1 “The circle in which you move”

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Candace Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Social Diversity ◽  
Enslaved Women ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Musical Practices

The use of music as a sign of prestige extended across a wide spectrum, from enslaved women of color to the white daughters of affluent planters, and Part 1 reveals this social diversity by demonstrating how women employed binder’s volumes, etiquette guides, and other signs of cultural capital in the parlor to position themselves within a particular social class. Although it includes the historical actors who confirm currently-held views about social class and music in this period (the white middle-class), it juxtaposes these with examples across race and occupationally-defined status (barbers, farmers, mechanics, and planters) to bring to the fore a fuller view of women’s musical practices.

“I Need Help!” Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School

2011 ◽  
Vol 76 (6) ◽  
pp. 862-882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica McCrory Calarco
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Unequal Opportunities ◽  
Do So

What role do children play in education and stratification? Are they merely passive recipients of unequal opportunities that schools and parents create for them? Or do they actively shape their own opportunities? Through a longitudinal, ethnographic study of one socioeconomically diverse, public elementary school, I show that children’s social-class backgrounds affect when and how they seek help in the classroom. Compared to their working-class peers, middle-class children request more help from teachers and do so using different strategies. Rather than wait for assistance, they call out or approach teachers directly, even interrupting to make requests. In doing so, middle-class children receive more help from teachers, spend less time waiting, and are better able to complete assignments. By demonstrating these skills and strategies, middle-class children create their own advantages and contribute to inequalities in the classroom. These findings have implications for theories of cultural capital, stratification, and social reproduction.

scholarly journals Class Diversity and Youth Volunteering in the United Kingdom

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 95S-113S ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Dean
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Young People ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Widening Access ◽  
The United Kingdom

This article utilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of habitus and cultural capital to offer some explanation as to why there is a lack of class diversity in formal volunteering in the United Kingdom. Recent studies have shown that participation in volunteering is heavily dependent on social class revolving around a highly committed middle-class “civic core” of volunteers. This article draws on original qualitative research to argue that the delivery of recent youth volunteering policies has unintentionally reinforced participation within this group, rather than widening access to diverse populations including working-class young people. Drawing on interviews with volunteer recruiters, it is shown that the pressure to meet targets forces workers to recruit middle-class young people whose habitus allows them to fit instantly into volunteering projects. Furthermore, workers perceive working-class young people as recalcitrant to volunteering, thereby reinforcing any inhabited resistance, and impeding access to the benefits of volunteering.

Hidden Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Class

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Goudeau ◽  
Jean-Claude Croizet
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Academic Culture ◽  
Sixth Graders ◽  
School Contexts ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Regular Classrooms ◽  
Working Class Students

Three studies conducted among fifth and sixth graders examined how school contexts disrupt the achievement of working-class students by staging unfair comparison with their advantaged middle-class peers. In regular classrooms, differences in performance among students are usually showcased in a way that does not acknowledge the advantage (i.e., higher cultural capital) experienced by middle-class students, whose upbringing affords them more familiarity with the academic culture than their working-class peers have. Results of Study 1 revealed that rendering differences in performance visible in the classroom by having students raise their hands was enough to undermine the achievement of working-class students. In Studies 2 and 3, we manipulated students’ familiarity with an arbitrary standard as a proxy for social class. Our results suggest that classroom settings that make differences in performance visible undermine the achievement of the students who are less familiar with academic culture. In Study 3, we showed that being aware of the advantage in familiarity with a task restores the performance of the students who have less familiarity with the task.

Real, but Not Too Real: A Hierarchy of Reality for Recreational Middle-Class Boxers

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis D. Satterlund
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
White Middle Class

This article looks at how the (mostly) white, middle-class recreational boxers at KO Gym constructed an authentic boxing experience from which they could derive identity rewards from accomplishing a type of masculinity without stigma or injury. Gender, as we will see, was a central part of the story. Furthermore, social class complicated matters considerably, creating dilemmas for the white, middle-class male recreational boxers who sought risk—albeit a “pseudo-risk”—but were concerned about signifying hypermasculinity. It was thus vital for them to manage their conduct to express a certain situated kind of masculinity. In essence, class means there is a different style of self-presentation when men and women attempt to do gender.

scholarly journals A Phenomenological Study of White Female First-, Second-, and Third-Year Teachers in Title I Schools

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ashley Tiedemann
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Title I ◽  
Title I Schools ◽  
White Female ◽  
First Year ◽  
Female Teachers ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Second Year ◽  
White Female Teachers

The purpose of this study was to examine first-year experiences by interviewing second and third-year White female teachers at the beginning of their second or third year teaching, who work in Title I, K-5 schools. The overarching goal in this study was to: (a) identify similarities and differences in first and second-year teacher experiences; and, (b) identify the struggles teachers face inside and outside of the classroom. To achieve the goal of this study, the researcher used a qualitative phenomenological method. Data from this study was viewed with critical race theory, intersectionality, and cultural capital lenses. These lenses were used to identify cultural gaps, and socioeconomic differences between White, middle-class, female teachers and their students in Title I schools. Participants were white, female teachers in their second and third year of teaching at Title I, K-5 schools. Each participant was interviewed between December and March of their second or third year of teaching; therefore, each participant had worked through their entire first year of teaching at a Title I school. Each participant shared their experiences of their first and second year. White middle-class teachers were selected due to the possible differences in cultural capital and socioeconomic level between teachers and students. Additionally, White females represent 80% of teachers in the United States (Tale & Goldring, 2017). Participants at Title I schools are in more need of supports from their peers, mentors, and administration; however, most participants did not receive these supports. Due to the elevated needs of students at low-income schools, new teachers struggled to meet their needs and understand their cultural capital along with their own White privilege.

