Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies

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Professorial Capital: Blue-Collar Reflections on Class, Culture, and the Academy Mary Kosut Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 2006 6: 245 DOI: 10.1177/1532708604268222 The online version of this article can be found at: http://csc.sagepub.com/content/6/2/245

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Cultural 10.1177/1532708604268222 Kosut • Professorial Studies ↔Capital Critical Methodologies • May 2006

Professorial Capital: Blue-Collar Reflections on Class, Culture, and the Academy Mary Kosut Manhattan College, New York

Merging theory with autoethnographic reflections, the author critically explores the relationship between social class and the reproduction of inequality within the upper ranks of the academy, while reflexively and purposefully challenging traditional modes of academic discourse. Drawing from the author’s experiences as a blue-collar sociology doctoral student, the concept of an academic class ceiling is elaborated. In an attempt to link everyday practices within a larger structural framework, the author advances a theory of professorial capital derived from Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital. This article argues that unless the everyday dynamics of class exclusion are explicitly problematized, institutions will continue to implicitly reproduce the culture of the elite, and working-class voices will remain marginalized and silent.

Introduction: Where I Am Coming From Social science education did not prepare me to write from the heart, to touch other people, or to improve social conditions. My education taught me to write in a way that would bring respect from a small, elite group of colleagues (Ellis, 1997, p. 135). Although our memories are often fleeting and fuzzy, interpretations of lived events we rewrite and edit throughout our lives, some memories echo in our minds with clarity. Instead of drifting farther away from us over time, they remain distinctly audible. “Geez, aren’t you done with school yet? You sure are takin’ a long time. I don’t know what’s going on with you. You know, you ain’t getting any younger,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “Yeah, you’re right. It has been a long time, Grandma,” I impatiently replied.

Author’s Note: I would like to thank Norman K. Denzin, Elizabeth Jesella, Elizabeth Bachner, and the anonymous reviewers of Critical Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies for their astute comments. This article is dedicated to Jamie, Rachel, and other working-class comrades who have generously shared their life experiences with me. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Volume 6 Number 2, 2006 245-262 DOI: 10.1177/1532708604268222 © 2006 Sage Publications 245


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“Well, my niece is only 24, and she has a masters degree and makes good money teaching kids. She has a real good job, makes good money,” she emphasized. “Someday, I will make money too. Only a few more years and I will have my doctorate. Just think, I will be the first doctor in the family!” I said with hope and genuine enthusiasm. “Ha! You ain’t gonna be no doctor,” she crackled incredulously. “Mare, what’s goin’ on? It’s dear old Dad just checkin’ in to see how you’re doin’.” “Hey, Dad. I’m good. Just working on a take-home final essay exam,” I said trying to mask my regret for having picked up the phone. I was on a roll and had hoped to finish my final and shut down my computer so that I could get to bed by midnight. “I gotta hand it to ya. I couldn’t do what you’re doin,’” he said with sincerity. “Yeah, sometimes it gets pretty tiring, especially when work gets hectic. With graduate school and my job, I have no time to have a life.” “Oh, but you know it will be worth it. Teachers are state workers, and they have good benefits and retirement. I was talking to your uncle about you, and he said that you should definitely teach kindergarten kids or first graders ‘cause when they are little, they listen to you. When they get to be junior high or high school age, then they start actin’ up and givin’ you crap,” he offered. “Dad, umm, as I have told you many times before, I am getting my doctorate. I plan to teach in a college. I am going to conduct research and write books and articles. I will be a Ph.D., a professor,”I said with consternation and patronization. After a long uncomfortable pause, he replied, “Oh. I see, a college professor,” in a mockingly haughty voice.

Even though I had been in graduate school pursuing a doctorate in sociology for more than 5 years, most of my blue-collar, non-college-educated family members did not have a clue as to what I was doing. Some of them understood that I was going into the field of education, but they could not comprehend why it was taking so long. They were worried. I was worried too but for different reasons. Even though I understood why the titles Ph.D. and professor were virtually meaningless to them, I had to confront the reality that I knew their culture, yet they did not know the culture I was entering. It became clear to me that the closer I got to the title of Ph.D., the more distance was being wedged between myself and my blue-collar familial roots. I began to feel detached from my family because I found it harder to pass in their world. I made it a point not to use academic jargon or fancy words, so I would not sound like a snob. At the same time, I did not feel comfortable in the academy. I consciously strived to mask evidence of my blue collarness in hopes of gaining acceptance and credibility as a student scholar and eventually a professor. I felt like an outsider who had snuck in. For roughly 7 years, I lived in what hooks (2000) describes as a state of class limbo. Now that I am on the inside, I have a privileged platform through which to communicate my experiences.


