Class Mobility in the University

Minor change of plans today, in that I’m not in Adams Morgan but NoVa, King Street and St. Asaph; I’m meeting Jennifer in a couple hours here in Old Town for dinner. Lots of white shoppers carrying Gap and Banana Republic bags (the latter, being made of cream-colored paper rather than blue plastic, we all know to be more prestigious), wearing Claiborne or sometimes the now-less-ubiquitous ‘Crombie. Hot, muggy day.

My minor insight yesterday, however obvious it may have been, led me to think about how the interaction between economic and cultural understandings of class plays out in the university context. I made some overly facile distinctions about the concerns of the upper classes being less directly linked to the material, which I think are inaccurate, or at least not generally true.

They do feel right to me, although obviously having something feel right isn’t exactly a mark of theoretical sophistication or rigor. They come out of that Linda Brodkey article on class and gender I’ve mentioned a couple times, where Brodkey suggests that the horrible inability to communicate that the wealthier class exhibited towards the poorer class was grounded entirely in the absolute refusal of the wealthier class to acknowledge that the circumstances of one’s life could be profoundly influenced by material concerns: Brodkey recounts how one correspondent remarked to another that she was having difficulty making rent payments and was worried about eviction, and received the reply that she ought to think about buying a house, since the market was really good.

The problem is, I’m equating economic to material, and thereby supposing that cultural distinctions are somehow less material. Neither is necessarily true. What is true, I think, is that people who have more money don’t have to worry as much about it; kind of tautological there, but the point being that if you’re making a professional-class salary then you’re probably not living paycheck to paycheck, and so you’re not worrying about getting evicted as much as you’re worrying about keeping up with the Joneses on the cultural front. That limited sense is how I want to suggest that people with more wealth tend to focus on cultural concerns and people with less wealth tend to focus on economic concerns. Rereading that, it feels uncomfortably close to class bigotry; I think a lot of these are dangerous or unfounded generalizations, and just wish I could figure out precisely where the logical problems with them lie. (Help me out here?)

In any case, that understanding of the classed nature of (not necessarily exclusive) cultural and economic distinctions can help me to refine my sense of how class mobility might take place in the university. This is taking as a given that class mobility is (1) always desirable and (2) a project of the university; both assumptions may be problematic. This is something I’ll need to return to later.

Now, though, I’m kind of taking my cue from discussions that construct the university as gatekeeper to some sort of better life, an assumption I’ve discussed in the past (rather unfairly, I might add). Charlie, for example, has written extensively about the problems that unequal access to computers presents for composition studies, and has suggested that perhaps the only true remedy to the access problem is a massive redistribution of wealth in America. Somewhat in the same vein, many on the political and economic left have suggested that capitalism itself is the source of many of our societal injustices, and that the only true remedy for those injustices is the elimination of capitalism. I’m not sure how to feel about such analyses. I certainly agree about the symptoms of the problem, and agree also that they require radical change for a cure, but I don’t think there’s going to be any large-scale redistribution of wealth in America anytime soon, and I don’t think capitalism is going to go away anytime soon; as a consequence, I feel that advocating such radical solutions as abolition or redistribution is a good way to rhetorically marginalize oneself while at the same time safely feeling that one is morally upright for sticking to one’s principles. But then I ain’t exactly got any better ideas.

Where I’m going with this, though, is to suggest that any large-scale class mobility in the context of the university is out of the question. Wealth will not see a more egalitarian redistribution except via progressive taxation, which itself seems sadly doomed with Dubya and DeLay in power, and we seem to instead be seeing a retrograde move in the U.S. tax system, apparently designed — as Curtiss has pointed out — to broaden the wealth gap. (Is Jello Biafra still performing “Kill the Poor” somewhere? Is anyone listening?) Anyway, what I’m getting at is that class mobility as fostered by the vocational construction of the university is only going to happen by the slightest degrees. Anything more and the reactionary right will let loose a wounded howl of “Godless Communism!” from the sunroof of its collective Cadillac Escalade louder than old Joe himself (idiot warning on that second link) ever did.

Those who might not want to fight such a fight could, perhaps, suggest instead that we privilege class mobility via the liberal education model of the university; class mobility via the broader dissemination of capital-C Culture rather than the redistribution of wealth. If you’re anything like me, even the hyper-cautious language in which I’ve couched such a proposal gives you the creeps. This is cultural elitism of the nastiest E. D. Hirsch variety, presuming and validating a singular and monolithic Culture over others. Who decides what Culture facilitates upward class mobility? Isn’t education in this Culture elitist? (Sometimes I wonder how much my interest in upward class mobility is itself elitist.) Or is such Cultural education in some ways the already-extant current model of American university education, as enacted in core curricula, Art History 101, introductory literature courses, and the dustbin of Western Civ? In which case, perhaps American universities already foster class mobilities as much as they ever will, with little attention to how their curricula might interact with students’ understandings of themselves within their material contexts.

