Lower Class Status Research Articles

Factors associated with cutaneous colonization of Mucormycetes in diabetic and non-diabetic individuals.

This study was conducted to assess factors associated with cutaneous colonization of Mucormycetes in diabetic and non-diabetic individuals. A total of 800 swab samples from 200 participants including 100 diabetics and 100 non-diabetics were collected from four different body sites: (1) the forehead, (2) nasal cavity, (3) hands and (4) feet. Fungal isolation, fungal identification and antibiotic sensitivity tests were performed on the isolates. Overall, 12.0 % of the participants showed Mucormycetes colonization while the commonest fungal isolates were Mucor Species (Spp.). followed by Rhizopus spp. Diabetics had a 11 times higher odds of colonization compared to non-diabetics. The majority of the isolates were resistant to itraconazole; however, all isolates were sensitive to amphotericin B. A significant association was observed between profession and Mucormycetes (P=0.03) with significantly higher colonization in retired people compared to business people. Higher odds of colonization were demonstrated among older ages, lower class status and individuals with prolonged contact time with soil.

The Ball of La Laguna

The Ball of La Laguna was an infamous cross-dressing ball that ended in a police raid, media scandal, and public uproar on the night of January 31, 1959, in Lima, Peru. Hundreds of maricón (queer) couples attended the ball sporting masculine and feminine attire — unaware of the moral panic that would soon unfold across the city. How did class, race, and gender inequalities shape La Laguna? How did they shape heteronormative reactions to the ball? How can we understand the meanings of (homo)sexuality and cross-dressing at the ball? This essay answers these questions by conducting a content analysis of five newspapers, two magazines, a cartoon, an invitation to the ball, a video advertisement, and three oral history interviews. The Ball of La Laguna reveals that the class, race, and gender inequalities that have structured Peruvian society since colonial times also structured maricón social worlds and the policing of their communities. All attendees experienced homophobic treatment in the aftermath of the ball, but Indigeneity, femininity, and a lower-class status compounded these inequalities. La Laguna enables us to describe maricón social worlds in mid-twentieth-century Lima from an intersectional class, race, and gender perspective, which contributes to the growing literature on cross-dressing practices in twentieth-century Latin America and, more broadly, to the hemispheric turn in queer studies.

Hailing in the Face of Covid-19: On the Uses and Abuses of Heroism

In this paper, we examine the paradoxes of hailing health care workers as “Covid-19 heroes” in Canada and the United Kingdom. We ask how public discourses—primarily by governments, politicians, mainstream media, but also by racially minoritized groups and migrant-led associations—frame the ambiguous social and legal status of mostly women of color “essential” health care workers during the pandemic. We argue that hailing is a form of conditional inclusion. Hailing involves both the camouflaging of individuals’ low-class status, precarious position in the workplace, gendered and racially minoritized positionality and insecure/non-permanent immigration status on the one hand, as well as the potential for resistance, emancipation, wider organizing, and claims-making on the other. Through a focus on Filipino/a workers because of their high levels of representation as health care staff in both contexts, our empirical analysis underlines that hailing as conditional inclusion is asymmetrical and unequal. It enables co-optation and deflection from structural inequalities as the price of conditional inclusion of selected individuals and groups. However, at the same time, hailing generates resistance. Through “tiny openings” these contradictions are named, and the binary language of inclusion/exclusion is challenged.

