Class : A Guide Through the American Status System, by Paul Fussell

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, by David Brooks

Bobos in Paradise

The New York Times: Crossing Class Lines

Crossing Class Lines (Click to open)

This is an interesting article about how focusing on shared characteristics promotes cross-class interaction. 

People Like Us - Social Class in America

I chose this PBS documentary as a starting point in my exploration of social class.

People Like Us (1999)

This documentary examines class in American society. The content is strikingly relevant to the discussions on social class that are still ongoing even though the film is now twenty years old.

As the thesis of the film asks, "It's the 800-pound gorilla in American life that most Americans don't think about: how do income, family background, education, attitudes, aspirations, and even appearance mark someone as a member of a particular social class?"

Within the first ten minutes of this two-hour film, the audience is faced with the stark reality of the American social class system and the vast disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots."

People on the street and in shopping malls are asked to look at photographs of people and rate the perceived class of the subjects. Later, other respondents are asked which class they identify with and the overwhelming majority choose the middle class. This is really no surprise since most Americans feel that they live a middle-class lifestyle and haven't examined the data about where their place is along the income curve.

Income is what most consider the main determinant of class in America. However, there are many other factors that determine what class you are part of.  As discussed in the film, the amount of white bread that you consume is an indicator of which class you are part of. On average, people who consume more white bread are at the lower end of the class spectrum.

This film examines people at both the top and bottom of American society as well as the working class and the middle class.


(This is a beginning and a partial post as I want to compare and contrast my findings in the two books I am currently reading)

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. This project is my Capstone Project to fulfill the requirements of the Master of Liberal Arts degree at Middle Tennessee State University. I am excited to begin posting new content that I hope you will find interesting, useful, inspiring, or informative.

I will be examining topics related to the liberal arts through the lens of social class. Throughout my education in the MALA (Master of Liberal Arts) program, I have been exposed to many academic disciplines and how they relate to the notion of community. One constant within my study of "community" was the necessity for people to cooperate to achieve common goals. I find it interesting that communities and people belonging to them are often stratified into distinct social classes. I question how this can be productive, equitable, and conducive to progress. Therefore, my goal is to examine how people are arranged into different classes and how that impacts society. I plan to investigate the American notion of social class as well as how class structures exist globally. I seek to determine how people are included and excluded from social groups and the methods by which they transition from one to another.