Grusky Part V - The Consequences of Stratification

Lifestyles and Consumption Patterns

Thorstein Veblen - "The Theory of the Leisure Class"

The end of acquisition and accumulation is consumption, either by the owner himself or his household. This consumption can fulfill either physical or spiritual wants. V. says that the motive of ownership is emulation. The possession of wealth confers honor. He notes that for some basic subsistence can be the primary, although not the only, motivation for accumulation. "On the other hand, so far as regards those members and classes of the community who are chiefly concerned in the accumulation of wealth, the incentive of subsistence or of physical comfort never plays a considerable part. Ownership began and grew into a human institution on grounds unrelated to the subsistence minimum" (pg. 397). To ensure peace of mind, an individual desires to possess as large a portion of goods as others with whom he classes himself and it is even better to possess more. The standard is always rising, too. Each level of wealth leads one to desire an even higher level. The goal is to rank high in comparison to the rest of the community. As long as the comparison is unfavorable, the normal person will feel dissatisfied. But as he rises in rank he sets his sights to higher levels and is therefore never satisfied.

V. says that this is the reason for accumulation of wealth. If it were simply a means to basic subsistence, one could conceive of a point at which the subsistence of everyone in a community has been met, "but since the struggle is substantially a race for reputability on the basis of an invidious comparison, no approach to definitive attainment is possible" (pg. 398).

Conspicuous Leisure

"If is working were not disturbed by other economic forces or other features of emulative process, the immediate effect of such a pecuniary struggle as has just been described in outline would be to make men industrious and frugal" (pg. 399). In fact, this is true to some extent for the lower classes. The upper classes are what we are concerned about here, though, and they are a different story. Although industriousness and frugality are not absent from these classes, their actions are greatly qualified by secondary demands of pecuniary emulation. The most important of these secondary demands is the requirement of abstention from productive work. The upper classes possess an instinctive repugnance for labor. In order to gain and hold esteem, the mere possession of wealth or power is not enough. One must provide evidence of that wealth or power, which is provided by the avoidance of work, or conspicuous leisure.

Conspicuous Consumption

Another way to showcase one's wealth or power is by conspicuous consumption. Originally (he says) the only economic differentiation was between an honorable class of able-bodied men and an inferior class of laboring women. According to this scheme, it was the right of men to consume what the women produced. Such consumption was honorable as a mark of prowess and eventually became honorable in itself (esp. the consumption of desirable products). Eventually, these class distinctions are extended and a hierarchy of honor is created. Also, as wealth accumulates, the leisure class develops further in function and structure and differentiation occurs within it. A class of impecunious gentlemen emerges who have no money, but gentle blood. They attach themselves to pecunious gentlemen and become courtiers. The patron then gains reputation through his own leisure and consumption as well as vicariously through theirs. In today's world, such a system no longer exists. The number of vicarious consumers and dependents a man has is reduced. Since the wife was the first, she is also the last. She remains as the main source of vicarious consumption. "The head of the middle-class household has been reduced by economic circumstances to turn his hand to gaining a livelihood by occupations which often partake largely of character of industry, as in the case of the ordinary business man of today. But the derivative fact-the vicarious leisure and consumption rendered by the wife, and the auxiliary performance of leisure by menials-remains in vogue as a conventionality which the demands of reputability will not suffer to be slighted" (pg. 401). The leisure of the wife is not simply idleness. It usually consists of social or household activities that serve no other real purpose than to demonstrate that she is not occupied with any substantial or gainful work (I think of needlepoint and glower gardens, and society activities).

What has happened in the middle and lower classes, is that the vicarious consumption practices of the leisure class have infiltrated them to some extent. The leisure class is at the head of the social structure in reputability. Therefore, its standards and manner of life become the norm of reputability for the entire community. The lower classes are simply less able to fulfill the idea. What happens is that each stratum accept the standard of the next higher stratum as their idea.