Expressivism, Pluralism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”

Expressivism, Pluralism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”

Sustainable development in the construction industry: The role of frugal innovation

The journey towards sustainable development is largely limited by practices in the construction industry, which is a significant generator of wastes and other anthropogenic emissions. It therefore follows that a transition to cleaner construction technologies and methods through the deployment of innovations that minimize the use of resources and anthropogenic pollutants such as greenhouse gasses (GHG), aerosols, carbon dioxide, sulfur oxide, nitrogen oxide, benzene, and other emissions which adversely affect humans and impact the environment will foster the sustainable development goals. To sustainably develop, it is imperative for the construction industry as a hub of economic development to look inwards for solutions that are frugal, pragmatic, and inclusive. The tools for understanding the phenomena investigated are derived from the theories of frugal innovation, sustainable construction, and appropriate technology. The case of Hydraform was studied to understand how it contributes to sustainable development. Semi-structured interviews with industry experts and stakeholders provide qualitative insights into the phenomena investigated. The findings indicate that frugal innovation (FI) in the construction industry is shaped by large institutional players such as state governments, and non-profit organizations (NGOs), while a segment of the target user-groups interpret the innovation as lower-class status artifacts. Specifically, this study contributes to an understanding of how locally-engineered technology can foster development in the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) economies. Practitioners also gain through knowledge of the diffusion inhibitors, and how to navigate the diffusion barriers.

Class, Policy Attitudes, and U.S. Presidential Voting in the Post-Industrial Era: The Importance of Issue Salience

In the Post-industrial Era, there has been an apparent weakening of the relationship between class and voting in the U.S., with lower class voters becoming less likely to support the Democratic Party. We argue that this reflects that lower class status predicts liberal economic attitudes, but conservative views on cultural and racial issues, while the parties are consistently liberal or conservative, creating conflicts for many voters. How do voters settle such internal conflicts? We argue that the salience that voters attach to these different types of issues determines how policy attitudes, and indirectly class, shapes voting. Using ANES and GSS data since the 1970s, we find that class consistently predicts economic and cultural/minority policy attitudes, and that lower class voters who place more salience on economic issues, and upper class voters for whom cultural issues are more salient, are more likely to support the Democratic Party in presidential elections.

Understanding Poverty in Samar, Philippines: A Sociological Perspective

Poverty in the Philippines remains a challenge. In a recent nationwide self-rated survey of the Social Weather Station, more Filipino households consider themselves poor despite the positive feedback on one of the government’s poverty alleviation programs, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4PS). This qualitative study utilized a phenomenological approach to explore the reasons behind this claim. It explored the experiences of poverty from the lower class status, particularly the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) beneficiaries. The study revealed that norms and practices in the family might contribute to their claim of poverty, such as poor lifestyle choices, difficulty prioritizing needs, lack of parenting style, and extended family. Parents’ low education and lack of financial literacy are seen as another factor of poverty. Likewise, religion plays a part in responding to poverty. Participants assert that there is psychological comfort in experiencing poverty because of their religious convictions. Thus, it can be reasoned that sociological factors can affect poverty.

Re-imagining freedom as elderly female porters: A study of buruh gendong at Beringharjo traditional market of Yogyakarta

This paper expects to reveal the struggle of elderly female porters or buruh gendong who mostly had a historical background of working in industrial production (factory) but ended up being self-employed at Beringharjo traditional market of Yogyakarta. They used to work as factory workers. However, most factories collapsed in the aftermath of the 1997 economic crisis, especially in Southeast Asia. These older people from peri-urban (and rural) areas with lower-class status ended up in urban areas to be self-employed and became precarious workers. Therefore, the research questions are how they cope with the income uncertainties only to meet their daily needs and still desire their children to have a better living condition. Observations and interviews were done with 25 elderly female traditional porters as the research methods from 2020. They are primarily in the age range of late 50-80 years old. The results show that income uncertainties and social insecurity bring about precariousness. Buruh gendong have to work every day only to make ends meet. However, these conditions could also open up alternative perspectives that they often found themselves liberated from the control of industrial production. They do not work for capital owners or bosses; they work for themselves (self-employed). They are free or more flexible on working hours, but, at the same time, they have to accept their insecure employment. Buruh gendong also have desires for their children to be able to achieve a higher education level. Eventually, the desires are mostly unfulfilled; their children get unfortunate work and still live barely.

