Food prices are a daily concern in many households’ decision-making, especially when people want to have healthier diets. Employing Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 710 Indonesian citizens, we found that people from wealthier households are less likely to have concerns about food prices. However, the degree of health considerations in food consumption was found to moderate against the above association. In other words, people of higher income-based social classes may worry more about food prices (...) if they care more about the health impacts of their food choices. These findings provide more insights for policymakers on the psychological aspects of promoting the balance between finance and health in food consumption. (shrink)

(1990). The social classes attending Christian brothers schools in the nineteenth century. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 63-79.

Happiness is the eternal pursuit of mankind and is also the ultimate goal of social governance and national development. Based on data from the Chinese General Social Survey, this study used a structural equation model to analyze the influence of social class identity and public service satisfaction on the happiness of residents. The effect of public service satisfaction and social trust between social class identity and residents’ happiness was tested using the Monte Carlo method. The (...) empirical results show that social class identity, social trust, and public service satisfaction all had a significant positive impact on residents’ happiness. The influence coefficients of social class identity on the happiness of residents and on the satisfaction degree of public service for those born in the1970s group were greater than the 1980s and 1990s groups. The influence coefficients of social class identity on the happiness and public service satisfaction of non-agricultural household residents were greater than those of agricultural household residents. Therefore, to improve the happiness of residents, we should make new breakthroughs in the equality of quality and the quality of public services, promote the integration of urban and rural areas, highlight key areas of rural development, and increase the construction of basic public services for agricultural household residents. (shrink)

This collection seeks to excavate the tradition of radical liberal class analysis, which predated and inspired Marx's reflections on class. Liberal class theory is distinctive because it regards relationship with the state as constitutive rather than just indicative of social class membership. Along with an introduction that frames the discussion historically and conceptually, Social Class and State Power provides readers with easy access to provocative texts from the early modern period to the present.

The purpose of this article is to investigate how sex segregation, social class, and gender are analytically related to occupational stratification. Recent discussions of women and men in the labor force revolve around whether a sex-segregated model in which sex of the worker affects placement, a pure social class model using classical criteria, or a gendered social class model in which social organizational processes of a gendered social class structure affect positioning in the stratification system. (...) This article addresses the influence that social class and gender have on stratification in the labor market. Data from the 1972-82 General Social Survey on 371 occupations, representing 7,541 male and female workers, are used to formulate a social class scheme based on all workers' characteristics. In comparing the models, the analyses show that an integrated gendered social class perspective is consistent with the empirical differentiation found among women and men in the labor force. (shrink)

The paper offers to substantiate a claim about the so-called Meritocratic Conception of how educational opportunities ought to be distributed. Such a conception holds an individual’s prospects for educational achievement may be a function of that individual’s talent or effort levels but should not be influenced by their social class background. The paper highlights the internal tension in the Meritocratic Conception between on the one hand a prohibition on the influence of social class on educational opportunities and on (...) the other a permission to allow unequal educational opportunities on the basis of talent and effort. This tension obtains because individuals’ talent and effort are themselves subject to influence by social class. The paper makes a positive case for an interpretation of the Meritocratic Conception that resolves this tension in favour of an egalitarian version, such that social class represents an objectionable determinant of unequal educational prospects even when its influence is mediated through the cultivation of talent and effort. This argument is further supported through an explanation that the character of social class as a systemic social source of the structure of individuals’ opportunities makes it an objectionable influence on educational opportunities. (shrink)

This article looks anew at questions of social class in China. It does this through the prism of three recent books on China dealing with class. Key problems regarding social class in China treated in the article are those of the constitution of the working class given the fact that China’s workforce is largely composed of a ‘floating population’ of migrants, and of the position of the peasantry which had emerged as the revolutionary agent of the Mao years.

