Authenticity in America: Class Distinctions in Potato Chip Advertising

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Freedman ◽  
Dan Jurafsky
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Potato Chip ◽  
Potato Chips ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
American Landscape ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Relationship

Our study uses the language of food to examine the representation of socioeconomic class identity in contemporary America by comparing the advertising language on expensive bags of potato chips with that on inexpensive chips. We find that the language on expensive chip bags indeed emphasizes factors that are more representative of higher socioeconomic status, such as more complex language and more claims about health. We also find support for Pierre Bourdieu's hypothesis that taste is fundamentally negative: descriptions on expensive chips, unlike on inexpensive chips, are full of comparison (“less fat,” “finest potatoes”) and negation (“not,” “never”'), suggesting a goal of distancing the upper classes from the tastes of lower socioeconomic classes. Finally, our results expand the relationship between authenticity and socioeconomic status. Previous scholars suggest that the desire for authenticity is solely linked with upper-class identity; we find, however, two distinct modes of authenticity. For the upper classes, authentic food is natural: not processed or artificial. For the working class, by contrast, authentic food is traditional: rooted in family recipes and located in the American landscape. Thus, the authentic experience is linguistically relevant for both classes—an example of the rich meanings hidden in the language of food.

"Us" vs. "Them". Communist Dialectical Images from Interwar Europe and Soviet Russia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adri Kácsor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Interwar Europe

Brawny male workers vs. bulging bourgeois men. Working-class mothers burdened by the hardship of poverty and childcare vs. elegant upper-class women enjoying a lifestyle of privilege. Such juxtaposed images of workers and the rich were prevalent in the visual culture of communism throughout the twentieth century, appearing on posters, illustrations, and other genres of political propaganda across countries and continents. Although these didactic propaganda images have rarely been considered in histories of modernism and the avant-garde, this article argues that they were among the key visual inventions of twentieth-century communist visual culture given their highly innovative aesthetics and juxtaposed structure that provided them a potential to become dialectical. Drawing on examples from interwar Europe and Soviet Russia, this article examines how didactic juxtapositions could become dialectical images, triggering political transformations while also making revolutionary class consciousness visible for the viewer.

“The Whirl of Life” The Social Structure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Robert Reed
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Class Structure ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Social

This chapter explores the intricacies of the first discernible class structure that conformed to normative standards of socioeconomic status in Chicago's history. Black Chicago developed a very small but distinguishable upper class, large segments within the broad middle classes, enormous laboring classes including industrial and service sector workers, and an underclass. The members of the upper class owned and managed businesses, chose housing commensurate with their status, consumed their disposable income with conspicuous delight, engaged in civic activities, and socially acted as a group apart from other segments of their racial cohort to which they traditionally held their primary social allegiance. The middle class focused on occupation, wealth production, educational attainment, cultural interests, and character. The working-class, however, formed the bulk of black Chicago's citizenry.

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.

Sexual behaviour and contraceptive use among socioeconomic groups of young women in the United States

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Ford ◽  
Melvin Zelnik ◽  
John F. Kantner
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Sexual Activity ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Contraceptive Use ◽  
The United States ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Socioeconomic Groups ◽  
First Intercourse ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
The Relationship

SummaryAlthough much research has been devoted to understanding differences in contraceptive behaviour among socieconomic groups of married women, little is known about group differences among young unmarried women. In this paper, data from a national survey of women 15–19 years of age are used to study the relationship between socioeconomic status, sexual activity, and contraceptive use. The socioeconomic status of the young women is related to age at first intercourse, contraceptive use at first intercourse, regularity of use, and use of medical methods. The results indicate that both an earlier initiation of sexual activity and less regular use of contraceptives in all probability lead to a concentration of pregnancies in the lower socioeconomic groups.

scholarly journals Do the Rich and the Poor Have Different Conceptions of Democracy? Socioeconomic Status, Inequality, and the Political Status Quo

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Besir Ceka ◽  
Pedro C. Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
High Status ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Status Inequality ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
The Relationship

In this study, we investigate how socioeconomic status is related to people's commitment to liberal democracy. Based on sociological and psychological theories of social conflict and dominance, we argue that those who enjoy a more privileged position in the social hierarchy tend to develop stronger preferences for the existing social and political order. Conversely, people in underprivileged positions tend to be less supportive of that order. Hence, we expect the relationship between socioeconomic status and commitment to liberal democracy to be context-specific: positive in liberal democracies but negative in autocracies. Furthermore, we argue that income inequality amplifies these dynamics, widening the gap between low and high status individuals. We test our hypotheses using the fifth wave of the World Value Surveys.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Is Connected with Lower Health Literacy in Rural Areas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melody L. Greer ◽  
Steven Sample ◽  
Hanna K. Jensen ◽  
Sacha McBain ◽  
Riley Lipschitz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
Impact Risk ◽  
Lower Health ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Lower Health Literacy