Stratification, Entrepreneurial Choice and Income Growth: The Moderating Role of Subnational Marketization in an Emerging Economy

In this study, we examine the moderating role of subnational institutions (marketization) in the relationship between social stratification, on the one hand, and entrepreneurial choice and income growth, on the other. Our analyses, using data from 5,581 individual-wave observations from nine provincial regions in rural China, across six data collection waves, show that: (1) lower-class status is conducive to self-employment, while being from the upper class encourages individuals to become employers; (2) compared to their middle-class counterparts, both upper- and lower-class entrepreneurs enjoy higher levels of income growth; and (3) when subnational marketization is high, the positive effect of being upper class on selecting entrepreneurship as a career is weakened, but the effect on income growth among entrepreneurs is strengthened. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and future research.

Social Class in Transnational Perspective: Emotional Responses to the Status Paradox among Ghanaian Migrants

Migrants often experience a low-class status in the countries to which they migrate and a high one in their home country, because of their remittances. This paper takes that analysis further by examining the emotional reasons for return migration and retirement. Ghanaian migrants’ social-class debasement in the United States through their work in home healthcare leads to strong emotions about their class status. They mitigate their humiliation through transnationalism, in which they direct their energy toward an alternative social field through house construction in Ghana. Their houses indicate both how the social fields in which they operate are delinked, resulting in differing opportunities for social class mobility, and how social class positioning crosses different social fields.

Early and Late Preterm Birth Rates Among US-Born Urban Women: The Effect of Men's Lifelong Class Status.

To ascertain the relation of men's lifelong class status (as measured by neighborhood income) to the rates of early (< 34weeks) and late (34-36weeks) preterm birth (PTB). Stratified and multilevel, multivariable binomial regression analyses were computed on the Illinois transgenerational birth-file of infants (born 1989-1991) and their parents (born 1956-1976) with appended U.S. census income information. The median family income of men's census tract residence at two-time periods were utilized to assess lifelong class status (defined by residence in either the lower or upper half of neighborhood income distribution). In Cook County Illinois, the preterm rate for births (n = 8115) to men with a lifelong lower class status was twice that of births (n = 10,330) to men with a lifelong upper class status: 13% versus 6.0%, RR = 2.2 (2.0, 2.4). This differential was greatest in early PTB rates: 3.9% versus 1.4%, RR = 3.0 (2.5, 3.7). The relation of men's lifelong class status to both PTB components persisted among non-teens, married, college-educated, and non-Latina White women, respectively. The adjusted (controlling for maternal demographic characteristics) RR of early and late PTB for men with a lifelong lower (versus upper) class status were 1.4 (1.1, 1.9) and 1.2 (1.0, 1.4), respectively. The population attributable risk of early PTB for men's lifelong lower class status equaled 16%. Men's lifelong lower (versus upper) class status is a novel risk factor for early preterm birth regardless of maternal demographic characteristics. This intriguing finding has public health relevance.