This article first surveys a significant set of issues that are intertwined in asking whether social classes are real. It distinguishes two different notions of class: class as organized social entities and class as types of individuals based on individual characteristics. There is good evidence for some classes as social entities—ruling classes and underclasses in some societies—but other classes in contemporary society are sometimes best thought of in terms of types, not social (...) entities. Implications are drawn for pluralist accounts of social classification and the individualism-holism dispute. (shrink)

In the present research, based on the game research paradigm, the research tools are the dictator game and the trust game, and the research objects are Chinese university students. We adopt 2 × 2 between-subjects design experiment to investigate the influence of social class on university students’ prosocial behavior. Across the experimental study, we find that in the two situations of dictator game and trust game, self-social class has no significant influence on university students’ prosocial behavior; in the (...) situation of dictator game, target social class has a significant influence on university students’ prosocial behavior, and it is regulated by self-social class. Under the condition of low self-social class, the higher the target social class, the more prosocial behavior of university students, which confirms the perspective of status and negates “if you are poor, you will be good for yourself.” Under the condition of high self-social class, the lower the target social class, the more prosocial the behavior of university students, which confirms the perspective of fairness and echoes “if you are good, you will be good at the world”; in the context of the trust game, target social class has a significant influence on university students’ prosocial behavior, and there is no interaction effect with self-social class. (shrink)

Rising exclusion rates indicate the continuing marginalisation of many young people in education in the UK. Working-class boys, children living in poverty, and children with additional/special educational needs are among those experiencing a disproportionate rate of exclusion. This book traces the processes of exclusion and alienation from school and relates this to a changing social and economic context. Jean Kane argues that policy on schooling, including curricular reform, needs to be re-connected to the broad political pursuit of social (...) justice, and presents compelling case studies of excluded pupils, showing the multi-faceted identities of pupils, with a particular focus on masculine and feminine identities. This invaluable contribution to the literature offers an alternative analysis where the social identities of pupils are shown to be tied up with their exclusion from school. Themes investigated include: the meanings of school exclusions social class, gender and schooling social identities of excluded pupils negotiating identities in school: moving towards exclusion exclusions and young people’s lives improving participation in schooling. Providing fascinating reading for teachers, social workers, researchers and policy-makers this book considers how educational disadvantage might be addressed through recognition of the gender and class identities of pupils. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to consider the situation with the social class stratification in Latvia. The focus is on the middle social class, due to the significance of this class both for the economic growth and the achievement of the sustainable, long-term development of the country. The subject of sociological research is the formation of class stratification in the region (estimated on the basis of cluster analysis), the main characteristics of the selected clusters based on the (...) analysis of the volumes and structure of total resources and aggregate capital. In the conclusion of the article, the controversial issues of classes in modern societies are analyzed. (shrink)

Class effects in Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania are compared in the framework of the Neo-Weberian social class theory (EGP class schema), using European Social Survey (ESS) Round 4 (2008–2010) data, just at the time when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania completed their transition to market economy and liberal democracy. Finland, perceived in the post-communist Baltic countries as a model or a “real utopia” state, is used as benchmark for a comparative estimation of the strength of class effects. The (...) main findings of the statistical correspondence analysis are the following: (1) Class inequality of life chances is more pronounced in the post-communist Baltics than in Finland; (2) Paradoxically, class effects on ideological orientations and party voting are more prominent in Finland, where class inequality is less pronounced. (shrink)

Entrepreneurial agency—the individual power to change environments—is central to entrepreneurship research. Yet, from a social inequality perspective, beliefs in an entrepreneurial agency might differ based on the social class environments individuals are born into. Drawing on social cognitive theories, our findings across three data sets among students from Germany and entrepreneurs from the United States indicate that social class origins are associated with entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) beliefs in adulthood. Exploring the underlying mechanisms, we find that students’ (...) early entrepreneurial experiences in education and practice are indicative of reproducing the class gap in ESE. When individuals collect mastery experiences such as social mobility or entrepreneurial success, their lower social class origins turn out to be associated with enhanced entrepreneurial agency beliefs. We discuss the implications for further research on social class, inequality, and entrepreneurship. (shrink)

In this article, I develop a novel relational egalitarian theory of social exclusion that explains how society fails to treat socially excluded individuals – such as people experiencing homelessness, individuals with substance use disorders and mental illness and sex workers – as equals. I argue that society places and keeps excluded individuals at the very bottom of the social status hierarchy by treating them as socially invisible, or by rendering them physically invisible, or both. The upshot, then, is (...) that part of what is wrong with social exclusion is that it creates the invisible social class. (shrink)

