Class in the United States: Not only alive but reproducing

Abstract

Death-of-class advocates assert that the United States is moving toward a classless society or that class is no longer a useful concept in the social sciences; however, this paper argues that class is not only a highly salient factor in stratification and inequality but that it also is a compelling force in the lives of elites as they seek to enforce their privileged positions—at least at the local and regional levels—across generations. The ethnographic study reported here documents how privileged women contribute to the maintenance and social reproduction of the upper class through boundary maintenance practices involving residential selection, children's peer groups and schools, elite by-invitation-only social and volunteer organizations, and rites of passage such as the debutante presentation—all of which serve in the macrolevel process of class-based legitimation and the perpetuation of an opportunity structure that benefits the privileged at the expense of non-elites.