There has also been much debate if an ‘underclass’ does indeed exist. Further, how would we define it in the first place – would it make sense to speak of an ‘underclass’?
Is there an underclass and how would we define it?
Before defining the term underclass, let us first historically root the idea of an underclass. The conception of an underclass can be traced back to the Victorian period, rooted historically in the beginnings of mass urbanisation and industrialisation. At that time they were the dangerous classes, a class of people who were considered a threat to social order and safety. In the 19th century terms “such as ‘moral wretch’ , ‘degenerate poor’, ‘depraved nomad’, and ‘savage outcast’ all ultimately came to be incorporated under the umbrella term ‘dangerous class’ …” (Hayward & Yard 2006: 17) In the writings of Henry Mayhew (1851) we have the terms such as the ‘nomad’ who “is distinguished from the civilised man by his repugnance to regular and continous labour”.
Similarities can be seen in Marx’s concept of the ‘lumpenproleteriat’, which first figures in ‘The German Ideology’ (1845) as the “’refuse of all classes,’ including ’swindlers, confidence tricksters, brothel-keepers, rag-and-bone merchants, beggars, and other flotsam of society.’” In the Eighteenth Brumaire it is used to describe a class-fraction of mutineering soldiers — the Swiss Guard, a group of mercenary soldiers, that aided Napolean Bonaparte in his 1851 coup. It is not clear to ascertain what exactly Marx and Engels meant by the lumpenproleteriat, but the broad category would include a stratum of people who have no direct link to the economic productive forces in society, living on the edge offering their services to the highest bidder. Sociologist Ritzer (2003) broadly calls them as “the proleteriat who readily sell out to the capitalists” If we are to take ‘The German Ideology’ it would seem that the lumpenproleteriat does seem to denote what was later termed as the underclass, however in the Eighteenth Brumaire the affinity becomes less clear, here it seems to be a stratum of merceneries who were unproductive, with no direct realtion to the means of production, other than offering their services to whomever can be considered the highest bidder. However, overall, the term ‘underclass’ does share some affinity with the term lumpenproleteriat i.e. a class of people who choose and are unwilling to be productive in their potential to labour.
Writings from the right of the political spectrum (Murray 2001) have similarly defined the ‘underclass’ as different to the ‘working poor’ — a stratum that chooses lifestyles, behavioural patterns and cultural dispositions that make them anti-social and ever dependent on welfare handouts. They are unproductive and hence a threat to social order and stability. Key to understanding the idea of an ‘underclass’ in these writings, and how they are often depicted in media coverage and public imagination, is that it is a discourse:
Turned crucially upon a (percieved or real) pathology in the working classes’ relations to production and socially productive labour (Hayward & Yard 2006: 10)
And a pathology in the outlook of such an identified class to the social reproduction of percieved common norms and values in society — none recognition of the importance of a strong working ethic (including the need to produce and provide for their families) and the participation in anti-social behaviour such as gun crime, shoplifting and drugs etc.
Thus, for Murray, the underclass is distinguished by a choice to break with long established norms about one’s role in the relations of economic production (one needs to work and ought to work) and the relations of social reproduction (one needs and ought to marry and raise properly disciplined and socialized children)” (Hayward & Yard 2006: 12)
Murray’s claims have come under criticism (Field 1989, 1996; Wilson 1999), one of them being that he ignores looking at broader social and political factors — chronic unemployment and crime in inner city urban areas often are rooted in deeper structural causes, for example the decline of the manufacturing industry and the subsequent loss of jobs for many communities that rely on such industries for work. This is coupled with the migration of the more affluent to the suburbs, which saps the resources from inner city urban centres, resulting in insufficient opportunities such access to a good education or training. There is no ‘underclass’ as such but people who are excluded from society, that as Wilson (1987) observes in the case of American inner city areas “not all African Americans still live in ghettoes, and those who remain are kept there, Wilson maintained, not so much by active discrimination as by economic factors – in other words, by class rather than race” (Giddens 2004: 321) This type of critique, starting from a more structural view of inequality, looks at the experiences of the ghetto poor or what Murray would term the underclass, experiences of multiple deprivation – education, health, poor recreational facilities and victimization by law enforcement agencies etc.Wealth does not simply trickle down, and unless there is an active policy that seeks to interevene on these levels, than poverty would be cyclical and difficult to breakdown.