Kosut • Professorial Capital

Voices From the Inside Following Lincoln (1997), Ellis (1997), and Ellis and Flaherty (1992), I reflexively use multiple voices throughout this article—the embodied first person “I” and the formal authoritative third person—to juxtapose my class identities. These two voices symbolically represent and communicate my experiences of feeling betwixt and between my blue-collar background and the middle-class academic world. Rather than only speaking on behalf of those who are silenced and marginalized using my third person professorial voice, I also speak through a body that has been silenced and marginalized using the emotional, experiential “I.” I purposefully use both of these voices to engage in a new type of dialogue that challenges traditional academic discourse. The discipline of sociology is firmly grounded in the rational and the objective thanks to 19th-century founding fathers, Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, who advocated a methodological paradigm grounded in positivism and value-free data collection. Notwithstanding, within the past few decades, postmodern ethnographic and qualitative paradigms have challenged the ontological and epistemological assumptions of quantitative-based research (Clifford, 1988; Clifford & Marcus, 1986). In this context, I reject positivism and use my autoethnographic narrative as primary data to focus on various barriers that I encountered as a blue-collar sociology doctoral student. As Ellis and Flaherty (1992) note, embracing subjectivity can be both unpleasant and dangerous, “unpleasant because emotional, cognitive and physical experiences . . . are deemed inappropriate topics for polite society” and “dangerous because the workings of subjectivity seem to contradict so much of the rational-actor worldview on which mainstream sociology is premised” (p. 1). Of course, academic colleagues may dismiss sociologists who embrace their own subjective experiences as overly emotional, unprofessional, or dangerously too close to the domain traditionally occupied by the humanities. However, this type of critique fails to comprehend the inherent power in using autoethnographic data; lived experiences provide a direct link to cultural, political, and historical contexts. I contend that a class ceiling inhibits working-class students from entering the so-called knowledge factory (Tokarczyk & Fay, 1993). Much like the glass ceiling limits women from rising to upper-level positions in the labor force, a class ceiling exists within the upper levels of the academy impeding less privileged students from achieving the same levels of success as their more privileged colleagues. The class ceiling is supported by everyday practices as illustrated in my elaboration of a theory of professorial capital. I suggest that achieving recognition and success in a humanities or social science doctoral program is directly related to the levels of professorial capital a student possesses. Professorial capital is based on Bourdieu’s (1984, 1986) concept of cultural capital. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Bourdieu (1984) theorizes that our social class position reflects four kinds of capital that


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are inherently interconnected: economic, social, cultural, and symbolic. According to Bourdieu, members of the dominated classes have not only little economic capital but also less cultural capital. All members of society are born with varying amounts of cultural capital that are reproduced through what he refers to as the habitus, or “internalized, embodied, social structures” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 468). For example, those born into the upper class will have access to elite institutions and hereditary privileges (private schools, seats at the symphony) that function to reproduce their elite cultural capital and social location. Likewise, members of the working class will reproduce their social location through the habitus by engaging in low-status activities such as playing pool and watching TV. The concept of habitus and cultural capital are valuable because they link individuals with macrostructures, providing a greater understanding of how structure is reproduced by individuals in action. I propose that professorial capital functions as a specific type of cultural capital that reproduces class stratification within the upper tiers of the academy. Professorial capital consists of four different cultural tools that a doctoral student may possess: discursive, aesthetic cultural, cognitive, and temporal. These four forms are dialectically related and enable a privileged class of academics to monopolize academic discourse and culture. Graduate students with high levels of professorial capital benefit because they possess valuable cultural knowledge that may translate to success in doctoral programs, eventually opening the doorway to the academy. As an analytic framework, professorial capital specifically aims to make an explicit connection between theory and lived experience. Although theory has traditionally been employed by academic elites far from the realm of the every day, it has critical potential when used as a tool to make larger connections between structural conditions and subjective realities. As Giroux (2002) asserts, if theory is understood as a resource, it can become a way of critically engaging and mapping the crucial relations among language, texts, everyday life, and structures of power as part of a broader effort to understand the conditions, contexts, and strategies of struggle that will lead to social transformation. (p. 98)

