Millions Standing against Their Own Economic Interest

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mugambi Jouet
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
Economic Interest ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Blind Faith

Millions of white working-class and middle-class Americans vote against their own economic interest by defending policies that hurt them while profiting the rich, including the 1% wealthiest Americans. Several factors help explain this peculiar dimension of U.S. politics: myopia fostered by anti-intellectualism; the relationship between religious fundamentalism and free-market fundamentalism; blind faith in the American Dream; and how racism hinders economic solidarity.

Disparate Recoveries: Wealth, Race, and the Working Class after the Great Recession

2021 ◽  
Vol 695 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
Fenaba R. Addo ◽  
William A. Darity
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Net Worth ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

What does it mean to be working class in a society of extreme racial wealth inequality? Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we investigate the wealth holdings of Black, Latinx, and white working-class households during the post–Great Recession (pre–COVID-19) period that spanned 2010 to 2019. We then explore the relationship between working-class and middle-class attainment using a wealth-based metric. We find that, in terms of their net worth, fewer Black working-class households benefitted from the economic recovery than white working-class households. Among white households, the working class saw the greatest increase in wealth in both absolute and relative terms. Working-class households were less likely to be middle class as defined by their wealth holdings, and Black and Latinx households were also less likely to be middle class. For Black households, racial identity is a stronger predictor of wealth attainment than occupational sector.

Working-Class Culture as Political Participation: Reading Trump as Revolt Against a Middle-Class Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Liberty Kohn
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Communication Style ◽  
Deep Foundations ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
White Working Class

The 2016 election cycle and ensuing presidency of Donald Trump has been attributed in large part to his support among working-class whites (Gest 2016, p. 193; Tyson and Maniam 2016). Their reasons for support, however, are open to interpretation. This article will suggest that elements of Donald Trump’s public communication style and ethos align with elements of working-class culture, language use, and knowledge construction. Trump’s anti-institutional, anti-government rhetoric reifies these components of working-class culture because of institutions’ and government’s deep foundations in middle-class culture, language use, and knowledge construction—and the working-class’s, especially the white working-class’s, alienation from these institutions, with the result being anger or apathy (Lareau 2003; Jensen 2012; Gest 2016). These values are often embedded in a master narrative that defines white working-class life as one of victimization (Hochschild 2016; Gest 2016; Cramer 2016). The article next suggests that Trump’s oft-used rhetorical framework of not just immigrants as threat, but of immigrants as protected and valued by institutions that overlook white workingclass concerns (Gest 2016), opens up one possible persuasive framework to legitimate Trump’s xenophobia and racism through white working-class attitudes.

‘An intensive study of – feet!’ in two films by Lois Weber: Shoes and The Blot

2021 ◽  
pp. 38-48
Author(s):  
Pamela Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Intensive Study ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Moral Compromise ◽  
The Relationship

In Shoes (1916), Lois Weber re-examines the relationship between shoes and social mobility. Far from guiding the working-class protagonist’s progress, a pair of worn boots trap her into a moral compromise, which destroys her hope of future advancement, either romantically or socially. Weber’s investigation into wage inequality, the rights of women and the influence of consumer culture via footwear continues in The Blot (1921), which revisits the same plot in a lower middle-class milieu and expands on the theme. Here, shoes are again a danger to women, but also an indicator of genteel distress and a cheap, impractical commodity, good only for profiteering rather than practicality.

scholarly journals Mockery and Morality in Popular Cultural Representations of the White, Working Class

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayne Raisborough ◽  
Matt Adams
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Strategic Orientation ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
New Class ◽  
Class A ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Class Distinction

We draw on ‘new’ class analysis to argue that mockery frames many cultural representations of class and move to consider how it operates within the processes of class distinction. Influenced by theories of disparagement humour, we explore how mockery creates spaces of enunciation, which serve, when inhabited by the middle class, particular articulations of distinction from the white, working class. From there we argue that these spaces, often presented as those of humour and fun, simultaneously generate for the middle class a certain distancing from those articulations. The plays of articulation and distancing, we suggest, allow a more palatable, morally sensitive form of distinction-work for the middle-class subject than can be offered by blunt expressions of disgust currently argued by some ‘new’ class theorising. We will claim that mockery offers a certain strategic orientation to class and to distinction work before finishing with a detailed reading of two Neds comic strips to illustrate what aspects of perceived white, working class lives are deemed appropriate for these functions of mockery. The Neds, are the latest comic-strip family launched by the publishers of children's comics The Beano and The Dandy, D C Thomson and Co Ltd.

