Class in/and the media: On the importance of class in media and communication studies (original) (raw)
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Introduction: Class in/and the media: On the importance of class in media and communication studies
Nordicom Review, 2021
Social class is one of the most enduring concepts in the social sciences and is associated with many of the key themes and topics across multiple disciplines. Thus, there are many uses to which the concept of social class in media and communication can be put. The ambition of this special issue is to offer a glimpse into the heterogeneity of its uses in the field. While attuned differently in relation to the various approaches and definitions of class, the eight contributions to this special issue collectively focus on the relationship between media and class. One of the ambitions of this special issue is to report on some of the current Nordic scholarship in this growing field of research and to highlight the particularities of the relationship between class, inequality and media in this region. While the special issue also includes contributions from other regions, the main focus is on social class in the Nordic countries. This introductory article begins with a discussion on the concept of social class and its analytical relevance in the contemporary social landscape. We detail the relationship between media and class as manifested in a growing body of research, followed by a brief presentation of the individual contributions to this special issue. Finally, we identify the road ahead and potential research areas for scholars of media and communication concerned about class and social inequality in the twenty-first century. Class: A key concept in an increasingly unequal world Despite its long history of playing a key role in the social sciences, the concept of social class is a contested term. First, because of the definitional uncertainty that stems from a range of academic traditions applying the concept in different ways to different objects of study. Second, due to changes in the sphere of production, social structure, and in the lifeworlds of citizens in many parts of the world, which has made it more difficult to ascertain the empirical reality of social class.
Debating the Reality of Social Classes
This paper first surveys a significant set of issues that are intertwined in asking whether social classes are real. It distinguishes two different notions of class: class as organized social entities and class as types of individuals based on individual characteristics. There is good evidence for some classes as social entities—ruling classes and underclasses in some societies—but other classes in contemporary society are sometimes best thought of in terms of types, not social entities. Implications are drawn for pluralist accounts of social classification and the individualism-holism dispute.
Sociology, 2014
This paper responds to the critical reception of the arguments made about social class in Savage et al (2013). It emphasises the need to disentangle different strands of debate so as not to conflate four separate issues, (a) the value of the seven class model proposed; (b) the potential of the large web survey -the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) for future research; (c) the value of Bourdieusian perspectives for re-energising class analysis, and (d) the academic and public reception to the GBCS itself. We argue that in order to do justice to its full potential, we need a concept of class which does not reduce it to a technical measure of a single variable and which recognises how multiple axes of inequality can crystallise as social classes. Whilst recognising the limitations of what we are able to claim on the basis of the GfK/GBCS, we argue that the seven classes defined in Savage et al have sociological resonance in pointing to the need to move away from a focus on class boundaries at the middle reaches of the class structure towards an analysis of the power of elite formation.
“The Reemergence of Class in the Wake of the First ‘Classless’ Society”
2015
Class structure, class inequality, and class analysis are central to understanding contem- porary Russian politics and society. And yet Russians themselves—from social scien- tists, to political leaders, to everyday Russians—have struggled to come to grips with the concept of class, which became a taboo topic following the collapse of commu- nism. In recent years, that has started to change. Russian social scientists have placed great emphasis on defining the Russian “middle class,” in a search both for a non- Marxist conception of class and for a social group with the potential to lead Russia toward a more liberal future. Yet the middle class concept remains fuzzy, and the political aspirations for the group have been only partially realized. Meanwhile, much of the rest of Russian society retains a more traditional view of class and class conflict, as reflected in various political struggles and even in popular culture, such as Russian film.
2011
I have selected these three articles for their important contribution to contemporary debates around social class, and, in particular, their development of conceptions of class that encompass understandings of how class is lived and experienced on an individual as well as collective level. Neither the cultural nor the embodied experiences of being classed were satisfactorily addressed in the conventional approaches to class theory that dominated the last half of the twentieth century.