Class and Privilege

Paper Summary:

Pierre Bourdieu observed that human beings demonstrate a strong need to classify objects and groups. A large part of a person's identity is determined by how he or she is classified into social groups that are divided by factors like ethnicity, social or economic status, race and gender. In addition to identity, a person's social and economic privilege are derived from and defined by his or her economic class. In many ways, the economic class a person is born into remains a determining factor over other aspects of his or her life. This paper thus draws from the writings of Marxist theory and Noam Chomsky to examine the continuing influence of class and its concomitant social and economic privilege.

From the Paper:

"Despite the astute realization that consciousness is defined in relation to one's economic conditions, this classical Marxist analysis of a superstructure (political institutions and consciousness) resting on an economic base proves inadequate to explain the many forms of social stratification. For instance, gender and race often affect privilege, even more than class. Furthermore, even Marx himself recognized that the peasant and working class often use their limited voting rights to further subjugate themselves, rather than establishing themselves as a revolutionary challenge to the ruling class (Fletscher 89)."

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