The Second Amendment's Inferiority Complex

The Second Amendment is suffering from an inferiority complex. Litigants, scholars, and judges complain that the right to keep and bear arms is not being afforded the respect and dignity befitting a fundamental constitutional right. They assert that on its own terms and relative to rights in the same general class, the Second Amendment is being disrespected, under-enforced, and orphaned. They argue that the Second Amendment is regarded as peripheral, fringe, anachronistic, second- rate, and second-class – in sum, as one commentator states, it is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Bill of Rights. Reviewing the available evidence, this Article generally rejects second-class claims as either false or overstated. Many of the claims are based on false premises, including the notion that the Supreme Court and lower courts immediately and aggressively expand the scope of fundamental rights once they are recognized, that all fundamental rights are created and enforced equally, that the absence of strict scrutiny is demonstrative of lower-class status, and that low success rates demonstrate under-enforcement. As defined in District of Columbia v. Heller and interpreted in the lower courts, the Second Amendment exhibits all of the hallmarks of a fundamental constitutional right. It is a non-absolute, non-economic, individual dignity right that is considered implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. Constructed in the image of the Free Speech Clause and analogized in those terms by many courts, the right to keep and bear arms exerts a powerful influence on constitutional discourse and political outcomes. To be sure, success rates for Second Amendment claims have been low, and lower courts have hesitated to interpret Heller broadly. However, the available evidence does not show that either the results or the restraint are the product of judicial hostility, resistance, or political ideology. Although it has been silent for a decade, the Supreme Court has surely not abandoned the Second Amendment for all time. Indeed, other fundamental rights have experienced the same, or in some cases greater, periods of neglect or inattention. Our experience with fundamental rights shows that what courts have made of the Second Amendment in its first decade will not dictate what the right will become in its second decade and beyond. Whatever it becomes, by whatever dynamics will affect it, the Second Amendment's path should be charted according to an accurate assessment of both its real and relative current status.

Gaṇeśa Caturthī and the Making of the Aspirational Middle Classes in Rajasthan

This article examines the ways in which religious practices play a critical role in formulating middle-class identities among upwardly mobile Hindu women—members of what I call the “aspirational middle classes”—in Pulan, an urban neighborhood of Udaipur, Rajasthan. It focuses on ritual practices surrounding the Gaṇeśa Caturthī festival, a ten-day festival honoring the elephant-headed god Gaṇeśa, which has become increasingly popular in Udaipur in recent years. The article shows how taking up these new practices enables women to form and perform new middle-class identities within the neighborhood. Yet, as the concluding practices of Gaṇeśa Caturthī require the ritual community to leave the neighborhood for visarjan (ritual immersion of the festival image), outsiders can evaluate their performance of middle-class status and may perceive it as a display of lower-class status. In tracing the shifting meanings of festival practices, both within and beyond Pulan, the article shows how the urban neighborhood emerges as a localized religious space within which nuanced definitions of middle-class identity are constructed and made meaningful.

Jim Crow Laws in Langston Hughes’ “Breakfast in Virginia” and “Trouble with the Angels”

This graduating paper analyzes Jim Crow laws as reflected in Langston Hughes’ short stories “Breakfast in Virginia” and “Trouble with the Angels”. This study aims to identify the practice of Jim Crow laws as seen in “Breakfast in Virginia” and “Trouble with the Angels”. This graduating paper applies mimetic theory proposed by Abrams since it is the most suitable approach to be used to analyze the connection between the literary work and the reality. There are two types of data which are used in this paper. The primary data are the short stories entitled, “Breakfast in Virginia” and “Trouble with the Angels”. Meanwhile, the secondary data are the references that support the analysis and are taken from the internet browsing.Based on the data analysis, this research concludes that segregation is the practice of Jim Crow laws in these two short stories. The segregations are clearly seen mostly in public places. In “Breakfast in Virginia” the segregations happen in the train, specifically in Jim Crow car and in the dining car in Virginia. Meanwhile, in “Trouble with the Angels” the segregations are clearly visible in the hotel and in the theater in Washington. In “Breakfast in Virginia” the segregations are faced by African American soldiers during World War II. Meanwhile, in “Trouble with the Angels” the segregations are experienced by African American actors and the other African American citizens of Washington. These two short stories show that Jim Crow laws made African Americans life getting worse, especially in public places. Both in “Breakfast in Virginia” and in “Trouble with the Angels”, African Americans cannot use the same public facilities as the whites. They can only use public facilities specially provided for the African Americans which have improper conditions. During the practice of Jim Crow laws, their rights are denied. This is proved by the segregations that do not only restrict African Americans from middle or low class status but also restrict those who have a higher status regardless their influential contribution toAmerica. This condition is painful for them.

