Tag: life

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 4: Some Reflexions & Notes on Habitus, Luck & Biological Capital

February 11, 2018

“Being reflexive means being conscious in a way that makes our normal practice, however much it felt like we were consciously doing it before, seem like unconscious. […] By analysing how I came to acquire the scholastic disposition and become academically successful we can look at the structures which led to this, so policy can encourage these types of results.
[…]
Biological transfer is, although stochastic and probabilistic, it is not absolutely deterministic. […] Our statistical techniques can never give us 100% certainty (if they did, we would have hard laws rather than statistical probabilities), human errors, or all the other kinds of problems associated with human research, we always face margins of errors” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 4: Some Reflexions & Notes on Habitus, Luck & Biological Capital

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 3: Gaining the Scholastic Disposition

January 21, 2018

“For the earlier parts of childhood, we were fairly middle class in the sense that I don’t remember ever going hungry, living in a comfortable suburban area where I would play outside with other children on our street. Culturally however I was fairly deprived compared to more middle class children in that, although I showed an interest in certain culturally valued pursuits, my parents did not have the propensity to invest in my education further […] I sometimes lived with my maternal grandparents […] It was probably most during these years that I was inculcated with values of hard work, gratitude, self-reliance and thrift. Although not exactly poor, my grandparents probably inherited these values from their parents […] success might have motivated me to adopt a more industrious attitude to my schoolwork if not for the following years not affording me the stability I needed to focus…”

In this article I have begun to explore how I came to possess a scholastic disposition and certain values which I have been able to exchange and convert into different forms of capital that have allowed me to be socially mobile. … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 3: Gaining the Scholastic Disposition

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 2: Class-based Bullying, Fear & Envy

November 10, 2017

“[…] Social class even effects the ways we think and feel. […] the education system is a key point of socialisation and education as an institution, along with the family, is one of they most significant experiences which develop everyone. […]working-class children internalise an understanding of their low academic achievement as pathological, which in Bourdieusian terms translates to them accepting and valuing symbolic mastery, which is required for academic achievement, as privileged over practical mastery. They come to accept the doxa, the orthodoxy, that academic achievement makes one worth more and so on one level misrecognise that their acceptance of this doxa perpetuates its privileged value which keeps them in a dominated position by reproducing general class relations, and on another level, they understand this which is why it leads to class based bullying.” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 2: Class-based Bullying, Fear & Envy

The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 7 of 7

October 29, 2017

“Although after years of higher education have allowed me to reflect on the experience and articulate it, these experiences were hardly unique and reflect the harsh, dull reality of millions of workers. It’s not difficult to find these types of critique throughout the world of contemplative thought. I only repeat them here as examples to highlight the point that this kind of criticism of our working life is not uncommon, however I feel that much of this critique does not offer much in the way of realistic ways out of this predicament. I think a key part of overcoming these obstacles is realising that the social position of the worker is the most important category that links these situations and imbues those subordinate to them with common interests to transcend the current system.” … More The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 7 of 7

The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 6

September 27, 2017

“Using dramaturgical analysis, we see here how the actors need to perform convincingly enough that the audience doesn’t have the illusion of the overall interaction shattered- this is called impression management. Here, positive affect is a goal of the corporation because it increases profits but this extra work, which Arlie Hochschild labels “emotional labour” isn’t considered renumerable work.
This emotional labour not only compounds the exploitation of the worker, as they produce more surplus value for their employer, but it is a more obvious example of the alienation caused by capitalism.” … More The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 6

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 1: Introduction

September 10, 2017

“[Diane] Reay points out how some sociological theories consider class identities consist of the practices and accounts of such practices done by members of a class, but she believes that how members of a class think and feel about those practices is a key, yet overlooked, feature of class identity. […] there is a psychic economy implicit in the reproduction of social classes whereby social class causes psychic effects which contribute to the reproduction of class, which cause psychic effects on that class that reproduce it again, and so on. […] Reay shows how experiences [of school] might not show explicit knowledge of social class, but at least an implicit understanding about class differences which effect their attitudes and practices. [In this series] I will also be reflecting on some of my own experiences of school as I think they have effected my own thoughts and practices.” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 1: Introduction

The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 5

September 2, 2017

“I believe that the uncritical acceptance of such methods is a result of the inculcation of values of propriety and the normalisation of examination (practices which are so generalised in modern society, they led Foucault to call it “the disciplinarian society”). Having eyes upon you, whether of the state or one’s employer (in reductionist terms, both can easily be conceived as collaborators in class domination, hence enemies/dominators of the working class and so indistinguishable in that regard) is just a part of daily proletarian life in contemporary British society.” … More The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 5

The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 4

July 7, 2017

“The pathetic value and arbitrariness of rewards at foodchain made the punishment aspect of games the main incentive for competition. Some of these punishments, as discussed in the earlier part of this series, were explicit, however, some were seemingly (and possibly) accidental side-effects. […] Beyond the unfairness of rewards and punishments, and the arbitration involved in the allocation of them, the sales game itself was rigged.” … More The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 4

Experiences in Corporate America: Workers Rights | Guest Article by writer Dylan Yoki

July 5, 2017

“As it stands right now, there is little to no protection for the average U.S. worker and this lack of protection often leads to a subdued work force that will tolerate any abuse from an employer.
This personal account, while only encompassing employment at one company, has been indicative of my experience in the corporate world of the U.S. and the unethical business practices that have become all too common.” … More Experiences in Corporate America: Workers Rights | Guest Article by writer Dylan Yoki

The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 3

June 19, 2017

“At foodchain, the objective of the game was to maximise certain types of additional sales and compete with fellow workers on daily scoreboards, displayed for all workers to see. Falling below a certain threshold cumulative score for the week could result in penalisation and winning meant possible rewards. Domination is more apparent when considering penalisation might include being made redundant, or more perniciously, scheduling less hours of work for the “losing” worker.” … More The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 3