Social Class

A class identifies people as being members of a group based on some common attribute or circumstance. Although social scientists disagree upon a definition of social class, they agree that classes are not perceived to be equal in rank or social status. Hierarchy is evident in the terms most often used to identify class groups: upper, middle, working, and lower. Social class as defined by economic factors, such as wealth and occupation, appeared during the Industrial Revolution, when a new consciousness of the socially constructed nature of class emerged. The concept of class mobility was at the core of the 18th-century Enlightenment and shaped the role of research and evaluation in society. It was hoped that research and evaluation studies would point to the causes of social inequalities and identify interventions that would best redress them.

Class issues that are essentially issues of inequality in society affect the decisions made by evaluators. How class and class-related issues should be incorporated in evaluations has been widely contested. The two most influential theories of class are those of the political philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883) and sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920). Their work has shaped the landscape of how class has been defined and analyzed in the social sciences. For Neo-Marxists, class is an objective measure of one's relation to the means of production and a direct result of the structures of capitalism. Furthermore, a class is defined relationally: The behaviors and values of the lower classes are determined because of the practices and beliefs of the upper classes, and vice versa. Members of different classes not only have different interests; these are in conflict with each other. For these theorists, the presence of class is evidence of a deeply unjust and polarized social structure. Theorists influenced by Weber, on the other hand, view social class as a more subjective measure of a person's access to multiple economic processes, which include, among others, income and educational level, social status, and power. The interplay of these resources contributes to a person's “life chances” but does not determine his or her fate.

Class differences are created and maintained in our daily social practices, and these practices in turn are shaped by our perceptions of class. Evaluation can play an active role in understanding the formation of class values and beliefs and the relationship that the members of one class have to the others. Evaluators can take a “neutral” stance on class, treating class as one (albeit important) variable in determining the effectiveness of programs and policies (a choice that some say only serves the interests of the powerful), or they can place class relations and the social structures that shape them at the forefront in an attempt to bring to the surface those contradictions between the rhetoric of social practices and their actual effect on people. The decision to approach evaluation from one or the other position has clear political implications.