In connecting theory, individual experiences, social institutions, and cultural processes, we can begin to articulate and illuminate how mechanisms of inequality work. Forms of Professorial Capital: A Series of Clicks (The stranger) is fixed within a certain spatial circle—or within a group whose boundaries are analogous to spatial boundaries—but his position within it is fundamentally affected by the fact that he does not belong within it initially and that he brings qualities into it that are not, and cannot be, indigenous to it. (Georg Simmel, 1908, in Levine, 1971, p. 143)



In the following section I present a series of clicks:1 biographical moments embedded in my memory that contributed to the formation of my own class consciousness. I conceptualize these autoethnographic clicks as mundane everyday interactions that reproduce a hidden curriculum: They send implicit messages about who has a place in the academy and who does not. Although each click is a highly subjective micronarrative, when fused together, they narrate a larger story about exclusion and inequality in American education. These clicks are the foundation of a theory of professorial capital.

Click 1: Discursive Capital The setting is a classroom in an urban university. The room is decorated in the classic institutional style: beige walls, florescent lighting, oversized simulated wood grain seminar table in center of the room, and an absence of windows. Fifteen graduate students are waiting for the professor to arrive. Some talk quietly in groups, some reread their notes, and others gaze listlessly at random objects. It is the second time the class will meet, and the inaugural semester of my Ph.D. student career. I feel nervous, confused, inept, and frazzled. I pan the room looking for symbolic signs of hope. No visible tattoos, black concert t-shirts, facial piercings, or other obvious cues of unconventionality. I wonder to myself, “My god, what have I done?” The White male student in his late 20s sitting next to me breaks my solipsistic silence. “So did you finish the readings?” he said. “Ah hah,” I nodded back. “What did you conclude?” “Umm, yeah, I concluded that some sociologists are crappy writers. I mean, some of that stuff was pretty hard to figure out,” I offered sincerely. “ Ahhh, I like what Adorno had to say about the culture industry, but the way he writes is pretty confusing and alienating. . . . Why do they have to write like that? Although, writing style aside, he writes some cool shit to think about.” I stop talking because I realize he is furrowing his brow. I get the feeling I gave the wrong answer. “Perhaps you should invest some time in a more thoughtful reading of the text or consult some secondary sources if you are unable to process the material,” he said in a condescending tone. His body turns away from mine. I am shut down. “Yeah, perhaps I should do that,” I replied in a cocky tone. I take a lungful of air and utter the word asshole under my breath. We are both relieved when the professor enters the room and takes his spot at the center of the table.

I sat quietly in anger, mulling over the exchange. I did not speak the entire class because I knew I would sound stupid. To sound stupid is to be stupid. I feared that my peers and more importantly, my professor, would discover I was an intellectual charlatan. I remembered what my friend Tom said: “Just be


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quiet and people will think you are smart.” I thought to myself, “Where did that guy learn to talk like that? Who the hell talks like that?” Click. The following scene is a copy-making place that services university students. I am waiting by myself, staring out the window at the manic sidewalk traffic and leaning against a white counter with a paper cutter on it. I recognize two of my classmates as they walk through the door. She is also a 1st-year student. He is an upper-level student who is rumored to be a genius. He did his undergraduate work at Yale. He is often seen in the vicinity of smiling professors. “Hey guys, getting your urban packets?” I affably offered. “Hi Miss Mary,” she said sincerely. He nods at me and goes directly to the counter to place his order. She and I chat about how busy we are at work, how we are already falling behind in the readings, how we feel like having a drink. He comes back from the counter and joins the conversation. “Oh, I see you got the Lyotard readings,” I said. “It’s Lie—o—tar, not leotard,” he said as his eyes widened and rolled. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know,” I replied. A long period of uncomfortable silence followed. He looked out of the window onto the street. The conversation was shut down. “Well, I guess we will see you in class,” she uncomfortably offered. They walk away. I mispronounced a French name. My blue-collar cover is blown. I guess I should have kept my mouth shut. Click.