Franz Mehring and the Problems of Liberal Social Reform, in Bismarckian Germany 1884–90: The Origins of Radical Marxism

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-255
Author(s):  
Glen R. McDougall
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
The Relationship

The purpose of this article is to analyze, using the example of Franz Mehring, the growing cleavage between German left-liberalism and social democracy in the 1880s. Due in part to the radicalization produced by Bismarck's anti-socialist law of 1878 to 1890, Marxism was firmly established within the German socialist movement in the 1880s. The reverse of that process, the growing ideological and political rigidity of left-liberalism, is less well treated. In this article, I will outline the program of social reform proposed by the then left-liberal journalist, Franz Mehring, to German liberalism in an effort to build a coalition of middle-class and working-class democratic forces in Imperial Germany. Mehring's failure was instructive both for his own intellectual and political development and for what it tells us about the relationship between social democracy and liberalism in Germany.

scholarly journals How class identities shape highbrow consumption: A cross-national analysis of 30 European countries and regions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Reeves
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Using Data ◽  
National Analysis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cross National

Highbrow culture may not always be central to cultural capital and, in such circumstances, the distinctiveness of middle-class consumption of highbrow culture may diminish, becoming more similar to working-class consumption. Using data from 30 European countries, I explore this issue through examining three questions: 1) is class identity associated with highbrow consumption; 2) does this association vary across countries; and 3) is the relationship between class identity and highbrow consumption altered when the majority of people in a given society identify as either ‘working-class’ or ‘middle-class’? After accounting for other socio-demographic controls, people who identify as middle-class are more active highbrow consumers than those who identify as working class. Yet, the distinctiveness of middle-class consumption of highbrow culture varies across countries and is negatively correlated with how many people identify as working-class in a society. As more people identify as working-class (rejecting middle-class identities) highbrow culture less clearly distinguishes middle-class and working-class identifiers. In the absence of any class-structured divisions in highbrow culture, whether and how cultural practices function as a form of cultural capital is likely quite different, reinforcing the claim that the centrality of highbrow culture to cultural capital varies geographically.

Who Believes in the American Dream?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Graham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Future Success ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter goes on to ask who still believes in the American Dream. It begins with a review of what we know about the relationship between inequality, well-being, and attitudes about future mobility. It summarizes what we know from survey data on attitudes about inequality and opportunity in the United States, and then places those attitudes in the context of those in other countries and regions, based on new data and analysis with a focus on individuals' beliefs in the role of hard work in future success. Evidence suggests that the American Dream is very unevenly shared across socioeconomic cohorts. The poor and the rich in the United States lead very different lives, with the former having a much harder time looking beyond day-to-day struggles and associated high levels of stress, while the latter is able to pursue much better futures for themselves and their children, with the gaps between the two likely to increase even more in the future.

Women, Class, and Identity Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Martha E. Gimenez
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
Women's Experience ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
General Conditions

The question of the oppression of women, the critique of which constituted feminism as an academic and political pursuit, has been feminism's enduring source of strength and appeal, yielding numerous critical theories and perspectives. This has produced continual conceptual shifts defining an evolving feminism, such as the shift from women to gender and from inequality to difference. It has also involved shifts from theorizing the general conditions of women's experience—oppressed at home and in the workplace, while juggling the conflicting demands of both—to theorizing the implications of the claim that, while gender may be the main source of oppression for white, heterosexual, middle-class women, women with different characteristics and experiences are affected by other forms of oppression as well. A possible way for Marxist feminism to remain a distinctive theoretical and politically relevant perspective might be to return to class, in the Marxist sense, theoretically reexamining the relationship between class and oppression, particularly the oppression of working-class women, within capitalist social formations.

Charabancs and Social Class in 1930s Britain

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael John Law
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Equivalent Motor ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Separate Class

The renowned writer J. B. Priestley suggested in 1934 that the motor-coach had annihilated the old distinction between rich and poor passengers in Britain. This article considers how true this was by examining the relationship between charabancs, motor coaches and class. It shows that this important vehicle of inter-war working class mobility had a complicated relationship with class, identifying three distinct forms of this method of travel. It positions the charabanc alongside historical responses to unwelcome steamer and railway day-trippers, and examines how resorts provided separate class-based entertainment for these holidaymakers. Using the case study of a new charabanc-welcoming pub, the Prospect Inn, it proposes that, in the late 1930s, some pubs were beginning to offer charabanc customers facilities that were almost the match of their middle class equivalent. Motor coaches and charabancs contributed to the process of social convergence in inter-war Britain.

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