Final PaperRequirements
In a 5-page analysis, answer the following question:
Can people change their social class in their lifetime?
Format requirements:
5 pages, Times New Roman, Double Spaced, 12, APA style
Recommendations:
1. Take a stance from the beginning: “Yes, they can….”. “No, they cannot…” or “Yes, they might but a lot
of conditions have to be met” …. etc.
While there is no right or wrong answer to this question, and while by now, you probably developed an
understanding of the idea that in social sciences nothing is “black or white”, I want to see how YOU
support your claim using the knowledge acquired in this class.
2. You must use lessons learned from the documentary “People Like Us” and sociological concepts and
theories to support your stance.
While it may seem that the essay asks for your opinion, it actually asks you to explain your answer
sociologically, using knowledge accumulated in this course.
Here is an example of what you should avoid.
“Yes, they can, because I have a cousin who was born in a poor family and now, he is driving a
Mercedes and has a 5-bedroom house in Vinings.”
You may include such an example, but it has to be used only to support a theoretical argument
and not as the main explanation.
3. Adopt a theoretical standpoint and develop your essay from that perspective.
4. Do not present your theoretical standpoint (because it will take a lot of the text body). It is expected
that, by now, everyone in the class knows that Conflict Theory criticizes the arrangements in society –
based on Marx’s division of classes in bourgeoise and proletarians, and Functionalist Theory sees the
arrangements in society as serving a purpose, just like the parts of an organism.
5. You may acknowledge the other stand point in the end, but you have to explain why you think it is not
as sound as the one you adopted.
6. Pay attention to the logic of your writing.
Your argument has to flow. (e.g. I think this…because of this…& the documentary showed that…&
textbook mentioned this and that & the authors X, Y and Z demonstrated a, b, c) …etc.
7. Divide your essay in 3-4 parts (subchapters if you want). Even name your subchapters.
8. You may use external sources, or you may limit to the textbook and documentary. Do whatever you
think is necessary to create a sound and well written essay.
9. MOST IMPORTANTLY, your essay has to be sociological in nature, not psychological or ethical (e.g.,
“while I do not have any money, I feel like I am part of the elite class”, or, “we should not have social
classes because it is not fair”).
10. When you cite the documentary, you have to mentioned the name of the speaker and the section.
When you cite your textbook, you have to mentioned the page.
12:15
< Library
The American Class
Structure in an Age of
Growing Inequality, 11th Edi...
Dennis Gilbert
2 POSITION AND PRESTIGE
America is a nation of tribes.
- People Like Us, PBS
Prestige or status—the terms can be used interchangeably-is
a sentiment in the minds of people that is expressed in social
interaction. In almost any social setting, we note that some
individuals are considered people of consequence, looked up to,
and deferred to (though sometimes resented), while others are
thought of as ordinary, unimportant, even lowly. Sociologists
think of prestige as a ranking or scale based on degrees of
social esteem. They find that groups of people similar in prestige
tend to draw together and develop common lifestyles. Max
Weber, whose views on stratification we examined in the last
chapter, called them “status groups." We can call them prestige
classes.
PEOPLE LIKE US
People Like Us: Social Class in America, a provocative
documentary aired on Public Television, explored these themes
(Alvarez and Kolker 1999). People Like Us probes the ways
Americans experience prestige differences and offers revealing
glimpses of the raw emotions lingering just beneath the surface
when Americans, like those quoted below, talk about class.
7
Thomas Langhorne Phipps: I am a member of the privileged
American class known as the WASPs, - the silver spoon people,
, 1
the people who were handed things from an early age. ... We
stand better, we walk better, we speak better, we dress better,
we eat better, we're smarter, we're more cultured, and we treat
people better-we're nicer, and we're more attractive, and that
was built into my sense of who I was growing up.... I got a
phone call from somebody who decided he wanted to become a
WASP ... [and] would pay me [for] WASP lessons in style. And
it was sad because the whole point is ... you either are it or you
aren't, we believe. That's the tribal belief, that you either have it
or you don't.
1. Literally, white Angle-Saxon Protesant. Refers to the
traditional American upper class.
Bill Bear, Plumber: I’m standing in line [waiting to pay a bill]
and because of the way I’m dressed, I have a tendency to be
overlooked, you know? [T]hey really don’t want to deal with me.
They want to deal with Mr. Suit-and-Tie…. I almost started a
riot. … I had to make it known that I was next, not Mr. Suit-and-
Tie. If you want to deal with the son of a bitch, make a date with
him later, you know? But just because I have on working clothes
doesn’t mean can’t afford to pay my bill, baby. Well, then she
got all embarrassed about that and the manager came out…
and I just exploded. And uh, there was about four working-class
guys in there, they all started applauding. ‘Cause they felt the
same way. You know? Because society does that automatically.
Barbara Brannen-Newton: I am from the middle class because
that’s where I was born and that’s where I live.