The other hypothetical argument that could be made here (I’m offering these as hypotheticals because I’m aware they’re freighted with misconstructions, fallacies and elisions that I haven’t gotten myself to perceive yet, so I’d be grateful to anyone who can help me punch a few holes in them) is that such a privileging of the liberal education model is itself classist, because such a model (I think I’m starting to go in circles here) favors attention to cultural abstractions such as high art and intellectual history over material realities and concerns of economic advantage or disadvantage. In this sense, the liberal education model could be seen as reinforcing the Cartesian privileging of mind over body, and thereby reproducing the class hierarchy. As an English geek, I think Good Literature means more than just the top-grossing bestsellers, but I also think that we need to do much more in terms of paying attention to how writing gets produced and consumed, and how bodies and material conditions interact with that production and consumption.

Sounds like a decent place to stop. Time to brave the soggy heat and go find Jennifer.

Class Mobility in the University

6 thoughts on “Class Mobility in the University

  • July 7, 2003 at 11:06 am
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    Class mobility still implies that class matters. Yet, for as long as class matters, there will always be an underclass and an upperclass. Thus, really, the only alternative would be to get rid of ideas of class altogether, to make a non-class society, or a classless one. Yet, in such a society, we would have to abandon our idea of what is “better”, and abandon our idea of being “better”. The attraction of a pile is that while many people end up at its bottom, there is still the possibility that I might end up on top.

  • July 12, 2003 at 3:11 pm
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    Erik —

    You’re absolutely right; the entire concept of ‘class’ necessarily presupposes differentiation, and the classless society seems to me to be an impossible-to-achieve utopia. Your final sentence intrigues me, with its notion of what system we might choose if we could foresee where we might end up in the ‘pile’, and makes me think immediately of John Rawls’ ideas in A Theory of Justice of the “original position” and “veil of ignorance”. Your writing seems to be considerably informed by your position as a Christian; does that make a difference in whether or not you buy what Rawls is saying? (His thought experiment seems informed by a fairly secular worldview, but I don’t know all that much about him.)

  • July 14, 2003 at 6:47 am
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    Interesting concept. I would disagree with Rawls not on a religious basis but on a thought basis – I find it hard to believe that people would in fact think as abstractly about themselves and their place within society as Rawls “original position” demands. We are fascinated by the very details of belief and values in each other that Rawls wishes to exclude from reasoning about justice. Thus, his thought may describe a “wished-for” situation, but doesn’t seem to me to reflect the way that people think and act.
    Any theory of justice has to take into account the fact that the first human impulse is always to grab the biggest amount for myself, then for my immediate family or group, and only much later for people I don’t know so well, never mind everyone else.
    The same applies to concepts of class – I would say that people will always actively construct pyramids for as long as they are convinced that there is a way for them personally to reach nearer the top. We want to be better than the Jonses next door. It takes a very strong sense of call it morals or beliefs or values, to change that impulse.

  • July 15, 2003 at 11:51 am
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    Well, yeah, the “veil” is clearly a theoretical construct. Rawls isn’t attempting to describe or reflect people in the world; he’s attempting to construct a theoretical basis for just action. And, in fact, “the fact that the first human impulse is always to grab the biggest amount for myself” is precisely what the doctrine of the original position takes into account: it’s entirely pragmatic, basing its assumptions that everyone will, in fact, act in their own best interests. In theory.

    But some of your objections point to the belief in the chance that one *might* come out on top, which certainly throws a wrench into Rawls’ ideas. Me, I don’t have as much faith in chance, so I don’t play the lottery. Do you?

  • July 16, 2003 at 7:33 am
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    I don’t either, mostly because I’ve been raised a good German who needs to earn his way to the top.
    I think the answer to a class-based society is one where I value the individual as a human being, irrespective of ability, money earned etc etc. For that to happen, I need to realise that I am in no way different than the next person, even if my talents might be different from hers or his.
    As a christian, I see the fact that we are all equal as creations of God, that all I have is a gift from God, including my talents and abilities, and that I can’t be proud of something I am not responsible for. I also see that I need to try to meet the other on his or her terms, not on mine, and that if I wish anything for the other, I need to wish it on his or her terms. So, it is not my place to tell someone that they should go study and become more educated. I can only wish them the best they can imagine for themselves.

  • July 19, 2003 at 5:29 pm
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    It sounds, Erik, like your views on an ideally egalitarian society share a lot with those Gerry expresses. I’d only change your language slightly, to say “I am in no way different in value than the next person.” But the very existence of difference seems to point us towards valuation. I think maybe I’m just a little more pessimistic than you and Gerry seem to be.

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