Collective Identities of Class and Gender: Working-Class Women in the Pittston Coal Strike

This article investigates the intersections and tensions between two collective identities, those of class and gender, for working-class women involved in supporting the 1989–1990 strike against Pittston Coal Group in southwestern Virginia. In the case of this year-long (and ultimately successful) strike, women were organized by United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) staff in strike support activities, but they also sought to organize themselves as women. The tensions between their identity as members of the working class and their identity as women are revealed by examining their forms of activism, their relationship with the UMWA, the divisions between groups of activist women, and the articulation of women's involvement in the strike. The experiences of these women are briefly compared with women's activism in the 1984–1985 British Coal strike. The article concludes by arguing that collective identity is best understood as it emerges in response to specific contexts.     

Becoming Conscious of the American Middle Class (Un)consciousness

It is argued in this article that social psychology would make the greatest contribution to research on class identity if it concentrated on the area closest to psychology—analysis of class consciousness. In order to show that the study of the psyche and mentality of the middle class is one of the least researched aspects of the American middle class, a brief overview of the different approaches to the study of the middle class in selected disciplines will be offered. It will be demonstrated that even if the identity of the U.S. middle class cannot be fully understood without its history and the social context in which it operates, it is the study of its (un)consciousness that social psychology should be focusing its research efforts on. The alternative would make social psychology indistinguishable from social history or sociology.     

Social class and models of agency: Independent and interdependent agency as educational (dis)advantage

Social class continues to be associated with achievement in school and attendance in university and higher education. This qualitative study explores this phenomenon, and reports three focus group interviews with middle and working class secondary school students, in Ireland. We explore cultural and identity factors in educational settings. Specifically, our analysis orients to the models of agency experienced by these students. Middle class participants express independent agency in education, through norms of choice, control, and freedom from constraints. In contrast, working class students orient towards an interdependent model of agency and express psychological, social, and material barriers to opportunity in education. However, independent neo‐liberal individualising and meritocratic discourses were expressed by both groups, suggesting the models are complicated and nuanced. Nevertheless, it is concluded that cultural fit and identity compatibility in educational settings, broadly, constitute middle class advantages and working class disadvantages.     

Representing Radcliffe: Perceptions and Consequences of Social Class

Using retrospective data from a sample of women who graduated from Radcliffe College in 1964, this paper examines the perceptions (what women notice) and consequences (how it makes them feel) of social class during college in these women's lives. The majority of women acknowledged that social class was salient at Radcliffe by stating so directly, by noticing members of different class groups, and/or by mentioning their own class backgrounds. In addition, women consistently perceived two markers of social class: exclusivity and the differences between public and private high school graduates. Surprisingly, there were no differences by social class background in the rates of these perceptions; social class indicators were equally apparent to women from different social class backgrounds. However, most commonly among women from working-class backgrounds, there were psychological consequences of social class that were manifested in feeling bad about themselves. In order to understand the psychology of social class most fully, it seems important to distinguish between perception and consequence in the psychological study of social class, and to pay attention to the impact not only of people's backgrounds, but of social class cues in the environments in which they operate.     

The Intersections of Gender,Class, Race,and Culture: On Seeing Clients Whole

The author explores the multiple and dynamic intersections of gender with race, culture, and class in psychosocial identity formation to minimize the risk of homogenizing or polarizing our understanding of these characteristics.     

A Country of Two: Race and Social Class in an Immigrant Therapeutic Dyad

This paper explores some of the ways in which social structures and fantasies organized around race and social class emerge in the intersubjective space created by a patient and a therapist who emigrated from the same country. Incorporating some of his own experiences of identity and otherness, the author discusses, through the lens of his countertransference, how communicating with the patient in their native language allowed for access to early internal object-relations, unconscious threats to his sense of belonging, racialized self-states, and feelings of shame associated to some of these dissociated self-states rooted in historical oppression and trauma. The author suggests that the “country of two” populated by patient and therapist is a dynamic co-created space, that emerges from the dialectic interplay of sameness and difference along the lines of race, social class, and culture.     