A couple of general notes:

t The basis of good repute in any organized industrialized community is pecuniary (or economic) strength and the means of showing that strength.

t The utility of both conspicuous leisure (CL) and conspicuous consumption (CC) is in the element of waste. CL is a waste of time and effort, while CC is a waste of goods. Both are methods of demonstrating the possession of wealth.

t As long as the community is small and compact both methods (CL and CC) are equally effective. But as society grows and differentiation increases, it becomes necessary to reach a broader human environment. At this point, CC becomes more effective than CL because it is more easily seen from a distance.

t Pecuniary canons of taste - "By habituation to an appreciative perception of he marks of expensiveness in goods, and by habitually identifying beauty with reputability, it comes about that a beautiful article which is not expensive is accounted not beautiful" (pg. 403). For ex., some beautiful flowers are labeled weeds and some are valued differently by different classes. This variation in taste from one class of society to another extends to many kinds of goods: furniture, houses, parks, gardens. This diversity in appreciation is based on different codes of reputability that specify what objects are acceptable for honorific consumption in each class. These differences are determined primarily by the class's level of wealth.

Pierre Bourdieu - "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste"

The Social Space

"The distribution of the different classes (and class fractions) runs from those who are best provided with both economic and cultural capital to those who are most deprived in both respects" (pg. 404). Differences in overall capital tend to conceal the more subtle secondary differences within each class separate class fractions. By distinguishing between economic (EC) and cultural capital (CC) and looking at the possible combinations, we can draw more precise distinctions. The distribution of EC and CC may be symmetrical (high EC and high CC, like the professions) or they may be asymmetrical (low EC and high CC, as in the case of higher education and secondary teachers). So within the class there are 2 sets of homologous positions: "The fractions whose reproduction depends on economic capital, usually inherited. . . are opposed to the fractions which are least endowed (relatively, of course) with economic capital, and whose reproduction mainly depends on cultural capital" (pg. 405).

The Habitus

It is crucial to remember that each person's point of view on the social space depends on their own position with in it. Both objects being classified and the schemes of classification, define how we see the world, depend on this position. "It is in the relationship between the two capacities which define the habitus, the capacity to produce classifiable practices and works, and the capacity to differentiate and appreciate these practices and products (taste), that the represented social world, i.e., the space of life-styles, is constituted" (pg. 405). The habitus is necessarily internalized and converted into a disposition that creates meaningful practices and the perceptions that give those practices meaning. Since different conditions of existence produce different habitus, the practices generated are also different.

We must also remember that the habitus is not only a structuring structure, it is also a structured structure. It not only organizes practices the perception of those practices, it is a product of the internalization of the division of the social classes. This results in a system of practices and products that is coherent even though no attempt was made to make it so. Thus each class has a coherent set of practices even though the members did not consciously seek to create such a life style. B. says that taste, "the propensity and capacity to appropriate (materially or symbolically) a given class of classified, classifying objects or practices, is the generative formula of life-style, a unitary set of distinctive preferences which express the same expressive intention in the specific logic of each of the symbolic sub-spaces, furniture, clothing, language, or body hexis" (pg. 409). It is taste (of necessity or of luxury), not income, that determines the practices. Through taste, an individual has what he likes because he like what he has. In other words, his taste is based on and reinforces the properties distributed to him.

The Homology Between the Spaces

In cultural consumption, the main opposition is between those practices that, by their rarity and association with the class fractions that are richest in both EC and CC, are identified as distinguished, and those practices that are considered vulgar because they are easy, common, and associated with the fractions poorest in EC and CC. In the intermediate position are those practices that are considered pretentious. The different fractions are oriented towards practices that are so different that it is easy to forget they are variants of the same relationship to necessity. Take the case of art: the bourgeoisie (the dominant fraction of the dominant class) demand a high degree of denial of the social world and prefer a hedonistic aesthetic of ease. On the other hand, the dominated fraction (the intellectuals and artists) support artistic revolutions and work that has a more pessimistic view of the social world. This opposition is found in other areas of practice such as language (popular outspokenness vs. the highly censored language of the bourg.). "...There is no area of practice in which the intention of purifying, refining and sublimating facile impulses and primary needs cannot assert itself" (pg. 411).