Last year I published a short article urging bioethicists to carefully examine the question of what ought to constitute the canonical issues topics and questions driving research and teaching in bioethics. Why some subjects dominate the field whereas other topics are regarded as matters for scholars in other disciplines is a question that has intrigued me for nearly a decade. How are the boundaries of bioethics established? What factors influence research agendas and the creation of bioethics curricula? How do funding (...) agencies, editors, and leading scholars shape the field of bioethics? These questions are increasingly receiving scrutiny from Charles Bosk, Raymond De Vries, and other researchers as they explore the sociology of bioethics and the “construction” of the “ethical enterprise.". (shrink)

In this paper, I use interview data drawn from ethnographic work on a Division 1 collegiate cross country team at a large midwestern university in the United States to demonstrate the ways that possessive individualistic discourses around hard work are embodied in classed subjectivities. I find that middle class women, the products of concerted cultivation, tend to focus on the display of hard work, and have anxiety around the value of their production of a hard-working identity. Working class women tend (...) to treat the experience of being disciplined as an athlete as a fortunate opportunity to build physical capital, using the hard work to benefit them as athletes rather than to build their identities. These different attitudes, affected by social class, interact with a dominant discourse around hard work demonstrating the interaction between agency and structure when it comes to forming identities. (shrink)

As part of an effort to look at for bioethicists interested in clinical decisionmaking, Erik Parens, the editor of this special section, asked us to look at social class. When we began our research for this paper, we were surprised to find that although bioethicists have written much on social class and such macrolevel issues as access to healthcare and the distribution of scarce resources, and have paid some attention to the effects of class on patient-provider relationships, bioethicists (...) have written little specifically that looks at the implications of social class for medical decisions in individual cases. (shrink)

Based on data from participant observation and in-depth interviews with women who live in a relatively homogeneous small, rural town, this article examines how women act to produce social class representations. By presenting symbols of socioeconomic positions, including behaviors, tastes, and values, during their work, the women in the town present themselves as working, middle, or upper class women. Through these representations, they secure a place within the town's subjective social class system.

Research with predominately minority, urban students has documented an educational “gender gap,” where girls tend to be more likely to go to college, make higher grades, and aspire to higher status occupations than boys. We know less, however, about inequality, gender, and schooling in rural contexts. Does a similar gap emerge among the rural poor? How does gender shape the educational experiences of rural students? This article explores these questions by drawing on participant observation and student interviews at a predominately (...) white and low-income rural high school. I find a substantial gap favoring girls in this context, and I analyze how understandings of masculinity shaped schooling using the theory of hegemonic masculinity. The findings suggest that boys' underachievement is actually rooted in masculine dominance and related to particular constructions of gender and social class. (shrink)

Over last half of the twentieth century, a silent revolution in post-material values made significant advances around the world. The formation of post-material values also resulted in expanded participation in post-material experiences such as joining voluntary groups, pursuing creativity and independence in the world of work, and engaging in political actions—experiences that go beyond a strict focus on accumulating economic wealth and material possessions. Because social class position matters for being a post-materialist, a class divide exists between middle-class post-materialists (...) and working-class materialists who occupy the lower end of the social class spectrum. This article will show that such a divide occurs, first for participation in post-material experiences and second for the attainment of life satisfaction. Using data from the World Values Survey, evidence will be provided in this article showing that members of the working class participate less in post-material experiences than others and, as a consequence, enjoy lower life satisfaction than others, especially post-materialists. In light of working-class-supported right-wing populism’s recent emergence in the USA and Europe, this social class divide takes on a special significance in explaining shifting trends in politics and public policy. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest that social class, class background, and social mobility have important consequences for family life. Exploring hypotheses derived from these studies, as well as the literature on intergenerational relations, the authors focus on one key aspect of family relations: adult daughters' ties to their mothers. Analyzing data from the National Survey of Families and Households, the authors explore how employed women's relations with their mothers are shaped by race, social class memberships and backgrounds, and family (...) arrangements. Their results suggest that social class and mobility exert powerful effects on women's sense of their relations with their mothers, especially among Whites. In addition, however, it is shown that mother-daughter ties among African American and White women are also influenced by family arrangements that operate somewhat independently of social class and mobility. (shrink)