The relationship between social determinants of health (SDoH) and health outcomes is established and extends to a higher risk of contracting COVID-19. Given the factors included in SDoH, such as education level, race, rurality, and socioeconomic status are interconnected, it is unclear how individual SDoH factors may uniquely impact risk. Lower socioeconomic status often occurs in concert with lower educational attainment, for example. Because literacy provides access to information needed to avoid infection and content can be made more accessible, it is essential to determine to what extent health literacy contributes to successful containment of a pandemic. By incorporating this information into clinical data, we have isolated literacy and geographic location as SDoH factors uniquely related to the risk of COVID-19 infection. For patients with comorbidities linked to higher illness severity, residents of rural areas associated with lower health literacy at the zip code level had a greater likelihood of positive COVID-19 results unrelated to their economic status.

scholarly journals Socioeconomic status associated with carpal tunnel syndrome: A retrospective nationwide 11-year population-based cohort study in South Korea

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong-Jae Lee ◽  
Hyun Sun Lim ◽  
Hyoung Seop Kim
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Cohort Study ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic Status ◽  
National Health Insurance System ◽  
Hazard Ratios ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
Korean National Health Insurance ◽  
Tunnel Syndrome ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractImportanceThere have only been a few large-scale studies that have included a risk factor analysis for CTS. No prior study has investigated the relationship between the occurrence of CTS and stratified socioeconomic status, which is closely related to a person’s type of job.ObjectiveTo confirm the known risk factors for CTS and also to determine the correlation between stratified socioeconomic status and the occurrence of CTS.DesignWe conducted this study using a retrospective cohort model based on the combined databases of the Korean National Health Insurance System from 2003–2013, a database compiled using information from a national periodic health-screening program that is used for reimbursement claims.SettingThe setting was a population-based retrospective cohort study.ParticipantsFirst, we randomly sampled 514,795 patients who represented 10% of the 5,147,950 people who took part in periodic health screenings from 2002–2003. Existing CTS patients were excluded from this group. Therefore, this study finally included 512,942 participants and followed their medical records from 2003–2013.Main Outcomes and MeasuresDesired outcomes were the incidence rate of CTS and the hazard ratios according to stratified socioeconomic status.ResultsA correlation analysis showed that CTS was more likely to occur in patients from a lower socioeconomic status.Conclusions and RelevanceCTS was associated with people of a lower socioeconomic status who work in simple but repetitive manual labor jobs. We believe that the results of our study will be helpful to determine the pathophysiology of CTS and to set up a new industrial health policy for this condition.Key PointsQuestionWhat is the relationship between stratified socioeconomic status and the incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS)?FindingsIn this retrospective population-based cohort study that included 512,942 participants sampled from the Korean National Health Insurance System(KNHIS) database, the incidence rate and hazard ratios for CTS tended to increase with lower socioeconomic status.ImplicationsLow socioeconomic status was identified as a risk factor for the incidence of CTS.

Increased Incidence of Asthma in Children of Smoking Mothers

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando D. Martinez ◽  
Martha Cline ◽  
Benjamin Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Childhood Asthma ◽  
Maternal Smoking ◽  
Respiratory Symptoms ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Education Level ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
Asthma In Children ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between parental smoking and both subsequent development of asthma and subsequent lung function (before age 12) was studied in more than 700 children enrolled before age 5. Children of mothers with 12 or fewer years of education and who smoked 10 or more cigarettes per day were 2.5 times more likely (95% confidence interval 1.42 to 4.59; P = .0018) to develop asthma and had 15.7% lower maximal midexpiratory flow (P < .001) than children of mothers with the same education level who did not smoke or smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes per day. These relationships were independent of self-reported respiratory symptoms in parents. There was no association between maternal smoking and subsequent incidence of asthma or maximal midexpiratory flow among children of mothers with more than 12 years of education. It is concluded that children of lower socioeconomic status may be at considerable risk of developing asthma if their mothers smoke 10 or more cigarettes per day. It is speculated that recently reported increases in prevalence of childhood asthma may be in part related to the increased prevalence of smoking among less educated women.

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.

Ethnic vs Class Voting: The Case of Winnipeg, 1945

1974 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 314-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Wiseman ◽  
K.W. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Class Voting ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Prairie Provinces

This paper examines the relationship of social class, ethnicity, and voting in the city of Winnipeg in the 1945 provincial election. Our data sources were the 1946 census and provincial election returns. The Winnipeg provincial constituency was selected for a number of reasons. In 1945, it corresponded to the city of Winnipeg boundaries, thus permitting the correlation of the 1946 Census of the Prairie Provinces data with the October 1945 voting results. Second, it had both a large number of non-British voters and candidates, which allowed a test for the importance of ethnic voting. Third, Winnipeg had (and has) a large working-class population and pockets of upper-class areas, permitting a test for the importance of class voting. Finally, as a multi-member constituency returning 10 members, a system of proportional representation was employed. With 20 candidates in the running for 10 seats, 15 ballot transfers were necessary before all 10 candidates were declared elected. An examination of these ballot transfers permits a corroborating test for class and ethnic voting.

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