Socioeconomically, statistically we are middle class. But we’re
black middle class, and we will always have that word black in
front of us until the day I die.
Ginie Polo Sayles: When I was in high school, I went to a
country club with a girlfriend. … I had never been to a country
club, and we went swimming in the summer, and she said, “Let’s
go over to the clubhouse and have some fried shrimp and
charge it to my daddy.” And I’d never had fried shrimp. And I
thought, what is that, what will it taste like, what will it look like,
will I use the right fork? And what really hit me then was that
there were limitations. And that’s what I didn’t like. I didn’t like
the idea of feeling less than, ignorant, eliminated, limited by a
class.
Tammy Crabtree: [Lives in a trailer that “embarrasses” her
teenage son]: I was on welfare 18 years. And now, I work at
Burger King, and I’m trying to make a living, and make a home
for the kids. It ain’t my fault ’cause I’m poor. I growed up poor..
. Even when I’m walkin’ to work or something, someone’ll holler,
“Ey! Trashy bitch! What’re you doing?” I’m just walking to work.
All I want is just a life where I can be happy. But right now, I’m
not because the way people treats me and the way my kids treat
me. … My son, he thinks he’s high class and a preppie. He’s
the best. He thinks he’s better than me, better than his brothers.
[All emphases added.]
People Like Us is often about respect and disrespect, from the
blue-blood pride of Langhorne Phipps’ people to the blue-collar
anger of plumber Bill Bear. Barbara Brannen-Newton laments
that on
African American woman onn novor bo full middle
W. LLOYD WARNER: PRESTIGE
CLASSES IN YANKEE CITY
People Like Us raises intriguing questions about the ways we
understand and experience class differences. In particular, how
do people create mental maps of the class system from their
varied daily exposure to prestige distinctions? Can researchers
turn their often vague and contradictory perceptions into
coherent models of the class structure? One place we can look
for answers is in early community studies conducted by W.
Lloyd Warner and his students and colleagues. The first and
most famous of these studies was done in the 1930s in a small
New England town Warner called “Yankee City” (Warner and
Lunt 1941; Warner et al. 1973).
Warner and his team began their research with the assumption
that class distinctions people in Yankee City made among
themselves would be determined by economic differences. The
initial interviews tended to confirm this view. Their respondents
spoke of “the big people with money” and “the little people who
are poor.” Property owners, bankers, and professionals were
high status. Laborers, ditch diggers, and low-wage workers were
low status.
However, after the researchers had been in Yankee City for a
while, they began to doubt that social standing could so easily
be equated with economic position, for they found that some
people were placed higher or lower than their incomes would
warrant. They noticed that certain doctors were ranked below
others in the social hierarchy, even though they were regarded
as better physicians, and that high prestige was associated with
certain family names. Such distinctions were often made
unconsciously, which made them all the more convincing to the
researchers.
a
Warner discovered a hierarchy of prestige classes in Yankee
City consisting of groups of people who were ranked by others
in the community as socially superior or inferior. From his
interviews and observations, he concluded that the place of
individuals within this system was the result of a combination of
economic and social variables that included wealth, income, and
occupation but also patterns of interaction, social behavior, and
lifestyle. People of the same class tended to spend time
together and, as a result, developed similar attitudes and
values. Their children were key to marry one another. Warner’s
Upper-upper class (1.4 percent). This group was the old-
family elite, based on sufficient wealth to maintain a large
house in the best neighborhood, but the wealth had to
have been in the family for more than one generation.
Generational continuity permitted proper training in basic
values and established people as belonging to a lineage.
Lower-upper class (1.6 percent). This group was, on
average, slightly richer than the upper-uppers, but their
money was newer, their manners were therefore not quite
so polished, and their sense of lineage and security was
less pronounced.
Upper-middle class (10.2 percent). Business and
professional men and their families who were moderately
successful but less affluent than the lower-uppers. Some
education and polish were necessary for membership, but
lineage was unimportant.
Lower-middle class (28.1 percent). The small
businessmen, the schoolteachers, and the foremen in
industry. This group tended to have morals that were
close to those of Puritan Fundamentalism; they were
churchgoers, lodge joiners, and flag wavers.
Upper-lower class (32.6 percent). The solid, respectable
laboring people, who kept their houses clean and stayed
out of trouble.
Lower-lower class (25.2 percent). The “lulus” or
disrespectable and often slovenly people who dug clams
and waited for public relief. (The relatively high proportion
of people in this category apparently reflects the difficult
economic conditions of the Great Depression, when the
study was conducted.)
Among the notable features of this schema of Yankee City
classes are the following: (1) the distinction, at the top, between
an old-money elite, the product of New England’s long history,
and a class of families with more recent fortunes; (2) the
distinction between those who work with their hands-members
of the bottom two classes, comprising more than half the
population-and those who do not, in the higher classes; and
(3) the attribution (presumably reflecting what Warner and his
associates heard in Yanlan City of moral status to class