Cultural Capital and Social Class

1.Briefly describe Bourdieu’s theory of ‘cultural capital’ and discuss how it might influence our experience of consumer culture. 

2.How might a technology like Instagram be used to challenge gender stereotypes? 

3.Privilege and disadvantage were recurring themes in this course. Briefly explain what these terms mean and discuss how one of them (either privilege or disadvantage) can influence our experience of unemployment. 

4.How does the idea of “emotional labour” relate to gender identity?

1.The term cultural capital by Pierre Bordieu connotes the collection of symbolic elements includes the tastes, skills, clothing, posture, mannerisms, credentials and material belongings that are  acquired by a person through being part of a particular social class. Sharing of similar forms of cultural capital and the same taste and preferences define the social class. The concept of cultural capital is influenced by the Marx’s view of class struggle. Bordieu extended the argument of Marx’s economic value associated with capital and supplemented it with the symbolic value. According to Bordieu cultural capital exists in three primary forms-implicit practical knowledge, skills and disposition, objectified in the cultural objects and institutionalized in the educational credentials, official degrees that exists in an embodied form (Denniss 2018). Cultural capital is strengthened in an overdetermined way in the social milieu of the elites. This can be observed in the education of the parents whose occupations demands the cultivation of cultural skills , upbringing in the families, high level of formal education in the families and institutions that attract the cultural elites  who are studying in domain that encourage abstract thinking. These diverse, redundant yet connected dispositions of the cultural elites subjectively becomes embodied as ways of thinking, feeling and acting through the generative social structure (Featherstone 1987). The term consumer culture refers to the material culture in which a specific relationship is created between the product and the consumer. In the advanced capitalist countries there has been found there is class patterning of consumption. Materialism is one important aspect through the social identities are constructed. For the economic elites pursuing the newest fashions and opting for technologies that are sophisticated, trendy and reflects luxury. People with small and relatively low income are more concerned with the material satisfaction of the product rather than the aesthetic appeal of the product (Dumais 2002). This can be attributed to the material deprivation in their life that shape and structure their taste of products.

Social Media and Challenging Gender Norms

2.In the age of digitization social media platforms have been condemned by scholars for creating false consciousness about relationships and have been accused of contributing to the distorted reality. Despite the criticism that revolves around the discourse of social media, social media platforms have become spaces for challenging the norms by providing platform to the people who believe in flouting the gender norms. One such illustration is that of Petra Collins who is a prominent photographer has teamed up with Instagram to work on the #MyStory campaign that began with Collins that feature the work of 28 Instagram women whose accounts have come to the limelight for challenging the gender stereotypes and promoting the value of inclusivity (Correa, Hinsley and De Zuniga 2010). The motivation for creating the #MyStory creating the images for women or the female-identifying people that would be more realistic and inclusive. Media images of women can be quite unrealistic as it premises on the patriarchal notions of a woman’s body. A woman is expected to be presentable manifesting all the feminine qualities. /the media representation of female bodies set unrealistic standards that when emulated by the young adolescents leads to unfathomable repercussions. In this context, such initiatives emerging from gender consciousness. As argued by Baudrillard that we live in a world where there are more and more images and less and less meanings. Social media platforms are saturated with images of people of different genders and sexualities. However, instagram can challenge the gender norms by providing space to people post body-positive images and create a consciousness through the followers of influential people who would promote such values (Schwartz et al. 2013). Another phenomenon that has observed on Instagram is the rise of men who enjoy doing makeup and believes in embracing their feminine side without any reluctance. The phenomenon of defeminisation of makeup has led to men who are fond of makeup ensconcing their position through the demonstration of their makeup skills

