Class, Self, Culture

233 Pages·2004·5.871 MB·English

by  Beverley Skeggs

Class, Self, Culture
Class, SeCf; Culture puts class back on the map in a novel way by taking a nelv look at
holy class is made and given value through culture. It shows holy different classes
become attributed with value, enabling culture to be deployed as a resource and
as a form of propert); which has both use-value to the person and exchange-value
in systems of symbolic and economic exchange.
The book sholvs holy class has not disappeared, but is known and spoken in a
myriad of different ways, ahvays lvorking through other categorizations of nation,
race, gender and sexuality and across different sites: through popular culture,
political rhetoric, economic the017 and academic theory In particular, attention
is given to holy new forms of personhood are being generated through class, and
holy what we have come to know and assume to be a 'self' is always a classed
formation.
Analysing four processes - of inscription, institutionalization, perspective-taking
and exchange relationships - it challenges recent debates on reflexivit); risk,
rational-action theor); individualization and mobilit); by sholving holy these are
all reliant on fixing some people in place so that others can move.
Beverley Skeggs is Professor of Socio1og)- at The University of Llanchester.
Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism
Edited by:
Maureen LIcNeil, Institute of \Yomen's Studies, Lancaster Universiv
Lynne Pearce, Department of English, Lancaster University
Beverley Skeggs, Department of Sociolog).; hlanchester University
Other books in the series include:
Transformations
Thinking through feminism
Edited b3, Sarah Ahmed, Jane Kilb_y, Celia Luy, *Mazlreen, Mcu\2il and Beverlq Skeggs
Thinking Through the Skin
Edited b3, Sarah Ahnzed andJackie Stacq
Strange Encounters
Embodied others in the post-coloniality
Sarah Ahnzed
Feminism and Autobiography
Texts, theories, methods
Edited by Tess Cosslett, Celia Lug) and Pen9 Sunzmellfield
Advertising and Consumer Citizenship
Gender, images and rights
Anne -M. Cronin
Mothering the Self
hlothers, daughters, subjects
Stephanie Lazeler
When Women Kill
Questions of agency and subjectivity
Belinda ,Vorrisse3,
Class, Self, Culture
Beuerlty Skeggs
Haunted Nations
The Colonial dimensions of multiculturalisms
Sizeja Gunew
The Rhetorics of Feminism
Readings in contemporary cultural theory and the popular press
Ljnne Pearce
Class, Self, Culture
Beverley Skeggs
Routledge
Taylor &Francis Croup
LONDON AND NEW YORK
ISBN 978-1-136-49921-0 (ebk)
Contents
dcknowledgements
hlaking class: inscription, exchange, value and perspective
Thinking class: the historical production of concepts
of class
Mobility indi\,idualism and identity: producing the
contemporary bourgeois self
The subject of value and the use-less subject
The political rhetorics of class
Representing the ~vorkingc lass
The methods that make classed selves
Resourcing the entitled middle-class self
Beyond appropriation: proximate strangers, fixing
femininity enabling cosmopolitans
Conclusion: changing perspecti1.e~
.I btes
Biblioglzlphy
Index
Acknowledgements
Thanks to those lvho have read all sections of this book. I am truly grateful: Laura
Doan, Rfike Savage, Sallie \\'est\vood, Andre\v Sayei; Rosemary Deem, Tim Rfay
Fiona De\ine, Alan TYarde, Rfari Shullam;J on Binnie, Noel Castree, Elspeth Probyn,
Lauren Bedant, Sally hlunt, including the great 'queer' reading group 'Comings
and Goings', lvith Lisa Adkins, Nicole Vtellone, Sarah Green, Don Kulick, Eleanor
Castella, Penny Hai~eyT o the 'Violence, Sexuality and Space' research team:
Les hloran, Paul Tyrrer, Karen Corteen, Le\vis Turnel: Thanks are also due to my
fantastic ex-colleagues lvho main influential: Celia Lurx Jackie Stacey Sarah
Franklin, Rfaureen RfcNeil, Sara Ahmed, Lvnne Pearce, and, of course, my ne\v
colleagues listed above. To all those participants at places lvhere I've given papers
who have enabled me to try out ne\v ideas and rescue badly thought-through
ones.
