hen it is an egalitarian society. Keep in mind, that these are relative terms. Last week we drew a picture that tells the story of how societies are organized around work. As societies move from simple to complex organization, they start to get levels of inequality that would need stratification to keep the peace. The differences are not natural, neutral nor random. They are ranked and constitute a hierarchy along the lines of race, gender, age, income among others. Class is about how society organizes production and the outcomes that it creates for people; this a combination of a Marxian (stratification) and Weberian (organization) understanding. Empirical question: What does the class system look in the U.S.? Your position in the social world determines what you can see. The project of 19th century thought was to find a point from where to look at the world and see its social relations unaffected by the observer's position (the objectivist perspective). Subjectivist epistemology, on the other hand, holds that where you are leads to what you see. Gardner and Gardner conducted a study in 1941 to investigate how people perceive social class. They used six categories to desegregate the concept. Visions of class structure held by the upper upper class Upper upper class: old aristocracy Lower upper class: aristocracy but not old(new rich) Upper middle class: nice respectable people Lower middle class: good but nobody Upper lower class: po' whites (white trash) Lower lower class: po' whites (white trash) Visions of class structure held by the lower lower class Upper upper class: society folks with money Lower upper class: society folks with money Upper middle class: society folks with money Lower middle class: way high ups Upper lower class: snobs trying to pushup Lower lower class: people just as good as anybody These are two different pictures of the class structure. There is great variation in the perception according to where they are. T...
