"Ordinary, the same as anywhere else": notes on the management of spoiled identity in 'marginal' middle class neighbourhoods

Urban sociologists are becoming increasingly interested in neighbourhood as a source of middle-class identity. Particular emphasis is currently being given to two types of middle-class neighbourhood; gentrified urban neighbourhoods of ‘distinction’ and inconspicuous ‘suburban landscapes of privilege’. However, there has been a dearth of work on ‘marginal’ middle-class neighbourhoods that are similarly ‘inconspicuous’ rather than distinctive, but less exclusive, thus containing sources of ‘spoiled identity’. This article draws on data gathered from two ‘marginal’ middleclass neighbourhoods that contained a particular source of ‘spoiled identity’: social renters. Urban sociological analyses of neighbour responses to these situations highlight a process of dis-identification with the maligned object, which exacerbates neighbour differences. Our analysis of data from the ‘marginal’ middle-class neighbourhoods suggests something entirely different and Goffmanesque. This entailed the management of spoiled identity, which emphasized similarities rather than differences between neighbours.</p

Performative Acts in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford

Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford presents the lives of Cranford ladies consisting of old maids and widows living in a provincial town, Cranford. This study is aimed at analyzing the performance and performative acts performed by the Cranford ladies. This study shows that the performance and performative acts institute not only their gender but also their class identity as middle-class women. Therefore, gender and class identity intertwine and are constituted by stylized repetition of acts. Key words: performance, performative acts, gende

Metropolitan mothers: Mothers, mothering and paid work

This paper reports on the interim findings from a two year ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) -funded project exploring parental choice of child care for pre school children. The fieldwork is based in two predominantly middle class areas in London. The vast majority of the respondents to date are women, many of whom are in paid employment. This paper draws on the literature about mothering, motherhood and identity to explore how these professional middle class women experience shifts in their self-identity. It considers how the women respond to the emotional and physical labour required of them by their roles as both worker and mothers, how they negotiate the tensions between the two, and how couples adapt to managing employment, childcare and a household. It also briefly considers the childcare roles and practices of the fathers. It concludes that despite the social and economic advantages of these middle class families, the adults are not presenting a serious challenge to a traditional understanding of family relationships

The Representation of Urban Upper Middle Class American Women\u27s Community in Sex and the City

The portrayal of urban upper middle class American women\u27s community in Sex and the City-SATC-is built upon constructed symbols related to the position of urban upper middle class American Women\u27s community and how cosmopolitan the women are. The symbol\u27s construction is characterized by singleness, upper middle class social status, well-established career, alienation, consumptiveness, independence, gender consciousness, and open mindedness in their sexual knowledge. Television has helped to fracture traditional conventions about how women should place themselves in the midst of their society and constructed urban upper middle class American women\u27s image and identity