Especial thanks and apologies to my mates: Yalerie Atkinson, Nickie \\'hitham,
Graham Day Jean Grugel, Stuart Baron, John Hobbs, Les Rforan, Betsy Stanko,
Alan Jamieson, John Phillips, Pat Kirkham, Les Rforan, Jeanette Ed\vards, Henri
Kreil and Krystal Packham. I kno\v some have lived the pain of this book lvith
me. Soriy And of course, thanks and apologies to my amazing parents: Doreen
and Ken Skeggs, lvho continue to sustain me when I should be sustaining them. I
really do appreciate the care and loving that all the above have provided.
1 Making class
Inscription, exchange, value and
perspective
According to hlanthia Dia\vara (19 98), black working-class masculinity operates
in popular culture as a mobile cultural style available to different characters in
fdm, be they black or white. Exploring a tradition exemplified in Blaxploitation
fdms, he sholvs how a contradictory amalgam of racist stereoty~eas nd resistance
to those stereotypes produces a form of black lvorking-class maleness coded as
cool.' This becomes used across a range of sites in popular cultures, most obviously
in film and music. But what is significant is how this inscription, this marking of
cool attached to black bodies, becomes detachable and can operate as a mobile
resource that can be 'transported through white bodies' (Dialvara 1998: 52).
Yet the mobility of this attachment and the inscription 'cool' are not resources
that are equally available to all. For lvhen black male characters play 'cool' it
becomes fixed on their body They are cool. They become fixed into playing 'black-
ness' (Eddie Murphy is probably the most obvious example, lvhere even as an
animation donkey in the fdm Shrek! he still embodies a comedy version of cool).'
But black male actors cannot perform 'whiteness' in a similar way because they
are ahvays inscribed and read as black in our \Vestern colour-coded visual symbolic
economy They are excluded symbolically &om performing 'whiteness'. Yet lvhite
characters that need to achieve 'cool' can move bet\veen black and white, attaching
and detaching aspects of black culture and characteristics as and when appropriate.
So lvhat lve learn to recognize as categorizations of race and class are not just
classification or social positions but an amalgam of features of a culture that are
read onto bodies as personal dispositions - lvhich themselves have been generated
through systems of inscription in the first place. Dia\vara uses the example of Pulp
Fiction in which John Travolta acts 'black cool' (remember the lvalk?) lvhilst Samuel
Jackson is cool. A particular version of racial inscription thus becomes a mobile
resource for some whilst being fixed and read onto some bodies as a limitation.
The black male character appears not to be acting; he just is. Hence, black
dispositions are culturally essentialized and made authentic. This is an example
of a symbolic economy where the inscription and marking of characteristics onto
certain bodies condenses a whole complex cultural history. Some bodies can be
expanded rather than condensed. At the same time they become a resource for
others. The way some cultural characteristics fix some groups and enable others
to be mobile will be a central exploration of this book. The interest here lies in
2 ,Making class
how some forms of culture are condensed and inscribed onto social groups and
bodies that then mark them and restrict their movement in social space, whilst
others are not but are able to become mobile and flexible.
\Ye can chart how similar characteristics are inscribed, marked and stuck on
other bodies too - femininity, hy~e~sexualitcyr iminality for example - whilst
others do not. But before lve explore this condensing, sticking and fixing process
lve need to understand four other processes that provide the fi-amelvork for the
rest of the book. First, how do certain bodies become inscribed and then marked
with certain characteristics? Second, what gstenzs of exchange enable some
characteristics to be read as good, bad, lvorthy and unworthy? Thus, holy is value
attributed, accrued, institutionalized and lost in the processes of exchange? And ho\v is
this value both moral and economic? Third, how is value produced through different
pelspectives (different ways of knolving, hearing and seeing that represent particular
interests)? Fourth, we need to know ho\v these systems of inscription, exchange,
valuing, institutionalization and perspective provide the conditions of possibility
for being lead b3, others in the re1ationshi;bs that are formed betlveen groups; what are
the effects? This, therefore, is a book about the conditions of possibility that make
class. It is not about ho\v class is lived.
