July 31, 2007
paper: Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
excerpt
In sociology, Nalini Kotamraju has argued that constructing arguments around "class" is extremely difficult in the United States. Terms like "working class" and "middle class" and "upper class" get all muddled quickly. She argues that class divisions in the United States have more to do with lifestyle and social stratification than with income. In other words, all of my anti-capitalist college friends who work in cafes and read Engels are not working class just because they make $14K a year and have no benefits. Class divisions in the United States have more to do with social networks (the real ones, not FB/MS), social capital, cultural capital, and attitudes than income. Not surprisingly, other demographics typically discussed in class terms are also a part of this lifestyle division. Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus "class."
I'm not doing justice to her arguments but it makes sense. My friends who are making $14K in cafes are not of the same class as the immigrant janitor in Oakland just because the share the same income bracket. Their lives are quite different. Unfortunately, with this framing, there aren't really good labels to demarcate the class divisions that do exist. For this reason, I will attempt to delineate what we see on social network sites in stereotypical, descriptive terms meant to evoke an image.
Citation: boyd, danah. 2007. "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace ." Apophenia Blog Essay. June 24 . http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html
comments http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/06/24/viewing_america.html
[photo via google, not above]
~I wonder how many US soldiers use Facebook?
How about estimating the number of ex-GIs heroes who'll be using Facebook in the next few years after they receive Uncle Sam's enlistment money for college?
(Makes me wonder if the Bushies were less party orientated in spreading our tax dollars among military contractors, would there be any Congressional pressure to end Bush's War in Iraq? Maybe the next President Clinton will learn what's the magic number of contracts required (for the Republicans) to keep both parties of lawmakers in favor of the war? Any war? President Hillary Clinton the 'Great Unifier'?)
Posted by Stubbornson at July 31, 2007 05:29 PM