These two clicks forced me to confront the obvious: I did not communicate my thoughts in legitimate academic speak. A doctoral student’s success hinges on his or her ability to communicate ideas verbally. Oral examinations and dissertation defenses allow professors to determine whether a student possesses the discursive skills that are the signature of a legitimate academic. However, professors assess a student’s intelligence and creativity via forms of talk from the start of the institutionalization process. Students from less privileged backgrounds are at a major disadvantage on entering doctoral programs because they often do not possess the vocabulary, speech patterns, and pronunciation skills of their colleagues. Working-class, uneducated families communicate in a language distinctively different from academic discourse (Belanoff, 1993; Bernstein, 1971). In addition, working-class students are less likely to hone their communication skills at school. The state colleges that I attended did not prepare me for institutional discourse. Because of large classes and predominantly unidirectional dialogue from professor to student, I learned to listen, write, and memorize. I did not know what a seminar course was prior to graduate school. When I first encountered doctoral seminar speak, I became acutely aware of how insufficient my vocabulary was. I quickly determined words that I commonly used, such as cool, good, and sucks, needed to be replaced by fascinating, tenable, and problematic if I wanted to stay competitive. This took a lot of practice as I grew up in a house that engaged in fights, not polemics. I also quickly



became aware of the ease in which my professors and classmates pronounced German and French names. Rather than pause or butcher the exotic words, they appeared to gracefully flow from their mouths. Fin de siècle and geschellshaft were words I not only did not understand but also was unable to pronounce. In addition, my privileged colleagues possessed formal and authoritative speech patterns that significantly differed from my own. For example, the working-class speech with which I am familiar is peppered with likes, you knows, umms, am I rights, and double negatives. Its delivery has a tendency to be casual or emphatic, sometimes with expressive facial or arm movements. I had to alter not only what I said but just as important, how I said it. Informality, emotion, and feelings are not rewarded in most academic settings. Lack of discursive capital puts working-class students at a disadvantage because they are less likely to be recognized as bright or intelligent. They are also less likely to speak, fearing their own language would be appallingly inappropriate. Students with high amounts of discursive capital receive rewards that translate into real opportunities. For example, they are mentored by highranking professors, are more likely to receive the most prestigious academic awards and scholarships, and most important, are identified as having promise. Without the right communication codes, blue-collar students remain silent and invisible.

Click 2: Aesthetic-Cultural Capital The setting is the hallway outside of my professor’s office. I sit on the floor with my legs crossed, impatiently wondering if I will be able to meet with her today. More than 20 minutes have passed, and I glance at my watch again. It is almost 4 p.m. I will have to try again next week. I unlock my body and look up from my notes. I recognize a classmate coming down the hall. She has a big grin on her face. “Hey, waiting to see Dr. X?” she asked. “Yeah, it ain’t happening today. One of the boys is monopolizing her office hours,” I halfheartedly complained. “Where are you coming from?” “Oh, I just had an excellent meeting with Dr. B,” she beamed. “I wrote this paper that references Mandelstam, and as it turns out, Dr. B is a big fan of his. He seemed really impressed. He was drooling over my paper. I think I am going to ask him to be on my thesis committee.” “Who is Mandelstam?” I asked. “Osip Mandelstam. He is a Polish-born writer who grew up in Saint Petersburg. He often gets lumped into the category of the great Russian writers, like in the tradition of Tolstoy or Nabokov,” she chattily replied. “Oh, is he still alive?” “No, he died in the early 1940s,” she said authoritatively. There is a brief moment of awkward silence. “Well, I guess I better run. I am meeting my boy-


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friend at the opera tonight, and I want to go home and change first,” she said as she walked backwards away from me. “Have fun,” I said rather lamely. I stood there for a moment and watched her gaily bounce away. I never met people in their 20s who went to the opera. I never read Mandelstam. (I never even heard of Mandelstam.) I never read Tolstoy or Nabokov. “Maybe she would run into Dr. X or Dr. B at the opera,” I thought to myself. Click.