Form and Substance

Here B. addresses the realm of food. He says that the fact that the main opposition corresponds roughly to income differences masks the secondary oppositions that exist within the dominant class and the middle classes between fractions richer in CC and less rich in EC and those who richer in EC and less rich in CC. He says that income plays a role in determining distance from necessity, but it cannot account for people with the same income who have different consumption patterns. "The true basis of the differences found in the area of consumption, and far beyond it, is the opposition between the tastes of luxury (or freedom) and the tastes of necessity. Remember, taste is a choice but a forced choice. We have a taste for what we are condemned to.

The art of eating and drinking is one of the few areas in which the working classes challenge the legitimate art of living (sobriety, slimness, etc. are valued at the highest levels of the social hierarchy, but are not accepted by the working classes). B. sets the boundary between the manual workers and the clerical and commercial employees. Clerical workers spend less money on food and consume less high fat and calorie foods. Along with these changes in food spending, these workers also spend more on health and beauty care and clothing, and a little more on cultural and leisure activities. B. argues that these changes are suggestive of a transformation of the relationship to the world. "The 'modest' taste which can defer its gratifications is opposed to the spontaneous materialism of the working classes, who refuse to participate in the Benthamite calculation of pleasures and pains, benefits and costs" (pg. 413). The working class lives in the present, while the clerical workers are learning to live for the future, to delay gratification.

Three Styles of Distinction

B. says that the basic opposition between the tastes of luxury and the tastes of necessity is expressed in numerous ways. He does however, distinguish between three structures of consumption in the dominant class distributed under three categories: food, culture, and presentation (clothing, beauty care, toiletries, servants). He shows how teachers (low EC and high CC), professionals (high EC and high CC) and industrial employers (high EC, low CC) differ in their consumption of these three categories (Table 1, pg. 415). Teachers spend less overall than ind. employers, they spend less on food and presentation and quite a bit on culture (books, entertainment, sports , toys, music, etc). Ind. employers spend a lot on food abut the same on presentation and very little on culture. Professionals spend the same proportion on food as teachers but out of a much larger total expenditure. They also spend much more on presentation, but less on culture than teachers (although more than ind. employers.

From here, B. takes a closer look at patterns of spending on food. He goes on and on about what types of food each eats, but the point is that the type of food people buy and eat reflects their class fraction and the combinations of EC and CC that are available to them. He also says that the taste for particular dishes is associated with a whole conception of the division of labor between the sexes and the domestic economy (Elaborate casserole dishes require a lot of time and effort to prepare and so a taste for them is related to a traditional conception of woman's role). This creates a significant opposition between the traditional working class and the dominated fraction of the dominant class in which women have a greater sense of the value of their time and energy and so focus more on child care and transmission of cultural capital and contest the traditional division of labor. Taste is also related to the class's conception of the body and the effect of food on the body (issues of strength, health, beauty). Working classes emphasize strength and buy cheap, nutritious foods, while professionals tend to focus on health, preferring tasty, healthy light, non-fattening foods. The body is the most obvious materialization of class taste (through its dimensions and shape. It signifies class in its appearance. So, regardless of biology, one can map out a universe of class bodies that tend to reproduce the logic of the social structure.

Unpretentious or Uncouth?

In types of food eaten, amount of food eaten, and even the way in which it is eaten, it is easy to see an opposition between the bourg. practices and the popular practices and the opposite focuses on form (bourg.) and substance (popular). The working class meal is characterized by plenty and freedom (for the men). This plenty and freedom can be perceived as glutton and slovenliness (by the bourg.). In opposition to this working class meal, the bourg. is concerned with eating will all due form. There are rules and a certain rhythm, the expression of a habitus of order, restraint and propriety. One can find in this opposition two antagonistic world views, two representations of human excellence. The popular world view emphasizes substance rather than appearances, reality over sham, imitation, etc. The bourg. view is all appearances and form, rules of conduct, formalities. Between these two world views, there is no neutral point. "...what for some is shameless and slovenly, for others is straightforward, unpretentious; familiarity is for some the most absolute form of recognition, the abdication of all distance, a trusting openness, a relation of equal to equal; for others, who shun familiarity, it is an unseemly liberty" pp. 423-424).

