Class Containers
Class comes up. For some that would be an understatement. For some analysts, class more than "comes up," it suffuses all aspects of life. For some of my friends, class also more than "comes up," I can't stop talking about it. The combination of these two forms of a single understatement have inspired me to write this post.
What is class? How important is it to understanding our world?
In a Marxist sense, class is based on those who have capital (modes of production) and those who have labor. These categories/classes waver depending on the historical period at hand.
In a biological sense, class is a level of classification between phylum and order. There are subclasses in this reckoning.
There are a few other notions of class out there, many of which will be important to this discussion.
What do you think of when you think, "class?"
What is class? How important is it to understanding our world?
In a Marxist sense, class is based on those who have capital (modes of production) and those who have labor. These categories/classes waver depending on the historical period at hand.
In a biological sense, class is a level of classification between phylum and order. There are subclasses in this reckoning.
There are a few other notions of class out there, many of which will be important to this discussion.
What do you think of when you think, "class?"
posted by Breathing at 4:26 PM
3 Comments:
What is class to me? I don't know. The part of your entry that mentions taxonamy is striking to me though. As a bird watcher I am interested in seeing as many distinct "types" as possible even though the particular type or color morph may not be recocgnised as a distinct species or even subspecies. Do birds classify eachother? I think that is another symptom of the human condition. Do animals make war? Dose the deer think that the bear is, "teribly insensitive"? It amuses me to see us, humanity, as the scientist looking threw the microscope, the microscope itself and the creature swiming in a cultured goo on the slide,all at the same time. When a raccoon finds something shiny and stores it away some where in it's burrow or hollow tree, dose it then latter take it out to admire it's beauty and strangeness? Dose it have the cognitive or perhaps emotional means to value this object over the acorns and other items that more normaly/more naturaly populate it's world? Has the raccoon CLASSIFIED this thing? I guess what I'm getting at is the question you ask (to me) is if there can be many different layers of human then what is human and what is something below or above? Is below human animal? Or perhaps lower down to the order of "subhuman" where evil people are correctly filed. Is above human god? All cultures have discoverd, invented or been contacted by one. Perhaps human is the very thing in the middle. I'm rambling now and so I'll stop but you got me thinking. Thanks. I guess it's just a funny question to me because humans are more than thier DNA they are there choices without regard to their circumstances but we are so rarely better than our circumstances and I suppose that is what class means to me.
Best,
Aaron
i respond to this in an entirely different sense than Aaron (is that the aaron i met? or another one?)
i've been thinking about class a lot lately, been meaning to write a small treatise on the subject and then, of course, i haven't.
class is not just money. it's not just taste or culture. class is perception -self-perception as well as perception of others. many people who aren't consider themselves middle-class, but what does this even mean?
i find it incredibly suspect that america has always pretended to a classless society of democracy and opportunity. this is actually a dangerous belief, if it's still extant.
money: who has it, who wants it, how it circulates.
education: who has it, who gets to have it, how it's deployed
taste/culture/aesthetics: camp and kitsch. tacky and refined. low-brow/high-brow. popular vs. high cultures.
class has many permutations, combinations of characteristics and ideals and beliefs that combine and express themselves differently.
do very expensive, stylish clothes disguise "low-class" or produce "high class"?
i think the very fact that class is so often disguised, mocked, marginalized makes it incredibly central to understanding our world.
plus i kind of lean socialist/semi-marxist and so it's inescapable that i see class struggle in the labor - worker vs. capitalist - sense.
say MORE!!!!
i'm thinking too about how ideas about class operate outside of american/western cultures.....
Kbryna's right. Understanding class IS "incredibly central to understanding our world". And I think that's more the kind of exploration of this idea you were looking for. But again it makes me think. For maybe a decade or more I've been thinking about America and the notion of class and the advertisement that each child could one day become president. Where dose that notion come from? Why is it such a salient precept of the birth right of all americans? How dose it shape the sociopolitical perceptions and self concept of our members? Is there an advantage to our "lowest" members of 'Merican society beleiving that they are on the best team? An all time cou in the history of what is still tribal warfare? Sorry Chris, not very coherent or on topice, but I'm envited to revisit lot's of old questions.
The occidental organism is a strange one. If you take the Giah theroy of a living earth where all organisms are analogous to individual cells whitin the one organism of the planet and suplant it on the young concept of 'Merica I see a strange picture of our identity. In what other creature, societal, or organic, do the white blood cells have hope to be an important nuron in charge of critical synapse's and live longer in exchange for arguably less work? It is strange and miraculous but is it healthy for all parts to be interchangeable? Is it even true? When's the last time a mail carrier became Cheif in this country? The worker bee has no designs on being queen but for the good of all if she dies they will feed an unhatched larve special honey to augment it's growth and create a new one.
Last night I saw, "The New World" in the theatre. One of the characters inhabiting the Jamestown settelment lies to others about his former status in the old world saying that he had servents. Obstensibly to avoid some messy and hard work, or perhaps just to set himself apart in the minds of others. Why would that matter?
This is the country where we have the saying, "A mans home is his castle", and we still mow our lons and clip our hedges on our eighth acre plots to look like miniature versions of the sprawling estates of our rich old oppressors. I guess status of class is a social designation that can sheild one from hardships that are not equaly shared. Everyone has dreams. They almost always depend on a social construct. Class is the key to acheiving them. Having it or rubbing up close to it.
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