The Price of Progress and Should We Care?
Instructor: Chuck Acker
Thursdays • 8 classes – 9/23-11/18 (No class 11/11) • 10:15 AM-12:15 PM
Class size 7-25 students
15 seats remaining
Location: Zoom
This course is about the clash of class, the loss of industrial progress to pollution and disease, and the search for empathy in a nation divided.
It is the story of the working class, illustrated by the history of Mexico, Maine. The mill town promised well-being for everyone willing to work for it. Instead, these folks are now living not only with hopes diminished but also, sadly, with the scorn of many of us who carry the means of achieving wealth in our heads. We will refer to this latter class as the “aspirational class,” a term coined by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett. Its members are characterized by the skills, information, and power attained through education beyond high school.
We will look at how the differing orientations and preoccupations of the knowledge and working classes contribute to our great national divide. Finally, we will seek ways to minimize that divide.
Textbooks: In lieu of tuition please purchase (or beg or borrow) the Arsenault book, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. In addition, excerpts and summaries will be offered in the lecture part of the course from The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class by Currid-Halkett.
classes
SYLLABUS: Course guide by units
UNIVERSITY OF MAINE AT AUGUSTA SENIOR COLLEGE
FALL SEMESTER 2021
Class Format: Zoom
SYLLABUS
Instructor: Charles W. Acker, Ph. D.
INTRODUCTION
The Price of Progress And Should We Care?
This is a course about the clash of class, the loss of industrial progress to pollution and disease, and the finding of empathy in a nation divided. It is the story of a section of Maine which promised well-being for everyone willing to work for it, now living with hopes diminished, now looked down upon by us who carry the means of wealth in our heads.
We will be using two books as texts: The first of these is titled Mill Town – Reckoning with What Remains.* The second of these books is The Sum of Small Things – A Theory of the Aspirational Class, by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett. I am asking you, in lieu of tuition, to purchase (or beg or borrow) the Arsenault book. Excerpts and summaries will be offered in the lecture part of the course from Currid-Halkett.
(*ISBN 978-1-250-15593-1) (NY, St. Martin’s Press)
Mill Town is the story, on a deeply personal level, of a woman’s near- futile search for an official accounting for the death struggles of a community. Kerri Arsenault’s vision is clarified by living away but returning again and again to perceive what is happening in her hometown of Mexico, Maine (across the river from Rumford) and to the friends and relatives who remain there. It is also the story of the death of an industry, once prosperous but a region now poisoned by the chemicals and practices used by that industry. And it is the story of Arsenault’s father whose death appears as a metaphor for the demise of his community. Most Importantly, the book provides sympathetic insight into members of the working class, often derided by members of a class that most of us probably belong to.
The second book – The Sum of Small Things – could not be more different in style and content from Arsenault’s book, yet it also depicts a specific social class – most likely yours and – mine – which dominates our society and to which we may grudgingly admit our membership.
The term “aspirational class”and its application to our course requires some historical context. In 1889 social scientist Thorsten Veblen coined the term “leisure class” to refer to the group of people made wealthy by the burgeoning coal, oil, transportation and manufacturing industries. Members of this class signalled their status and social power by displays of “conspicuous consumption” – ownership and manners far beyond what are presumed necessary by the lower and middle classes. Currid-Halket has appropriated and reversed these terms to refer to the “aspirational class” in which membership is signalled more by “inconspicuous consumption” but with significant other characteristics, nonetheless.
Some writers have referred to this aspirational class as the “knowledge class” since its members are distinguished by the skills, information and power that they carry in their heads or educated minds. Hence most professions requiring education beyond high school (or entrepreneurship in IT) are automatically members of the knowledge class. Dependence on electronic technology is assumed. Income in this group is ordinarily sufficient to provide for retirement, college education for their children and residence in “preferred” housing, whether in the suburbs or inner city apartments. Travel or visit to resorts or exotic places are preferred means of vacation. Careful diet – shopping at Whole Foods, farmers markets, or more exclusive sources is important. Hiring nannies, housekeepers, sometimes on the sly, is done. Keeping in shape, regular visits to the gym or trainer are frequently practiced. Most important is keeping up with the current fashions to signal membership status. The aspirational class is most distinguished by keeping consumption low-keyed, but nevertheless working very hard at their chosen careers to afford membership. There are of course many people who have not obtained the requisite experience to belong, but they still aspire.
This course is in part about how the differing orientations and preoccupations of the knowledge and working classes contribute to our great national divide.
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DESIGN OF CLASS WORK
There are essentially two parts of this course:
Part One, coming before the resort break, will be devoted to a discussion of materials from the Arsenault text. Students are asked to read the assigned chapters before class and be prepared to discuss their questions, objections and understandings drawn from the readings.
Part Two, planned for after the break will be concerned with quotations from the Currid-Halkett book, which appearing in this syllabus will be elaborated on and discussed in class. Additional reading, research and observations by students are encouraged.
