The Social Class Series: Karl Marx

Social class is a central concept within the study of Sociology. It is one of the first forms of inequality one reads about when taking an introductory course in the subject. This series will look at different conceptualisations of social class given by the most popular social theorists writing on the subject. This first post explains and discusses the work of Karl Marx.

Karl Marx was interested in historical materialism: how the economic base of society shapes the classed living conditions of social groups throughout history. These historical societal structures are referred to as modes of production. For example, feudalism and the lived conditions of nobility and peasantry as well as the capitalist and the consumer within capitalism. Marx wrote about how an individual’s relation to the modes of production affects their living conditions. In particular, within the Communist Manifesto, Marx discusses two classes that are in direct opposition to each other: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

The bourgeoisie are the middle/upper class, those who own the means of production (e.g. factory owners). The proletariat are the working class, those who have to sell their labour to survive within society (e.g. the factory workers). Within these classes there are sub-classes. Within the bourgeoisie there is the haute (upper), moyenne (middle) and petite (petty) bourgeoisie. Within the proletariat Marx distinguishes between the proletariat as workers with a salary and the lumpenproletariat, those who can be described as residing within the underclass and the poorest within society e.g. vagabonds and sex workers.

As one can see, Marx’s conceptualisation of class is dependent upon one’s financial position as he emphasizes the economic base of society, that is resources and production which creates societal goods for exchange, as shaping one’s social class and their experience within the superstructure. The superstructure refers to societal institutions such as the family, politics, culture, religion and education. Due to the emphasis on the economic base, Marx does not credit other factors which could conceptualise one’s class. Similarly, it is difficult to ascertain how relatable the theory is to society now since the industrial revolution in which Marx was writing. Of course, it is possible to apply his account to our capitalist mode of production but what about other aspects of society. Would we still categorise sex workers as part of the underclass when so many students are engaging in this work to pay for their way through university?

I like it when it rains: consuming, creating and nature’s seasons

This past year I have not written for abbyelsociology once. Well, I’ve tried to write down ideas and titles when they come. But I have not sat down and written prose for a year and I’ve just been reflecting on the writing processes for creators. During this year I have consumed a lot: YouTube videos, journal articles, advice from my master’s dissertation supervisor, some more YouTube videos, Instagram posts, Facebook group posts about MLMs, wedding nightmare stories, how to DIY furniture (even though I have not and have no plans to DIY any furniture), TED talks etc. The things I have created in the past year include: a master’s dissertation, an unsuccessful proposal, a successful proposal, Instagram posts, a home for our newly built house (cheesy I know), a wedding, a schedule for travelling Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and Vancouver. But the one thing I haven’t done is create a blog post.

Now it is October and it has turned colder and it is raining [more frequently than it is in the summer], the outside is quieter with people staying indoors. I recently read a post by Evanna Lynch in which she documented her struggles with wanting to create all the time. She quoted somebody else in the way they mentioned that our creative processes are like seasons. Like nature, we cannot be in full bloom all year round. We need the autumn to reap in our creations from summer. We need the winter to rest and prepare. We need the spring to slowly begin to bloom. And we need the summer to complete our blooming and see it at its height. For me, although I have been in spring and summer for the projects, I mentioned above that I have created this past year. In terms of this blog, I feel as though I have been at the end of autumn/the beginning of winter for the past year and I am now slowly coming out of winter and into spring with this blog post. So, when I say I like it when it rains, what I mean is I like that I am ready to create again for this blog.

So, this post has been very unlike me in terms of the content and writing style. But I wanted to write something to acknowledge the fact that it has been a year and introduce the new layout and banner for this blog [a photo I took from the gum wall in Seattle, Washington]. I will be back to the sociological analysis in my next post. Perhaps, I will sociologically analyse this very post?

The commodification of Autumn: are Millennials passive consumers?

"Seasons are not a trend, they’re a part of a fragile eco system that we need to focus on preserving, not Instagramming” - Sirena Bergman (2018) on the impact of Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte.

If you follow me on Instagram, you will see that on the first day of Autumn, I created my bullet journal set up for the season. Doodling and writing in “autumnal” colours made me reflect upon the commodification of the season. Commodities are things that are seen as useful or hold a particular value. Autumn can be seen as a production of commodities, conceptualised by Marx as commodification. For instance, Bergman (2018) writes that just like any other millennial, Bergman finds satisfaction in “stomping around in a pile of leaves”, wearing woolly scarves, eating a variety of pumpkin based foods and partaking in Halloween. Indeed, when I reflect upon my own Autumn bucket list, I too have found satisfaction in autumnal activities such as pumpkin picking, watching Harry Potter, wearing plum toned lipsticks and mustard coloured clothing items. However, Marx’s conceptualisation of commodification refers to a process in which the capitalist companies such as Starbucks, MAC makeup and clothing brands deceive their customers into buying these products for their financial gain. The issue I have with this is that it disregards the reflexivity that consumers have to think about their role in the commodification of Autumn.

