's. This literature (Basu et al. 1978; Butler 1991; Grant 1977; Gomes and Williams 1990; Gruber 1980; Margolin 1993; Moses 1990; Piven and Cloward 1982, 1974; Sennett and Cobb 1972; Thompson 1988; Valentine 1975) was grounded in the idea that class-based explanations could account for poverty and hostility to welfare programs. Yet, even while stressing the importance of class-based explanations, the authors of these articles sometines mixed class with race and sex explanations. Thus, a clear separation of class from race and sex was less likely because of the confounding of possible explanations that might provide a clearer understanding of the effect that class prejudice plays in the creation and perpetuation of the lower class -- regardless of race or sex -- through social policy. Thus, it is very important that class prejudice be studied separately, not collapsed into traditional explanations. According to Mellonise Johnson Classism, vis-a-vis sexism, racism, heterosexism, etc., is our single greatest challenge to realizing an American democracy. Defined here, classism is the concentrated control of our nation's wealth and governing power that is used to advantageously serve a small segment of our population (the wealthy elite) at the expense of the majority (the middle and working classes and the working poor). Classism is the driving force that spawned the entire series of "-isms" we social justice organizations battle to this day. It is classism, the insidious, pandemic cancer, that eats away at opportunities for a humane standard of living for all Americans. This condition requires us to reconsider how we develop our individual organizational platforms, and work (coalesce) with other like-minded or common issue organizations to produce expedient, comprehensive and lasting relief from our oppressions. America is not a true democracy. It is a plutocracy (or oligarchy): a government of the few, for the few, by the few. Since its founding, our country's wealth and power have been held and exercised by a privileged few. Classism, or the overwhelming interest of the wealthy, has historically engineered our nation's political and economic agenda and the plight of the common laborer. The plutocracy dominates our political process and our politicians (greatly aided by the detachment and passivity of the general electorate, who are asleep at the ballot box). The plutocracy buys public policy to serve their narrow interests. To maintain their wealth and governing control, they have developed an entire cottage industry of economic and political oppressions (by sex, race, age, etc.). Further, they have brilliantly used "divide and conquer" tactics to divert our focus away from our common problem (they thrust people of racial and cultural diversity against each other and whites, men against women, straights against gays and lesbians, etc., each believing the other group is responsible for its failure to attain prosperity). Let's step back to study the forest and not the trees and recognize that all oppressions are rooted in classism. If sexism, racism, ageism, ableism, heterosexism, sizeism, and lookism, are all members of the same family, then classism is the parent-the common seed.. .http://www.now-va.org/choices/summer2000_vanowactions3.html Plutocracy The term "plutocracy" is formally defined as government by the wealthy, and is also sometimes used to refer to a wealthy class that controls a government, often from behind the scenes. More generally, a plutocracy is any form of government in which the wealthy exercise the preponderance of political power, whether directly or indirectly. Plutocracy may also have social and cultural aspects. Thus, in Democracy for the Few political scientist Michael Parenti is led to comment "American capitalism represents more than just an economic system; it is an entire cultural and social order, a plutocracy, a system of rule that is mostly by and for the rich. Most universities and colleges, publishing houses, mass circulation magazines, newspapers, television and radio stations, professional sports teams, foundations, churches, private museums, charity organizations, and hospitals are organized as corporations, ruled by boards of trustees (or directors or regents) composed overwhelmingly of affluent businesspeople. These boards exercise final judgment over all institutional matters." The question of whether or not the United States could be said to be a plutocracy is discussed at length in Who Rules America, by sociologist G. William Domhoff. There Domhoff remarks: "The idea that a relatively fixed group of privileged people might shape the economy and government for their own benefit goes against the American grain. Nevertheless, this book argues that the owners and top-level managers in large income-producing properties are far and away the dominant power figures in the United States. Their corporations, banks, and agribusinesses come together as a corporate community that dominates the federal government in Washington. Their real estate, construction, and land development companies form growth coalitions that dominate most local governments." The argument to the effect that the US is a functional plutocracy (that is, that the wealthy exercise a preponderance of American political power) is different from, enormously better documented, and altogether more credible, than claims to the effect that there exists a small circle of conspirators bent on ruling the world, claims for which no credible evidence exists. (Domhoff explicitly disavows the existence of any such conspiracy.)http://progressiveliving.org/plutocracy_defined.htm This lesson was developed to address elements of competency #2,#3, #4 and #5 on the functions of the educational process (teaching and learning) and schooling for education majors who are taking EDG 2701 in partial fulfillment of the graduation requirements for an Associate of Arts degree in Teaching (Elementary), Teaching (Secondary), Early Childhood and Exceptional Education. Competency #2 reads (in part) as follows: The student will examine the impact of diversity upon the educational process by
Competency #3 reads (in part) as follows: The student will examine barriers to understanding diversity by
Competency #4 reads (in part) as follows: The student will examine the structure and complexity of diversity by
Competency #5 reads (in part) as follows: The student will have the opportunity to develop intercultural competence and cultural relativism by
(A complete list of all the competencies for EDG 2701 is provided below by clicking on the link en titled competencies) | |||
