Class Identity

The Evolution of Social Class Identity

Social class has traditionally been defined as a socioeconomic construct, and social classes—including lower, middle, and upper classes—have been demarcated based on available government statistics on income. The income levels for determining social classes have changed over the years because of inflation. For example, in 1985 an income of $15,000 or less for a family of four in the United States was considered poor or lower social class, whereas in 2007 the figure was $27,000. In addition to income, occupation has been associated with social class, with professional/white-collar occupations more closely aligned with middle and upper classes and hourly service and blue-collar jobs associated with lower social classes.

Social scientists have known for years that social class is more than a socioeconomic category. In the 1950s and 1960s, class consciousness was frequently used to refer to the psychological and sociological dimensions of social class; these dimensions include class identification, social outlook associated with class, and class opposition. Class identification is a person's awareness of membership in a particular class which often includes such class entities as working class, middle class, and upper class. Social class outlook is roughly defined as a way of perceiving reality that reflects a person's social class. For example, working class, which frequently refers to people who hold blue-collar positions, is reported to have shared and coherent perceptions and assumptions about work, family, religion, and government. Upper class also possesses a shared outlook, which differs from working class in such areas as the value placed on manual labor and personal consumption patterns and expectations. Finally, class opposition is the perceived conflict between [Page 92]one's social class and other social classes. The Marxist notion of social class opposition generally entails some form of class antagonism, hostility, or both, between working class and the affluent. From this perspective, this opposition is triggered by capitalism, the agent provocateur of class warfare.

Identity is the most recent formulation of social class and expands past analysis of class as social consciousness. This view of class places much greater emphasis on processes of culture, lifestyle, and taste. The culture of social class can include perceptions, values, language, and social relationships. Lifestyle and taste encompass the myriad ways people live their respective lives and their personal preferences with regard to appearance, habitat, and consumption patterns. The cultural components of perceptions and values, for example, affect the way people cognitively process and organize stimuli from their environment. The working class, for instance, perceives political discourse differently than the affluent and traditionally is more supportive of political candidates who are culturally more conservative in such areas as abortion, homosexuality, and religion.

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