Although Bergman writes about their favourite autumnal activities, Bergman is still aware of their involvement in the commodification of Autumn. Focusing upon the Pumpkin Spice Latte, Bergman discusses the impact that this capitalist product is having upon the environment and how, ironically, it could affect the Autumn season the most. My own reflection via this blog post, without getting too meta, as well as Bergman’s article highlights the reflexivity consumers can hold upon their involvement within the season. 

Therefore, although it can be theorised that Autumn has undergone commodification, it is important not to view these consumers as “cultural dopes”. Just like my previous blog post surrounding #doitforthegram, interaction with capitalist consumer culture is more than passive consumption.

Reference: Bergman (2018) Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/starbucks-pumpkin-spiced-latte-environment-autumn-millennials-instagram-a8515706.html

#doitforthegram: social media and consumption

Last night I watched Snatched, a comedy starring Amy Schumer who plays Emily who is a “self-obsessed 30 something year old”. Throughout the film, Emily is going through negative life experiences, such as a breakup, but this does not affect her ability to pose in selfies as if she is “leading her best life”. In fact, even in one selfie, she employs a ring light, something which was once confined to professional photographers and gradually filtered down to YouTube and social media influencers and then to generic selfie takers in the form of smartphone attachments. Throughout the movie she engages in two conversations with two characters who question her use of social media. The first is James who is wining and dining Emily in order to trap her into being kidnapped by a South American gang. James is talking about all the places he has been around the world which impresses Emily; Emily replies with something along the lines of “wow, your Instagram must be amazing” to which James replies, “I’m not on anything like that”. It could be seen that the writers’ juxtaposition of Emily and James worked in a way to highlight Emily’s social media consumption which could be seen as a microcosm for today’s social media users. The second conversation is with her mother: Emily states that she has to show people “how much of a good time she is having” so that people can compliment her on her life in the comments section. Emily’s mum says that she needs to just live her life.

Watching this film, for me, has come at a time where I am more sceptical about my consumption of social media. Especially during this sun and heat that England is currently experiencing in which more of my Instagram feed is people I follow swimming in Spanish looking [yet English] seas, swimming pools, beer garden drinks and bikini selfies. It’s not that I feel jealous looking at these, it’s that I feel I should also be posting about how great my life is in the sun. There are sociological discussions surrounding individuals on social media being both consumers and producers of media. I can see this in my thoughts, through consuming other posts, I want to produce similar posts to show how great my life is. Snatched shows how the pressure to show one’s best life on social media even during something as life threatening as being kidnapped in South America.  Indeed, there has been transparency surrounding this on Instagram with the hashtag #doitforthegram being used over the past few years. Posters transparently detail that what they posted was not candid but, rather, to show their Instagram feed within a certain light. Often, these are referred to as #plandids. I recently took a month-long break from social media to decide how I would deal with this pressure, but as of yet, I am still unsure.

"Dont kid yourself lass, it's ICT": Generational attitudes towards Computing

I was recently talking to a family friend, a 7-year-old girl, the conversation turned to my occupation and she had to guess what I taught. It took her a while, guessing English, Science, Maths before me giving her a hint by acting out typing on a keyboard and using a mouse. Straight away she shouted “Computing!” When this happened, I paused to think about the difference between generations and what they label my subject.

We know that changes to the national curriculum have resulted in ICT changing to Computing. Computing is the study of the science behind computers, how they work, how to program and the components that constitute a computer. This is a change from ICT: a subject where one studies how to use a computer and the different software on a computer. Both are important, this is not a post about why one is better than the other, they both have their benefits and drawbacks. What I want to focus upon is how, as a teacher of Computer Science (as on my job description) I feel like a snob. I have had experiences where I have been talking to people from older generations and when they talk or discuss my subject they always refer to it as “ICT”. I have even had an experience where a cover teacher asked what I taught, when I stated Computing, they replied with something along the lines of “don’t kid yourself lass, it’s ICT”. As a socially polite young “lass” I just laughed this off, but it made me think about how the title teacher of Computing sounds to different generations. To the cover teacher, it was snobby and perhaps trying to be something that it is not. To the 7-year-old girl it was the subject she was studying in primary school. Either way both of these can be linked to socialisation. The cover teacher must have been socialised in the 2000s era where ICT and OCR Nationals were rife: ICT was screenshotting how you created that bar chart in Excel and creating PowerPoints with far too many animations and transitions. On the other hand, The 7-year-old girl is part of the current generation at the receiving end of the changes to the national curriculum: the focus on coding, Scratch being the favourite at primary school [and sometimes secondary school] level. Myself on the other hand, I am caught between the two, having experienced ICT within my own education, but being trained and teaching Computing.

