As I read through the Keywords articles for “Class,” “Community,” and “Civilization,” I thought about how while these terms are distinguishable in their own right, there are similarities, especially through the connection of their meanings during early European livelihood. Currently, I am taking a Victorian Literature course and the main topic of discussion is class, and class is based on livelihood. Class definitely has clear wealth distinctions, but class also identities the amount of work put forth to gain that wealth, and today, we might like to think that idealistically less work can be put into jobs with technological assistance but that is not the case. No matter what kind of improvements are made, there will still be servers on their feet for hours on end to get tips to support their kids in any way they can, and then there are the billionaires who can sell items merely with their name (along with using outsourced, cheap labor). The class system is still quite distinct and gets stronger with the increasing wealth gap.
Communities can tie into class because class inevitably becomes a community. Growing up in military housing, my community was people of the same rank as my father. Unlike class, I think community seems to have a slightly more positive connotation because when we think about communities there’s a sense of belonging, which can lead to othering of those who aren’t a part of a community. I argue that communities can create tension as much as class since both deal with an us vs. them binary. There can even be tensions within communities and class, in part because both are constructs and the particular tensions that come to mind are rooted in capitalism. For instance, “The centrality of community to capitalism becomes more explicit in the context of globalization” (Joseph 55). This claim means that when communities are viewed through the lens of capitalism, some can only thrive or exist through capitalism. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell comes to mind because the working-class is a community created by capitalism―the working class is a community because in order to survive, they must trust each other. However, tensions within the community arise when John Barton (Mary’s father) almost gets away with incriminating Jem Wilson (Mary’s love interest) for the murder that John orginally committed against a son of a factory owner (a character with class privilege and viewed in the elite community). Moreover, it fascinates me that class and community as talked about in this Victorian novel bring interesting parallels to modern society, in which class and community still take shape. I should also mention areas of Gaskell’s novel can be inaccurate or not fully-realized because she herself was not a member of the working class (at the time, female novelists were of the middle class).
Class distinctions and community can then be connected to the “Civilization” article, by David Shields, in terms of the narrative between “civil” and “uncivil.” Shields states that authors of the 1579 treatise Of Cyvil and Uncyvil Life debated on the civility between rural and urban communities in terms of serving the Crown (Shields). In this instance, civil referred to class constructions and ability to serve. The potential inability to serve is where “civilization” creates tensions with “culture,” “nation,” and “barbarism,” because it’s a measure of the elite’s definition for orderliness (and by elites, of course it deals with racial constructs of the white definition of orderliness). Thus, “civilization” furthers the narrative of class exploitations, which can go in hand with exploiting communities.
Anyways, I did not expect to talk about Victorian culture, but I can’t help but notice the historical roots of these issues and constructs that clearly exist today. The more I read for that course, the more I realize distinctions such as class, community, civilization, and even how illness is treated (or rather, looked down upon) is still prevalent in our contemporary culture and those attitudes don’t seem to have changed, but rather, have been enhanced since the wealth gap continues to increase.
[I did read Rosaldo’s piece but I got caught up in Keywords but I will definitely refer to it for future discussions on diversity in higher education, which is something I have touched on a bit in a past post.]
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