Unit 1: ORIENTATION
PART ONE: Introduction to Syllabus
PART TWO: Excerpts from Elizabeth Currid-Halkett (ECH)
• ECH Ch 1
The 21st Century “Leisure Class”
p.18
“This new dominant cultural Elite can be called, quite simply, the aspirational class. While their symbolic position sometimes manifests itself through material goods, mostly they reveal their class position through cultural signifiers that convey their acquisition of knowledge and value system – dinner party conversation around opinion pieces, bumper stickers that express political views and support for Greenpeace, and showing up at farmers markets. These behaviors and signifiers imply aspirational class values and also suggest the knowledge required to form them. Today’s aspirational class prizes ideas, cultural and social awareness, and the acquisition of knowledge and forming ideas and making choices ranging from their careers to the type of sliced bread they purchase at the grocery store. In each of these decisions, big and small, they strive to feel informed and legitimate in their beliefs that they have made the right and reasonable decision based on facts (whether regarding the merit of organic food, breastfeeding, or electric cars) In short, unlike Vebln’s leisure class, or David Brooks’s” Bobo’s,” this new elite is not defined by economics. Rather the aspirational class is formed through collective consciousness upheld by specific values and acquired knowledge and the rarefied social and cultural processes necessary to acquire them.”
UNIT II: WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
PART ONE: Assigned reading: Arsenault, pp.1-46
PART TWO:
• ECH Ch. 2
Conspicuous Consumption in the Twenty-first Century:
“It is from our disposition to admire and consequently to imitate the rich and the great that they are able to set or to lead what is called the fashion. Their dress is the fashionable dress, the language of their conversation the fashionable style, their air and deportment the fashionable behavior. Even their vices and follies are fashionable.” – Adam Smith
p.25
“The consumption of socially visible goods has been in place for thousands of years.”
p.29
“Overall, while education expenditures have increased 60% since 1996,the top 1%, 5% and 10% income fractiles have increased their share of education expenditures almost 300%.”
• ECH Ch. 3
Ballet Slippers and Yale Tuition, p. 48
“Cultural capital (as opposed to economic capital or money) is the collection of distinctive aesthetics, skills, and knowledge (often obtained through education and pedigree.”
p. 49-50
“The rise in conspicuous consumption is a result of three important trends. First, so much of material consumption is accessible and overt that the aspirational class…finds more obscure, codified symbols to reveal their social position. Second, there is no “leisure class.” The restructuring of the global economy prises a meritocracy, who own the means of production through their minds, not land ownership…Finally, material consumption…is less important than investing in the consumption that counts, like education, retirement and health care…which price-out ordinary people…”
UNIT III: HAPPY DAYS
PART ONE: Assigned reading: Arsenault, pp. 47-98
PART TWO:
• ECH Ch. 4
Motherhood as Conspicuous Leisure in the Twenty-first Century
p. 78
“ For starters, according to the Centers for Disease Control, just 16.4% of children are exclusively breastfed through six months, 27% are breastfed (in conjunction with other foods) 12 months and just three quarters could mean they were breastfed one time for one day, or one week – far cry from the goals of pediatricians and Health and Human Services.” “…the single leading indicator of breast feeding is level of education….Being wealthy helps.”…. “in fact, as a result of all the overwhelming evidence that breastfeeding is good for both mother and child, the AAP stated explicitly that “choosing to breastfeed should be considered as an investment in the short and long-term health of the infant rather than a lifestyle choice.)….Mothering, writ large, has become a new channel for engaging in what Veblen terms conspicuous leisure.”
UNIT IV: VACATION LAND
PART ONE: Assigned reading: Arsenault, pp. 99-126
PART TWO:
• ECH Ch. 5
Conspicuous Production (and Intelligentsia Coffee)
p. 114
Jeff Watts, Buyer for Intelligentsia Coffee: “You need to plant the right coffee, harvest selectively. We pay them to pick only the ripe fruits and put them in hermetically-sealed bags to protect them. If they can do this we will pay a really great price. We also pay based on the real cost of production, not the Futures Market brackets [ like other copy buyers] We are investing a lot in these farmers so they have finances, resources, and so they can learn from each other.” “This company really cares and spends a shocking amount of time getting things right.”
Intelligentsia Roasting works uses a process called “cupping,” involving coffee brewers, buyers, baristas who engage in meetings for tasting coffee brews in determining the ratio of water to grounds and the brewing method and timing to produce the best flavor.”
p. 116
What makes Intelligentsia fundamentally different from Starbucks is that its founders, producers, and customers all really care about where the stuff comes from.”
