Over the past 40 years, U.S. social scientists
carried out hundreds of self-report studies of juvenile delinquency, using as
subjects primarily high school and college students. In a typical study,
members of a sample complete a confidential questionnaire in which they are
asked to report the number of times in the preceding, say, six months they
committed each of a list of crimes. Taken together, the results of these
studies show that participation in direct-contact theft is not limited to the
disadvantaged to nearly the extent suggested by arrest statistics. Although
important class differentials in delinquency are apparent even in the findings
from self-report research, theft, it turns out, is a surprisingly democratic
enterprise. The same, however, cannot be said about men who commit the most
serious and largest number of direct-contact thefts and who often persist at
doing so despite formal sanctioning by the adult criminal justice apparatus.
Their backgrounds are noticeably tilted towards the lower reaches of the
working class.
The reasons for this imbalance is numerous, but one
of the most important is the distinctive qualities of their cultural capital, defined here as the
“general cultural background, knowledge, disposition, and skills that are passed
from one generation to the next.” (1) Children of working-class origin inherit
substantially different cultural capital than do middle-class children. The
cultural capital of working-class males limits their access to the resources
needed to entertain and to strive for options readily accessible to the more
advantaged. When they make important and consequential life decisions, their
attractive legitimate options are few, and their preparation to take advantage
of them is weak or nonexistent. Their cultural capital leaves them no better
prepared to take advantage of the safest and financially most promising
contemporary criminal opportunities. For one thing, they lack both the
normative commitment to inequality and the experience required to build and operate
effectively hierarchical organisations. In this chapter I suggest some of the
ways that the range of options available to the working class, particularly the
most disadvantaged and disreputable fraction of it, is constricted. Except in
passing, the interpretive focus is not the hard objective facts of class
disadvantage; I present no data on education or income. The concern here
instead is the cultural and social-psychological consequences of limited wealth
and prestige and how these constrain the number and variety of options
accessible to working-class men and women.
I will have little to say about the worsening
condition of the working class generally in the past two decades. As entire
industries have declined or disappeared, the high-paying manufacturing jobs
that once were plentiful have been exported to countries where wage levels are
far below what U.S. workers traditionally earned. This and other developments
related to the growth of a global Economy have increased the size, the misery,
and the despair of the underclass, the poorest segment of the working class.
(2) To many, for example, it has brought for the first time in their lives the
fear of homelessness. (3)
Wealth, Subordination,
and Repute
Firmly rooted in the working class, persistent thieves
are distinguished principally by their limited Wealth and Income. All their
lives most have been poor or just a financial crisis and a few paychecks away
from it. No other aspect of their circumstances is so profoundly important for
virtually every aspect of their lives, certainly not their own weak or chaotic
family ties or their taste for illicit drugs and their effects. The observation
that many working-class men and women traditionally have been able to purchase
stereo equipment, automobiles, and other expensive consumer goods does not
alter this fact. For every debt-free and satisfied owner of one or more of
these marvels, there is at least one financially strapped other whose stereo
system has been broken for months and whose 10-year-old automobiles fails to
start or run reliably. Describing the working-class families she studies,
Lillian Rubin noted: “For them, ... deprivation was real – real when they knew
parents had trouble paying the rent, when they didn’t have shoes that fit, when
the telephone was shut off, when the men came to take the refrigerator away.”
(4) Consider, for example, the amount of space available to family members: “It
is one of the distinguishing marks of ... working-class family life that
there’s not enough room in the house either for the people who live in it or
the things they collect as they pursue their lives.” (5) Nor, for that matter,
is there enough personal space, or even sleeping space, to permit privacy. Contrasting
sharply with middle-class sensibilities and practices, in the poorest and the
most crowded working-class households, bedrooms and even beds are shared with
others.
Working-class men and women labour in hierarchically
low-level, low-paying jobs, increasingly in service industries. When they have
employment, they clean office buildings, load and unload machines that extrude
endless streams of plastic products and parts, guard prisoners, hang dry-wall,
and maintain the dossiers and files crucial to the smooth operation of
countless bureaucracies. Much of their work is physically hazardous or harmful.
To spend any time at all in their company is to be struck by the high
proportion who suffer from work-related ailments and injuries. Infirmities
ranging from painful joints to missing fingers and ruined lungs are
commonplace. Normally they work under the direct supervision of and on
schedules constructed by others. For most, their work neither requires nor
permits them to set production goals or to plan and complete tasks as they see
fit. This is done by superiors or by other subalterns and in any case is
thought to be none of their business. Subordination is one of the most
important distinguishing characteristics of working-class employment. Always it
features bosses, schedules, and time clocks.
None of this is meant to ignore or obscure
substantial variation in the conditions and rewards of working-class employment
and lives. At one end of this range are men and women who earn high wages, who
have adequate health insurance, and who may own a home. Their work, perhaps in
the highly skilled and unionised construction trades, is challenging, allows
for exercise of some self-direction, and results in visible, tangible, and
enduring products that they often point to with pride. (6) At the other end are
persons employed, for example, at the lowest levels of the nursing home
industry; their work often requires cleaning the beds and bodies of incontinent
residents. The nature of this work ensures that only those with few options
chooses to do it, particularly at the minimum wage it pays.
Notwithstanding important variation in the nature and
conditions of their employment, few working-class citizens do work that is
interesting, exciting, or newsworthy. Much of it is aptly described as “dirty
work.” (7) Dirty work is jobs or tasks that most people want carried out albeit
the work is undesirable and Morally “dirty.” Collecting and processing
household garbage and trash is an obvious example, but much of the work of
criminal Justice fits also. “Good people” do not do dirty work, and they prefer
not to know very much about it or those who do it. They do not want to talk or
know about how “things are going,” just as long as they are going.
