The Workers at Biltmore Wished He'd Built Less

I visited the Biltmore Estate with my family over my recent Fall Break. To be honest, I was not looking forward to it, but it ended up being the highlight of the weekend--and that's saying quite a bit since I got to visit a great brewery and wander around downtown Asheville.

Biltmore: A Ridiculously Big House

To those who don't know, Biltmore was built c. 1890 as a rural, mountain retreat by George Vanderbilt, grandson of the railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was opened to the public after the family struggled following the Great Depression. It stands as a reminder of the outsized footprint of American industrialists during the Gilded Age.

We paid to take a tour of the building (and then paid again to listen to a recording of a tour guide). I found myself angered by the way that the tour whitewashed what were most certainly complicated relations between the servants who build and maintained the estate and the family who lived, occasionally, on the property. First was a rosy story about a young servant who dropped a service tray during a dinner party. As told, the story is that she expected to be reprimanded by Mr. Vanderbilt, but instead, he helped her to pick up the mess and even checked in on her for the rest of her life, for which she was eternally grateful. A second example came in the basement of the building, where we learned that several generations of servants and their children were happy to live on the property and that the servants were happy to work there because they received New York wages in North Carolina, which we are to assume were considerably higher.

Both of the stories served to mask the immediate exploitation that was no doubt the foundational story of the workers at Biltmore and their employer and was indeed the very foundation of the immense wealth accumulated by families like the Vanderbilts during the Industrial Revolution. The elites extracted profit from the labor of the poor.

I have noticed this type of whitewashing before as something typical of many historic sites, oftentimes more literally than figuratively. I went to college on the grounds of an estate that most certainly was built and serviced by slaves, though there was rarely, if ever, a mention of this history. I have worked for many years now in the Deep South, visiting many historic locations where slaves and slavery are given only a passing reference, at best. I remember learning an important lesson at a museum as a child, where, to their immense credit, they openly discuss the lamentable fact that elite historic sites tend to survive because they are built with more durable materials and methods, while common historic sites inevitably disappear due to the ravages of time and inattention.

The literally unbelievable stories proferred by the likes of the Biltmore Estate unwittingly do violence to the historic poor and, by extension, the contemporary poor by erasing or even replacing their stories. The only thing more damaging than rendering a group invisible is recasting them as smiling. The Vanderbilts received their earthly rewards; their servants have not yet. We rewrite history to maintain the myth of "Great Men," but I think, we also rewrite the narratives so as not to make ourselves uncomfortable, to not confront our own failings. We'd be better served to confront the ambiguity of it all.

Privilege as Virtue among the Wealthy

I don't get a lot of opportunity to keep up with the podcasts I follow during the summer so I'm currently catching up on a three-month backlog. I was listening to this episode of This American Life this morning on my way to work, and I was really struck by this exchange:

Zoe Chace [5:32]: OK, so for the past six months, I've been covering the presidential election. I've been particularly interested in this group of people who are trying to get the biggest bang for their buck out of this election season--Republican donors, people who are in a rare position to put enormous sums into campaigns and watch what the money can do, people like this.

Zoe Chace: So are you a billionaire?

Doug Deason: No I'm not. My father is.

Zoe Chace: This is Doug Deason. He's a millionaire. His dad Darwin Deason is the billionaire. Years ago his dad started a computer services company and made a ton of money in the years since, rolling up and selling off companies, just money making money. Five years ago he sold it to Xerox.

Now Doug, the son, manages their money and their political strategy. Doug is the one in charge of translating money into political power. He doesn't think of himself as a donor, exactly. There's much more thought and strategy than just throwing money at a campaign. He's more like an investor. He's looking around for the best place to put their money, the best Republican place.

... 

Doug Deason [24:00]: The reason [my father spoke more than expected in our meeting with Donald Trump] is because Trump just engaged him, asked him about [his] business, how did he make his money. And they talked about--he kept complimenting down on me that I know how great it is to be able to turn something over to your kids and let them run it, let them do it, which obviously is what I do. So it's nice to be complimented, right? [empahsis added]

So, I may be misreading this, but it seems like Doug feels that acknowledging the reality that his father handed him his business and fortune is a personal compliment. This feels emblematic of the mindset of many wealthy people like Deason and Trump, who somehow rationalize their privilege and advantage as a virtue, all the while chastising the disprivileged and disadvantaged masses as lazy, undeserving losers. So disturbing!