Paradise Lost? Patterns and Precarity in Working-Class Academic Narratives

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-44
Author(s):  
Deborah M. Warnock
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Student Debt ◽  
Survivor Guilt ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Impostor Syndrome

Through an analysis of eight collections of autoethnographic essays written by working-class academics and published over the span of thirty-two years, I identify stable themes and emergent patterns in lived experiences. Some broad and stable themes include a sense of alienation, lack of cultural capital, encountering stereotypes and microaggressions, experiencing survivor guilt and the impostor syndrome, and struggling to pass in a middle-class culture that values ego and networking. Two new and troubling patterns are crippling amounts of student debt and the increased exploitation of adjunct labor. I emphasize the importance of considering social class background as a form of diversity in academia and urge continued research on the experiences of working-class academics.

“Good schooling” in a race, gender, and class perspective: The reproduction of inequality at a former Model C school in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (264) ◽  
pp. 25-47
Author(s):  
Amy Hiss ◽  
Amiena Peck
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
Black Female ◽  
White Female ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Model C ◽  
Reproduction Of Inequality

AbstractAfter the first democratic elections in 1994 in South Africa, many Model C schools were opened for Black, Coloured and Indian learners. Model C schools that used to cater solely for White female learners had now entered the democratic period, and while the Cape Town Model C school in our study swiftly became populated with Black middle-class female learners, little was known of other transformations on the ground. In 2016, a protest by Black female learners quickly found favour on Twitter. They claimed that differentiated racialised treatment was directed at them and enshrined in the school’s Code of Conduct (COC). In order to investigate these claims, we employ an intersectional discourse analysis to investigate the 2015 COC prior to the protest, as well as the post-protest 2017 COC. Drawing on theories of social reproduction, cultural capital, symbolic violence and habitus, we endeavour to show how Black learners’ embodied capital and lack of cultural capital ensured their inability to be accommodated at the school. We investigate the outcomes of the COC in terms of empowerment, as measured by equitable school access, and the reproduction of inequality, indicated by the implementation of “school rules” directed at Black female learners whilst maintaining the status of the dominant (White) group of middle-class students. We conclude that analysis of the COC reveals an attempt at cultivating a particular White middle-class womanhood through the guise of “good schooling”.

Reading ‘Race’ in Bourdieu? Examining Black Cultural Capital Among Black Caribbean Youth in South London

Sociology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 907-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derron Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Black Caribbean ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article extends Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital in relation to ‘race’ and ethnicity by exploring the significance of black cultural capital among middle class black Caribbean young people in a large state school in south London. Black cultural capital is here defined as the appropriation of middle class values by black ethnics. Based on a 14-month-long ethnography, with specific attention to three focus group and 13 in-depth interviews with middle class black Caribbean young people, this piece outlines the benefits of and backlash to black cultural capital that students encounter from white middle class teachers for deploying black middle class tastes and styles in the classroom. The findings suggest that while black middle class pupils draw on black cultural capital to access advantages in formal school settings, they are also invested in challenging the terms of class privilege that marginalise the black working classes.

scholarly journals Mastery of Cultural Capital, Social Class Segregation of High Schools and Winning at Sport

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pat Rubio Goldsmith ◽  
Richard D. Abel
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
Cultural Capital Theory ◽  
Resistance Theory ◽  
Using Data

According to cultural capital theory, middle-class families cultivate their children’s cultural capital to promote their social mobility through success in school. We advance the explanatory power of the theory by measuring cultural capital in terms of mastery rather than participation or attendance using data on more than 12 thousand schools about their success in interscholastic athletics. We find that predominantly middle-class schools win more contests and by larger margins than economically integrated and predominantly working-class schools. The margins of victory become larger as the social class differences between the opposing schools grows. We also find evidence consistent with resistance theory because predominantly working class schools also experience success, albeit relatively modest. Our findings have implications for cultural capital theory, resistance theory, and our methods for studying them. By measuring mastery of cultural capital, we identify large social class differences among participants in cultural capital and a close alignment between middle-class culture and school culture.

scholarly journals Greatness and the Convertibility of Literary Capital: W. D. Howells and Black Writers

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Florian Sedlmeier
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Paul Laurence Dunbar ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Poetic Practice ◽  
Racial Divide

Abstract Opening with James Weldon Johnson’s discourse on artistic greatness, I discuss William Dean Howells’s assessment of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles W. Chesnutt through the lens of the convertibility of literary capital, developed with Pierre Bourdieu. From within the racial taxonomy and with white middle-class readers as implied addressees, Howells conceives of both writers as participating in a literary market, a field structured by the tenets of realism. Howells endows Dunbar with universal literary capital and creates a regional affiliation that breaches the color line, before he singles out his poems written in vernacular notation as lasting contributions and asserts the valence of such notation as general poetic practice. On Chesnutt he bestows literary capital by marking and converting two innovations: the genre of the short story and the representation of a world in-between the racial divide. In turn, the convertibility of that world is secured by a comparison of social class habits.

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