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May 23, 2011

False Dichotomies of Class (Part II): Material versus Cultural

I responded last month to Martha McCluskey’s ClassCrits post, “Class as a Category of Vulnerability and Inequality.” In that initial response, I asserted that progressives need not choose between advocating mobility (the upward variety!) and advocating mobilization (collective action, labor rights) when it comes to class. I called the tension between mobilization and advocating class mobility a false dichotomy. This post takes up another issue that arose from the initial conversation: is class material or is it cultural? More precisely, will attending too much to the cultural aspects of class cause us to lose sight of its material aspects and consequences?

Of course, class has both material and cultural components—no doubt one of the reasons we increasingly refer to it as “socioeconomic status” or “SES.” I believe we must take both seriously in our efforts to empower the working class and poor. As with my prior post, I take the white working class as my starting point for several reasons. One is that I don’t hear socially conscious progressives pushing for a bifurcation that separates the material from the cultural with respect to minority groups. The other is that focusing on working class and poor whites permits us to see class more clearly. If we are looking at the group which enjoys the greatest racial privilege, we will not be tempted to collapse the class problem into the racism problem. We thus have a distinct opportunity to see just how powerful class disadvantage is. This tack it is not intended to discount the ways in which racial disadvantage exacerbates class disadvantage.

Thinking about class as culture implicates identity, and some have challenged class as a basis for identity, especially among “lower classes.” John Guillory wrote in 1993:

Acknowledging the existence of admirable and even heroic elements of working-class culture, the affirmation of lower-class identity is hardly compatible with a program for the abolition of want.

First, note that even Guillory implicitly links culture (“lower-class identity”) to the material (“abolition of want”). Second, while Guillory’s assertion may be somewhat true regarding those most materially deprived—the poorest among us—it overlooks the fact that many working-class whites are proud of that status. Jim Webb has observed, for example, that rednecks “don’t particularly care what others think of them. To them, the joke has always been on those who utter the insult.” If they suddenly got rich, they would not necessarily shed their cultural trappings. Nor would they shrug off all of the socialization and habits of their childhood and youth. Consider the “Beverly Hillbillies” as a vivid (if imperfect) illustration of the point. As many scholars have observed, class is inextricably linked to consumption, and consumption implicates not only money, but also spending priorities and taste.

Significantly, scholars have observed that culture varies more along racial and ethnic lines among the “lower” classes, while culture becomes more homogeneous as you work your way up the class hierarchy. In other words, the upper classes—regardless of race or ethnicity—tend to be more culturally like each other than they are like those of their same race or ethnicity who fall below them in the class hierarchy. This, too, is evidence of the symbiotic relationship between the cultural and the material. Given the link between being lower class on the one hand and manifesting cultural differences attributable to race/ethnicity on the other, denying cultural aspects of class for working class and poor whites seems tantamount to denying their personhood. It also overlooks a whole lot of sociological literature that sees cultural and material aspects of class as entangled.

In fact, a feedback loop exists between the material and the cultural in a range of contexts. June Carbone illustrates this in relation to family types in a forthcoming article.  Education is another context in which the two are intertwined: the working class are less likely to seek higher education and may scoff at its value in part because they know (or believe) they cannot afford it; they see it as beyond their reach.  Young people from working class families are thus far less likely than the children of professionals/the managerial class to get college degrees, which contributes to the financial insecurity of the former and keeps them in the working class.

Martha McCluskey’s post about cultural and material aspects of class arose from my discussion of Joan Williams’s new book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter.  The book is the subject of a colloquy in the Seattle University Law Review, in which Laura Kessler suggests that Williams pays too little attention to the material aspects and consequences of class by virtue of attending too much to its cultural aspects. To this, Williams responded as part of the colloquy:

Does a focus on how class is manifested as cultural difference entail overlooking the structuralist-materialist dimensions of class? Not at all: I am a material girl. But here’s the fascinating thing. Since 1970, Republicans have adopted policies that have radically increased inequality of incomes and eviscerated the economic stability of Americans who are neither rich nor poor with those very Americans’ political support.

* * *

All this is to say that, although I am a material girl, I recognize that we do not live by bread alone. Dignity and meaning-creation are equally important. So it is possible to connect with people whose economic interests do not in sync with yours if you connect with the symbols and the values that give dignity and meaning to their lives. That’s what the Republicans have done, and I propose that Democrats follow the same path.

