First week of this term, the most fun part of this class was to ask “could x be culture?” I remember asking could the nuclear family have a culture, or occupations, or maybe places like coffee shops or whatever. It was this part about first-gen college students in the first chapter I asked if being a first-gen college student could be a culture. Turns out, it could!
This week, thinking outside of the cross-national box was refreshing. Honestly for the most part I was lost and disconnected because I couldn’t really step outside of it. Like it was mentioned in the class, it was just easier to think about a cross-national example or experimental design because we were used to it. Most of the things we talked about sounded a bit like overgeneralizing at first, or leaving important parts out. However, when I got past the threshold of thinking past cross-sectionality, it got easier (I think). But still, it was hard to rely solely on a base of social class. I figured I was viewing social class as very intertwined with culture that it is hard to distinguish it’s boundaries – or where it stands alone.
I mostly felt like gender was a big factor when dealing with the topic but couldn’t really figure out why. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been thinking about how our gender expressions or meta-perceptions regarding gender really affect how we orient our daily lives. It was a bit dissapointing to find out chapter didn’t talk about that at all. I just can’t bring myself to think about social class outside of the daily gender dynamics. I think presenting feminine, or the awareness of how one is perceived as a woman deals a lot with where someone stands in terms of social class in society. I feel like the situational factor in terms of social class placement was a bit underplayed in the chapter. I get that the class rank is somewhat a stable thing across the society at large. However, as the chapter points out, power might have similar effects like the social class. I find it incredibly hard to separate the two. Even though both a male and female doctor is probably come from a middle-class family, earn the same amount of money (altough they usually don’t), the male doctor has more power just because he is a man, and nobody mistakes him with a nurse (which is though to be a lower rank). I think this shows how people curate ranks rather than perceive them. And yes the female doctor is still stands in a higher SES position, but that’s just not her reality in terms of what she experiences in her daily life. And I’m not saying she should be respected more or whatever just because she stands in a higher SES rank. What I mean is, she might still be in a disadvantaged position where we don’t usually see with higher SES men. know it sounds like I’m mixing up some definitions but like I said, I find it hard to think of social class as a standalone thing.
Also my entry reminded me of this song
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