The article aims to reflect — also through some ethnographic examples — on the experience of adolescence in the light of a category, that of social class, rarely used explicitly in pedagogical research. In some contexts, being working-class adolescents has a decisive influence on the relationship with the school, as well with the urban environment and the imaginations of self for adolescents, while it tends to be removed by the actors of educational processes. The interpretative axis of social (...) class helps to reincarnate the theoretical construct of adolescence in the variety of material experiences that subjects have of being adolescents, favoring a clearer vision of the effects that inequalities have on life transitions and suggesting new directions of educational intervention. (shrink)

A field experiment examined how signs of social class influence compassionate responses to those in need. Pedestrians in two major cities in the United States were exposed to a confederate wearing symbols of relatively high or low social class who was requesting money to help the homeless. Compassionate responding was assessed by measuring the donation amount of the pedestrians walking past the target. Pedestrians gave more than twice as much money to the confederate wearing higher-class symbols than they (...) did to the one wearing lower-class symbols. A follow-up study exposed participants to images of the target wearing the same higher- or lower-class symbols and examined the antecedents of compassionate responding. Consistent with theorizing, higher-class symbols elicited perceptions of elevated competence, trustworthiness, similarity to the self, and perceived humanity compared to lower-class symbols. These results indicate that visible signs of social class influence judgments of others’ traits and attributes, as well as in decisions to respond compassionately to the needs of those who are suffering. (shrink)

This article looks at the income-related experiences of women workers in Bangladesh in the export garment industry, the first modern industry in the country to employ large numbers of women. The analysis draws on in-depth interviews with 34 female sewing machine operators at five factories. Despite the traditionally low economic autonomy of Bangladeshi women, the women's ability to control their income was varied, and in fact, a substantial number of the women workers exercised full control over their wages. Socioeconomic background (...) affected women's income control by shaping both the symbolic meaning of women's income and the ability of male kin to fulfill their traditional obligations to women. With the exception of some young unmarried workers, women's employment in the garment industry had not posed a significant challenge to patriarchal family relations. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reclaim social class as a central concern within education, not in the traditional sense as a dimension of educational stratification, but as a powerful and vital aspect of both learner and wider social identities. Drawing on historical and present evidence, a case is made that social inequalities arising from social class have never been adequately addressed within schooling. Recent qualitative research is used to indicate some of the ways in (...) which class is lived in classrooms. The article also raises concerns about the ability of the education system to positively address social class in the classroom when contemporary initial teacher training rarely engages with it as a relevant concern within schooling. (shrink)

This new edition contextualizes Lareau's original ethnography in a discussion of the most pressing issues facing educators at the beginning of the new millennium.

The present article discusses the measurement of social class in the social psychology of education research. It was evident that social class experiences are conflated with the socioeconomic status indicators and the subjective measure of the class context was underrepresented. However, this was discussed in Rubin et al about the intersectional nature of social class taking into account both objective and subjective indicators. The derivation of the social class experience from the objective and subjective measures (...) were critically discussed. An effort was made to understand whether these translations are category mistake or not. Three trajectories will be utilized to address the category mistake, that is, 1) subjectivity and objectivity debate in the measurement of social class in social psychology of education, 2) debates encircling around the position of social psychology and its underutilized concept such as social class as scientifically objective facets in social sciences and 3) operationalism of social class and category mistake. (shrink)

This project reflects on the way in which students in a situation of social risk construct their identity. Based on the reflections and theories originating from research conducted on individuals and collective groups in a situation of social exclusion due to disability, social class or ethnicity, this paper will analyse the conflicts these students have to deal with when constructing their identity. It also examines the challenge that education has to face to turn those conflicts into opportunities (...) that will help to build life projects with which they can freely identify. For this reason, from a critical perspective, the school’s role in constructing identity will be analysed, as will the way in which it affects children and adolescents from minority groups. In the same way, we will study and put forward some different channels aimed at providing more equal educational attention to those identities that are depreciated in neoliberal society. (shrink)