[Air-l] viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

[joana ro]

What really surprised me when reading your (really interesting and
inspiring) article, was the framing of class in the terms "good" and "bad"
kids. Does the popular, white girl actually see herself as good and the emo
girl as bad? In Germany (where I live), class would be framed more through
distancing and maybe specific (derogatory) terms which address class or race
issues I think.

It seems to me that the (moral?) distinction between good and bad might be
reflected in labeling the groups hegemonic and subaltern. When dealing with
class, it seems one always has to choose a side and figure out who is
gaining from all of this and who is loosing. Reading your worries about both
groups though, it seems hard to argue that any of these teenage groups is
truly on the winning side.

What about Bourdieu? I always found him helpful to deal with class in
specific contexts and in trying to figure out small scale social structures
and naming the different functionalities of these structures. Of course,
translating Bourdieu`s reliance on the body into virtual terms could be a
challenge - but might be a fun one (and has probably been done before).

Just a note - from what I see and hear, your notion that class divisions are
represented online holds true for Germany. Although I am not sure how
MySpace fits into the picture, we have two German networks which can be
class-identified, one overtly (StudiVZ for the university students), and
the other less overtly (Kwick for the pupils of the shortest branch of our -
very stratifying - three-way school system). Btw - Kwick has a very clean
and precast design and is not reminiscent of junky myspace.

Oh and another thing - analyzing the myspace thread commenting on the
article for social positioning, habitus and distinction could be a fun task.

Regards,
Johanna

Johanna Roering
Sfb War Experience
University of Tuebingen