Would Bourdieu drink Bordeaux?

It used to be rosé and White Zinfandel, but Merlot, it seems, has also been relegated to questionable status among some oenophiles.* Merlot's fall from grace is a consequence of the growing popularity of wine overall and the assumption that Merlot is an easier, more-palatable, and less-challenging varietal specifically. If wine as a whole is more universally consumed and has thus become inadequate by itself to distinguish an elite from the masses, then certain types of wine now need to do the work as categorizing categories (to bastardize Bourdieu). In other words, since wine is popular enough that the difference between drinking wine as opposed to beer is insufficient to create distinction, differences between drinking Cabernet as opposed to Merlot are recruited to do that distinguishing. Cultural capital persists with greater granularity even as it appears to recede.

To demonstrate how media help to spread and reflect such cultural knowledge, here is a clip from the movie Sideways with Paul Giamatti playing Miles (explicit language possibly NSFW):

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* - Yes, I realize that there are lots of great Merlots and that many people who take wine very seriously disagree with these judgments. I also realize that this whole discussion happened more than ten years ago.

A Return to Ancient Religion as an Elite Practice

When we think about the ancient religions of places like Greece and Roman, what we're actually remembering is the religion of the elites. More accurately, all of the temples, festivals, and sacrifices of these ancient religions were the elites doing religion for the society. The common people had a more practical religion that consisted mostly of superstitious magic. While the elites were slaughtering bulls to keep the city alive, the plebs where casting curses against their romantic rivals and business competitors. Lay participation in religio didn't regularly happen and was often actively suppressed. It occurs to me that secularization may have primed us today for a return to this kind of religiosity. As the number of religious nonaffiliates grows, we aren't actually becoming less religious at the macro level. Often, this is referred to as "cultural Christianity" or "civil religion." Beyond just the cultural, however, we are retaining the institutional. Churches keep doing what they do; it's just that fewer people are showing up and few people are showing up with any regularity. The priests keep slaughtering bulls, though.

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This is my 666th post. Coincidence?

Class-segregated School Systems and Realtors®

There is a cool new website that will let you zoom in to different school districts in the U.S. to see the percent of student poverty. One could imagine a society in which poverty is fairly evenly distributed in a given geographic area, but what's telling is that there are many, many instances of very poor districts abutting very affluent districts.

Here is where I currently live. Unless my family should decide to move, my child will attend school in the district at the center that is dark blue. Note the very white (in both senses) district immediately to the southwest.

Here is where I grew up. I attended school in the very white (in both senses) district near the center. Note the dark blue district immediately to the northeast. (It's no wonder I became a sociologist, right?)

Here is how that happens:


It doesn't take overt racism or classism to create such stark divides. We have simply structured our society in such a way that racist and classist outcomes happen irrespective of the intentions and beliefs of the individuals in those systems.

Friday Music: "New Noise" - Refused

I give you Refused's "New Noise":



This is one of those songs that was really seminal in my musical development as it was among several that got me interested in more aggressive musics early in my college career. This song, as well as the band itself, is a statement against consumerism, capitalism, economic and cultural capital.

The Economist's Error and Political-Economic Behavior

Paul Krugman, a brilliant man whom I respect and whose work I follow, is making a fundamental mistake, and it points to some fundamental issues with the current assumptions of economics, assumptions that even Krugman has acknowledged as problematic in the past.

Let's back up. Contemporary economics, in order to make sense out of extremely complex systems, starts with a false but helpful assumption: all else being equal, a person will behave in a way that maximizes his own utility; that is, people make rational choices. Without this convenient assumption, microeconomics collapses, bringing down most of macroeconomics, which is built increasingly on those micro-level understandings. The thing is, people do stupid shit; they are more often than not irrational and tend to behave in ways that go against their own individual best interests--at least in the immediate and short term. Unlike economics, this is the starting place for much of sociology: Why do people do seemingly nonrational things? And, we sociologists have more than a hundred years of data, theory, and analysis to make sense of it.