The conditions under which men and women earn their
living are one of the most important sources of how they are regarded by others
and how they regard themselves. Largely because they do work that few people
aspire to and most try to avoid, working-class citizens are seen by many as
less honourable or respectable than “better” citizens and treated accordingly.
Physicians, Supreme Court Justices, and CEOs of Fortune 500 Corporations enjoy
higher status and repute than men and women who work with their hands. Apart
from their location in a Wealth-and-Property hierarchy, the working class also are
located disadvantageously on this Moral hierarchy. Those near its top are
touted as exemplars of what is Admirable and Important; the strengths and
Virtues of working-class women and men generally are unacknowledged and
unchronicled. Respectable people characteristically imagine the most
disadvantaged and socially detached among them as shiftless and irresponsible.
John Irwin suggested they are seen as “irksome, offensive, threatening, capable
of arousal, even protorevolutionary.” (8) Objects of scournful, if colourful,
labels, such as “greasers” or “rowdies,” in an age of Television and the
videocassette recorder, these Morally dismissive labels are understood and used
widely. (9) Throughout much of America, and particularly in the South, the disreputable
working-class are dismissed as “rednecks.” In an unusually candid
characterisation, rednecks are described as “trash,” men with “rotten teeth”
who “kill deer out of season” and perhaps “belong to the Klan.” (10)
Working-class men and women are not unaware of the
existence and the dynamics of Moral hierarchies. They understand that persons
above them in the Wealth and Status hierarchies are “in a position to judge
them, and that the judgement rendered ... [is] that working-class people ...
[can]not be respected as equals.” (11) This can exact a heavy toll in
self-esteem. About the families he knew while living on “Clay Street,” Joseph
Howell said they “felt scorned and looked down on by [those] more affluent than
themselves.” (12) Referring to a typical male informant, investigators who
interviewed 150 Boston-area working-class men and women said that “he sees
himself as receiving the ultimate form of contempt from those who stand above
him in Society: he is a function, ‘Ricca the janitor,’ he is part of the woodwork.”
(13) Reflecting on her own working-class background, Lillian Rubin noted that
she was unable to examine it analytically for many years because “I was ...
eager to forget the pain and the shame of feeling deficient.” (14) Even
scholars and intellectuals are not immune from the tendency to see
working-class women and men as unworthy. [e.g. StevenPinker. PaulKrugman.] Part
of the intelligentsia, the former characteristically see themselves as “people
who hold the ‘right’ values [and] stand out from a mass whose understanding and
sensitivity they believe inferior to their own.” (15) For minority citizens,
the result can be “wounding undercurrents of self-doubt, [grounded in the]
suspicion that if whites [own] the world, there must be a reason.” (16) For
others, the result can be resentment and anger both over the nature and
dynamics of Moral hierarchy and the disrepute that looms as their destiny.
An important component of the individual-level impact
and meaning of low status is a sense of personal insignificance that is only strengthened by working-class awareness
that their views are not solicited and usually are not taken into account by
economic and political leaders. Neither they nor their opinions matter much;
they are taken for granted as a matter of course. Rarely are we surprised, therefore, when noxious
industries, land-fills, and freeways are sited in or traverse working-class
neighbourhoods. The great decisions that shape the lives of millions
instead are made by remote others who pursue their objectives with little
concern for working-class opinion. Thus the working-class patrons of a
restaurant frequented by African American men
tend to be very cynical about the motives of the
powerful institutions of their Society ... [O]ne of the beliefs they hold is
that the World they live in is controlled and manipulated by Powers at the top
... When a man suggests that nothing is an accident, he is making reference to
the “fact” that important events are brought about by those who hold the reins
of power ... It is taken for granted that Society is run by a set of Elites and
Institutions that arrange the most important events. (17)
Although race undoubtedly is one source of this
perspective expressed by working-class men, cynicism is not restricted to members
of minority racial groups. Reporting on the white patrons of the working-class
tavern where he was a participant observer, E.E. LeMasters noted:
It is quite evident that these men don’t trust
politicians – whether they voted for them or not. This attitude of cynicism is
generalised to include business leaders and trade union officials. As a matter
of fact, it is hard to think of any “big wheels” in our Society that these men
admire and trust. (18)
Nevertheless, the disadvantages of class and status
are intensified enormously for residents of American’s ghettos, barrios, and
reservations. Their rates of unemployment are among the highest, and those who
do have regular employment often are consigned to some of the dirtiest and
least remunerative work. Nor can we ignore gender inequity. To the oppression
of working-class women generally, the added burdens borne by those of minority
status can be insurmountable. Despite racial, ethnic, and gender variations
within the working-class however, “we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are
always talking about one working-class – divided as it may be.” Thus, the
‘underclass’ is not some peculiar distortion of Black Culture or psyche; [they]
... are members of the lowest sections of the working-class.” (19) This in no
way denies that poverty, disrepute, and race all contribute something to the
varied forms and meaning of lower-class street crime.