3.A recent report on migration and unemployment found that the unemployment rate among the immigrants have rose like never before and it is the Middle Eastern immigrants who face extremely difficulty in employment. It has been found that the immigrants from the African subcontinents and Middle East are three times more likely compared to their European and Asian counterparts to be out of work in the first five years of their settlement. It has been reported that 33 per cent jobless rate has rose higher and is currently six times than the national average. According to scholars who expertise on Islamic migration, this obnoxious rate of unemployment in Australia can be attributed to the discriminatory and bigoted attitude of the white, colonial employers towards employees with the name “Mohammad” and women who are garbed in hijab. The Australian Bureau of Statistics  has found that the Islamic  immigrants find it extremely difficult to find the job. Among the Middle-Eastern jobseekers employment rate is 17.5 per cent whereas for the Southeast Asian migrants the rate is 3.6 per cent and 1.9 per cent for those who belong the eastern and southern Europe (Barraket 2007). The Department of Social Services is of the opinion that one of the challenges faced by the immigrants is language difficulty and therefore, they would require additional training compared to the English speakers in seeking job. It has been found that in the Australian context refugees and migrants are subjected to systematic social barriers in securing meaningful employment. These barriers include non-recognition of the qualifications that have been attained outside Australia, explicit discrimination and the embedded racism that is operative during the recruitment of the employees and in the determination of workplace behaviour. According to Growe and Zwi forced immigration can be understood through the discourse of othering that is manifested in constructing the immigrants alien to the mainstream dominant culture. This power dimension of the dominant culture ensures that the immigrants remain marginalized within the broader populace.

Unemployment Rates among Immigrants

4.Emotional labour as a concept was proposed by Arlie Hochschild (1983) propounds that emotional labour involves the suppression or induction of the personal feeling of an individual with the aim of projecting an outward appearance to create a sense of being cared among others (Brook 2009). Emotional labour constitutes of three dimensions- firstly it is concerned with the face-to-face or voice contact with the public. Secondly, it demands that the worker would produce emotional state in another person and thirdly, it would enable the employer to regulate and control the emotional state of the employee through supervision and training. Emotional labour demands that the individual would train himself or herself in suppressing their emotions with the aim of being more professional towards duties (Borjas 1986). This is particularly evident in the healthcare organization in case of the nurses. Emotional labour has been largely associated as the rightful domain of women and is manifested in the affective role played by women in the private sphere. This affective role and performance of emotional labour is expected from them when they participate in the public sphere.

The professional socialization of a nurse entails that she needs to be caring, benevolent, exhibit maternal attitude and remain subordinate to the more patriarchal profession of medicine (Burdess 2011). The patient community as well as the public construct the nurses as angels of mercy and expecting them to conform to the image set by Florence Nightingale. The projection of emotional care an inherent attribute of women invisibilizes the veracity of emotional labour performed by the nurses in the performance of their duties. It has been found that emotional labour is devalued compared to physical labour. However, it is emotional labour that makes the patient and nurse relationship easier and it acts as an invisible bond that connects the nurse with the patient ( Gray 2010). It has been argued that intimacy can lead to the healing of the patients and help in managing the disclosures of the emotional nature that facilitates in the sharing of information and patient-centred practise.

References

Barraket, J., 2007. Pathways to employment for migrants and refugees? The case of social enterprise. In Proceedings of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and the Sociological Association of Aotearoa New Zealand (SAANZ) Joint Conference, 2007 (pp. 1-8). The Sociological Association of Australia (TASA).

Borjas, G.J., 1986. The self-employment experience of immigrants.

Brook, P., 2009. In critical defence of ‘emotional labour’ refuting Bolton’s critique of Hochschild’s concept. Work, employment and society, 23(3), pp.531-548.

Burdess, N., 2011. The social basis of health and illness. Public sociology: an introduction to Australian sociology, pp.330-348.

Correa, T., Hinsley, A.W. and De Zuniga, H.G., 2010. Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(2), pp.247-253.

Denniss, R., 2018. From lawn to lattes~ The cult (ure) of consumption. AQ: Australian Quarterly, 89(2), pp.10-42.

Dumais, S.A., 2002. Cultural capital, gender, and school success: The role of habitus. Sociology of education, pp.44-68.

Featherstone, M., 1987. Lifestyle and consumer culture. Theory, Culture & Society, 4(1), pp.55-70.

Gray, B., 2010. Emotional labour, gender and professional stereotypes of emotional and physical contact, and personal perspectives on the emotional labour of nursing. Journal of Gender Studies, 19(4), pp.349-360.

Schwartz, H.A., Eichstaedt, J.C., Kern, M.L., Dziurzynski, L., Ramones, S.M., Agrawal, M., Shah, A., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., Seligman, M.E. and Ungar, L.H., 2013. Personality, gender, and age in the language of social media: The open-vocabulary approach. PloS one, 8(9), p.e73791