Social Class Stigma

959 Words2 Pages

Social class is more than a word, more than a label, it is a description of the norms and values of a social group in society. It is powerful description, a description so powerful that many people live their lives around it. With all groups, there are stigmas that surround it. A stigma is a negative social label that not only changes others’ behavior toward a person but also alters that person’s own self-concept and social identity. In order to show that social class is not just an economic label of groups but a social construction, Robert Granfield uses the idea of stigma to discuss the experience of working-class students in prestigious universities of law. He does so in his article ‘Making it by Faking it’. In his article, Granfield discusses …show more content…

In fact, many of those students experienced identity issues on their climb to a higher class. The attempt to manage their class stigma led to what Goffman (1963) calls identity-ambivalence. “Working class students who sought to exit their background could neither embrace their group nor let it go” (Granfield, p. 343). One of the main issues that working-class students had with earning social capital or socializing with those of the elite-class was their guilt. As long as the guilt of them leaving their previous class behind is there, those students will continue to have trouble successfully climbing to a higher …show more content…

However, overcoming the stigma is more an individualist effort than a collectivist effort (p. 348). Goffman’s research on stigma influenced Granfield’s research in many ways as seen above. It is because of hegemony that we feel a need to change our identity to successfully adapt in environments dominated by social classes different from ours. We change our identity though socialization, usually with the help of an agent (of socialization), in this article it was the school. However, one question that sociologists still wonder is if we can ever truly adapt to a different social class or forever be a stranger in paradise, and forever feel like outsiders in both our original class from which we came from and new class to which we

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