One of the most important consequences of life in the
working-class is that men and women generally do not aim high either
educationally or vocationally. This is not hard to understand. It is difficult
for the Imagination to soar when life is consumed by the pressures of coping
with routine exigencies and near-daily crises. Nor are working-class children
exposed to the educational and cultural Experiences that are fertile soil for
imagining and comprehending alternatives. Commenting on his working-class
childhood, Russell Baker noted that at age 14,
[m]y ignorance of the World beyond schoolroom,
baseball diamond, and family circle was remarkable ... I had spent my childhood
in the blue-collar World where there was neither Money, leisure, nor stimulus
to cultivate an intelligent Worldview. I had never been exposed to Art, nor
attended a concert, nor listened to a symphony even on records ... The fierce
political passions of the 1930s, the clash of Ideas about Communism, Fascism,
Socialism were very remote from the gray depths we inhabited. (20)
Children reared in working-class Worlds frequently do
not aspire beyond a good-paying blue-collar job, perhaps in the construction
industry, or service in the Military. Of all the consequences of poverty and
disrepute, perhaps none is as consequential as this stunting effect on their
dreams and Imagination.
The limited aspirations of these children generally
are buttressed by their school Experiences. Because of their speech, their
behaviour, and other aspects of their cultural capital, they are tagged as
students unlikely to succeed:
By embodying class interests and Ideologies, schools
reward the cultural capital of the dominant classes and systematically devalue
that of the lower classes. Upper-class students, by Virtue of a certain
linguistic and cultural competence acquired through family upbringing, are
provided with means of appropriation for success in school. (21)
It does not take long for many working-class children
to tune out of the school scene, not because they believe “success in school is
irrelevant but rather that the odds of ‘making it’ are simply too slim to bet
on ... [They] conclude that the possibility of upward social mobility is not
worth the price of obedience, conformity, and investment of substantial amounts
of time, energy, and work in the school.” (22) It is not difficult to see why
working-class children, even if they do not expect it, at least are prepared to
accept limited aspirations and accomplishments. This objectively based but
self-reinforced damper on dreams and achievement limits their legitimate and
illicit pursuits alike. Even their criminal dreams and accomplishments are
drawn to modest scale.
Family and Peer Group
The degree to which families remain stable and intact
despite the problems of working-class life ranges on a continuum from hard
living to settled living. (23) The settled working class are those with an
adequate and stable income, many of whom own their homes. They are
the single largest group of families in the country.
These are the men and women, by far the largest part of the American work
force, who work at the lower levels of the manufacturing and service sectors of
the Economy; workers whose Education is limited, whose mobility options are
severely restricted, and who usually work for an hourly rather than a weekly
wage. They don’t tap public resources; they reap no benefit from either the
pitiful handouts to the poor or from huge subsidies to the rich. Instead, they
go to work every day to provide for their families, often at jobs they hate.
(24)
Another observer has called them “maintainers,”
adults who “reproduce Society through the enactment of recurrent processes in
the framework of established institutions” and, therefore, play an extremely
important part in the life of working-class communities. (25) These men and
women often are active in community activities. Whatever the reasons they are
able to rationalise their lives and activities, the availability of an adequate
income surely is one of the most important.
In contrast to the settled-living, the hard-living
generally seem to live from crisis to crisis. Their lives have a chaotic
quality. Alcoholism, unstable work Histories, and unstable marital and live-in
relationships are commonplace. It is this fraction of the working class that
commonly is designated lower class.
Most of the analysis in this chapter applies particularly to them. Whether they
are unable or simply unwilling to rationalise their lives and pursuits is
unimportant when weighed against the consequences of the fact that they do not:
They are the men and women who rebel against the
grinding routine of life; the dulling, numbing Experience of going to the same
mindless job every day; of struggling with the same problems of how to feed,
clothe, and tend the children without adequate resources; of fighting an
endless and losing battle with roaches, rats, sore throats, and infected ears.
(26)
It is characteristic of working-class life and
neighbourhoods that settled families and hard-living families often live in
close geographic proximity.
The importance of the family in mediating the effects
of overarching economic and status hierarchies is affirmed clearly in Jay
MacLeod’s study of the “Hallway Hangers” and the “Brothers,” two groups of
young men residing in a public housing project in a northeastern U.S. city. The
former, all of whom were white, had turned off to school and had leveled
aspirations; they aspired to nothing beyond
the only jobs that they perceive to be available –
unskilled manual work. Many expect to enter military service, not because they
find it particularly appealing but because of the paucity of other
opportunities. The concept of an aspiration is essentially alien to the Hallway
Hanger. Most simply expect to take whatever they can get. (27)
The Brothers, who were African American, offered a
contrast. The parents of these boys had seen improuvement in their own lives
and had conveyed to their children a sense of Optimism and hope. (28) As a
result, the Brothers had not lowered their educational and occupational
aspirations. The family clearly can reinforce, blunt, or defeat the threat of
leveled aspirations.
And there is no doubt some families, particularly the
ones that are better off financially than others, make at least a modest effort
to inspire their youngsters. Typically, this takes the form of urging them to
get an Education or to acquire occupational skills – electrical wiring, perhaps
– that will pay off later. Beyond these ambiguous admonitions, however, most
working-class parents may have little to offer, and even a directional heading
is more than some can provide.
The circumstances and motivations of parents who do
not encourage their children to set lofty goals for themselves can be varied
and complex. For many it simply is lack of Knowledge; they may not know how to
identify key reference points or to provide adequate guidance to those with
ambition. Buffeted by the consequences of alcoholism and unstable employment,
other parents are so overwhelmed by living day to day that they cannot imagine
a future different from what they know. Coping with daily crises simply leaves no
time or energy for it. Some parents may not inspire their children
intellectually or vocationally for feat that the cost to the latter in
frustration and devastated self-esteem if they do not “make it” is too much to
risk. Perhaps, as these parents see things, it is best not to “put ideas in
their heads.”
