Catholic Schooling in a Culture of Choice: Generational Differences in a Working Class Neighborhood

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 07. Traditions, Ideologies, and Modernity

Abstract

This paper analyzes how changing institutions and economic realities produce and are produced by the emergence of a culture of individuality and choice over a culture of traditional roles within communities. Catholic schooling and the neighborhood-specific community that accompanied it are now often endangered species in neighborhoods where they once played an important role in the organization of social life. I build upon recent literature considering the change from collective participation to individual survival within working-class communities. This paper situates 36 interviews with working-class respondents recruited from the Port Richmond and Kensington neighborhoods in Philadelphia within the context of these changes. Analysis of these interviews engages the literature on self-identity and modernity which suggests that young adults from across the class spectrum are adapting to a self-actualization process of emerging adulthood.

Two interrelated stories emerge from these interviews, one structural and one cultural. The structural story revolves around the changing economic structure of the post-industrial United States and its disproportionate negative impact on working class communities, as well as Catholic Church as an organizing institution in Philadelphia’s white working class communities. The cultural story differentiates the younger and older generations of working class Americans perhaps, and depicts the changing emphasis on individualism versus community, and self-identity versus role fulfillment. The working-class youth in this study are at the forefront of a nexus of cultural and institutional transformation, one with which their traditional upbringing and fewer economic resources may clash.

Author

• Elizabeth Mary Talbert, Johns Hopkins University