So, what mistake is Krugman making? Paul is pretty sure that the new Republican strategy that he is calling "libertarian populism" won't work because it is not in the best interest of the very group at which it is targeted: disaffected, downscale, rural, Northern, working-class whites. Why, after all, would a group rally in support of ideas that hurt them? This, of course, would make absolutely no sense to economists who assume that people behave rationally. To sociologists who assume the opposite, that people typically behave quite irrationally, it makes perfect sense. Moreover, from the sociological frame, there is far less reason to believe that the Republic strategy will fail. In fact, it's likely be quite successful.

Let's take another step back. Essentially what I'm writing about here is false consciousness, the idea that people are generally unaware that they are part of a class of people with whom they share a vested interest. These disaffected, downscale, rural, Northern, working-class whites do not in fact see themselves in these terms. They are much more likely to identify, first, as white and, second, as middle-class. This is the trick. If you don't see yourself as poor and you fail to recognize that you are a beneficiary of governmental welfare programs (PDF), you are not likely to support programs for the poor or the political party that created and defends those policies. Republican policies feel populists because you associate yourself with those who actually aren't much like you at all.

Krugman is optimistic because his discipline intentionally propagates the falsehood that people are rational, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that an irrational strategy will be ineffectual. As a sociologist, I am far more pessimistic.

Chicago, Schools, and Segregation: A Misunderstood Solution?

Chicago is closing a bunch of schools that they allege are being underutilized. It's an emotional issue to say the least. (This video seems to be going viral.) One reason that it is so emotional is that the schools that are targeted appear to disproportionately serve poor and non-white students. I understand people's concerns about endangering students by forcing them to travel further to get to school, often through violent areas, and ideally, the students should attend quality schools as close to their homes as possible. However, the argument that a school that has been made inefficient because it was abandoned by elites should be protected seems backward to me. Couldn't closing those schools be a way to integrate de facto segregated schools? What an interesting model for change, to close any school that has a disproportionately disadvantaged student body and force those students into adjacent school districts that are disproportionately advantaged. There would be nowhere to hide for those trying to "escape" "bad" schools (e.g. white flight); they should simply be forced to improve the schools they have. In other words, the root of the problem is not that the schools are being closed but that they have been put in such a precarious situation by privileged families following a short-sighted notion of self-interest.

Am I missing an important part of this story here either theoretically or practically? Admittedly, this a complicated social issue on which I am not an expert.

Understanding in a Car Crash

Chris and Nate at the SocilogySource Podcast shared an interesting allegory they use to teach race. They liken it to car accidents. (This is the episode, I think.) Car accidents are not intentional, and, yet, they still happen. Like car accidents, racist outcomes still happen even though the overwhelming (and increasing) majority of us are not intentionally racist. [Insert Brad Paisley "Accidental Racist" joke here.] I really like this analogy, and I think we can extend it further. One reason car accidents happen is that we have shared value, beliefs, and behaviors (i.e. culture) that make accidents more likely to happen. Think driving fast, aggressively, and distracted. Much in our culture predisposes us to racist outcomes. Think dialectical (i.e. language) prejudices, judgments about unique first names, and an insistence on "personal responsibility." Another reason car accidents happen is that we have designed an infrastructure (i.e. structure) that makes accidents more likely to happen. Think non-divided highways, crumbling roads/bridges, and elevated speed limits. Much of our social structure predisposes us to racist outcomes. Think concern over drug crime with apathy for white-collar crime, unequal schools, and disproportionate unemployment rates. Moreover, not all accidents have the same outcomes; some are more likely to be fatal than others. Think small car or motorcycle vs. SUV. Compare that to differences in social, economic, and human capitals. The dominant narrative that most students in the United States bring with them to the classroom is of intentionality: "I cannot be held personally responsible for things that I did not intentionally do." This narrative flies in the face of everything that we know sociologically, and I think the allegory above is one way to combat "common sense" assumptions.

"He's Shaving...His Legs."

I've been meaning to post on this for a while. As I regularly remind you readers, I am a cyclist. I ride primarily for fitness, but I also enjoy it recreationally. I've never competed and, though I had aspirations as a younger man, I don't ever intend to compete. I'm quite content to do a solo hour-long aerobic ride six days a week. I generally prefer to ride outside, but when the weather is inclement, I'll ride indoors on a trainer. I have a good friend who occasionally attends spin classes. I regularly have given her crap about it. I've, however, been giving it a little more critical consideration. What are the social differences between spinning and actually riding a bike?