Listening in to others : in between noise and silence

Since the launch of the ‘Clean Delhi, Green Delhi’ campaign in 2003, slums have become a significant social and political issue in India’s capital city. Through this campaign, the state, in collaboration with Delhi’s middle class through the ‘Bhagidari system’ (literally translated as ‘participatory system’), aims to transform Delhi into a ‘world-class city’ that offers a sanitised, aesthetically appealing urban experience to its citizens and Western visitors. In 2007, Delhi won the bid to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games; since then, this agenda has acquired an urgent, almost violent, impetus to transform Delhi into an environmentally friendly, aesthetically appealing and ‘truly international city’. Slums and slum-dwellers, with their ‘filth, dirt, and noise’, have no place in this imagined city. The violence inflicted upon slum-dwellers, including the denial of their judicial rights, is justified on these accounts. In addition, the juridical discourse since 2000 has ‘re-problematised slums as ‘nuisance’. The rising antagonism of the middle-classes against the poor, supported by the state’s ambition to have a ‘world-class city’, has allowed a new rhetoric to situate the slums in the city. These representations articulate slums as homogenised spaces of experience and identity. The ‘illegal’ status of slum-dwellers, as encroachers upon public space, is stretched to involve ‘social, cultural, and moral’ decadence and depravity. This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of everyday life in a prominent slum settlement in Delhi. It sensually examines the social, cultural and political materiality of slums, and the relationship of slums with the middle class. In doing so, it highlights the politics of sensorial ordering of slums as ‘filthy, dirty, and noisy’ by the middle classes to calcify their position as ‘others’ in order to further segregate, exclude and discriminate the slums. The ethnographic experience in the slums, however, highlights a complex sensorial ordering and politics of its own. Not only are the interactions between diverse communities in slums highly restricted and sensually ordained, but the middle class is identified as a sensual ‘other’, and its sensual practices prohibited. This is significant in two ways. First, it highlights the multiplicity of social, cultural experience and engagement in the slums, thereby challenging its homogenised representation. Second, the ethnographic exploration allowed me to frame a distinct sense of self amongst the slums, which is denied in mainstream discourses, and allowed me to identify the slums’ own ’others’, middle class being one of them. This thesis highlights sound – its production, performances and articulations – as an act with social, cultural, and political implications and manifestations. ‘Noise’ can be understood as a political construct to identify ‘others’ – and both slum-dwellers and the middle classes identify different sonic practices as noise to situate the ‘other’ sonically. It is within this context that this thesis frames the position of Listener and Hearer, which corresponds to their social-political positions. These positions can be, and are, resisted and circumvented through sonic practices. For instance, amplification tactics in the Karimnagar slums, which are understood as ‘uncultured, callous activities to just create more noise’ by the slums’ middle-class neighbours, also serve definite purposes in shaping and navigating the space through the slums’ soundscapes, asserting a presence that is otherwise denied. Such tactics allow the residents to define their sonic territories and scope of sonic performances; they are significant in terms of exerting one’s position, territory and identity, and they are very important in subverting hierarchies. The residents of the Karimnagar slums have to negotiate many social, cultural, moral and political prejudices in their everyday lives. Their identity is constantly under scrutiny and threat. However, the sonic cultures and practices in the Karimnagar slums allow their residents to exert a definite sonic presence – which the middle class has to hear. The articulation of noise and silence is an act manifesting, referencing and resisting social, cultural, and political power and hierarchies

CHAPTER 10: UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS POLITICS AND POLICY OUTCOMES: DOES CLASS IDENTITY MATTER?

This chapter in Clark and lipset\u27s book on class in American politics resulted from a multi-day workshop at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in the summer of 1999. The piece reverses the normal causality of class politics. It does not analyze citizens in elections, but government officials creating policies. It asks why policies differ across localities (specifically public transit decisions in 42 U.S. metropolitan areas). It probes how some government officials work with an upper-middle-class citizenry in mind, while others do so less. The chapter then tests for differences across localities and finds quite distinct patterns. The chapter next elaborates specific contours of the American upper middle class, in a creative merging of themes from Thorsein Veblen and David Riesman to current work on public policy

Constructing Drug Using Victims: Race and Class in Policy Debates on Ecstasy Use in the U.S.

Sociologists and political scientists examining the social construction of public anxiety surrounding drug use in the United States have argued that racial minorities are the targets of the harshest drug laws, while middle-class whites are shielded. In this article, I provide further evidence that middle-class, white drug users are shielded from harsh punishment by analyzing the process through which U.S. legislators and policymakers decide which drug users need punishment and which deserve protection and treatment. Analyzing transcripts from federal Congressional hearings, I examine the rhetoric of legislators and stakeholder witnesses concerning the use of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) by middle-class whites. Building on the social construction literature, I use social identity theory to demonstrate how legislators within Congressional hearings create in- and out-groups in order to categorize different drug users and dealers. My analysis of Congressional hearing language concerning white MDMA use demonstrates that Congressional speakers use rhetoric to convince committee members and the wider public that middle-class, white drug users are different from drug users of color and that the appropriate policy response is education and treatment, rather than punishment. My findings highlight how middle-class, white drug users are characterized differently from drug users of color, providing further evidence that U.S. drug policy has historically favored middle-class, white drug users

Culture and Motherhood: Findings from a Qualitative Study of East Asian Mothers in Britain’

This article focuses on the possible impacts of Confucianism on the experiences of middle-class East Asian women with dependent children in Britain. By using the concept of ‘intersectionality’, it aims to understand the ways in which mothering identity intersects with class and East Asian cultural identity in the British context, and how identities emerge through this interaction. The study was based on in-depth interview data collected from 20 first-generation East Asian mothers living in Britain, and suggests that East Asian mothers in this study appear to share a discernible trace of Confucianism, including a strong emphasis on education, alongside a high value placed on seniority, and children as a mother’s possession. These Confucian values were portrayed by the interviewees as salient in constructing their mothering identities. Simultaneously, however, certain aspects of British culture were also perceived to be significant in their mothering, in that they appeared to provide the interviewees with opportunities to question and modify their cultural values

Book Review: Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India

Review of Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India by Henrike Donne