Parents and other adults are the most important
transmitters of cultural capital, but the peer group is important also. It can
reinforce or turn on its head perspectives formed in the world of adults and in
relations with authority figures. The results of interviewing and participant
observation in a British working-class neighbourhood and school demonstrate
this point. The investigator found and described two groups of boys, the “lads”
and the “ear’oles.” (29) The former were distinguished by their opposition to
the Culture of the school and the objectives of teachers; the latter were
conformist in orientation and behaviour. Boys who gravitated towards the lads
in the process became less conformist in their stance towards school. The fact
that working-class male children are granted autonomy at an early age
simultaneously diminishes the influence of parents and increases the potential
impact of the peer group, whether it is conformist or oppositional. It is here,
for example, that lower-class aversion to many types of white-collar work as
unmanly often finds reinforcement. Substituting a white collar for a blue one,
as they see it, does not guarantee upward mobility or success. Income and
working conditions are critical also. Generally, white-collar employment that
subjugates one to a rigid schedule and close supervision is devalued. Tenured
full professors at major universities are viewed as successful, accountants are
not.
Cultural Constraints
Beyond economic precariousness, an air of inferiority
and insignificance, and the leveled aspirations that are staples of lower-class
worlds and lives, Experiences of the kind I have sketched give to their
cultural capital distinctive qualities. The economic and status Realities of
“working-class life,” Lillian Rubin noted, “and the constraints they impose
upon living are the common ingredients from which a world of shared
understanding arises, from which a Consciousness and a Culture grows that is
distinctly working-class.” (30) Noteworthy are two normative commitments and
personal stiles that are valued positively, particularly by males with origins
in the lowest fraction of the working class.
Independence and Autonomy
Those who have spent time in working-class worlds
invariably point to the importance males place on personal independence and
autonomy. The independent and unencumbered male ideal is valued highly. As they
understand it,
[i]ndependence ... means “minding one’s own business”
or not meddling in other people’s business and, at the same time, expecting to
be left alone in managing one’s own affairs. This concept is expressed most
frequently in the simple phrase, “Ain’t nobody gonna tell me what to do.” (31)
Doubtless one reason working-class males value highly
independence and autonomy is because, as the children of families with limited financial
resources, they achieve financial independence at an early age. When parents
simply lack resources to provide beyond the necessities, their children are
aware of it and have little choice but to adapt accordingly. Working-class
males understand without being told that whatever they acquire in life will be
by their efforts alone. There will be no inheritance or trust fund, no parental
indulgence while they take time off to “find themselves,” [Mnemotechnique, Amy
Goodman, Jennifer Connelly, Rooney Mara] and no high-powered connexions to draw
on. In marked contrast to children of the professional middle-class who enjoy
“an extended adolescence – often until the mid-twenties and later,” these
working-class children “grow up so fast” because the “moratorium on assuming
adult responsibilities is a luxury that only the affluent sector of the Society
can afford.” (32) Jay MacLeod described the Hallway Hangers: “At sixteen,
seventeen, and eighteen years of age, [they] have gained a maturity ... that is
incommensurate with their chronological age.” (33)
One of the taken-for-granted defining characteristics
of the Status of adult is the demonstrated ability to provide for oneself all
or a substantial proportion of the wherewithal for food, clothing, and shelter.
As young males achieve financial independence and adult Status in the realm of
occupational performance, others begin treating them as equals in other spheres
as well. And what begins as economic necessity and cultural norm is converted
gradually into personal and social Right. Bear in mind that young working-class
males usually hold a variety of jobs, many for no more than a few days. Often
they are paid in cash, in transactions that are unreported. Stable, skilled,
and well-paying employment at work with a future remains their ideal, however.
In addition to employment stability and a good
Income, work that permits one to operate independently is preferred. This helps
explain why many of them hope to acquire specific work skills while young:
Having a job skill was important because the work
itself was more rewarding than unskilled work, because the jobs paid more, and
because a skill gave a person more independence ... [S]ubcontracting was
popular ... The least desirable jobs were factory jobs or jobs where you had to
take orders all day and had no Freedom. (34)
Many of these men gain a familiarity with the
requisite tools, skills, and organisation of construction while young, which
facilitates later employment in this industry. The absence of formalised
credentialing processes and career lines also makes it attractive (35) An
informant once told me that those who do the hiring on construction sites
“don’t care whether you come from Yale or from jail. All they care about is
whether they can make any money with you.” Describing how he began working as a
bricklayer, the same informant went on to say:
When I got out of prison [the second time] ... I sold
a suit for $10 and I bought [some tools], just the bare necessities of what I
needed, and I met a guy who carried me on the job ... So at that time I could
make $160 a week ... And with this earning power, I didn’t have ... I didn’t
have to steal ... This was right down my alley.
Subcontracting, which is commonplace in the social
and economic organisation of construction work, only increases its appeal for
the independent-minded.
Most working-class males, however, have misinformed
or severely distorted notions about the Realities and risks of self-employment.
Given their subordinate origins, few of them fully comprehend the discipline
and long hours often required to make a go of things as a budding entrepreneur
and business owner. In the words and the fantasies of a hustler, “When you work
for somebody, he tells you this or that and if you don’t do it he beefs with
you. I don’t want to work for nobody.
That way, I got no beefs, and I can keep my own hours.” (36) Reality does not
concern them; Experience with subordinated and unremunerative jobs has
convinced them self-employment is better. Those who venture into
entrepreneurship generally find that it requires a degree of rationality and
discipline they cannot or will not devote to it. During the one year he lived
in south Philadelphia, Dan Rose was employed by a man who owned and operated an
automotive transmission repair shop. The business did not run smoothly, and
there were endless problems. According to Rose, it was as if the
owner-proprietor “wanted to turn the street hustle ... into a capitalist
enterprise but with none of the market rationalities of Ownership, legitimacy,
licensing, or access to wholesale parts and supplies.” (37) Entrepreneurship
and a rationalised life hold little appeal for men like him who want nothing so
much as to be free of external constraint. For those accustomed to the Freedoms
and the rhythms of the Street, operating a business prudently and closely is
too much like confinement.