This had lead many sociologists to turn away from the loaded label ‘underclass’, instead choosing the term ‘social exclusion’. This approach looks at the exclusion of communities from society in economic, political or social terms. Many lifestyles and behavioural patterns could be a symptom of these forms of exclusion and often they can be subcultures, where people not identifying with their greater social context choose to adopt forms of living that would mark them out from the rest of society. It is interesting to note here that:
All discussions of the underclass, whatever their analytical focus (culture, politics, the individual, or the system) accord central significance to the lack of a ‘normal’ role in the productive relations in society. It is in the failure (whether by choice or compulsion) to engage in economically and socially productive labour, that the essence of the underclass’ marginality is to be found, and it is from this exclusion that other associated pathologies (despair, violent conflict, crime, drug abuse) are see to emrge. For all the above authors, to be ‘of society’ is to produce; lacking such a role, one falls out of society proper all together, becoming part of its non-assimilable desiderata (Hayward & Yard 2006: 13)
This point is interesting as it sets a parameter around the discussions on the ‘underclass’, where an emphasis is placed on one’s relation to productive relations in society. This leads to what is termed as the ‘chav phenomenon’ in Britain, a phenomenon that does share some similarities with the idea of an ‘underclass’ (especially in the relation of a given individual to social norms), however in the case of the ‘chav phenomenon’ the emphasis changes i.e. one’s role when considering relations of economic production. With the ‘chav phenomenon’ we have a shift in emphasis to consumption patterns as a different form of indicator — can consuming and consuming the right goods be part of social stigmatisation for this new ‘underclass’? How can we account for such a change?
The ‘chav’ phenomenon and the underclass
The ‘chav’ phenomenon is never far from the news, stories of misbehaving youth, dressing and behaving in ways that are considered anti-social. While the term ‘underclass’ figured in the media in the 80s and early 90s, this would later subside, only for the term ‘chav’ to appear, once again taking hold of public imagination.Some have argued that there is a relation and continuation between the term ‘underclass’ and ‘chav’. However there is a key difference, while the term underclass was seen in terms of a pathology linked to production and social relations of labour, the term ‘chav on the other hand emphasises class dispositions in relation to the sphere of consumption. This is not to deny that the use of the term ‘underclass’ did not consider conumption patterns or that the term ‘chav’ does not consider forms of social behaviour in relation to labour and work. However, what is of interest here is the shift in emphasis, some would argue that this is linked to the fragmentation of class identities and a general de-emphasis on one’s position in relation to the social forces of production and more on what it means to be a ‘consumer citizen’ (Bauman 1998; Young 1999). We live in an era in which what one consumes can strongly effect identity construction and a sense of belonging. Often people are stigmatised or forms of social closure can be drawn in relation to cultural tastes, something that has figured before in the writings of Pierre Bourdieu on class dispositions in relation to cultural capital. For a detailed and excellent look at this phenomenon click here…
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Further readings:
- Bauman, Z. 1998 Work, Consumerism and the New Poor, Buckingham: Open University Press.
- Dean, H., Tayloor-Gooby, P. 1992 Dependency culture : The Explosion of a Myth London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
- Field, F. 1989 Loosing out: The Emergence of Britain’s Underclass, London: Blackwell.
- Hayward, K., Yar, M. 2006 ‘The ‘Chav’ phenomenon: Consumption, media and the construction of a new underclass’, Crime Media Culture 2(1): 9-28.
- Morris, L. 1993 Dangerous Classes: The Underclass and Social Citizenship, London: Routledge.
- Murray, C. 1996 ‘Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate’, London: The IEA Health and Welfare Unit.
- Wilson, W. J. 1987 The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
- Windyback, S. 2001 ‘Beyond the Welfare State’, Policy 17(3): 25-28.
- Young, J. 2002 ‘Crime and Social Exclusion’, in M. Maguire, Morgan. R, Reiner, R. (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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