Too Close for Comfort: How Social Class Shapes the Framing of Mobility in the Academy

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 17. The Structure of Academe: Graduate Students, Faculty, and Staff

Abstract

We examine how sociologists from varied class positions conceptualized the role of class background in their field. The data comprise narratives drawn from 875 responses to an open-ended survey question. Treating these responses as stories about class, we focus on where respondents located themselves in these stories and on what facets they described as most meaningful. While almost all respondents agreed that class background is important, first-generation, working-class respondents described class in first-person language and focused on disadvantages they had experienced. By contrast, continuing-generation and economically-advantaged respondents described class in third-person terms, focusing on the disadvantages of others. Further, respondents emphasized different facets of class that shape professional academic experiences, focusing on social ties and cultural knowledge respectively. We argue that although understanding class barriers is important, this understanding is incomplete when people fail to acknowledge how they have been advantaged, allowing those advantages to become invisible and normative.

Authors

• Elizabeth M. Lee, Saint Joseph's University

• Anthony Abraham Jack, Boston University