Physiologically, spinning and cycling offer different types of workouts. Road cycling is typically an aerobic exercise, focused on burning fat and increasing cardiovascular endurance. Spin classes, on the other hand, are typically interval training sessions, which are defined by alternating periods of high intensity and recovery. Ironically, spinning is better at preparing participants for competitive situations instead of increased cardiovascular fitness and weight-loss, the presumed goals of most spinners.

Economically, there are steep start-up costs to road cycling. Bikes and gear are not cheap. While I haven't done the maths, I suspect, however, that gym memberships and class fees make cycling less expensive than spinning in the long run. In terms of convenience, a road bike is always available. Spinning classes, on the other hand, are offered on a fixed schedule and, thus, could be a less easily sustainable practice.

Socially, both spinning and cycling can be group activities. Spinning classes do offer a built in social motivation in a barking instructor. While I haven't often taken advantage of them, group rides and local bike clubs can offer much more effective social pressure, though. Both are occasions for social interaction, but cycling feels much more organic.

Culturally, road cycling (and to a lesser extent mountain biking) carry a certain cachet, or cultural capital. Spinning has a middle-class tourist feel, while cycling has an elitist authenticity. This helps to explain a lot of the boundary work done by cyclist. Go into any local bike shop, and you'll get a feel for what I mean. There is a certain level of relatively arbitrary cultural knowledge demanded in such spaces. Those not in-the-know can experience a great deal of discomfort. (Hell, even those of us who are somewhat in-the-know experience discomfort!) This atmosphere is unwittingly cultivated by proprietors and aficionados to maintain exclusivity, thus generating high levels of in-group solidarity. (An ethnography of a bicycle shop would make a great dissertation project for a sociology or anthropology grad student!)

There are certainly some class differences between spinning and cycling. Given the myriad benefits of road cycling, it would be good to break down the social barriers and to grant access to all.

Bicycles, Motorcycles, Proles, and the Powerful

Last weekend, I got to attend an awesome crit bike race here where I live. (If you haven't already gathered from the blog, I'm a cycling fan.) I got there early and staked out a good spot to watch the races near the start/finish line. It happened to be right near a cordoned-off sponsor area for the motorcycles that cleared the way on every lap for the cyclists, Ducati. I was struck by the class diversity among the people associated with Ducati. Standing comfortably next to the working-class American rider/enthusiasts were elite European owner/managers. What otherwise we would think of as strange bedfellows seemed completely at ease in this setting. These kinds of situations, however, are quite rare. The only other examples that I can think of involve professional athletics or motorsports. Think Mitt Romney and his "friends who are NASCAR team owners" sans pandering inauthenticity. I wonder what it is about these social situations or realms that allow for otherwise avoidable inter-class contact. Is it their competitive nature? I also wonder if these moments for contact have appreciable effects, like elevated opinions of those in other classes, better treatment of employees by owners, increased levels of sympathy, or conversely, decreases in class consciousness. Surely, there is some research in the area. Point us to it in the comments below if you know of it.

Mowing a Path to Graduation

I saw this massive wall-cling poster recently, and it reminded me that, for many students, work is not a choice but a necessity.

Students who need to work in the summer to pay for school end up at a disadvantage because they take longer to complete college than those who don't need to work, delaying graduation, delaying a career, and increasing overall college costs. The sign also makes the assumption (albeit parenthetical) that parents are helping with college costs, an advantage not enjoyed by all students--particularly those who would need to work during the summer. Advertisements that frame summer classes in the language of "choice" do several things. First, they highlight what is likely the shortsightedness of well-intentioned administrators who do not recognize the diversity of students' socioeconomic situations. Second, they hide the fact that students are often structurally constrained. Finally, they alienate working- and lower-class students who are already underrepresented at most four-year institutions.

And don't get me started on the push to online classes.