To be clear, acknowledging culture does not let the state off the hook. In my earlier post, I discussed the role of the state regarding the increasing immobility of the working class. The state also plays roles in relation to a conception of class that attends to culture. One such role should be to prevent discrimination. Mitu Gulati and Devon Carbado have argued that anti-discrimination law should protect the "fifth black woman," the one with dreadlocks and African garb. They have asserted that whites are not faced with her dilemma—to pass or not—but they are wrong. Whites, too, must behave and dress in certain ways in order to "pass" successfully in settings where power (and wealth!) resides, e.g., elite universities, graduate and professional schools, large law firms, corporate America, middle and upper echelons of government.

Williams’s survey of ethnographic studies of the white working class suggests that turning away from working class habits, manners, and attitudes is necessary for class migrants to, well, migrate—to ascend the class ladder. They must do this in order to succeed and thereby to enhance their material well-being. Williams reports some comments made by class migrants during her book tour, noting that “they expressed anxiety that their migration in to the elite would leave them alienated from the values they grew up with and still hold dear.” At the same time, they worried that the working-class values engrained in them would inhibit “their ability to move up” and “attain professional success.” Williams was reporting there about class migrants of color, but it is high time we acknowledge that white class migrants are similarly hamstrung.

All of this points to the wrongheadedness of trying to bifurcate the cultural and material when we think about class. Clearly, each has a significant influence on the other, and we should reject a dichotomy between the two as false.

Cross posted to SALTLaw Blog and ClassCrits.

May 19, 2011

SALT Great Teacher 2012: Keith Aoki

The Society of American Law Teachers has released the following statement regarding the naming of Keith Aoki, our colleague who passed away last month, receipient of its 2012 Great Teacher Award.

"The Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) announces with pride and sadness that it will be honoring Professor Keith Aoki posthumously with its 2012 SALT Great Teacher Award at the Saturday, January 7, 2012 SALT Annual Dinner in conjunction with the AALS annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

"A talented, creative, committed professor, teacher, friend, colleague, musician, artist, husband, and father, Keith has left his mark on the legal academy and in the hearts of students and colleagues alike.

"Keith’s educational path reflected the fact that his legal analysis and scholarship were intimately connected to his love of art and music.  That made Keith into a risk-taking intellectual who was passionate about ideas and justice.  Keith earned a B.F.A. degree from Wayne State, M.A. in Fine Arts from Hunter College, J.D. from Harvard Law School, and LL.M. from the University of Wisconsin Law School. At the time of his
death, Keith was a professor at the University of California at Davis School of Law, having come from the University of Oregon School of Law, where he taught from 1993 to 2006. He also taught at Lewis & Clark, Columbia, and Boston College.

"He brought his performance art into the classroom, delighting and unnerving students, challenging their assumptions and expectations.  He made generations of pompous law professors and law school students laugh at themselves with his legal comics.

"Reviewing the comments posted by those who knew Keith after his untimely death was announced, we know that he was also a teacher of teachers, mentoring colleagues through the first years of classroom preparation, urging them to be brave in their scholarship, and reminding them that their vulnerability wasn’t such a bad thing."Keith Aoki was a generous spirit, and his teaching, scholarship, and service were the creative products of that generosity, intelligence, compassion, and determination to make the world a better place."

Read tributes to Professor Aoki here, here and here.  A memorial service to honor Professor Aoki will take place at the law school on Thursday, May 26, at 3 pm.

May 18, 2011

A Book of Remembrances in Honor of Keith Aoki

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Jamie Boyle has made available a book he produced remembering our UC Davis colleague Keith Aoki, available for $10.05 (at cost).

Keith Aoki: 1955-2011 Life as the Art of Kindness, A Remembrance (Paperback)

The book, produced by Duke Law Professor Jamie Boyle, with Duke's Jennifer Jenkins and Balfour Smith, offers remembrances of UC Davis Law Professor and graphic artist Keith Aoki, who passed away from a terminal illness this year. There are remembrances from John Perry Barlow and countless law professors across the country, in fields such as intellectual property and critical race theory. The book includes a dazzling array of Twitter messages, including one from Larry Lessig, on the day of Keith's passing. And it includes some great cartoons done by Keith, as well as art from his early years. A beautiful tribute from a few of the many who loved Keith.

 

May 13, 2011

Congratulations, Class of 2011!

After three years of hard work (see, e.g., here and here) and a lot of fun (see, e.g., here), you have earned your right to walk across the stage of the Mondavi Center. We toast your achievements thus far, and look forward to your accomplishments in the law and in life in the years to come.

 

Congratulations, Class of 2011!