Rethinking deindustrialisation and male career crisis

The decline in manufacturing and growth of service-based jobs has prompted many social theorists to argue that the ability of working-class men to construct meaningful and rewarding careers is becoming ever more limited. Despite using the universal label ‘working class’, the experience of skilled working-class men has been largely ignored. This article explores 26 work history interviews collected from 14 former Royal Dockyard tradesmen in South-East England and 12 of these men's sons and grandsons. Findings from this research challenge the idea that most men were/and are passive victims of industrial change. By contrast, the majority of men in this study managed to carefully adapt to and navigate the transition from industrial to post-industrial work whilst still retaining a ‘linear life narrative’ to give meaning to their evolving careers and lives.     

Working Through the Trauma of Sexual Assault in an Undergraduate Class

Processing the trauma of sexual assault is a complicated and often prolonged process that may occur both within and outside a formal psychotherapeutic context. The second author describes an undergraduate class that explores various aspects of sexual assault, followed by a paper written by a female student in which she describes how the class impacted her intellectual understanding of and emotional reactions to her own sexual victimization as a high school student. Finally, the authors discuss the concept of “working through” as it applies to recovery from sexual assault, and they propose that a didactic course experience, even if not designed as a therapeutic enterprise, may nonetheless serve such a function.     

The relationship of clients’ social class to early therapeutic impressions

Using case vignettes that differed in the presentation of the client's social class, the influence of social class on therapeutic impressions was studied in the context of just-world beliefs. Results suggested that (1) participants with higher levels of belief in a just world saw poor and working-class clients as more unpleasant to work with and more dysfunctional and (2) working-class vignettes were associated with the lowest predictions of session depth and smoothness. The findings suggest that counselors may respond differently to clients based on their social class, and in a way that negatively predisposes them toward work with poor and working-class clients.     

‘Does class count?’ Social class and counselling

This article explores the importance attached to social class by experienced practitioners taking part in a co‐operative inquiry group. A review of the literature from the last thirty years indicates that there is very little research on class in relation to counselling and psychotherapy reported in the UK. Both authors position themselves as coming from working class origins. Nine co‐researchers from both middle and working class origins joined the group. Eight meetings took place over a period of nine months. Extracts from the group's discussions are represented and integrated with ‘presentational knowing’ drawn from contemporary culture, including poetry and popular music. This study suggests that social class is a neglected aspect of diversity in the counselling field. Implications of the study have relevance for the language of counselling and psychotherapy and class based values; social class and its impact on initial education; and ongoing counselling practice and access to therapy for working class people.     

Fighting inequalities in times of pandemic: The role of politicized identities and interdependent self-construal in coping with economic threat

During the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions encouraged social isolation and non-interaction with other people to prevent contagion. Still, the response to an impending economic crisis must be through the collective organization. In this set of pre-registered studies, we analyse two possible mechanisms of coping with collective economic threats: shared social identity and interdependent self-construction. We conducted three correlational studies during the pandemic in May–October 2020 (Study 1, N = 363; Study 2, N = 250; Study 3, N = 416). Results show that shared identity at two levels of politicization (i.e., working-class and 99% identities) and interdependent self-construal mediated the relationship between collective economic threat, intolerance towards economic inequality and collective actions to reduce it. The results highlight that the collective economic threat can reinforce the sense of community—either through the activation of a politicized collective identity, such as the working class or the 99% or through the activation of an interdependent self—which in turn can trigger greater involvement in the fight against economic inequality. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

Theological Complicity in the Disappearing of the Working Class

Contrary to popular perception, the majority of the United States population belongs to the working class, not the middle class (even under different definitions of class). But in the discourses of policy‐making, popular culture, and Christian theological scholarship alike, the working class has almost completely disappeared—which contributes to deifying economic and political inequalities. To counteract this disappearance, class must be established as a constructive theological locus, and justice for the working class (qua working class) established as both ethical norm and practical objective.     

Does Parenting Differ Based on Social Class?: African American Women's Perceived Socialization for Achievement

Research has provided some evidence of ethnic group, gender, and class differences in the socialization for achievement. However, there is little research on African American women with the exception of the studies of low-income, single mothers. To understand the similarities and differences in socialization for achievement based on social class, middle-class African American women from working- and middle-class backgrounds were studied using qualitative and quantitative methods to compare them on issues related to achievement socialization. Women from middle-class backgrounds reported that their parents had higher expectations for them and were more involved in their education than did women from working-class backgrounds. More middle-class parents expected their daughters to be successful in careers than did working-class parents. Women from working-class families did receive support from their parents but they did not have as much support as did the women from middle-class backgrounds. Women from working-class families perhaps made use of other sources to support their desire to succeed. There were no differences in perceived race-related socialization based on social class. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