Making Public Education Compulsory AND Exclusive

In most of the U.S., education is compulsory until a student is between 16 and 18 years old. The default has become public education, though parents are alternatively allowed to enroll their children in private schools (both secular and religious) or to homeschool. After de jure segregation was struck down by the Supreme Court, many parents, both intentionally and unwittingly, have done de facto segregation by moving school districts or by exploiting the privilege of private schools. Contrary to the popular narrative about the failure of our public schools being attributable to poor teachers, the failure of public education can better be understood in terms of the flight of non-poor whites to more affluent school districts and to private schools. This has created a widening gap between students who attend failing schools and students whose parent(s) are financially and/or geographically mobile enough to attend effective schools. Private education reproduces and magnifies inequality.

The very people who could solve the problems in the public schools by contributing the most taxes to a school district and being able and knowledgeable enough to wield political clout in the local system are precisely those who are most likely to extricate themselves from those situations. They leave because they can. So, the problem is being able to keep both the political power and economic base in the public school system. An obvious solution to this is to require not just compulsory education but to compel exclusive public education. If parents are unable to pull their kids out of public schools, they will be motivated to improve the public schools.*

While the solution might be obvious, its implementation is problematic. For one, the centrality of voluntarism and individualism (read: individual liberty) in American culture guarantees strong resistance to the notion of forcing parents and students to do much of anything. (Indeed, it's surprising that public schools exist at all in this country!) In addition, though, it seems that the First Amendment would require religious exemptions for parents who prefer a religious education for their children, and savvy parents would exploit these exemptions as a way to get their kids out of public schools. I would argue that the state has a compelling interest here and that public education and religious education need not be mutually exclusive. There is nothing keeping parents from paying for their kids to attend religious school after they've spent the day at public school.

Just thinking out loud here.

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* - The problem of geographic mobility is a bit trickier. It's likely impossible--and indeed for labor force reasons probably undesirable--to keep people from moving from under-performing school districts to high-performing school districts; however, there is at least the possibility for planning policy and housing discrimination enforcement to constrain these problems, making them hypothetically more manageable indirectly than the private school problem.

Friday Music: "Money for Nothing" - Dire Straits (trigger warning)

I give you Dire Straits' (edited version of) "Money for Nothing":



And now, I give you the original, unedited version of the same song (NSfW/trigger warning):



You'll note that the verse that begins around the 1:52 mark of the unedited version includes several uses of the pejorative term "faggot." I don't know the entire history of the song. (Wikipedia has a brief discussion of the controversy.) However, these versions could be A/B'ed in a classroom--with ample warning--to show the changing nature of the acceptability of terminology as well as changing definitions of deviance, both in terms of language and sexual practice/identity. Interestingly, though the F-word declined after its coinage and remained fairly scares mid-century, its use in books seems to have increased since the 1980s.

In addition to the anti-gay and homophobic themes, this song can be used to discuss work, class, and conspicuous consumption.

Teaching Cultural Capital with Music

I've found music to be a fun and effective way to teach about cultural capital. Here is what I do. I first tell the class to imagine that they are executives at a record label and need to come up with a marketing strategy for some of their artists. I tell them to think stereotypically about what kind of person is most likely to purchase this genre of music. I tell them to jot down some notes for each clip of music that I'll play for them, including race/ethnicity, education, occupation, income, gender, region, urban/rural, etc. Then, I play 30- to 45-second clips from each of the following songs. (The genres are more important than the songs themselves, although I've found it useful to find songs that are somewhat obscure, at least to the students, which isn't all that difficult given our age gap.)











After listening, I have the class name each genre and share what they noted about the stereotypical consumer of each while I record the descriptives on the blackboard. (I also ask if anyone knows any of the artists/songs; they almost never do.) Over several years of doing this, I've noted a surprising amount of variation in whom students assume listen to each genre. I explain to them that in the past classical and jazz music were thought of as high brow cultural capital while country, hip hop, and metal music were thought of as low brow; appreciating certain musics demonstrated sophistication and aided in distinguishing oneself from others in terms of social class.

Importantly at this point, I explain how these divisions no longer hold. We are generally all cultural omnivores, now. I use myself as an example. I ask the students to guess which genre is my favorite from the examples we used in class. Most guess jazz or classical (probably given my education and professional presentation of self in the classroom). They are invariable shocked--and often angered--when I reveal that I am a metalhead. I quickly tell them, though, that while I have my favorites, I do own all five of these songs which clearly places me among the omnivores. I also speculate that if I randomly chose one of their MP3 players and scanned through their playlists that I'd find at least a smattering of several genres.

