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2. CLASS/CULTURE/ACTION: REPRESENTATION, IDENTITY, AND AGENCY IN EDUCATIONAL ANALYSIS
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2 CLASS/CULTURE/ACTION REPRESENTATION, IDENTITY, AND AGENCY IN EDUCATIONAL ANALYSIS Bill J. Johnston Introduction This chapter attempts to explore whether and in what manner the construct class remains a useful category for social and educational analysis. At one time class was unabashedly identified as one of, if not the central, category of sociological analysis. This is not to suggest, however, that the class construct has ever been unproblematically embraced. Karl Marx is probably identified as the first great class theorist, but never unambiguously defined class (Crompton, 1998). Max Weber spent much of his professional career engaged in a debate with Marx’s ghost over matters of class and social theory. A variety of theorists throughout the twentieth century have attempted to clarify, elaborate, or modify the original conceptions of class offered by Marx and Weber. Likewise, over the years there have been repeated declarations of the demise of class and/or class theory, just as others have lamented the imprecision, impurity, or simple neglect of class analysis (Eder, 1993; Pahl, 1993; Pakulski and Waters, 1996). More recently, economic restructuring associated with processes of postindustrial and post-Fordist forms of production, transformation of the occupational structure, the triumph of global capitalism, and the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, has led to renewed questioning of the continued utility of class theory, and by implication, the utility of class analysis. 29 There are two primary reasons why we should examine the effects of class on education: one empirical and the other theoretical. First, as Steven E. Tozer, Paul Violas, and Guy Senese (2000) points out in his brief discussion of class, family background is closely associated with educational attainment . He notes, for example, that “compared to White non-Hispanics, Asian Americans drop out of school somewhat less, African Americans drop out slightly more, and Hispanic students drop out twice as often as the White comparison group. Girls drop out slightly less than boys. Taking all ethnic groups and genders, low-SES students drop out six times as often as high SES students and almost three times as often as middle-SES students” (p. 154, italics in original). Other studies of educational attainment obtain similar findings. To report attainment differences by race/ethnicity and gender , but not by SES, is at best to misrepresent the nature of the educational challenge. Moreover, given the history of class antagonism, to employ the language of class, or its cousin SES, is to invoke a social memory of working -class repression carried out by, or with the nodding approval of, the state. And to implicate the state in such a manner is to both threaten the legitimacy of the state and to highlight relationships of interdependency between the economic and political order. From the statist perspective, far better to invoke the legacy of Parsonian structural-functionalism, with its assumptions of meritocracy, order, and stability, to attribute school failure to the inadequacy of family or student, and to dismiss conflict as an event of individual deviance rather than as a structural problem. From a critical perspective, on the other hand, to ignore class and/or SES in analysis serves little purpose other than to mystify hegemonic relations and to protect the privilege of the privileged. Second, Raymond E. Callahan in Education and the Cult of Efficiency (1962) traced the general adoption of business interests and values in education since 1900; a tendency reinforced during the past two decades beginning with the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983). The contribution of education to the labor force and to general economic development is now so taken for granted that it has become the primary focus of policy discussion, often to the exclusion of other interests. The tendency to exclude class from an analysis of education, however, deflects attention from the economic correlates of achievement, and more importantly relationships of domination and subordination relative to production and consumption . In a decidedly peculiar twist of logic we are left to engage in an analysis of an institution being defined and judged in terms of its contribution to economic production without recourse to a core construct by which to characterize economic relationships and potential conflicts. Thus, we undertake a review of the construct of class, with the intention of exploring whether and how educators might more productively conceptualize social class. We conclude that while the class construct need 30 Bill J. Johnston [54.145.82.104] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:27 GMT) not be abandoned, it may require reconceptualization...