This particular click, a casual friendly conversation, illustrates how a doctoral student’s career may be positively influenced by the level of aestheticcultural knowledge they possess. Aesthetic-cultural capital refers to knowledge of the humanities and arts, from Aristotle and Kant to Proust, Wilde, and Manet. Students that can drop names, make links between disciplines, and use examples from obscure literary references stand out. Aesthetic-cultural knowledge may accumulate through attendance of elite institutions (including primary and secondary schools) that promote a classic, liberal, well-rounded education. Aesthetic-cultural knowledge may also be transferred via the family. For example, children who are socialized by highly educated parents are more likely to be exposed to a variety of academic concepts and disciplines before entering college. They are also more likely to have been exposed to different types of books. Aside from newspapers and magazines, my parents did not read regularly. The small bookcase my family owned contained an assortment of knickknacks, a set of encyclopedias, a few self-help books, and a best seller or two. Russian literature, philosophy, and feminist theory were noticeably absent from my childhood. In addition to education and socialization within the family, aestheticcultural knowledge is accumulated through travel and exposure to the arts. As Peckham (1995) observes, those from privileged backgrounds are more likely to have traveled nationally and internationally. Some students visit such diverse sites as the Grand Canyon, Chartres, or the Acropolis as children or teenagers. Students of working-class families often do not go on remote vacations because they do not have discretionary money or cannot get time off from work. Besides travel, exposure to the arts also depends on economic resources. It is expensive to attend the philharmonic, opera, ballet, or theater. In addition to a lack of economic resources, it is important to note that the working classes engage in different cultural activities than the privileged classes (Bourdieu, 1984). For example, many of my relatives look forward to bowling, fishing, and playing pool in their spare time. Going to the opera or a gallery opening would be a potentially uncomfortable, boring, or simply unpleasant activity. To use the vernacular, it would suck. Students with high levels of elite aesthetic-cultural knowledge are at a distinct advantage when compared with their colleagues because, like discursive capital, that knowledge translates into recognition and rewards for individual students. It also simultaneously reinforces and sanctions the culture and language of the privileged classes.



Click 3: Cognitive Capital The scene takes place in a large square-shaped classroom. A balding White male professor in a rumpled, gray, wool jacket is pacing back and forth in front of the chalkboard. He looks like a living cliché. The professor lectures, reads passages from a text, and scrawls random words on the board with great urgency. I sit amid 25 students; some are avidly listening and furiously writing down every word the professor utters. I am one of those students. However, others appear to be less than engaged. A few students are visibly annoyed; they shift in their chairs, sigh from time to time, clear their throats aggressively, and one or two men appear as if they will physically explode if they are not given a chance to be heard. The professor’s homily is interrupted by a student’s unsolicited interjection. “I disagree with your argument. Bauman’s thesis is highly problematic to me. I think that it is erroneous to suggest that institutional moorings have been weakened,” said White Male Student A addressing the professor directly. “You are sounding like a modernist,” said White Male Student B (who cuts off White Male Student A in midsentence). Students A and B debate back and forth for a few minutes as the class silently watches the intellectual sparring. The professor referees and takes power back. The professor is delighted by the outburst. He seems energized by the exchange. I sit in a state of disbelief. “Where do they get the guts to talk like that?” I think to myself. “Who do they think they are challenging the professor?” Moreover, “what gives them the right to rip apart Bauman?” Click.

Cognitive capital refers to a particular way of knowing, perceiving, and interacting within the academy. Cognitive capital can also be described as an attitude that is synonymous with self-assurance. As Smith (1997) pointed out, “some students learn their own voices have authority, they count and should be heard” (p.1149). Because of their privileged, educated upbringings, some students not only are more at ease within university environments, but they also have learned the correct way to think. Thinking the correct way means challenging, deconstructing, and questioning the material with which you are presented. As a potential academic, you must successfully digest the canon and be prepared to quote passages verbatim. However, in doing so, you must demonstrate the understanding that all theories and treatises are imperfect, if not fundamentally flawed in some fashion. It is commonly understood in academia that “the A students do not memorize, they question” (Peckham, 1995, p. 270). As a first-generation college student who spent the initial 22 years of her life trapped in a small, economically wounded industrial region, who was I to challenge academic authority? What gave me the right to question a professor, let alone a French poststructuralist? Drawing from Bernstein (1971), Gos (1995) argues that working-class students are less likely to challenge academic authority because they are socialized