UNIT V: WHAT REMAINS
PART ONE: Assigned reading: Arsenault, pp. 127-153
PART TWO:
• ECH
Landscapes of Consumption:
p. 148
“To understand today’s cities is to understand what drives their desirability for the world’s elite, aspirational and otherwise, and much of this allure can be found in what people consume.”
p. 149
“Early 20th century cities were marked by a rapid influx of density never-before-seen in Western metropolises. This density was due to the rise in production–the manufacturing economy created the capability and the subsequent demand for mass-produced material goods which brought forth immigrant workers and tenement housing.”
p.152
“150 years after the industrial revolution took hold of the metropolis, long after the last factory had closed shop, the city has become the center of consumption, rather than the production of material goods.”
UNIT VI: STRIKE ONE, TWO, THREE
PART ONE: Assigned reading: Arsenault, pp. 154-193
PART TWO:
• ECH
The raison d’être
p. 148
“The raison d’être of cities is that they are centers of human civilization, whether production…or the consumption of apparel, restaurants and night-life…”
“Covered by an invisible tissue of urbanity, cities are able to offer many versions of themselves to those who self-select into one Metropolis version versus another… cities are becoming centers of what Douthat has termed “elite tribalism.” Despite their many options and seeming diversity, they too are reinforcing inequality and the class divisions of the 21st Century.”
UNIT VII: GOING DOWN HILL
PART ONE: Assigned reading: Arsenault, pp. 194-259
PART TWO:
• ECH Ch. 6
Landscapes of Production:
p. 148:
“Western Capitalistic cities have become cultural and economic universes unto themselves….By the 2000s cities were back in vogue. Part of what explains this phenomenon is that cities have become the nexus of the new global economic structure that prizes intangible skills, education, innovation and creativity — Sassen’s high level producers services are the underpinnings of what others have called “the knowledge economy,” “ symbolic analysts,” or the “creative class.” The restructuring of the global economy from widgets and factories to people and ideas most clearly impacted cities.”
UNIT VIII: THE TRUTH LIES SOMEWHERE
PART ONE: Assigned reading: Arsenault, pp. 259-319
PART TWO:
• ECH Ch. 7
“To get rich is glorious? The State of Consumption and Class in America”
p. 183
“As this book has shown, America’s consumerism – particularly conspicuous consumption – hides the vast inequality within this new America. In the 21st century, America’s aspirational class has rejected many of the material means by which status has been historically revealed. They have eschewed materialism, aspiring to what they believe is a higher social and cultural platform. In these efforts, the aspirational class utilizes new means to demonstrate its class position. Rather than simply conspicuous consumption, this dominant cultural elite prefers to engage in conspicuous production, conspicuous leisure, and inconspicuous consumption, all of which produce much greater class stratification effects than the acquisition of material goods.”
p. 185
“The consumption practices of the new elite are not simply a response to middle-class conspicuous consumption (and a further differentiation from ordinary America). In some instances, such as college education and full-time nannies, they also cost a lot more than that nice car or Coach handbag and have broader ramifications than merely serving as material signals of status. These consumer choices have social costs too. The aspirational class members make decisions and establish norms that have far more pernicious outcomes for society then did previous pleasure class consumerism. Rather than buying silver spoons or going on long holidays, their investments in education, health, retirement and parenting ensure the reproduction of status and (often wealth too) for their offspring in a way that no material good can. Through this reproduction of cultural capital and its trappings, we see the emergence of what Charles Murray has called the “New Upper-Class” and “New Lower Class,” which is not simply an economic but also a deep cultural divide that has never existed with such distinction as it does today. Even the cultural differences around the more nebulous norms of mothering, knowledge, and environmental consciousness are underpinned by economic position and these symbolic boundaries are far from costless.”
p. 186
“Given that the middle class has suffered tremendous job loss, the decline in their housing values, and wage stagnation, purchasing this material version of the good life is not as easy as it was previously.”
p. 187
“First, the Paradox of all of those cheap goods that make status so accessible to the middle class is that they are being created at the expense of good middle-class jobs, which are both moving to developing countries with cheaper labor forces and being replaced by computers. Globalization and standardization, the hallmarks of modern consumer goods, took those remaining middle-class factory jobs to Brazil and India.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arsenault, Kerri
Mill Town; Reckoning with what Remains
New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2020 ISBN 978-250-15593-1
Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth
The Sum of All Things; A Theory of the Aspirational Class
New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2017, ISBN 9780691183176
Karelas, Andreas
Climate Courage; How Tackling Climate Change Can Build Community,Transform the Economy, and Bridge the Political Divide in America
Boston, Beacon Press, 2020, ISBN 97807084885
McKibben, Bill
Falter; Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
New York, Henry Holt and Co.2019, ISBN 9781250178268
Purdy, Jedediah
After Nature; A Politics for the Anthropocene
Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-674-36822-4
Charles Acker holds a PhD in clinical and physiological psychology from UCLA to help him understand belief systems and mind-body relationships. In the distant past, he worked with community leaders, interested older citizens, Senior College Network promoters and key UMA personnel to help bring Senior College to Augusta.