Online Lottery

Here in Georgia, we will soon be able to purchase lottery tickets online. As an employee at a public college, a big chunk of my paycheck comes from lottery revenue that funds the HOPE Scholarship program. I would rather it didn't.

Lotteries amount to regressive taxes. Those with lower levels of income and lower levels of education are more likely to purchase lottery tickets. The revenue from the lottery, though, is more likely to benefit those with higher levels of income and higher levels of education (because their kids have access to more educational resources that set them up to go to college and win HOPE scholarships to pay for college). It's quite a perverse system.

But, here is the interesting part sociologically: the digital divide in this country means that the people who are most likely to buy lottery tickets (i.e. the poor and undereducated) are also those with the lowest levels of internet access. I'm not sure how the state figures that this will "increase the lottery's revenue by millions."

Monasteries or Resorts?

Back from a week and a half away, visiting friends and family. It is always nice to unplug for a while. Regular posting to resume.

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The academe has been wrestling recently with the arms race in student affairs that has resulted in what many have called the country-clubization of higher ed. No longer are students content to matriculate into relatively austere cinder-block dorm rooms with communal bathrooms and industrial cafeterias. Now, students expect apartment-like amenities, multimillion dollar recreation facilities with moving rock-climbing walls and lazy rivers, and fast food restaurants. The leisure class mentality is creeping into colleges. There are two major problems with this. First, as with virtually all arms races, it is unsustainable; there just aren't enough resources to keep up. The financial strain that country-clubization puts onto colleges and, in the case of public colleges, state funds hardly seems justifiable, especially if it starts to impact the level of education an institution can offer. Second, it strikes many as overly indulgent. Is this what the college experience should be?

As a sociologist, I like the idea of my relatively privileged students being forced to taste a life of comparative deprivation, to catch a glimpse of how the other half lives, if only for about four years. Some might argue that college should be a time free of distractions, that austerity offers focus, but I don't really buy that one. Students shouldn't be forced to live like ascetic monks just to receive a decent education. So, where is the balance? I'm struggling with this one. Clearly, the current path is wrought with problems, but what is the better way and how to get there?

"Hot Problems" of the Privileged

On the heels of Rebecca Black's "Friday," I give you Double Take's "Hot Problems":

Lyrics:

Look at me, and tell me the truth.

What do you do when people don't know what we go through?

They see my blonde hair, blue eyes, and class,

but they don't know I have a really big heart.

Please don't get me wrong;

I know that I'm hot, but textbook perfection really takes a lot.

Weird guys call my phone, and girls call me names,

but like Miley said, "I can't be tamed."

Hot girls, we have problems, too.

We're just like you—except we're hot.

The world needs to open their eyes and realize

we're not perfect, and sometimes, we lie.

I got the look. I got the butt,

but those things don't make me a [slut].

Boys call me stuck up. Girls say I'm conceited.

On behalf of all hot girls, those comments aren't needed.

Just 'cause I'm pretty, I have to be dumb.

"I don't care about wits; I just wanna have fun."

People start rumors and say things about me.

Funny thing is I didn't go to that party.

Why, oh why, can't you see?

You all are just like me.

We make mistakes and get in trouble.

Now, you know our hot-girls trouble.

 Just kidding; we're perfect.

Contrary to what you may be thinking, this appears not to be a joke. These blonde-haired, blue-eyed, upper class, self-proclaimed perfect girls do actually believe that they have problems on par with their non-hot peers. One of the advantages of the privileged is that they are rarely forced to acknowledge their own privilege, unlike the disadvantaged who are continually required to confront their lack of privilege. This is just a particularly egregious and callous example of the ignorance of the privileged.

I share this video with you for a couple of reasons. First, my misery needs company. If I have to hear this, so do you. [jokes] Second, I believe this music video could be put to good use in the classroom. Here are a handful of suggested questions that might spark conversation among students:

1. In what ways are these girls advantaged over others?
2. Do you think they recognize those advantages? If not, why not?
3. In what ways, beyond just emotionally, could their lack of perspective be detrimental to their peers?
4. How might privileged people like these be made aware of their advantages?
5. In what ways are you advantaged over others?

