CROSS-CLASS PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL CLASS

Abstract

This article explores how members of the American middle and working classes perceive themselves and each other's lives. The data offer an opportunity to address the relevance of social class as a concept for understanding American society while at the same time helping to clarify the debate over the question of whether the working class is integrated into American society or angry, alienated, and resistant to mainstream goals and institutions. The data reported here suggest that the attitudes held by many members of the middle class, which members of the working class perceive during social interaction, have an impact on the self-confidence of working-class individuals, causing some of them to experience self-doubt, pain, and hidden injuries. Social class as defined by education, occupational prestige, and income still matters in the United States. The American working class may not be class conscious in the classic Marxian sense of the concept - a class for itself - but it does have a deep understanding of the inequalities between "us" and "them". The respondents in this study do not yet know they live in a postmodern world. The attitudes and actions of members of the middle class toward working-class culture help (re) create the American working class.