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in authoritarian position-oriented rather than person-oriented households. Person-oriented families are composed of idiosyncratic individuals, each having their own rights, who are taught to creatively negotiate roles (Bernstein, 1971; Gos, 1995). As a result, privileged children are taught to think imaginatively and challenge various perspectives. These skills are fundamental to achieving success within extremely competitive doctoral programs. Unlike privileged families, working-class families are hierarchically ordered according to positions, such as role (with father at the top) or birth order (Bernstein, 1971; Gos, 1995). The authority and legitimacy of a statement derives from social relationship rather than reasoning. For example, if a working-class child asks a parent why he or she must perform a task, the response will likely be “because I am your mother and I said so.” If the child fails to comply, power is transferred vertically to someone with more authority as in “now you will have to deal with your father.” Correspondingly, throughout my childhood this type of thinking was reinforced through religious indoctrination that preached an adherence to behavioral rules because the bible said so or God says so. Through socialization in a position-oriented, highly religious, or patriarchal family (or often all three simultaneously), working-class students learn to blindly accept legitimacy not because of the truth of what is being said but because of who is saying it. When these students enter the academy, they have difficulty taking an imaginative or divergent position because it does not come naturally to them. Another part of possessing the right cognitive capital has to do with possessing a degree of comfort and ease within university culture. While growing up, I met a lot of assembly line workers, secretaries, and tradesmen. However, I never met a professor. Because of a lack of experiential knowledge, I thought professors were brilliant godlike individuals who achieved their lofty positions based on innate intelligence. I was impressed and more importantly, intimidated. I was afraid of this professorial Other and the world that he inhabited. Why were some of my classmates so at ease in the presence of this arcane and unapproachable lot? When I established friendships with three of my colleagues, I learned that all of them had at least one parent who had a Ph.D. and worked within the academy. Not only had they grown up accustomed to university culture, they had been challenging and disputing professors since childhood. I began to understand why they seemed so at ease talking with professors in and out of the classroom, interacting with administrators, pursuing and attaining academic and financial awards, and so forth. Besides comfort and familiarity, having highly educated parents means having a direct inside source to knowledge of how the academy works. Working-class students are at a distinct disadvantage within doctoral programs because they have to learn not only the canon and how to play the game, but they must learn also how to feel at ease within a place that is unfamiliar and far from home (Dews & Law, 1995).



Click 4: Temporal Capital The setting is an intimate seminar room with a small table that seats approximately 10 people. It is 3:20 p.m., and class begins in 10 minutes. Students are trickling in sporadically. They strategically position themselves around the seminar table and begin to organize their individual spaces—coffee, notebooks, photocopies, pens, highlighters, and cough drops are a few of the props that decorate the scene. “Hey, what’s goin’ on?” I said as I entered the room crashing in the first available chair next to a male colleague. “Hi, where you coming from—you look a little freaked,” he calmly returned. “Oh, I just rushed here from work. It was so cold that I had to take the subway and the damn A train was late. I needed to stop and get a cup of coffee because I was so tired. I tried to get through the readings last night, but I was dying on the vine. I was afraid I was going to be late, but I needed that coffee. It’s so busy at work and my boss is insane . . .,” I trailed off in midsentence, realizing I was rambling. I also realized I had forgotten to go to the bathroom. “So what’s up with you?” I sincerely offered. “I’ve been so into this subcultural theory. I spent the morning rereading this stuff, and I just can’t wait to discuss it with Professor K. I like McRobbie a lot, but ‘Resistance Through Rituals’ is rather theoretically empty. It’s like this big build up, and then you are left saying, so what?” he said enthusiastically. “Um, yeah,” I lamely offered. I still needed to pee. “You don’t work in the daytime?” “No, I work full-time on school.” “Oh, that’s cool,” I said. “Excuse me.” I run quickly to the bathroom. “Man, I can’t believe that people can live in New York City and don’t have to work,” I thought as a walked down the hall. “Full-time on school? It is not my imagination. He really does go to every meeting and event on campus,” I obsessed. Click. “He looks well-rested because he is well-rested.” Click. “What a privilege it would be to devote all of my energy into school.” Click. “Man, I could sound smarter if I didn’t have to work.” Click. Click. Click.