For instance, lvhilst black lvorking-classness is inscribed on the body as cool, it
is also part of a dominant symbolic exchange mechanism that through historical
inscription also equates cool lvith criminality This cultural equation is useful for
fdm makers yet it does not help those so inscribed to gain employment outside of
the field of popular representations where they may be read as interesting but also
dangerous and untrust\vorthy In exchanging blackness for cool, respectability may
be lost. The symbolic value attribution of danger and immorality sets limits on
the possibilities for economic exchange. But from a non-dominant symbolic
perspective, equating black M-orking-classnessw ith cool may be less tenable, indeed
it may even be seen to be highly valued, or valued differently Different exchange
mechanisms generate different values fi-om different perspectives in different fields,
hence different possibilities (but all informed by polver).
In a previous ethnographic stud); Fornzations (Skeggs 199'7) I showed holy white
working-class women were symbolically positioned and ho\v this fi-amed their ability
to move through metaphorical and physical social space (the ability to exchange
the cultural characteristics by lvhich they had been inscribed and condensed on
their body). This marking restricted their ability to trade and convert their cultural
resources as these were read and valued as worthless by those lvho participated in
and institutionalized the dominant systems of exchange. The processes of inscrip-
tion, exchange, value-attribution and perspective put limits on them, not only in
becoming economically valued (an exchange-value), but also in generating a sense
of self-worth (a use-value). These lvomen, although inscribed and marked b\- the
symbolic systems of denigration and degeneracy managed to generate their o\vn
systems of value, and attributed respectability and high moral standing to them-
selves. They lvere both positioned by but also contested the symbolic systems of
historical inscription to generate alternative systems of value. This daily struggle
for value lvas central to their ability to operate in the world and their sense of
subjectiviv and self-worth.
l14aking class 3
It is the central concern of this book to sholv holy these different processes
(inscription, exchange, evaluation, perspective) make class in the contemporary This
assumes that class is not a given but is in continual production. This introduction,
organized into sections, \till establish the central themes that make up the fiamelvork
for the book as a lvhole. The first section argues that class is ahvays made by and
in the interests of those lvho have access to polver and the circuits of symbolic
distribution. The second explores holy different forms of exchange (economic to
moral) ahvays assume or produce a form of personhood, a form often described
as a subject. It also sholvs how it is not the object of exchange but rather the
relationships that enable exchange (hence polver) that are important. The third
and fourth sections focus on inscription and value attribution, developing these
themes through an analysis of Bourdieu's perspective on the symbolic economy
All these themes are then lvorked through a specific empirical example and
extended in the final section into an exploration of self-formation and ho\v this is
integral to class making.
Class interests
Class cannot be made alone, lvithout all the other classifications that accompany
it. Significant15 the example described by Dia\vara above is based on a reading of
black male bodies rather than female ones, which are inscribed differently through
gender. 1% need to think how bodies are being inscribed simultaneously by different
symbolic systems; how inscription attributes difference and how lve learn to
interpret bodies through the different perspectives to which we have access. These
different systems of inscription and interpretation may operate both in simultaneiv
and in contradiction. This enables us to explore ho\v some people can use the
classifications and characteristics of race, class or femininity as a resource whilst
others cannot because they are positioned as them.
Historically there are strong and intimate parallels betlveen the generation of
classifications of social class and the production of sexuality and gendei: So lvhen
Foucault (1979) identifies the four discourses that came to produce sexuality (the
Malthusian couple, the masturbating child, the hysterical lvoman, the peiTerse
adult) lve can see a similar process occurring lvith class. The discourses of the
dangerous outcast, the urban mass, the revolutionan alien, the contagious lvomen,
the non-recuperable, came to produce lvhat M-as kno\vn as class. As Rfary Poovey
(1995) demonstrates, these were not entirely straightfonvard designations, and
formed part of a long discursive struggle. The catego17 of the contagious lvoman,
figured through the prostitute, presented specific problems. The paradox of needing
to name, identifx quantify and know also produced the possibility of breathing
life into the figure, making it a lived possibilit); and thereby provoking a range of
questions about why and for whom the prostitute exists. It lvas the dilemma over
naming the prostitute that floundered James Kay's studies of Irish poverty in
Llanchester (see Poovey 1995).A lso, the sexuality of working-class women became
a source of desire and 'scientific' obsei~ationf or the Vctorian male reformers
such as hlalthus and Rfumby As Lynette Finch (1993) sho\vs, it M-as the moral
reading of lvomen's bodies and practices that initiated the first class categories to