Revisiting the subculture: understanding deviant students in China

Purpose – In recent years, the concept of subculture has been fiercely criticized, with some scholars even claiming that it is no longer relevant in a multi-cultural world (Muggleton, 2000; Chaney, 2004; Stahl, 2004). However, the authors argue that by revisiting the Chicago School tradition and reconceptualizing subculture on the basis of acknowledging its limitations and its potential, subculture theory remains applicable in the context of contemporary China. Through an eight-month ethnographic study of a group of deviant students in a secondary school in urban China, the purpose of this paper is to contend that the subculture of these young people from lower-class backgrounds is a means to negotiate their space and power in a failing school system situated in a drastically transforming society full of diversified yet often conflicting values. Design/methodology/approach – In this study, the authors undertook an ethnographic study to follow a group of deviant students for eight months, trying to understand their everyday lives and the process of their identity construction. The research was conducted in Xiamen, a coastal city located in the southeast part of mainland China. Unlike large metropolitan areas such as Beijing and Shanghai, where most studies have been conducted so far, Xiamen represents one of the medium-sized cities, which are the majority in China. After a process of sampling among 11 classes from five schools in different tiers, the authors chose one class in Grade 2 at a medium-level secondary school called “Central Park Secondary School” as a pseudonym. The authors stayed in the field for the main study and the authors also paid another visit to the school to follow up on students’ recent development. Findings – In this study, a group of problem students identified with each other and shared the same problems and situations, and collectively formed a subcultural group, from within which they could challenge the authority of teachers and parents and negotiate power in the school; for example, reaching a truce with teachers so that they could have an easier time at school until they graduated. Their subculture and resistance may seem like a self-defeating practice, because what they learned at school and the qualifications they obtained could only assure them laboring jobs and reproduce their lower class status. However, this subculture offered an alternative way to safeguard their happiness and healthy development, which in this case is psychological well-being and better interpersonal skills. Practical implications – This paper could provide the teachers and school administrators with a new perspective to look at some of their students’ poor performance and disruptive behaviors. With a deeper understanding of their “deviant” students, the teachers may develop more pertinent measures to help their students. Originality/value – This paper argues that, through revisiting the Chicago School tradition and reconceptualizing subculture on the basis of acknowledging its limitations and potential, subculture theory remains applicable in the context of contemporary China.

Experiencing Inequality: Memoirs, Hardship, and Working-Class Roots

Thirty-two literary memoirs constitute the database for this research on how economic deprivation and classism affected the early lives of gifted writers who grew up in poor and working-class families. All the memoirists experienced material deprivation, ranging from severe hunger to insufficient funds for college. Many encountered discrimination based on their lower-class status, attitudinal barriers to intellectual development and upward mobility, and deficits in public school education. Institutional support came from extracurricular activities, public libraries, religious participation, and government funding. The mental health practitioner’s respect is likely to have special potency for clients undermined by past experiences of inequality and classism.

A Lost Opportunity for Tradition: The Violin in Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Traditional Music

Less than a century after the introduction of the violin to Japan, in the late nineteenth century, Japan offers the highest level of training on the instrument and has produced many internationally successful violinists. Although one can hardly imagine it from the current role of the violin in modern Japan, in the early twentieth century the instrument played a significant role, not in the development there of Western classical music, but in the survival of the indigenous Japanese music that we call today ‘traditional Japanese music’.With the flood of Western culture into Japan after the Meiji Restoration, of 1868, the Japanese government reconsidered whether their native music was worthy of Japan as a civilized country. In fact, except for court music, native Japanese music was held in low esteem by society and the government alike. The music of theshamisenwas particularly problematic, due to the vulgar texts ofshamisensongs and the low class status ofshamisenconsumers.Shakuhachihad until recently been restricted to Fuke monks, and was still establishing a new role in the musical culture. Thus, the whole world of ‘traditional Japanese music’ was entering a new age.It was during this period that many Japanese became acquainted with the violin, by playing it in ensemble withkoto, shamisenandshakuhachi.Young Japanese professional musicians began to learn the violin. The principles of Western music they learned in this way gradually made their way into Japanese music. At one time, the ‘traditional Japanese music’ ensemble of violin with Japanese instruments seemed to have become firmly rooted in Japan as ‘home music’; but this has not turned out to be the case. As Japanese violinists have become increasingly dedicated to Western classical music, traditional Japanese music has once again become the exclusive use of native instruments.

