>First of all, on the first page of the book, Wolfe disappears the
>concept of the working class entirely - and I have to assume
>knowingly. That's not "lapel grabbing" - that's devious. Second of
>all, I don't see how you know that people mean "middle class" when
>they say "working class." And third, ranking yourself from top to
>bottom on a numbered scale has a very different set of associations
>from calling yourself middle or working class. Who, aside from those
>of a certain sexual prediliction, would place him or herself on the
>bottom, given the choice?
Besides, ranking oneself in the middle on a numbered scale doesn't necessarily contradict one's self-identification as working-class. In fact, it may be a reflection of an accurate grasp of class (in relation to the ownership of means of production) as well as what the median income is, etc.
At 5:15 PM -0400 4/17/01, Kelley Walker wrote:
>186. In our society there are groups which tend to be towards the
>top and those that are towards the bottom. Here we have a scale that
>runs from top to bottom. Where would you put yourself on this scale?
>HAND SCALE AND PENCIL TO RESPONDENT. LET RESPONDENT MARK SCALE. Be
>sure that the mark is within one of the boxes. Record answer below.
>(coded at GSS as RANK)
>
>guess what? on a ten point scale, it turns out that people still
>identify themselves as middle and upper middle class more than they
>do as working or lower class, not to mention at the very top or
>bottom. here are the numbers:
>
>10=bottom // 1 = top
>1 4%
>2 4%
>3 13%
>4 16%
>5 33%
>6 15%
>7 8%
>8 5%
>9 1%
>10 2%
Why can't folks who put themselves between, say, 3 and 10 or 5 and 10 or other combinations think of themselves as working class at the same time?
At 5:15 PM -0400 4/17/01, Kelley Walker wrote:
>he is talking about subjective understandings of what it means to be
>middle class. furthermore, this discussion does not serve as his
>justification for why he chose to study the people he studied. for
>THAT you have to read the book where he talks about Bellah et al.,
>and then you have to read Bellah et al.
It seems Wolfe wants to have it both ways. On one hand, Wolfe says: "The general feeling in America is that you are middle class if you say so. And, truth be told, that is not a bad way to treat the matter, for while the economic definitions of middle-class status shift all the time, what tends not to change are the moral and cultural meanings of middle-class life. Unlike being poor, being middle class means earning enough to have some choice about where and how to live; middle-class people strive to practice a sense of personal responsibility by owning as much of their home as possible and by protecting themselves as best they can from the whims of employers. Unlike being rich, to be middle class is to believe that what one has achieved is due not solely to family advantage -- although within reason that is never to be spurned -- but to one's own hard work and efforts. We are best off thinking of middle-class status as what the French would call a mentalite -- a cluster of attitudes, beliefs, practices, and lifestyles that defines what it means to live in a way not too poor to be considered dependent on others and not too rich to be so luxuriously ostentatious that one loses touch with common sense" (at <http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/wolfe-nation.html>). On the other hand, when it comes to actually polling & interviewing people, he pays nearly exclusive attention to the higher-income end of those who "earn enough to have some choice about where and how to live," etc.: e.g., "Mrs. Vogel is a homemaker; her husband, who runs his own management consulting company, makes a six-figure income. A Republican and an active member of her Methodist church...".
>I can't speak for Yoshie, but I do think the subjective sense of
>class is important.
Surely the subjective sense of class is important, and one of the jobs of leftists to bring the subjective sense of what class is into alignment with objective social relations.
Yoshie