Egalitarianism
Although I have elected not to dwell on the pathologies
and shortcomings of working-class mates, they should not and cannot be ignored
entirely. It is useful to bear in mind that the values and personal stiles of
working-class males are celebrated and pursued in a patriarchal World:
In much the same way that it takes a number of
support troops to maintain one soldier on the front line, it takes a number of
seemingly compliant People to supply the make room for one individualist at
home – to honour his whims, provide an audience for his acts of self-expression,
and populate the World over which he has dominion. In this, as in so many other
respects, one person’s Freedom of Action can easily become another’s bondage.
Nor can the Racism and high levels of interpersonal
violence that flourish among lower-class males be overlooked.
In the corners of their patriarchal, racist, and
classist Worlds, however, working-class males endorse and expect egalitarian
relations with one another. Remarking on the black males he knew in south
Philadelphia, Dan Rose noted that “the autonomy of the Self led to a Society of
autonomous Selves that were radically democratic.” (39) They are more
democratic in some respects than in others. Working-class males do not treat
one another without regard for rank of some kind, even if it is informal or
reputational. Rank is important. The fact is that some men are looked to with
respect, others with fear, and still others with contempt. They are not
democratic if by this is meant that all area treated alike.
But they are democratic in believing that
interactionally ostentatious displays of the Right to give orders generally is
unacceptable behaviour. None should behave as though deference and command are
personal entitlements. Egalitarianism and Authority generally are seen as
incompatible. This is one of the reasons working-class males may be reluctant
to assume an international posture with their peers that could be interpreted
as “trying to give orders.”
The high value placed on Egalitarianism and
opposition to those who behave as though they are superior finds expression in
respect for the unabashedly common. To embrace Egalitarianism completely is to
revel in being and being seen as one of the “common folk,” (40) someone who is
“never too good to speak to you.” On Clay Street, “a given personality or
individual could be admired and accepted regardless of his social position,
just so long as he seemed to be an ‘okay guy.’ Being an ‘okay guy’ meant among
other things ... being ... unpretentious. The worst kind of person was a snob.”
(41)
When Egalitarianism is coupled with strong support
for Class or peer-group Solidarity, it can make for reluctance to move out of
the familiar World and to regard those who do as traitors. Peer-group
influences that cause members to limit their individual aspirations in favour
of Loyalty to the group have been noted in research from New York ethnic
neighbourhoods to rural West Virginia. (42) One of the characteristics that
distinguished the “lads” and the “ear’oles” was the lads’ desire to maintain
the identity of the group. In his account of the Brothers and the Hallway
Hangers, Jay MacLeod noted that members of the latter placed great emphasis on
group identity. (43)
The working-class male
cultural emphasis on democratic relations is a mixed blessing, however. It
makes these men less likely than contemporaries reared at other levels of the
Class hierarchy to strive for and to seek out positions of leadership. They do
not relish acquisition or effective use of the skills or the trappings of
superordination. Left to themselves, few would choose to become “boss.” Lacking
Experience as organisers and leaders, it is hardly surprising they also lack
confidence in their ability to do these things. Thus, the emphasis on
Egalitarianism augments the leveling of aspirations produced by Class and
school Experiences. (44)
For individuals, as for families, the consequences of
disadvantage and disrepute and subordination are not invariant. Limited
resources and a bleak assessment of prospects for becoming successful through
honest endeavour can lead alternately to a profound sense of futility or to
rage. (45)
Spurred by identical structural and cultural
constraints, some individuals respond with willingness to drive themselves
unsparingly on the assumption that anything less only guarantees the quiet fate
that awaits most. Regardless of whether they are determined to succeed or
simply determined not to fail, these men will not be snared or defeated without
struggle. Class and racial memberships that destine one for a life of disrepute
and insignificance cause them to elevate near the top of their motives a drive
to be noticed and respected. They are less willing than their siblings and peers
to rule out criminal options if need be. Even if it must be secured with a
pistol, these men will have the wealth and leisure denied to their parents and
older neighbours. Asked what made him a criminal, an aging English thief
replied, “Seeing my father, a straight man, getting only poverty all through
his life for being straight.” (46) Another man is more expansive:
You know, [there’s] a thing the smart-boy preachers
and professors and all ought to remember: all the crap they hand you in Sunday
school and over the Television and the Radio and through Newspapers and Books
about how you got to be good and work hard and go to church and mind your manners
and wash your face and comb your hair and clean your fingernails and spray
under your arms and say sir to the boss and punch the time clock and tip your
hat to the cop and respect the Mayor or Governor or President, all those things
if you want to live a happy life, that’s a lot of goddamn lies, and if they know it, what makes them think
someone else can’t figure it out, too? (47)
To be successful, these men must construct a life
experienced as satisfactory on dimensions such as “dignity, fulfillment,
achievement of life goals, or level of gratification.” (48) They are capable of
enormous self-discipline and rationality in pursuit of a life better than the
one their parents attained. Although their numbers proportionately are not
large, the toll they exact is substantial, for they are among the most rational
and successful of all whose criminal beginnings stem from the inequity of
class.
