Class Theory: An Introduction

Class structures have been around since what seems like the dawn of time. Societies, to some extent, have always been based around different classes or groups, all based around different forms of capital.

We'll be taking a look at two branches of Class Theory - Marxism and Neo-Marxism, which classify individuals based on economic and cultural capital respectively. Marxism believes that as human beings ourselves we don't determine who we are, but rather our social being that determines us. This social being is determined by where we sit in a class structure. There are various schools of thought within class studies that view class structures differently. In Marxism, for example, ones' class is based on ones' “relationship to the means of production” (Etzioni-Halevy, 1976). Basically, if you own a factory you're higher class than someone who simply works in a factory, because you're “closer” to the means of production. But more relevant to today, it is simpler to say that economic wealth determines class. Marxism also looks at society through a dominant class. It believes that the culture of society is based only around the interests and traditions of the dominant class, and that the other classes really have no influence. This dominant class also has control over the media, which is something Antonio Gramsci is central to. We'll talk more about the dominant class and how they come to be in Hegemony.

Other schools of thought feel that it is not soley economic “capital” that determines ones class. Rather, it is seen as a combination of both economic and cultural capital, wherin cultural capital is composed of things like access to education and social manners or norms. Boudoire is a well-known thinker of this stream, and we'll be taking a look at him later on.