社会阶层心理学视角下的公平研究

社会阶层代表了一个人拥有的社会资源和对自己所处社会等级的感知。社会阶层因其概念的独特性、功能的广泛性、影响的深刻性和结论的系统性, 成为了心理学中的前沿热点领域, 目前主要有劳动、健康心理、社会文化、等级和社会认知五种研究视角。基于现有视角对社会阶层与社会公平的关系研究相对较少, 从社会认知视角出发, 围绕着不同阶层感知公平的差异、社会公平对不同阶层的影响作用以及低阶层感知不公平的应对策略三个方面开展了研究。未来研究可以从概念辨析、理论整合、加强应用研究等角度来推进社会阶层心理学的发展。     

Crossing the Line: Case Studies of Identity Development in First-Generation College Women

In this paper we present four case studies of adult women from working class backgrounds who attended Hillside College (a pseudonym for one of the seven-sister colleges) during the early 1990s. Although research on women has led, over the past few decades, to a more complex picture of the contexts in which women develop their identities, one important context that has been underexplored is social class. Drawing on data from three lengthy interviews with each of our four participants, our purpose was to explore the identity concerns of adult women from working class backgrounds in their experience getting to and attending Hillside College, which has historically been home to the middle and upper social classes. Implications for college retention are discussed.     

班级环境与学生适应性的多层线性模型

此研究探索中国中小学体制下的班级社会心理环境对于学生的适应性的关系。以江光荣和林盂平所编制的《我的班级》问卷测量班级环境．选择学生的学校适应（由Teacher-Child Rating Scale（T-CRS）测量）、主观幸福感（以Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale（SLSS）测量）和焦虑（用State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children（STAlC）测量）作为适应指标．以多层线性模型（HLM）方法进行分析,结果显示：学生个体所知觉到的班级环境,对其适应水平有相当肯定的鳃释力,而一个班级学生整体适应水平的高低,与这个班的班级环境有极大关联。此结果表明．中国学校体制下的班级社会心理环境对于学生的发展和适应状况,具有举足轻重的作用。     

Class cleavages and ethnic conflict: Coptic Christian communities in modern Egyptian politics

Whereas the political claims of Egyptian Islamists have attracted much attention in Western media and scholarly circles, only rarely have such circles acknowledged the role played by ethno‐religious consciousness among Coptic Christians in Egyptian political life. This article analyzes the development of this consciousness through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the socio‐economic roots of ‘Coptist’ political action. Accorded particular attention is the emergence of an explicitly sectarian political discourse among groups of middle‐class Copts in the 1970s, and the related spread of ethnic consciousness through the Coptic community at large since that time.     

SOCIAL CLASS, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND GENDER

This article explores the implications of social class background in the lives of women who attended Radcliffe College in the late 1940s and in the early 1960s. Viewing social classes as "cultures" with implications for how individuals understand their worlds, we examined social class background and cohort differences in women's experiences at Radcliffe, their adult life patterns, their constructions of women's roles, and the influence of the women's movement in their lives. Results indicated that women from working-class backgrounds in both cohorts felt alienated at Radcliffe. Cohort differences, across social class, reflected broad social changes in women's roles in terms of the rates of divorce, childbearing, level of education, and career activity. There were few social class-specific social changes, but there were a number of social class differences among the women in the Class of 1964. These differences suggested that women from working-class backgrounds viewed women's marital role with some suspicion, whereas women from middle- and upper-class backgrounds had a more positive view. Perhaps for this reason, working-class women reported that the women's movement confirmed and supported their skeptical view of middle-class gender norms.     

Using multiple class indicators to examine working-class ideology

Eysenck showed that working-class supporters of any particular political party tended to be more conservative than middle-class supporters of the same party. Lipset has put forward the more ambitious thesis that working-class people in general are more authoritarian and conservative than middle-class people (except on economic issues). Existing evidence for the Lipset thesis suggests at best weak support for it with a lot depending on the particular scales used and the particular class index used. A comprehensive study is therefore presented in which six scales of conservatism, two scales of authoritarianism and political party preference are correlated with five social-class indices. Ss were a community sample of 203 Australians. Significant correlations were sparse and of low magnitude with working-class people tending to be radical rather than conservative on non-economic issues. Authoritarians also tended to be middle class rather than lower class. There were however two weak correlations with education in the direction predicted by Lipset.