SOCIALIZING INEQUALITY.
THE CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT OF STATUS STEREOTYPES IN FOUR EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
Few subjects have proven more stimulating to the sociological imagination than that of “social inequality”. Few concepts are more central to sociology’s sense of disciplinary identity than that of “socialization”. This makes it all the more curious that sociologists have thus fair paid remarkably little attention to the process whereby social actors gradually learn to perceive and judge the world around them as inherently “unequal”. The research project “Socializing inequality” aims to uncover when and how young children develop the cognitive ability to perceive and judge inequality in social status. Using a specifically designed visual methodology, this project aims to uncover the classificatory logic that children deploy to situate themselves and others in social space. It does so through a comparative study of children from 4 to 12 in Belgium, Norway, Serbia and the UK.
ECCI partners: BELGIUM – UNITED KINGDOM – NORWAY – SERBIA
BUTLERS: SOCIOLOGY OF A CRAFT
The occupation of “butler” – the congenial household manager that the popular imagination generally associates with figures like Jeeves or scenes from Downton Abbey – is currently undergoing a revival. In line with growing economic inequality, over the last thirty years butlers have increasingly found employment working for the emergent, global ‘super-rich’ in addition to their traditional, aristocratic employers. As a case study, butlers highlight how many of the symbolic advantages that elites enjoy, such as their ability to express ‘class’ in the home and in leisure, are in fact supported by the employment of skilled labour. This research project explores this relationship through original ethnographic research where the researcher actually trained as a butler and worked as a butler in the UK. These observations are supplemented with extensive interviews with professional butlers across the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as a historical content analysis of the professional literature.
ECCI partners: BELGIUM – UNITED KINGDOM – THE NETHERLANDS