A Darker Shade of Pale: Whiteness as Integral to Middle-Class Identity

2011 ◽  
pp. 82-100
Author(s):  
Diane Reay ◽  
Gill Crozier ◽  
David James
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Class Identity

scholarly journals Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852098222
Author(s):  
Sam Friedman ◽  
Dave O’Brien ◽  
Ian McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Privileged Class

Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with those working in professional and managerial occupations, 36 of whom are from middle-class backgrounds but identify as working class or long-range upwardly mobile. Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ which act to downplay interviewees’ own, fairly privileged, upbringings and instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories. Yet while this ‘intergenerational self’ partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts – we argue – as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege. By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, we show how these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success ‘against the odds’ that simultaneously casts their progression as unusually meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory.

scholarly journals ‘Below English Line’: An ethnographic exploration of class and the English language in post-liberalization India

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 576-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAZANA JAYADEVA
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
English Language ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
And Performance ◽  
English Training

AbstractAnthropological studies of India's post-liberalization middle classes have tended to focus mainly on the role of consumption behaviour in the constitution of this class group. Building on these studies, and taking class as an object of ethnographic enquiry, I argue that, over the last 20 years, class dynamics in the country have been significantly altered by the unprecedentedly important and complex role that the English language has come to play in the production and reproduction of class. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork—conducted at commercial spoken-English training centres, schools, and corporate organizations in Bangalore—I analyse the processes by which this change in class dynamics has occurred, and how it is experienced on the ground. I demonstrate how, apart from being a valuable type of class cultural capital in its own right, proficiency in English has come to play a key role in the acquisition and performance of other important forms of capital associated with middle-class identity. As a result, being able to demonstrate proficiency in English has come to be experienced as a critical element in claiming and maintaining a space in the middle class, regardless of the other types of class cultural capital a person possesses.

The City Sketch

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-104
Author(s):  
John Evelev
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Margaret Fuller ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Urban Populations ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
City Life ◽  
The City

Although the picturesque sketch genre is primarily associated with rural subjects, it was also applied to city life during the mid-nineteenth century, when urban populations were undergoing unprecedented growth. Chapter 2 argues that the newly popular picturesque city sketch helped the emergent middle class to establish its identity as it attained a distinctive position between the wealthy and the working classes. Walking the streets, the middle-class picturesque city sketcher turned the class-divided city into picturesque tableaux that were far less antagonistic to city life than the sensationalist characterizations that were central to the dominant mode of city writing in midcentury. The chapter examines city sketches and fiction derived from the genre, written by Edgar Allan Poe, Lydia Maria Child, George “Gaslight” Foster, Margaret Fuller, Cornelius Mathews, and others. Although city sketchers helped articulate a middle-class identity, the picturesque at times tended to give way to a sublime mode in which the city crowd threatened to absorb the middle class into its undifferentiated mass.

scholarly journals Naming oneself in the social mirror: A vignette-based survey

2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212093295
Author(s):  
Oscar MacClure ◽  
Emmanuelle Barozet ◽  
Ana María Valenzuela
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

In order to understand the way in which people self-identify in society and as a contribution to debates about class identity in Latin America, in this article the authors assess how individuals categorize themselves and others socially, and discuss whether a significant portion of the population classifies itself as middle class. They address the question of whether or not individuals’ representation of their social position is linked to social class, examining whether that position incorporates a socio-economic dimension, a hierarchical dimension, or even an element of moral value. The authors focus on how individuals name their own social position by means of a vignette-based survey applied in 2016 to a randomized sample of 2000 people in Chile. The results show that the theoretical notion of class is still of relevance to subjective positioning criteria, and that such criteria are specific to individuals who self-identify with lower or higher social positions.

Kin Support of the Black Middle Class: Negotiating Need, Norms, and Class Background

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine D Hill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Socioeconomic Background ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Kin Support ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract In comparison to middle-class Whites, middle-class African Americans disproportionately provide financial support to their low-income family members. Evidence suggests that this practice is both essential for its low-income recipients and economically detrimental for Black middle-class givers. Scholars often oversimplify Black middle-class identity by describing kin support as motivated solely by racial identity. Gathering insight from 41 in-depth interviews, this article interrogates the conditions under which, despite their financial own vulnerability, middle-class Black families offer kin support. This study explores variations in Black middle-class racial ideology and observes how other dimensions of identity, such as class background, influence attitudes and decision-making towards family. This article demonstrates how socioeconomic background shapes the ways the Black middle class negotiates expectations of kin support and details three kin support approaches as either strategies for social mobility, tools reserved for short-term lending, or opportunities to repay unsettled childhood debts. This work contributes to our understanding of how the Black community deploys kin support, illuminates how the Black middle class makes sense of racial norms around giving, and centers class background in our intersectional understanding of identity.

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