He goes on to briefly discuss how food is related to clothing and the same opposition (substance vs. form) occurs in the realm of clothing. The working class makes realistic, or functional use of clothing. They seek value for money and choose articles that will last. The bourg. has more of a preoccupation with formal dress. He discusses this opposition in men's clothing, contrasting the overall to the suit. He says that the attention and energy that classes put into self-presentation is proportional to the chances of material or symbolic profit they can expect to get out of it. He also notes the connection between social class and the self assurance of one's own value. He says that the proportion of women who consider themselves to be below average in beauty diminishes rapidly as one moves up the social scale. He discusses the situation of petit bourg. women who are often in occupations that emphasize presentation and representation. These women tend to feel as bad about their bodies as working class women, but work harder to improve their appearance (self-denial, cosmetics, cosmetic surgery). The experience embarrassment, the experience of the 'alienated body', is much more common for petit bourg and bourg women who value presentation and legitimate ideas of beauty but are unable to achieve it.

In conclusion, B reminds us that "the spaces defined by preferences in food, clothing or cosmetics are organized according to the same fundamental structure, that of the social space determined by volume and composition of capital" (pg. 426). In other words, it is defined by total amount of capital and the combination of EC and CC. "Fully to construct the space of life-styles within which cultural practices are defined, one would first have to establish, for each class and class fraction, . . . the generative formula of the habitus which retranslates the necessities and facilities characteristic of that class of (relatively) homogenous conditions of existence into a particular life-style" (pg. 426). Then, we would determine how the dispositions of the habitus are specified in each of the major areas of practice. We would be able to "obtain a rigorous representation of the space of life-styles, making it possible to characterize each of the distinctive features. . . on the one hand by reference to the set of features constituting the area in question. . . and on the other hand by reference to the set of features constituting a particular life-style (e.g., the working-class life-style), within which its social significance is determined" (pp. 426-427).

Attitudes and Personalities

Melvin L. Kohn - "Job Complexity and Adult Personality"

Kohn says that in all the studies of work, rarely is the effect of work on personality considered. He looks at the work of sociologists and finds that the focus is on occupational status. But this variable is not directly useful for the study of the effect of work on personality. "The status of a job is closely linked to such structural conditions of work as how complex it is, how closely it is supervised, and what sorts of pressures it entails. It is these structural realities, not status as such, that affect personality" (pg. 430).

Economists focus on income, but just as with occupational status, it is not appropriate to assume that income is the primary aspect of a job that affects the worker's personality. The human relations approach addresses relations between workers, but does not consider the relationship between the worker and the job itself. Occupational psychologists come close to understanding the relationship between work and personality, but there are 2 limitations to their work: they deal with people's perceptions of their work, but completely ignore the actual conditions under which the work is performed; and they tend to be preoccupied with job satisfaction. Kohn says that the research that comes closest to dealing with the relationship between work and personality old-style sociological case studies of occupations, but these studies cannot show which aspects of work are most important to psychological functioning.

Kohn recommends a new approach to disentangle the psychological impact of work. He and Carmi Schooler argue that we should shift attention from named occupations to dimensions of occupations. They have separated out more than 50 dimensions of occupations (first on men, then on women) and found 12 to substantially related to men's psychological functioning, controlling for education and all other occupational conditions.

This essay focuses on only one of the 12, substantive complexity (SC), because of its theoretical and empirical importance. "By substantive complexity of work, I mean the degree to which the work, in its very substance, requires thought and independent judgment" (pg. 432). This refers to the complexity of work with people, data, or things, although work with people and data tends to be more complex in general. He selects SC because he feels it is central to the experience of work and because their analyses shows it to be related to a wide range of psychological variables. SC of work has a stronger relationship to psychological functioning than any other dimension examined, for both men and women.

Kohn discusses the relationship between SC and one aspect of men's psych. functioning, intellectual flexibility (IF). They found a striking effect of SC on IF, but also a reciprocal effect of IF on SC. They note that the effect of SC on IF is fairly immediate, while the effect of IF on SC is time-lagged. In other words, current IF has little effect on one's current job demands, but a significant effect on one's future job demands. In a later study, they found the effect of SC on IF to be substantial for women as well (they were unable to examine the time-lagged reverse effect in that data). This reciprocal relationship implies that relatively small differences in SC at early stages can become magnified into larger differences in both SC and IF at a later stage in the career.

