Living with Class: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture

226 Pages·2013·1.14 MB·English

by  Ron Scapp, Brian Seitz (eds.)

Living with Class
This page intentionally left blank
Living with Class
Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture
Edited by Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz
living with class
Copyright © Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz, 2013.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-32678-2
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
®
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the World,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above
companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
® ®
Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-137-32681-2 ISBN 978-1-137-32679-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137326799
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Integra Software Services
First edition: December 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I really would have liked to contribute to this volume, but I had to work.
Jens Veneman
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction: Working Class 1
Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz
1 Class Dismissed: The Issue Is Accountability 7
bell hooks
2 Letter from a Lovelorn Pre-Radical: Looking Forward and
Backward at Martin Luther King Jr. 11
Kevin Bruyneel
3 In Search of a New Left, Then and Now 25
Dick Howard
4 The Status of Class 33
Stanley Aronowitz
5 “Fix the Tired”: Cultural Politics and the Struggle for Shorter
Hours 37
Kristin Lawler
6 Literary and Real-Life Salesmen and the Performance of Class 53
Jon Dietrick
7 Money Changes Everything? African American Class-Based
Attitudes toward LGBT Issues 59
Ravi K. Perry, Yasmiyn Irizarry, and Timothy J. Fair
8 Democracy without Class: Investigating the Political
Unconscious of the United States 79
M. Lane Bruner
9 Re-Forming Class: Identity, Wealth, and Cultural
Transformation in South Africa 91
Lisa Nel
viii • Contents
10 Whiteness as Currency: Rethinking the Exchange Rate 101
Emily M. Drew
11 Dying with Class: Race, Religion, and the Commodification of a
Good Death 107
Ann Neumann
12 New Materialisms and Digital Culture: Productive Labor and
the Software Wars 117
Ted Kafala
13 Feminist Theory and the Critique of Class 131
Robin Truth Goodman
14 Criminal Class 145
Eric Anthamatten
15 Consuming Class: Identity and Power through the
Commodification of Bourgeois Culture, Celebrity, and
Glamour 159
Raúl Rubio
16 When Prosperity Is Built on Poverty, There Can
Be No Foundation for Peace, as Poverty and Peace Don’t Stand
Hand in Hand 169
Pepi Leistyna
17 Solon the Athenian and the Origins of Class Struggle 189
Thomas Thorp
18 Memories of Class and Youth in the Age of Disposability 203
Henry A. Giroux
Notes on Contributors 219
Index 223
List of Illustrations
Figures
7.1 Weighted percentage of respondents with negative attitudes
toward same-sex sexual relations and marriage rights by race 66
7.2 Weighted percentage of respondents with negative attitudes
toward same-sex sexual relations and marriage rights by
socioeconomic index quartiles 66
7.3 Predicted probabilities of believing that same-sex sexual relations
are almost always wrong or always wrong by race and
socioeconomic index quartiles 68
7.4 Predicted probabilities of disagreeing that same-sex couples
should have the right to marry by race and socioeconomic index
quartiles 69
7.5 Weighted percentage of religious affiliation for black
respondents by socioeconomic index quartiles 71
Tables
7.1 Frequency distributions of negative attitudes toward same-sex
sexual relations and marriage rights (General Social Survey:
2004–2010) 65
7.2 Weighted distributions of independent variables across samples 67