Coventry as the City of Culture: experiences of place at university

A big part of going to university during my undergraduate degree was the sense of belonging to a place. To me, the socially correct thing to do was to live in student halls for the first year and then move in with newfound university friends during the second and third year. Therefore, studying and living in York were intertwined: my degree reminded me of the city and the city reminded me of my degree. I became involved in local politics, knowing what local constituencies were likely to vote for particular parties; I knew local attractions and no longer felt like a tourist but rather a citizen. Since graduating and moving away from the city, whenever someone mentions the place I get a sense of pride in telling anyone who will listen that I lived there and a sense of protectiveness over their views of the city.

However, this was not the same experience of my subsequent times at university. During my PGCE I studied from a distance, completing full time teaching responsibilities whilst going to university 5 days out of the year. I lived an hour away from the city the university is located within and rarely visited it. Despite studying there, I feel no affiliations to the city. Indeed, my graduation in this city felt different to my undergraduate, my family and I did not “need” to visit a particular spot in the city which I had spent a lot of my time. I did not feel an emotional connection when we passed the university library, in fact, I had never set foot in there. It wasn’t the same pride ridden day as my undergraduate graduation.

I started thinking about university and place about a month ago. As a current student at the University of Warwick, again through distance learning, when logging onto the website I noticed that Warwick were advertising the triumph of Coventry winning the title of City of Culture. At this point I even forgot that the University of Warwick is located in Coventry and not, in fact, Warwick! I am guessing, as I have nobody to ask, that those students who live and study at the University of Warwick may be happy and proud that their city has been given this prestigious title. However, although I study at Warwick, I am far from thrilled. As a full-time teacher in Stoke-on-Trent, another candidate for the City of Culture title, I feel much more attached to Stoke. Having lived in the city for two years now, my sense of belonging is around the same as the city I studied in during my undergraduate studies. As such, when I saw this advert on the Warwick website I felt conflicted, on one hand I felt I should have joined the University of Warwick in celebrating the success of the city in which it is located, but on the other hand, I had no ties to this city and my current residing city had lost the title to Coventry. I have written before about place and the emotional connections one feels, indeed this has involved places one has not even visited. In my experience of university and place, living in the host city conjures up a different sense of belonging to the university. What is your experience of living [or not living] within the city you studied within? Has it changed your perceptions?   

Why is leadership favoured over management in education?

Managing and leading are two actions that can often be used to describe the same thing. As a result, it is often difficult to draw boundaries between the two. When I started my Masters in Educational Leadership I did not know the difference between the terms. Even now, I have to think about what actions pertain to each label. My reading and discussions with colleagues have led me to the following summaries:

Leaders: the ones with the ideas to drive change

Vision, mission statement, ethos, etc. Leaders are the ones that create the underlying ‘feeling’ of the educational institution. Leaders are the ones with the imagination in where they want to take the institution.

Managers: the ones who have to make sure that change happens

Managers are those who are employed to ensure that this vision, mission statement and ethos is achieved. Those who design and implement whole school policies; delegating work to other line managers such as heads of years and heads of departments.

Reflecting back upon my teaching career I have a sense that leaders are favoured over managers. I trained to teach through the Teach First Leadership Development Programme. What is interesting to reflect upon is why Teach First use “leadership” and not “management”. If one is training to teach, and therefore a potential head of department/head of year/senior leader, isn’t management something this teacher should be proficient in? Similarly, lecturers on my masters have stated that many masters courses which were called Educational Management have swapped the management out for leadership. Why was this change made? Although we do not know the true reason for this, it can be inferred that this change was a result of marketing: teachers want to be “Leaders” rather than “Managers”, but why? Is it the connotations that leadership has? I will continue to reflect upon this distinction, hopefully I can come back to the questions I have posed in this post. If you have any ideas, let me know!