Late to Class: Social Class and Schooling in the New Economy

PART 3. AFTER CLASS

233 PART 3 AFTER CLASS These complex discussions of class and how class works with and against race and gender argue that we must keep working on the conceptualization of class. What is to come after class as we have historically understood it? Ellen Brantlinger’s research has led her to conclude that schools do the work of social class in separating and preparing people for the stratification of the wider society. Her work leads her to argue that both the winners and losers in hierarchical forms of social relations are endemically linked to frustration, anger, and violence. She is also clear that it is the middle class that needs to change its behavior if we are reduce inequality. Maike Philipsen takes this last argument a full step further. After class, we must be clear that the issue of poverty does not belong to the poor but rather to the non-poor. The non-poor derive disproportionate benefit from a stratified economic system. While Philipsen sees a role for educators in eradicating poverty she argues that direct economic changes are more likely to reduce income inequality. Nevertheless, she argues convincingly that academics themselves can play a more active role by naming who benefits including how we benefits ourselves. One of the lessons of this volume is that class is contingent. Van Dempsey illustrates this by illuminating how the class in rural, Appalachia has a distinctive form. Youth are “pushed out” of home and region to take advantage of education while simultaneously “pulled back” by local culture and families. His work shows us that intersectionality involves more than race, class and gender. It also has a geography that will need to be accounted for, after class. Finally, George W. Noblit returns us to the distinction drawn in the opening section, getting to class. The subjective and objective ways of getting to class were distinctly drawn. After all the work on class this and other volumes represent, Noblit argues that class is in danger of becoming déclassé unless it is reconstituted. He argues for instead of reducing all forms of stratification to a class base that it may be better to reconstitute class after race. This is to say that class may have to be thought of as maintaining difference as well as a strategy to reduce inequality. After class, we may have to think rather differently. ...