Out of all of the forms of professorial capital, temporal capital is the most straightforward and obvious. Temporal capital is the amount of time a student has available to devote to study, research, and writing. Students from the privileged classes are less likely to work as many hours in the labor force, if at all, compared to blue-collar students. Quite simply, some students work their way through college and some do not. Having free or discretionary time to study when you are in the mood or write at a time when you are most productive can translate into a high level of preparedness and productivity. Also, those that have significant amounts of temporal capital can ensure more face-to-face interaction with professors as they have the time and flexibility to wait outside professors’ offices during office hours. Temporal capital allows students to attend scholarly presentations or seminars recommended by professors. Attendance at these events shows you are a serious and committed student who is


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active in all phases of the scholarly community. As one colleague put it, “It’s time to go show my face.” Working-class students who have to juggle doctoral work and labor-force work have a substantial deficit of temporal capital. Like discursive, aesthetic-cultural, and cognitive capital, temporal capital supports the class ceiling. It is extremely difficult for blue-collar students to compete with students who do not have to work outside of the university. Temporal capital allows privileged students the luxury of choosing when to do academic work, enables them to be seen on campus, and allows them more time for seminar preparation. Temporal capital also functions to nurture and promote a professorial identity. Focusing full-time on scholarship contributes to the formation of selfidentity based primarily on academics. Throughout my graduate career, I was never identified, nor did I exclusively identify, as a doctoral student. I was a waitress, artist assistant, office assistant, or exhibition coordinator who attended school. Crashing the Party: Passing = Passivity The only way to confront and challenge class bias in the academy is to begin to make the class ceiling visible. Rather than attempt to continue to pass to gain credibility (as I had previously done), I have since come out of the class closet and given public voice to my lived experiences.

Communicating With My Colleagues It is a warm summer afternoon, and I am sitting in a comfortable, spacious, windowed classroom in a suburban university. I am here as a presenter at an interdisciplinary conference on social class. I am positioned at a long conference table with three other presenters. The official theme of my session is issues in class mobility, and I am designated as the last person to speak. Each person is allotted 20 minutes, but some of the presenters that speak before me do not adhere to the time limit. One presenter quotes passages from an Edith Wharton novel, another uses an overhead projector to buttress her argument with charts and careful outlines, and the third offers statistics and demographics to make his case. Over the course of about 70 minutes, I observe the audience members go from mildly interested—eyes wide open, heads nodding politely, erect posture—to utterly uninterested. I was not sure if I could wake up the heavylidded, slouchy, and apathetic crowd, but I was determined to give it a shot. “Thank you for being patient. I know that we are running late, so I have decided to edit my presentation on the spot. I will do my best to shave it to 10 minutes. Some of it will be off the cuff, so bear with me. Some more good news—my presentation is based on my life—the one thing I know about pretty intimately,” I



said in a noticeably animated and much louder voice than those who presented before me. I take a deep breath and scan the audience. A few people appear to wake up, and I even see smiles. Now we are getting somewhere. I continue, “I personally identify as blue-collar primarily due to my parents’ and grandparents’ educational backgrounds and the types of work they did. Only my mother’s father has a high school diploma. Both of my father’s parents attended school until the eighth grade. The highest degree my parents earned is a high school diploma. My father is a mechanic, and my mother has held a variety of pink-collar office jobs throughout her career in addition to sole responsibility for the second shift. Callous, dirty work, little time for play, and the ideology that life is a constant struggle dominated my parent’s socialization. . . .” I finish in 10 minutes as promised. The moderator invites the audience to ask the presenters questions. Dozens of arms dive upright into the air. “This is to Mary. I want to thank you. I too am from a working-class background, and I can relate to what you said. It is so important to speak of these issues with our own voice,” a young woman said enthusiastically. Other hands raise, other voices raise, people talk over each other, and the once-dead classroom is alive. The rest of the conference session is a blur. I have never received such sincere, emotional, and positive feedback after presenting my work at an academic conference. Class does matter.