Responses to Class and Status inequality can take
manner forms as well. Nursing anger and resentment, other men situated near the
bottom of Class and Moral hierarchies are prepared to use threat or force to
acquire what is denied them by inequality. Wealth and Leisure are important
components of their motivational quest, but self-validation or recognition is
added to the mix. In this way, crime can be a Mechanism and an interactional
forum for extracting form an indifferent or hostile World the attention and
respect men would not know otherwise.
Class, Constraints,
and Decisions
The theory of crime as choice predicts that persons
who have few legitimate options, attractive illicit ones, and little fear of
the risk of being caught if they choose the latter are more likely to engage in
criminal activity than are those who have attractive, attainable legitimate
options, few if any illicit ones they are aware of, and fear of the
consequences if they are arrested. The reasons working-class men are more
likely than middle-class thieves to persist at street crime are easy to
understand and entirely consistent with this theory. Working-class men are
unlikely to have access to attractive legitimate opportunities or to be
sufficiently confident of themselves and their skills to pursue the ones that
are available. In a word, they are among the least likely to find close at hand
the resources needed to construct and maintain successful lives legitimately.
Some of their own decisions limit them even further; they drop out of school
and in other ways make decisions that limit what they will be able to
accomplish.
If it is understood properly, the decision to commit
a crime must be seen in this larger context of prior decisions and constraints.
We never have unlimited options in the choices of everyday life. Always our
options are constrained by considerations that cause us to ignore or to rule
out some. Lower-class children generally do not entertain as a career option
becoming a physician, although this is not because they lack potential.
Instead, it is because this is not held out to them as a “realistic” or
attainable goal by their parents or by school officials, and consequently most
do not aspire to become physicians. At some point we must acknowledge and
examine how the Class and Status origins of many men who persist at
direct-contact theft and the characteristics of their cultural capital
constrain their legitimate options. These factors have the same effect on their
criminal options.
Class and Compliance
Several years
ago, a team of researchers at Stanford University conducted a study of
psychological reactions to the Experience of imprisonment. (49) The key
component of the research was a simulated prison operated by the investigators.
They first advertised for volunteers, who would receive $15 per day for
participating in the study. Seventy males, predominantly young, middle-class
college students, applied, and two dozen eventually were selected to
participate in the study. Half the volunteer participants were arbitrarily
designated as guards and the others as prisoners. As one of the investigators
later explained:
These were
the roles they were to play in our simulated prison. The guards were made aware
of the potential seriousness and danger of the situation and their own
vulnerability. They made up their own formal rules for maintaining Law, Order
and respect, and were generally free to improvise new ones during their
eight-hour, three-man shifts. The prisoners were unexpectedly picked up at
their homes by a city policeman in a squad car, searched, handcuffed,
fingerprinted, booked at the Palto Alto station house, and taken blindfolded to
our jail. There they were stripped, deloused, put into a uniform, given a
number and put into a cell ... where they expected to live for the next two
weeks. (50)
All
activities taking place in the mock Prison were observed and videotaped.
Participants also were tested and interviewed at various points during the
study.
“Guards”
quickly developed exaggerated roles of the kind found in real Prisons, becoming
high-handed and Tyrannical in the process. [That little spic fucker at Baylor
Medical School. That fat fucking prison guard at Harris County Jail.] “Inmates”
became docile and showed signs of extreme emotional stress. Three prisoners had
to be released in the first four days because of “acute situational traumatic
reactions,” such as hysterical crying, confusion in thinking, and severe
depression. Others begged to end their participation early. These and other
reactions by guards and prisoners caused the investigation to terminate the
study after only six days.
The
participants in the Stanford research primarily were middle-class university
students. (51) Just as they found confinement to be extremely unpleasant, men
from white-collar background who chance to spend any appreciable time in real
confinement often find it unusually demeaning and difficult. An ex-convict and
former thief made this accurate observation:
Straight
doing time can’t relate to the lifestyle inside, can’t make peace with being
caged, and can’t accept the con code. They don’t know how to keep to
themselves, to see nothing, hear nothing, talk about nothing. They don’t know
how to protect themselves from the dangers, like wolves that prey on weak,
scared ones. They don’t understand that you mustn’t trust no one, mustn’t
injure anyone’s feelings, and mustn’t lose at gambling any debts you can’t pay.
Squares don’t know how to wheel and deal to stay alive. (52)
When they do
become ensnared by the criminal Justice apparatus, respectable white-collar
citizens characteristically apply to their criminal acts linguistic techniques
that enable them to deny or to minimise the fact they are criminals. They may interpret their arrest and conviction, for
example, as evidence of political pressures exerted on or personal bias on the
part of prosecutors. Once in custody, they complain, make claims for special
treatment, and burden others with accounts of the mistreatment and Injustice
they have suffered. (53)
How different
they are from working-class males who, once they are arrested and sentenced,
typically refer to their activities as “stealing” or “doing Wrong” and who
rarely dispute the State’s formal Right to punish them. It is a fundamental and
inescapable fact, moreover, that the penalty of Imprisonment is limited
principally to blue-collar men and that one of the more noteworthy aspects of
their adaptation to it is a high level of taken-for-granted compliance.
Reflecting on many years spent in juvenile and adult institutions, an alcoholic
former thief and heroin addict could be speaking for many working-class males
who, like him, chance to end up in prison:
[N]obody’s
done anything to me that I haven’t gone clean out of my way to ask for. And
I’ve never complained about being picked on, really. I’ve never had complaints
about parole officers or Police. I never have felt that, because I’ve always
known that each time that I got here I worked hard to get here. I truly worked
harder than other people to get myself put in this goddamn place, you see, and
I think the way that I did my time also indicated my willingness to accept the
punishment as my lot. (54)
Save for the
day-to-day violence inmates conflict upon one another, occasional inmate
assaults on staff, and the waves of Riot that periodically course through them,
U.S. Prisons are calm places. Active, open resistance to institutional
personnel and regimens is as rare as emotional responses were commonplace in
the “Stanford County Jail.” The same handicaps and cultural biases that prepare
working-class men for street crime also prepares them for Punishment when they
are caught.
