Social Status and Intersectional Identities: Consumer Behavior, Gender, and Immigration

Abstract

In spite of the pervasive class hierarchy, Fayette residents maintained the power to enact change and shape their lifeways in meaningful ways. For example, the upper class displayed distinction in their consumption of fashionable medical and grooming paraphernalia, which required both economic and cultural capital. By contrast, although the middle-class housing resembled the upper-class neighborhood, middle-class consumption of beef, tablewares, and flatware more closely resembled those of the working class. The reasons for such a trend are unclear, but certainly involved households’ strategic decision-making regarding economic expenditure and socially meaningful consumerism. These findings run parallel with Weber’s differentiation between economic class and social status, and Bourdieu’s assertion that different forms of capital do not correspond proportionately to each other. There were also notable social differences between and within genders in terms of occupation, portrayal in local narratives, and photography, indicating that neither gender nor class was a single deciding factor in an individual’s life circumstances or status. With similar complexity, immigrants’ experiences at Fayette were widely variable as their nativity intersected with class, gender, household development cycle, and the built environment. For example, although many immigrants were quite poor, some foreign-born residents occupied high positions on the corporate ladder and lived in the upper- and middle-class neighborhoods. Even some of the lowest-paid immigrants eventually became landowners and accrued social capital within the community (see Chap. 8 for more on social capital). It has proven difficult to assign some households a fixed class position, because of their social and economic mobility.