In this video, she states that the definition that we may use for social class all depends on what society we’re interested in. The video explains Marx’s definition. He says that we have two classes: bourgeoisie (production of labor) and proletariat (people who do the labor). They say that it may be too simplistic and they use the example of if you own a store but you work at that same store, Marx would put you in the bourgeoisie because you’re the business owner and because you’re the one who hires people. The video also brings up Max Webers definition. Weber was more focused on what opportunities people have through their classes. The owner of a store that’s super big will have better opportunities than the one who owns a smaller shop. The video defines social class as “a group that’s daily similar in terms of income, education, power, and prestige in society.” American society is split into five classes: Upper class, Upper middle class, Average middle class, Working class and Lower class. The upper class can be tied with Marx’s system because it is the top of the income and wealth distribution (people who earn at least $250,000/year) This groups tends to have a lot of political and social power. There is a huge amount of people who lives in the middle class so sociologist split them up into three groups. This group has a college degree or post college degree. They’re mostly doctors, lawyers, etc. Average middle class make $50,000-$115,000 and they make up 35%. Half of this group is college educated and probably attended public instead of private schools. Their jobs consist of office workers, teachers, middle-managers. Lower middle class (working class) are less likely to own their own house and aren’t as wealthy as the others. They have jobs like manual labor like construction, manufacturing, maintenance work, factory work, etc. Don’t really have a college degree. Lower class makes less than $25,000/ year and work part-time with no set schedule and no benefits. I chose this video because it definitely ties into what we learned in class. In class we also learned Marx’s had two types of classes. He also believed that the classes are going to be more separated and un-equal. We also took the time to learn that Max Weber said there was three components: wealth, power and prestige. Both the video and in class talked about the five types of social class. We found that social reproduction plays a big part in social class. Pierre Bourdieu says that social reproduction is when social class is passed down from generation to generation. This video basically explained everything that we learned in class and from the book. WORD COUNT: 452
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