Those charged
with running places of involuntary segregative confinement face the challenge
of inducing inmates to contribute to the smooth operation of their facilities
or at least not to disrupt daily operations. The
challenge of maintaining order and routine in Jails and Prisons is reduced when
prisoners can be made to discount or ignore entirely the possibility of joining
with their peers to challenge staff actions or to insist upon improuvements in
their common conditions of confinement. Their acquiescence is facilitated not
only by administrators’ calculated actions to divide inmates but also by the
fact that working-class men respond to incarceration in ways that reflect
aspects of their cultural background and common values. Their Experience leads
them to see as legitimate and to accept as proper an unambiguous link between
crime and Punishment. Working-class men are prepared to submit to criminal Justice authority. Two aphorisms
often heard in the prisons are “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime”
and “If you wanna play, you gotta pay.” They attest to the clear relationship
between crime and Punishment that is taken as a given by prisoners from poor
and minority backgrounds.
The value
they assign to Independence and autonomy is particularly important in this
regard. Prison officials promote a “do-your-own-time” interpretation of
prisoners’ plight, one that resonates comfortably with the self-defined
independent working-class male. Describing how he settled into doing his second
prison sentence, Roger Morton said:
I just laid
back and let people do what they want to do, just as long as it didn’t involve
me. Just laid back and done my time. I was the only one there to do it. I just
let most folks alone, I tried not to get involved in loanin’ Money and
borrowin’ Money, or get into the drug thing. Every now and then we might throw
us up a little julep or something, to celebrate.
This
normative ideal and strategy of “live-and-let-live” atomises the prisoner group
and complicates enormously the task of anyone who would call for more
interaction and trust among prisoners. It is not because of the actions of
guards alone that U.S. Prisons “are among our last bastions of the idea of the
insurmountable, free individual.” (55)
The brand of Egalitarianism valued so highly by
working-class males also finds expression in their compliant behaviour when
they are in custody. The notion of differential Authority and leadership is for
them of such uncertain legitimacy and distasteful as well that they are
reluctant to involve and submerge themselves in organisation. They are not the
kind of men who align themselves with or subordinate quickly to self-proclaimed
leaders. This wariness decreases further any protest for a collective, perhaps
oppositional, response to their treatment.
The emphasis working-class men place on
Egalitarianism also makes the task of controlling them easier when they are in
the clutches of criminal Justice functionaries and bureaucracies. They are slow
to step forward from the ranks, but they are quick to mistrust those who do.
This effectively denies to them all hope of acting purposefully and
collectively. They are leaderless because it satisfies their egalitarian
impulses, because they are slow to subordinate themselves voluntarily, and
because they lack Experience organising and leading. [Occupy Movement.] In
Chapter 3, we shall see how these same cultural biases limit their ability to
exploit crimes that pay well with little risk of arrest or severe penalty.
Notes
1.
Jay MacLeod, Ain’t
No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987), p. 12. For an extended
development of the concept of cultural capital, see Pierre Bordieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977); and Pierre bordieu and Jean-Claude Passeron,
Reproduction in Education, Society, and
Culture (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1977).
2.
William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1987). The underclass thesis has been the focus of
considerable if often arcane scholarly debate in which the lived Experience of
underclass women and men is all but ignored. For an exception, see Ken
Auletta, The Underclass (New York,
NY: Random House: 1982). The utility of the underclass concept certainly is not
limited to urban minority populations. Its application to Appalachia is argued
in Lynda Ann Ewen, “All God’s children ain’t got shoes: A comparison of West
Virginia and the urban ‘underclass,’” Humanity
and Society 13(1989), pp. 145-164. A discussion of the underclass concept
and the controversy generated by it is Carole Marks, “The urban underclass,” Annual Review of Sociology 17(1991), pp.
445-466.
3.
Sympathetic and insightful accounts of some of
these changes include Terry M. Williams and William Kornblum, Growing Up Poor (Lexington, MA: D.C.
Heath, 1985); and Gregory Pappas, The
Magic City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). On the fear of
homelessness, see Lillian B. Rubin, Families
on the Fault Line (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994), especially p.
113-116.
4.
Lillina Breslow Rubin, Worlds of Pain (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976), p. 30.
5.
Lillian B. Rubin, Families on the Fault Line (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 17.
6.
E.E. LeMasters, Blue-Collar Aristocrats (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1975); and Studs Terkel, Working (New
York, NY: Pantheon, 1974).
7.
Everett C. Hughes, “Good people and dirty work,”
In The Sociological Eye, vol. 1,
edited by Everett C. Hughes (Chicago, IL: Aldine Atherton, 1971).
8.
John Irwin, The
Jail (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), p. 2.
9.
Herman Schwendinger and Julia R. Siegel
Schwendinger, Adolescent Subcultures and
Delinquency, research edition (New York, NY: Praeger, 1985).
10.
This characterisation of
Bernard Welch, the man who murdered her spouse, was given by Dr. Halberstam’s
widow on the day Welch was sentenced to imprisonment. Mrs. Halberstam, who grew
up in the Deep South, said she had known men like Welch “all my life.” See
Washington Post, “Welch convicted of
murder, robbery, nine other counts,” 11 April 1981, p. 11.
11.
Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York,
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 38.
12.
