Nick Caverly 09/19/2011 GANT 6245 W1 Response Situating Class and Status In the opening of Webers essay Class,

Status, Party, he writes, Now: classes, status groups, and parties are phenomena of the distribution of power within a community (1958:181). Although some issue may be taken with his determination of what constitutes a community, it is easily seen that Weber is not describing a single hierarchical class structure as his predecessors had done, but for three separate, yet interrelated ranking systems present concurrently within societies. Moreover, these systems are intimately related to the sources of economic, social, and political power present among the people whom they connect. The utility of unbounding of class and status categories is observable in Jones chapter on the gendered anxieties surrounding capital circulation among Indonesias emerging middle class groups. Together, Jones and Webers pieces call into question the utility of conceptualizing classes as distinct cultural categories at the expense of ignoring status group subjectivities. Whereas Marxs writings strictly divide the social world between an elite bourgeoisie and the poor working class (leaving only marginal room for a temporally limited middle class), Weber determines that class structure is more varied, saying class determination based on property alone is insufficient (1947: 425). That said, Weberian classes are determined by market interests; thus, it is possible to situate middle classes as people without property who possess marketable skills necessary to elevate themselves economically above proletarians who have neither property nor marketable skills (Giddens 1973:43; Weber 1958:183). As the unifying factor between people of the same class is purely an economic relationship, Weber posits that classes in and of themselves do not normally comprise a community and as such their members need not be aware of one another (1958:184-186). It is here that the possibility of another social hierarchy arises, based not on the economic ties between individuals, but upon the interests and values they have in common. As opposed to his idea of classes, Webers status groups are usually communities, as they are formed on the basis of having a shared lifestyle or position (1947:429; 1958:187). In this respect, the members of a status group (or social strata) normally know each other or are able to identify themselves on the basis of distinct social characteristics (e.g. way of dress, material possessions, place/style of residence, etc). Jones chapter on Indonesian middle class subjectivities delves into the complex discourses surrounding the appropriate use of feminine income and status during a time of political and economic change. Her analysis centers on how female wage earners, a symbol of the regions burgeoning middle class, are encouraged to purify their income through the purchase of material goods (Jones 2011:210-211). Their purchases allow capital to transcend its symbolic existence as a symbol of government corruption (237). Nevertheless, the purchases made by women are further scrutinized, with western goods eliciting questions of corruption and traditional Islamic materials begetting praise of the buyers piety (225). Thus, the ways in which capital is cleansed of its dirty nature become an index for a persons social status. Webers writings on class provided an interesting response to Marx, whose ideas on class I am reading this week for Critical Foundations. For better or worse, I began reading Weber before noticing that I would be reading Marx as well. Because of this, I found myself constantly critiquing Marxs strict boundaries between classes that leave little room for social movement. I was also struck by Giddens discussion of Weber and Marxs conflicting explanations of the states role in modern capitalism. As Weber witnessed the transformation of Germany into an industrial state and not a bourgeois society as Marx had predicted, he was in a unique position to refute the preceding theorists claim (1973:49).