Telling Tales of Oppression and Dysfunction: Narratives of Class Identity Reformation

Allison L. Hurst

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.3.2.05

Authors

Allison L. Hurst Kenyon College, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.3.2.05

Keywords:

Working Class, Identity, Narrative, Social Mobility, Higher Education

Abstract

I compare experiences and class identity formation of working-class college students in college. I find that all working-class students experience college as culturally different from their home cultures and have different understandings and interpretations of this difference based on race, class, and gender positions. I find that students develop fundamentally different strategies for navigating these cultural differences based on the strength or weakness of their structural understandings of class and inequality in US society. Students with strong structural understandings develop Loyalist strategies by which they retain close ties to their home culture. Students with more individual understandings of poverty and inequality develop Renegade strategies by which they actively seek immersion in the middleclass culture of the college. These strategic orientations are logical responses to the classed nature of our educational system and have very significant implications for the value and experience of social mobility in an allegedly meritocratic society.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Allison L. Hurst, Kenyon College, USA

Allison L. Hurst (PhD) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. Trained as both a lawyer and sociologist, she is interested in issues of class inequality and class consciousness. Her courses include Class Studies, Class Issues and the Law, From Hard Times to Hard Time: The Law of Prisons and Welfare Reform, and Critical Legal Studies. Her current research examines the impact of student debt on college students’ lives and opportunities for mobility.

References

Adair, Vivyan C. & Sandra L. Dahlberg (2003) Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Almanza, Leticia (2003) “Seven Years in Exile.” Pp. 157-169 in Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America, edited by V.C. Adair & S.L. Dahlberg. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London; New York: Verso.

Anna, Pam (1993) “Pass the Cake: The Politics of Gender Class, and Text in the Academic Workplace.” Pp. 165-178 in Working-Class Women in the Academy, edited by M. M. Tokarczyk & E. A. Fay. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Anson, Robert Sam (1987) Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry. New York: Random House.

Belton, Brian (2005) Questioning Gypsy Identity: Ethnic Narratives in Britain and America. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Brantlinger, Ellen A. (1993) The Politics of Social Class in Secondary School: Views of Affluent and Impoverished Youth. New York; London: Teachers College Columbia University.

Charlesworth, Simon J. (2000) A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489419

Dews, C. L. Barney and Carolyn Leste Law. (1995) This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Edwards, Julie Olsen (1995) “Class Notes from the Lecture Hall.” Pp. 338-358 in Liberating Memory, edited by Janet Zandy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Fine, Michelle (1991) Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban Public High School. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Finn, Patrick J. (1999) Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Foley, Douglas E. (1990) Learning Capitalist Culture: Deep in the Heart of Tejas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Fordham, Signithia (1996) Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226229980.001.0001

Hairston, Jason LaGarde (2004) “Analyzing the Experiences and Perceptions of Students from a Background of Generational Poverty Who Have Successfully Completed a Bachelor’s Degree Program.” Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, University of Oregon, Eugene, USA.

Hoggart, Richard (1957) The Uses of Literacy: Changing Patterns in English Mass Culture. Fair Lawn, NJ: Essential Books.

Hooks, Bell (1993) “Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education.” Pp. 99-111 in Working-Class Women in the Academy, edited by M.M. Tokarczyk & E.A. Fay. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Hooks, Bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Jackson, Brian & Dennis Marsden (1962) Education and the Working Class: Some General Themes Raised by a Study of 88 Working-Class Children in a Northern Industrial City. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Jensen, Barbara (2004) “Across the Great Divide: Crossing Classes and Clashing Cultures.” Pp. 168 – 183 in What’s Class Got to Do with It?, edited by Michael Zweig. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Kadi, Joanna (1996) Thinking Class: Sketches from a Cultural Worker. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Lareau, Annette (2003) Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lareau, Annette and Jeffrey J. Shultz (1996). Journeys through Ethnography: Realistic Accounts of Fieldwork. Boulder: Westview Press.

Linde, Charlotte (1993) Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. New York: Oxford University Press.

Loeb, Paul Rogat (1994) Generation at the Crossroads: Apathy and Action on the American Campus. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Lubrano, Alfred (2004) Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Lutrell, Wendy (1997) Schoolsmart and Motherwise: Working-Class Women’s Identity and Schooling. New York: Routledge.

MacAdams, Dan P. (2006) The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live by. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

MacLeod, Jay (1995) Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood. Boulder: Westview Press.

Mahony, Pat and Christine Zmroczek (1997) Class Matters: Working-Class Women’s Perspectives on Social Class. London: Taylor & Francis.

Mitchell, Tonya (2003) “If I Survive, It Will Be Despite Welfare Reform: Reflections of a Former Welfare Student.” Pp. 113-119 in Reclaiming Class, edited by V.C. Adair & S.L. Dahlberg. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Morley, Louise (1997) “A Class of One’s Own: Women, Social Class, and the Academy.” 109-122 in Class Matters, edited by P. Mahony & C. Zmroczek. London: Taylor & Francis.

Muñoz, Daniel G. (1986) “Identifying Areas of Stress for Chicano Undergraduates.” Pp. 131-156 in Latino College Students, edited by M.A. Olivas. New York: Teachers College Press.

Muzzatti, Stephen L. and C. Vincent Samarco (2006) Reflections from the Wrong side of the Tracks: Class, Identity, and the Working Class Experience in Academe. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Newman, Robert (2004) The Fountain at the Center of the World. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press.

Ogbu, John U. (2003) Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410607188

Price, Jeremy N. (2000) Against the Odds: The Meaning of School and Relationships in the Lives of Six Young African-American Men. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp.

Reay, Diane (1998) “Surviving in Dangerous Places: Working-Class Women, Women’s Studies, and Higher Education.” Women’s Studies International Forum 21:11-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-5395(97)00087-3

Rodriguez, Richard (2003) Hunger for Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. New York: New York University Press.

Rosenwald, George C. and Richard L. Ochberg, editors (1992) Storied Lives: The Cultural Politics of Self-Understanding. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Ryan, Jake & Charles Sackrey (1984) Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class. Boston: South End Press.

Ryan, Jake (2005) “No Longer Strangers, and Academia is Not Paradise: From Awareness to Consciousness in Action.” Paper presented at 10th Annual Working-Class Academics Conference, July 28, New York, USA.

Taylor, Gary (2005) Buying Whiteness: Race. Culture and Identity from Columbu to Hip Hop. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Tokarczyk, Michelle M. (2004) “Promises to Keep: Working-Class Students and Higher Education.” Pp. 161 - 167 in What’s Class Got to Do With It?, edited by M. Zweig. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Tokarczyk, Michelle M. & Elizabeth A. Fay (1993) Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Villanueva, Victor (1993) Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English.

Weiler, Jeanne Drysdale (2000) Codes and Contradictions: Race, Gender Identity, and Schooling. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Welsch, Kathleen (2005) Those Winter Sundays: Female Academics and Their Working-Class Parents. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Welsh, Irvine (2002) Porno. London: Jonathan Cape.

Winant, Racial Conditions (1994) Racial Conditions: Politics, Theory, Comparison. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttss2b

Wright, Erik Olin (1997) Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis. Cambridge; New York; Paris: Cambridge University Press.

Zandy, Janet (1995) Liberating Memory: Our Work and Our Working-Class Consciousness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.