Identity by Florian Coulmas

Author:Florian Coulmas
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780192563613
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2019-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

Crosscurrents

The past several decades have seen changes whose gravity matches those of the industrial revolution. Previously stable settings and relationships crumbled under the impact of socio-economic developments that transformed the social system. The most consequential changes have been the following.

First, while parts of the working class became more affluent, obscuring the distinction between blue-collar and white-collar work, economic disparities between rich and poor not just continued but widened. Privatization, deregulation, and new forms of employment that made life courses more varied and less predictable drove the individualization of society to new highs, undermining the solidarity of the working class to the extent that it lost its contours.

Second, the rising labour force participation of women reinforced this trend in as much as it contributed to distorting the image of the proletarian worker’s identity, which, female and child labour notwithstanding, once was decidedly male. In many instances, more female workers also meant more double-income households, another factor of rising inequality. Lifestyle and consumption patterns came to supersede class as a determiner of social identity.

Third, in the former colonial countries of the West, immigrants from southern parts of the globe filled the space opened up by a vanishing proletariat. As one of the intertwining threads of the fabric of globalization, this process resulted in the ethnification of social class. In the United States, slavery had laid the groundwork of a social hierarchy in which race was a central dimension of inequality and where race is still a strong predictor of per capita income—today: White, Asian, Black, Hispanic, in that order. Similar patterns appeared in Western European countries in the wake of decolonization. Nowadays, an ethnic underclass is a common feature in many cities. This is a society where housing rent varies with the tenants’ ethnicity, and where your station in life may be a stop on a commuter train; for instance Aulnay-sous-Bois on the Île-de-France Line 4 in Paris, or Thamesmead Town Centre, a stop on the 244 bus line in London, where chances are you will see mostly black people get on and off. In Paris, London, or Brussels, skin colour, place of residence, infant mortality, and per capita income nowadays show significant correlations formerly associated with social class and are hence indicative of new social divisions and identities.

Fourth, level of education (literacy) has always been an important variable of social stratification. With the advent of the digital age and the knowledge society, it became more important than ever, opening up new opportunities of participation in economic life across social classes. Certified skills are still valuable in the marketplace, but at the same time, new ways of making money not dependent on any formal education have emerged in cyberspace. ‘Disruptors’, who interfere with or destroy normal processes to try out and benefit from some innovation that may or may not be useful, are celebrated as heroes, while educators promote the idea of lifelong learning for many professions. This is a society with reduced continuity and stability, where changing jobs in the course of one’s professional life is common and attachments are contingent.

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