Paul Kingston, in The Classless Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), offers as his thesis the argument “that groups of people having a common economic position — what are commonly designated as ‘classes’ — do not significantly share distinct, life-defining experiences” (1). Yeah. I think you can already figure I’m gonna have some problems with this guy. I’m looking forward to seeing how he disregards “worrying about how you’re going to make rent each month” as a “life-defining experience”. To attempt to be a little more fair, Kingston says that the “use of class language is not analytically rigorous or precise,” and “the reality of economic inequality, even substantial degrees of it, does not necessarily imply the existence of classes” (2). So my biggest difficulty with him is in his suggestion that economic inequality is the only index of class. The Tutor, with his questions about Roger Clinton and Elvis, knew far better, as do most Americans (but not, apparently, Mr. Kingston): class is more than just money.
But Kingston bills himself as a positivist, an empiricist, and a “realist”, and as such suggests that “To be useful, class theory can’t merely define specific social divisions as consequential; it must show that these divisions correspond to the collective realities that people experience and perceive. In advocating this realist approach, I follow the lead of such disparate thinkers as Marx (in much of his writing), Weber, Schumpeter, Warner, and Fussell” (3). A quick look at the index shows that the only mentions of Schumpeter and Fussell are, in fact, on page three. This isn’t argument: this is name-dropping. Kingston’s “realism” forces him to define “class” so narrowly and simplistically and one-dimensionally that he can’t help but miss the sophisticated interrelationships slipping past his near-sighted gaze. Over and over again, Kingston repeats his definition of class (“relatively bounded social groups defined by common economic positions”) as if the repetition of his blunt-instrument economic determinism will make it true.
In fact, Kingston actually indicts a number of sociological texts because they “consider diverse aspects of stratification (e.g., income and educational categories) under the rubric of class with little attention to the conceptual and empirical problems of doing so” (13). For Kingston, apparently, sophistication is a conceptual and empirical problem, which leads me to wonder whether there might be a place for him in the Bush administration. Ultimately, the problem I have with Kingston is definitional, but in precisely the opposite sense of the definitional problem I had with Resnick, Wolff, and Gibson-Graham. I saw the latter three (four) as attempting to make the definition of “class” so broad that it no longer referred to the English definition (from the Latin word classis, of the same meaning) of a group formed of a plurality with certain similar characteristics, but instead to certain socioeconomic processes. Kingston makes the definition so narrow that each grouping of people that shares the same economic qualities must universally share other qualities as well.
And after three paragraphs, it’s becoming clear to me that I’m feeling rather unwilling to suffer any degree of foolishness tonight. (This was also the case last night. Hmm.) Maybe it’s time to let the spleen subside for a bit, and try again tomorrow.
Happy thoughts. I’ll think happy thoughts.
How would your students identify the class to which they belonged growing up? The class they are now? The class to which they aspire? How well would they agree with others assessments of their class? Do your students identify with the idea of class at all?
You will like this, and will think more of me for asking it in the correct POMO jargon: Can your students be INTERPELLATED as upper class? Lower class? Middle class? Or in this land of dreams would they repudiate the very notion of class?
If they do repudiate it, will you impose that conceptual grid by brute force? Will you fit them into it, whether they want it or not — “No, you may not think you are class bound, but you are about as lower middle class as it gets, Buster!”
In other words, what gives you the right to push them into conformity with your theory? Or do college kids today just naturally think of themselves as members of a pseudo-Marxist class society?
I know in sales, life insurance agents would never so self-identify. They would say, “Look, I came up hard and made a success of myself.” To me that means they are low class, to them that they are high class. Who is to say that I should impose my snooty Marxist sociology, or Eastern Seabord snobbery on them? To them I am not high class, but a pointy headed intellectual, a joke. Again, they could well be right.