Navigating Classes and Workplaces
NAMES WORTH KNOWING
Karl Marx (1818–1883) spent his life studying economics, social change, and the history of class relations, and co-authored The Communist Manifesto.
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) saw modern inequalities as arising from industrialization and the shift to a more differentiated, complex society.
Oscar Lewis (1914–1970) viewed the culture of poverty as a demonstration that class disadvantage shattered people’s abilities to learn, grow, plan, and protect themselves.
Harry Braverman (1920–1976) proposed that work was becoming more mindless, bureaucratic, and alienating, and argued that the separation of skill and knowledge was “mechanizing” humans to operate like machines.
Arlie Hochschild (b. 1940) studied the alienating effects of emotional labour, which requires workers (typically women) to manage their feelings in accordance with workplace rules.
CLASS
A set of people who share the same relationship to the means of production (Karl Marx)
A set of people with a common economic situation, based on income, property, and authority (Max Weber)
Class Conflict
Results from diverging economic interests
Marx
- Defined class in terms of production
- Viewed classes as economic groups
- Argued that people could exercise power only by controlling the means of production
Capitalist industrial society
Bourgeoisie
The capitalist class, comprising those who own and control the means of production (factories, banks, labour, etc.)
Conflict
Proletariat
The subordinate working class, comprising those who work for wages from the bourgeoisie
Capital
Wealth in the form of money or assets, used or invested in the production of goods
Exploitation
The worker is paid less than the price of the finished product, while the capitalist takes the surplus value as profit
Unions
Formed when workers recognize their shared disadvantage and seek to improve pay, job security, and working conditions
Alienation
The labour process denies workers ownership of their own products
- Class consciousness—a social class’s awareness of its common interests, which generates a commitment to work together to attain collective goals
- False consciousness—a willingness to believe in ideologies that support the ruling class but that are false and disadvantageous to working-class interests
- Class socialization—the process by which cultural capital (patterns of fashion and consumption) are passed from generation to generation, reproducing class distinctions
Weber
- Defined class in terms of distribution
- Viewed classes as power groups
- Argued that people could gain power by entering influential, high-status groups
SOURCES OF POWER
Economic Class
Defined by economic power in relation to a given market
Parties
Associations and organizations that give people noneconomic power and influence
Status Groups
Sets of people who share a social position in society and exclude others to maintain boundaries
Work
Is tied to...
Poverty
- Unemployment
- Underemployment
- Working poor— people who are able to find only parttime work or who earn minimum wage
- Urban culture of poverty—casts the urban poor as authors of their own downfall
- Non-standard work arrangements— dead-end, lowpaying, insecure jobs typically held by women, immigrants, and young people
Identity
- Occupations associated with more education and income are valued higher than other occupations
- Status inconsistency occurs when one’s professional and other statuses (race, sex, etc.) are given different levels of respect
Inequality
- People tend to remain in the class they were born into
- Workplace inequalities translate into broader social and economic inequalities
- Women in the workforce are more likely to be involved in emotional labour, which requires workers to manage their feelings in accordance with rules and guidelines (Hochschild)
- Workplace diversity becomes an instrument of power and inequality by creating an “us versus them” attitude
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