Page 82 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Class, identity and culture 73

interaction as well. This he does through the discussion of shame and humili-
ation, as well as subsequent consideration of class contempt, which includes
‘visceral revulsion, disgust and sneering, through the tendency not to see or
hear others as people, to the subtlest forms of aversion’ (p. 163). However, he
does note that it is important that sociology should not neglect the positive
aspects of these moral sentiments. This is an important way of characterizing
the modes of moral interaction in ordinary life in its complexity and shows an
important development of the overall approach of Bourdieu.
This approach is extended in Sayer’s consideration of different responses
to class. He recognizes, as has been discussed earlier, that the ways in which
people ‘act towards class others involve varying mixes of pursuit of advantage,
deference, resistance and pursuit of goods for their own sake. But they are also
influenced by their moral sentiments and norms, which are only partially
inflected according to class and other social divisions’ (p. 169). However, even
the positive aspects of this are contextualized by ‘the field of class forces in
ways that reproduce class hierarchy’ (p. 169). Sayer considers four responses
to class: ‘egalitarian tendencies, the pursuit of respect and respectability, class
pride and moral boundary drawing’ (p. 169). All these responses are affected
by the structural nature of class itself. Sayer also suggests that these responses
take place in the context of wider understandings of ‘their own and others’
behaviour and to their views of class itself’ (p. 186).
It is important through this brief consideration of the work of Sayer to
note how discursive interaction around the complexities of class runs through
ordinary life and I have introduced his work to make this point and to show
one of the important ways in which this area can be researched.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have explored a number of different dimensions of a new
class and culture agenda. As I stated in the introduction, this is important for
my argument in several ways. Here I wish to emphasize both the continuing
significance of class in structural terms, but also the way in which class is
a significant part of the interactions and performances of ordinary life and
identity. I have spent time on the general approach and two specific studies to
pull out the different ways in which class is currently being theorized and
researched in a broad context of culture. This both shows the significance of
class but also that it can be seen in the context of the aims of this book. I will
pick up some further aspects of this case in the chapters that follow. For the
moment, it is important to emphasize that I see this work on class as signifi-
cant in a number of ways. First, it has opened up new avenues of the consider-
ation of class that emphasize the cultural. This means that it has the potential
to close the gap between sociology and media/cultural studies. Second, this
work shows how a dimension of mediatized ordinary life can be considered
to illuminate particular key aspects (there are, of course, others). Third, this
approach has developed the theorization of the individual, identity and the
self in ways that can be further developed by more explicit consideration of
the media (see further Chapter 9). I now turn to the related processes of
distinguishing.