Why does SC have such a strong influence on personality? Kohn finds the most likely hypothesis to be "that in an industrial society, where work is central to people's lives, what people do in their work directly affects their values, their conceptions of self, and their orientation to the world around them. . .Hence, doing substantively complex work tends to increase one's respect for one's own capacities, one's valuation of self-direction, one's intellectuality (even in leisure time pursuits), and one's sense that the problems one encounters in the world are manageable" (pg. 436). He has found that the relationship is ongoing throughout life and argues that it must be taken into consideration in any theory of adult personality development and any social psychology of occupations. What is important about work is not its rewards or the social experiences that come with it, but the nature of the work itself.

James A. Davis - "Achievement Variables and Class Cultures: Family, Schooling, Job. . ."

As you might expect from the man that teaches Survey Analysis, this article is highly quantitative. He is kind enough, though to lay out 8 main conclusions and discuss what they mean at the end. The point of the article is to reopen an old question that has been set aside in favor of such studies as Blau & Duncan's. This study sets up a relationship: family effects schooling, schooling effects job. The older tradition studies the subjective effects of stratification as well as objective effects. Rather than lay out the 3 variables as B&D do, Davis uses all three as independent variables, testing their effect on 49 dependent subjective and behavioral variables. These variables are grouped in 5 categories: morale, attachments, politics, values and tastes, and social issues (see pg. 440-442 for a description of all 49 by category). His data come from the General Social Survey and he says that the contribution of this study is not the novelty of the question, but the technical advances of the GSS and Goodman techniques of analyzing tabular data.

The Nine Main Conclusions:

1. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis of sheer mobility for the 49 dependent items analyzed. Sheer mobility refers to the total amount of mobility, or movement, regardless of its direction.

2. There is also no evidence to support the hypothesis of status consistency (that particular combinations of occupation and education produce particularly high or particularly low scores on the dependent variables) for either the respondent or their fathers.

3. The associations of the achievement variables (family, schooling, job) with the 49 dependent variables are mostly weak and usually not statistically significant (except in extra large samples).

4. Occupational stratum does not have the diffuse and strong effects on nonvocational attitudes and opinions that sociologists generally assume. (Respondent's occup. stratum does have a nontrivial association with about a third of the dependent variables. The differences do follow the prestige order of the strata, but the associations are weak and clustered in the area of cynicism and items directly related to jobs and economic security).

5. Among Americans from nonfarm backgrounds, father's occupation has no association with any of the dependent variables. Persons from farm backgrounds tend to be more conservative as adults.

6. The evidence is strongly against the signed mobility hypothesis which implies opposite signs for the associations between the dependent variables and the respondent's occupation and between the dependent variables and the father's occupation.

7. There is no evidence that education acts as an investment and occupation as a return in terms of attitudes and behaviors.

8. Of the 3 achievement variables, education is the most powerful predictor of attitudes and behaviors. It explains any association between father's stratum and the dependent variables, and has more and stronger associations with the dependent variables than the respondent's occupational stratum.

9. Altogether, the notion of class cultures receives little support from the data.

So what have we learned from this analysis? Davis says, "we have failed to find a shred of support for the 'obvious' propositions that Americans' attitudes and opinions are shaped by (1) intergenerational occupational mobility, 'sheer' or 'score,' (2) occupational return on educational 'investment,' (3) status consistency, or (4) parental occupational stratum in a vertical sense. We did see some significant statistical effects for (1) farm vs nonfarm origins, (2) current occupational stratum, and (3) educational attainment. However, the significant associations are seldom of impressive magnitude and the occupational associations are centered on limited topics" (pg. 456). The implications: although, we have accumulated a large amount of knowledge about occupational structures in modern society and their demographic metabolism, this knowledge is self-contained. If we want to learn about other facets of modern societies, we probably need new theories, perhaps more cultural than structural.