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UPDATE (1:12 PM):

     6. In what ways are beauty and class related?

College Is Classist

I recently had a conversation with a colleague who argued that my idealized notion of a liberal arts education was classist. I was articulating how professional majors (e.g. teaching and nursing) were contrary to the mission of liberal arts institutions. She countered that we had a duty to graduate employable students and that those who sought out liberal arts majors were privileged in a way that not all students are.

First, let's be clear: most students matriculate to colleges because of classist motives; they aspire to upward mobility, and by getting a college degree, they are positioning themselves quite well for that opportunity. A college degree might not have the same value that it once did, but it's still a far better investment in terms of time and money (or, more often, debt) than not going to college. College is classist.

Moreover, we shouldn't apologize for this. College, like all institutions in a capitalistic society, is about distinction. It is capitalism, not higher education itself, that insists on the creation and reproduction of class. We do run into trouble, however, when access to a college education becomes restricted based on class. Education should be a meritocratic equalizer in this way. When I write that college is classist, I mean this in the sense of output, not input, although the latter is too often true as well.

But, should college be classist? I say no. The means to that is through social change, not higher ed reform, though.

Beer as Cultural Capital

I started a tradition a couple years ago when my wife and I moved for my current job of hosting an annual craft beer tasting party during Oktoberfest. Here is part of the boilerplate I use in the invites:

Bring a craft beer to share. This could be a six-pack, a four-pack of the high ABV stuff, a classy 40 oz., or a fancy 750 mL. The point is for everyone to try a bunch of tasty, new, and exciting beers while enjoying each others’ company.

What counts as a "craft" brew, you ask? Well, it doesn't have to be expensive, but it does need to be flavorful; it doesn't need to be a microbrew, but it does need to be distinctive. Blue Moon, for example, is certainly a craft beer, but it's relatively cheap and is produced by the same macrobrewery that brings us Coors Light. If you show up with Miller Lite, we'll all laugh at you and then ask you to leave. If you show up with Three Floyds Oak Aged Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout, you'll be our new best friend.

Initially, some of our friends read this as "classist" or "snobby." Sociologically, I think this is ripe for analysis.

Beer has generally been seen as plebeian, even working class, especially compared to other potent potables like liqueurs and wines. I suspect that the "craft" adjective alters this relationship in a way similar to the difference between Wonder Bread™ and artisan loaves (see People Like Us). We can go back to Broudieu who argued that tastes are about class distinction, that they are not innate but are learned, and, through them, social class is reproduced.

The example I always use in Intro to Soc is wine pairing. I ask, "If you invited your boss over for dinner and were serving steak, what kind of beverage would you serve with it?" Several--but, importantly, not all--of the students answer, "Red wine." I then ask them how they know this. Most mention learning from parents or friends. We talk about how these pairings aren't necessarily inherent to the food and drink themselves, how on some level the knowledge is arbitrary, but nonetheless, is consequential. I say, "What might your boss think if you served white wine with steak or red wine with chicken?" The consensus is that that is a faux pas and that one's boss might make some kind of personal judgment about him/her which could, even if unfair, affect one's career trajectory. Arbitrary knowledge matters.

Is my prohibition against flavor-neutral macrobrews a similar demarcation? Am I entrenching class distinction and reproduction by cultivating this brand of cultural capital? I think there is a legitimate case to be made that the low brow beers (e.g. Bud Light, Miller Lite, Budweiser, Cools Light, etc.) have been degraded by the capitalistic process (see Beer Wars) and, thus, should be discarded as bad products per se.

That said, I suspect that beer may be a new area of cultural capital negotiation. I could rethink the above example for the Intro students and ask, "If you invited your boss over for dinner, what kind of beer would you offer him?," I imagine that there would be more debate among the students. Some might want to serve a Russian River Pliny the Younger while others would be fine with a Miller High Life.

I'm going to keep having my beer tasting party, though.

Thinking back to the Beer Summit, I'm wondering how much we can read into the beer selections:

Pres. Obama had a Bud Light, Sgt. Crowley had a Blue Moon, Prof. Gates had a Sam Adams Light, and VP Biden had a Buckler.

See these previous posts on beer.