The Realistic Actualization of the Moist Passion for Salvation and Its Historical Destination

The passion for salvation, as the spiritual motive of Moism, can be investigated concerning its actualization and historical evolution. Because of his lower class status, a passion for salvation arose in Mozi was at first emphasized in “universal love,” “identification with the superior,” and “will of heaven,” and then was later realized in the spirit of Shi Mo 仕墨, or Moist officials, who were impartial and incorruptible in the execution of their duties. When the officials became frustrated by the despotic powers, their passion then evolved into a spirit of Xia Mo 侠墨, or Moist knights, who never hesitated in helping people and upholding justice. And when Moist knights were finally rooted out by despotic powers, the only choice for Moists was to become Bian Mo 辩墨, or Moist sophists, specialists in “Major Illustration” (“Daqu” 大取) and “Minor Illustration” (“Xiaoqu” 小取). This development, however, ran contrary to its primary ideal. Still, both the impartial and incorruptible Moist officials and the righteous and courageous Moist knights represented an expectation deep inside people’s minds. Therefore, whenever social injustice worsened to a certain degree, the populist spirit of Moism was picked up as a weapon of critique. Thus, the actualization and evolution of this passion for salvation offers a constant mirror for populist thinking.

Stars Behaving Badly

There appears to be a high degree of public tolerance for celebrities who misbehave and break the law. This has given rise to concerns that celebrities are bad role models who are glamorizing antisocial behaviour. However, it would be wrong to suggest that celebrity antics are uniformly tolerated and accepted by the public. The reputation of some celebrities is undoubtedly seriously affected when they breach moral, legal and social codes, while other celebrities suffer few adverse effects. This paper examines the importance of gender and class in ascertaining the limits of permissiveness that apply to celebrity wrongdoing. Female celebrities of a lower-class status are often subjected to very high levels of public scrutiny and punitive media commentary. This point will be illustrated with reference to the British reality TV star Jade Goody and her fall from grace following public outcry about her treatment of her co-contestant Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother 2007.

Maternal Practices That Influence Hispanic Infants' Health and Cognitive Growth

Infants born to immigrant mothers, including Hispanic mothers, display birth weight and mortality advantages, compared with other disadvantaged groups. We examined prenatal biological factors and maternal practices that account for this advantage. Then we estimated the extent to which healthy birth outcomes, along with maternal and family factors, contribute to the health and cognitive functioning of Hispanic infants. A representative US sample of 8114 newborns, including 1450 newborns of Hispanic mothers, was drawn randomly in 2001. We compared the mean attributes of infants in subgroups that vary in maternal practices, family attributes, and acculturation levels. We accounted for variations in newborns' gestational age and size for gestational age and their health status and cognitive functioning at 9 months of age. Mexican-heritage and less-acculturated mothers were no more likely than white mothers to bear premature or small-for-gestational age infants, despite large social class disparities, which was explained in part by Hispanic women's low level of prenatal tobacco use. Parenting practices and lower class status of Hispanic mothers then began to slow infants' cognitive development, compared with white infants, because of weaker maternal education and cognitive facilitation during interaction tasks and larger family size. These findings extend earlier research, detailing healthy births among most immigrant Hispanic women. Robust birth outcomes contribute to the early health and cognitive growth of Hispanic infants, but risk factors linked to maternal and home practices overtake these early protective factors by late infancy. Robust births and early health indicators displayed by Hispanic infants should not distract pediatricians from attending to uneven cognitive growth.