Concluding Commentary to Part V

Paul DiMaggio - "Social Stratification, Life-Style, and Social Cognition"

In this essay, D. reviews the two areas of literature that this section of the book highlights: 1) the relationship among stratification, life-style, and consumption (Veblen and Bourdieu); 2) interactions between class, personality, and attitudes (Kohn and Davis). Both look at individuals as the unit of analysis and consider how history and social structure have shaped the relationships observed.

Culture, Life Style, and Consumption - Veblen and Bourdieu are the starting point for any discussion of life styles and consumption patterns. Both believe that stratification has a profound effect on life styles, but beyond this their approaches differ significantly. They address different aspects of stratification: V. emphasizes a continuous prestige hierarchy and B. "posits discrete 'class fractions' sharing similar positions with respect to education, income, and occupation, each united by a habitus or worldview derived from similar life experiences and common images of the way of life appropriate for people 'like us'" (pg. 458). In addition, the social functions of taste are less complicated for V. than for B. For V. pecuniary emulation and conspicuous consumption are strategies used in a battle for status. B. views tastes as signs of group affiliation (both horizontal and vertical).

D. says that the results of most studies in this area are more consistent with Bourdieu's approach than with Veblen's. However, some are consistent with both approaches. In addition, not all evidence supports B. argument. Although taste does appear to be differentiated by social status, there is no sign of the discrete taste classes that B. supposes. In addition, the concept of cultural capital has suffered from considerable ambiguity. D. argues that the 'capital' metaphor is misleading. ". . .the rationalistic imagery of the 'capital' metaphor obscures the social-organizational basis from which the efficacy of cultural resources derives" (pg. 459). Operationalization of cultural capital is also problematic. Most studies follow B. early work and use participation in high culture arts, even though the concept in much broader than this. It is unclear why these aesthetic measures have performed so well. It is unclear whether these orientations are important in themselves or whether they are a proxy for other unmeasured forms of cultural capital. D. says we also need to understand why certain tastes or styles become more highly valued than others. We lack a comprehensive theory of how hierarchies of aesthetic taste change.

Personality and Attitudes - While V. and B. emphasize class differences in consumption patterns, Kohn's article addresses the relationship between one's place in the stratification order and the inner self of values and attitudes. D. says that K. has something in common with B. "These authors agree that both normative and cognitive orientations are linked to class and occupational positions because shared experiences associated with these positions are generalized by social learning and shaped into enduring dispositions" (pg 460). But beyond this, the 2 differ considerably. K relies on learning theory and focuses on the individual level of analysis. B. places more emphasis on the role of the family and the broader social environment in shaping personality and K focuses on the role of work. K's work has been sustained, extended, and elaborated in subsequent work. The basic finding is that "Social class was related to more self-directed, optimistic, and flexible responses [in many areas] with educational attainment and occupation (but not income) playing independent roles in predicting orientations and values" (pg. 461). D. notes that, like cultural capital research, this work demonstrates the effects of good positions in the stratification order are themselves resources. However, we still know very little about factors that may play a role besides work.

Davis' analysis suggests that simplistic notions about 'class cultures' or expectations that people's attitudes arise directly from their positions are naive (McLeod's argument in Part IV seems similar). He recommends that we think about more cultural, rather than structural, theories. What we end up with is the understanding, not that class does not matter, but that it matters in much more complex ways. "Understanding regularities in relationships between class, culture, and attitudes requires complex models, different models for different aspects of culture and different kinds of attitudes, and theories of how macrostructural variation among societies affects the relationship between individual-level measures of class, culture, and attitudes within them" (pg. 462).

Finally, D. says that what all these findings about the noneconomic consequences of stratification demonstrate is social reproduction, or cumulative advantage and disadvantage. He says we must distinguish between microreproduction and macroreproduction. Microreproduction refers to individual level processes. "A social process is 'reproductive' in the micro sense insofar as attitudes, values, and tastes linked to social origins are themselves causally related to hierarchical position at some later point in a manner that reinforces advantage or disadvantage" (pg 462). This occurs both inter- and intra-generationally. Macro reproduction refers to large scale structural change, political factors, legal factors, or institutional developments that strengthen individual-level relationships between social origin and life chances.