Joseph T. Howell, Hard Living on Clay Street (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1973), p.
327.
13.
Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York,
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 50.
14.
Lillian Breslow Rubin, Worlds of Pain (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976), p. 13. Of her
childhood spent in rural poverty, songwriter and singer Dolly Parton noted
simply that “The worst thing about poverty is not the actual living of it, but
the shame of it.” See Dolly Parton, Dolly
(New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 51.
15.
Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York,
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 69. Although many middle-class academics and activists claim to
understand and to act in the interests of the working people, in truth most do
not bother to acquaint themselves firsthand with working-class lives and
perspectives. The fact that Affirmative Action programs were designed and
operate with apparent indifference to the handicaps of Class is particularly
revealing. The gulf between middle-class and working-class perspectives
and its consequences are explored in David Croteau, Politics and the Class Divide (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press, 1995). A popular treatment of some of these issues is E.J. Dionne, Jr., Why Americans Hate Politics (New York,
NY: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
16.
Sylvester Monroe and Peter Goldman, Brothers (New York, NY: William Morrow,
1988), p. 161.
17.
Mitchell Duneier, Slim’s Table (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p.
74.
18.
E.E. LeMasters, Blue-Collar Aristocrats (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1975), p. 184.
19.
Lynda Ann Ewen, “All God’s children ain’t got
shoes: A comparison of West Virginia and the urban ‘underclass,’” Humanity and Society 13(1989), p. 154.
20.
Russell Baker, Growing Up (New York, NY: Congdon and Weed, 1982), pp. 198-199.
21.
Jay MacLeod, Ain’t
No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987), p. 12.
22.
Jay MacLeod,
Ain’t No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987), p. 104.
23.
The distinction between settled living and hard
living is made and discussed in Joseph T. Howell, Hard Living on Clay Street (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1973).
24.
Lillian B. Rubin, Families on the Fault Line (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994), p.
25.
Mitchell Duneier, Slim’s Table (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p.
131.
26.
Lillian Breslow Rubin, Worlds of Pain (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976), p. 34.
27.
Jay MacLeod,
Ain’t No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987), pp. 67-68.
28.
Jay MacLeod, Ain’t
No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987), especially pp. 137-162. The
same racial difference is reported in Mercer L. Sullivan, “Getting Paid” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
29.
Paul E. Willis, Learning to Labour (Farnborough, UK: Saxon House, 1977).
30.
Lillian Breslow Rubin, Worlds of Pain (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976), p. 210.
31.
Patricia Duane Beaver, Rural Community in the Appalachian South (Lexington,
KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1986), p. 153.
32.
Lillian Breslow Rubin, Worlds of Pain (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976), p. 30.
33.
Jay MacLeod,
Ain’t No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987), p. 55.
34.
Joseph T. Howell, Hard Living on Clay Street (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1973), p. 343.
35.
For example, Dermot Walsh, Heavy Business (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 59.
36.
James Willwerth, Jones (New York, NY: M. Evans, 1974), p. 186.
37.
Dan Rose, Black
American Street Life (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1987), p. 120.
38.
Kai T. Erikson, Everything in Its Path (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1976),
p. 91.
39.
Dan Rose, Black
American Street Life (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1987), p. 165.
40.
Patricia Duane Beaver, Rural Community in the Appalachian South (Lexington,
KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1986), p. 165.
41.
Joseph T. Howell, Hard Living on Clay Street (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1973), p.
348.
42.
Compare, for example, Herbert J. Gans, Urban Villagers (New York, NY: Free
Press, 1962) and Jack E. Weller, Yesterday’s
People (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1965).
43.
Jay MacLeod,
Ain’t No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987).
44.
Paul Willis, Learning
to Labour (Farnborough, UK: Saxon House, 1977); and Jay MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO:
Westview, 1987).
45.
Jay MacLeod,
Ain’t No Makin’ It (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987), p.
46.
Tony Parker and Robert Allerton, The Courage of His Convictions (London:
Hutchinson, 1962), p. 106. “Robert Allerton,” the thief and ex-convict whose
life history is the subject of this book, would go on to serve at least one
additional prison sentence after it was published.
47.
Ted Thackery, Jr., The Thief (Los Angeles, CA: Nash, 1971), p. 72.
48.
John Irwin, The
Felon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentince- Hall, 1970), p. 177.
49.
Philip G. Zimbardo, “Pathology of Imprisonment,”
Society 9(1972), pp. 6-8.
50.
Philip G. Zimbardo, “Pathology of Imprisonment,”
Society 9(1972), p. 6.
51.
Philip G. Zimbardo, “Pathology of Imprisonment,”
Society 9(1972), p. 6.
52.
Marlene Webber and Tony McGilvary, Square John (Toronton, ON: University of
Toronton Press, 1988), p. 74. For examples of how incarcerated squares are
exploited, see Pete Earley, The Hot House
(New York, NY: BanTam books, 1992), pp. 156-158; and Nathan McCall, Makes Me Wanna Holler (New York, NY:
Random House, 1994), pp. 154-156. In recompense for
incarceration with those they typically regard as social inferiors, some
respectable ex-prisoners write scournful, classist accounts of their peers. For
an example of this, see Jean Harris, Stranger
in Two Worlds (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1986).
53.
See, for example, Michael L. Benson, “Denying
the guilty mind: Accounting for involvement in white-collar crime,” Criminology 23(1985), pp. 583-607.
54.
Eugene Delorme, Chief, edited by Inez Cardozo-Freeman
(Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 153.
55.
Joan Smith and William Fried, Uses of the American Prison (Lexington,
MA: Lexington Books, 1974), p. 58.
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