Class in the Social Sciences

For a long time, in the broader social sciences literature, class had been viewed by many as obsolete or less important in an era of heightened individualisation and identity politics (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002; Fresnoza-Flot and Shinozaki 2017). Many argued, as Gibson-Graham et al. (2000) pointed out, that class failed to secure both the theoretical and empirical focus that other markers of differing power relations could convey, such as gender and race. Such a belief pervaded the scholarship despite the fact that social class had

traditionally been one of the basic, most well-established and highly powerful categories in the social sciences (Fresnoza-Flot and Shinozaki 2017). Others such as Bauman (2007) were of the view that since class solidarity had been eroding, inequality as a fundamental

component of class had lost much of its relevance (Oliver and O'Reilly 2010).

Lately, the concept of class has been witnessing a powerful re-emergence in the broader social science as a highly significant container capturing social inequalities, distinctions, relationships and affiliations (cf. Crompton et al. 2000; Crompton and Scott 2005; Devine et al. 2005; Savage 2000; Skeggs 1997, 2004). In her seminal feminist work, Beverley Skeggs (1997) argued for an intersectional approach to gain more nuanced understandings of social power (inter)relations, by investigating identity and power (or class) through the lens of gender. Since then, many others have argued for the use of an intersectional lens when examining individual realities (see Anthias 2005 not only pertaining to class), where class appears to be determinant.

There have been numerous attempts at conceptualizing class since the inception of the notion. The highly influential theory of Marx located individuals in the social hierarchy through their link with the means of capitalistic production and their role in this process (Kelly 2012). Marx drew a picture of a social class structure defined by fundamental antagonism between the two main classes of bourgeoisie and proletariat, where distinction was made through property, i.e. ownership of production, and labour power. Currently, as Bottero (2014) described, two major approaches to class can be distinguished. The first is still strongly influenced by classical understandings of class, drawing on Marxist and Weberian class concepts. It advances that class is a social category of individuals and groups with similar features, behaviours and lifestyles (Fresnoza-Flot and Shinozaki 2017). Based on this classic approach, class could be defined ‘as [a] position [that] refers to the location of

an individual in a societal division of labor and a stratified structure of wealth’ (Kelly 2012: 156). Such a class-as-position perspective considers class as ‘collective, explicit and

oppositional’ (Bottero 2014: 987), with a ‘precise and contained approach to the meaning of “class”’ (Bottero 2014: 985). In this strand of literature, ‘individuals occupy objectively classifiable locations in a societal structure’ (Kelly 2012: 156). Many of the critiques of such a static and deterministic approach highlighted the need to consider other axes of distinction such as race and gender, which idea could also be attributed to the concept’s lack of

popularity in the 1980s and 1990s (Kelly 2012). In particular, as there is a need to

acknowledge a wide range of power vectors determining individuals’ life in society (Devine and Savage 2005).

Meanwhile, the second current perspective on class emphasizes the individually lived nature of class, which makes the concept contingent on underlying social and cultural realities (Bottero 2014). This second stance views the nature of class as dynamic: ‘class is not a given but is in continual production’ (Skeggs 2004: 3). It perceives class as more of a process than a ‘precise and contained’ (Bottero 2014: 985) structure (Fresnoza-Flot and Shinozaki 2017). As Kelly (2012) pointed out, this second, class-as-process approach had many positive effects as it enabled the use of class in more flexible ways. With the acknowledgement of other similarly significant markers of difference that determine one’s life, such as race and gender, it questioned the assumption of a ‘commonality of interests, processes, and outcomes on that basis’ (Kelly 2012: 157), and gave way to acknowledgement of multiple allegiances, even based on class interests (Gibson et al. 2001). Kelly also emphasized that an

intersectional and procedural approach to class renders class relations relative, as class can be formed by way of other axes of difference, for instance ethnicity; thus class would be ‘overdetermined’ (Gibson-Graham et al. 2000 in Kelly 2012) by these most powerful social differences. Also, class could be applied to contexts which are not purely capitalistic (as Marx suggested), which widened the scope of its applicability to relations inside the home or household as well (e.g. Gibson-Graham et al. 2001 in Kelly 2012).

Kelly (2012) identified two more major aspects of class in his work on transnational class conceptualisation, that of class-as-performance and class-as-politics. He examined class subjectivities of Filipino migrants in Canada and recognized that understanding class in the ‘traditional’ sense of the notion would not give an adequate account of the experienced downward mobility of such migrants, as other class dimensions should also be taken into account, especially in a transnational social field. He also viewed class as performance, since ‘subjective understandings of class may seem imprecise, contradictory, and unsatisfactory’,

and is thus performed in numerous settings on a daily basis. He argued that class-as- performance is particularly conspicuous in performing consumption (see also Bourdieu 1984; Devine et al. 2005), where consumption can be both marker and ‘entry requirement’ to certain class positions, while class position as embodiment such as embodied racial, gender- linked, or other visible or audible performances, for instance accent, behaviour or dress, could all project one’s class standing in an embodied way (p. 160). He also saw class as politics, to accentuate the concept’s close links with political solidarity in both individual and collective forms, where class shapes and is shaped by political mobilizations of such solidarities (p. 161). It is argued that approaches to class seen as position, process,

performance or politics are not mutually exclusive categories, but have significant overlap directed by the many contingencies and temporalities in an individual’s life. In a recent study, Stefan Rother (2017) demonstrated how the political mobilisation and everyday class performance of Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong can lead to affiliation with a class truly transcending nation-state borders, that of the ‘transnational social class of domestic workers’.