When I got home from the conference, I received a series of e-mails from audience members who attended my presentation. It was not simply my ego or my imagination; the words I spoke were powerful. However, my story was not powerful because of its singularity or uniqueness, but rather, it was a story others had lived. I was afraid my neck might snap from nodding so intensely during your presentation. You were talking my language. I am so sick of the old white men who get up and talk in highly technical academic terms about things we find pretty basic. Yet another reason I thought I might explode with gratitude, relief, and joy when you were speaking. What you were talking about in your presentation reflects my college experience. And it’s in large part why I don’t want to go to graduate school even though many people keep recommending it. And after that whole conference I feel more discouraged and sickened by academia than ever. But you also inspired me to think more about graduate school since you are challenging the system. (Rachel, working-class college student and administrator) I really had a hard time with graduate school, not so much technically but emotionally, and it wasn’t until recently that I really tied it in with class. I think the most humiliating thing I’ve ever experienced in my life was my first semester of grad school when I sincerely suggested in the first day of a graduate seminar on the politics of East Central Europe that the encyclopedia provided lots of useful information about that part of the world. I was so excited to be in grad school after 3 years waitressing and working in the mall that I had spent the week before school reading the World Book to get myself ready for class. My professor proceeded to publicly ridicule me in front of the class, telling me in the most sarcastic way possible that that would be fine if this was 5th grade but that in grad school, we use other sources. I learned quickly that I should just


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keep my mouth shut, and it wasn’t until I had learned what was acceptable to say in front of these people—maybe 2 years later—that I began to talk in class. Wow . . . Sorry. I just reread what I wrote above, and I’m not sure why I felt the need to be so autobiographical, except that this stuff is really a felt experience for me; it’s not just theoretical or something you read about in books. Which, of course, is exactly what you’re not supposed to do as an academic . . . hinders one’s objectivity and all that. I hope you continue to look at class concerns inside of the academy as well as outside. I’m not sure that academics will want to see or talk about this. Even most lefties who think they are beyond progressive don’t hesitate to criticize and laugh at working-class people. Which, then, it seems to me, makes scholarship like yours all the more important. Thanks again for making me think. (Jamie, working-class Ph.D.)

Communicating in the Classroom This final scene takes place in a conservative private college. I am teaching an introduction to sociology class, and we have been discussing the topic of class stratification in America for about a week. My pedagogical goal for the day is to illuminate the connection between one’s social class and occupation and the type of education you receive. To this end, I have my students read passages from Kozol’s (1991) “Savage Inequalities” as evidence that the American education system is failing, explicitly for students who are from low-income and impoverished neighborhoods. Although some students seem to get it, about half of the class tightly and obstinately clings to the notion of meritocracy. “Ok, I’ll admit that I went to a nice suburban school with computers and clubs and all that. But I still worked my butt off to get good grades even while I played on the lacrosse team. The kids that come from places like in that book have it tough, but they just need to work harder,” argued a White male student in a navy blue and red striped polo shirt and baseball hat. “Yeah, this is America, it’s not some Middle Eastern country. Anyone can make it if they try hard enough. Schools are free and open to anyone. The trouble with these people is that they don’t try hard enough. They are lazy and make bad decisions. That’s the reason they drop out of school,” echoed another young White man in similar attire. It was time to interrupt his moralistic middle-class monologue. “While I hear what you are saying, I do not agree with your assessment. Class and educational inequality make it almost impossible for kids to pull themselves out of their social location . . .,” I began in an impersonal professorial voice before being interrupted. “How would you know? You are a middle-class professor,” shouted a female student. “How many of you think I am middle class?” I asked. All of the students raised their hands. “How do you know?” A few seconds elapsed, and no one answered. “Can you always see someone’s class? What does middle class look like? What does it sound like?” A few students raise their hands, but I ignore them. It is time to come out. I take a deep breath. “I know a lot about being working class because I lived it, and it is in me. I was the first person in my family to go to college. My dad is a mechanic . . .” As I tell my story, my students stop murmuring and jok-



ing. Nobody interrupts me; they are rapt in my emotion and my experiences. It is because they hear the truth not from a book but from a body. I think some of them might even get it.

Later that afternoon, a female student with an A average who has never spoken in class sheepishly knocks on my door. I invite her into my office, and she takes a seat. “Professor Kosut, I just wanted to say that I can relate to what you said in class. I have had to work really hard to get here. My mom is raising me and my brother by herself, and I am working my way through college and taking out loans like you did. And it seems like everyone around me just gets checks in the mail from their parents. They have cars and go shopping, and then they complain about how hard they work. I swear, some of these people are clueless. I feel like I am the only one around here that wasn’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth. I just wanted to thank you for what you said. Also, I was thinking about maybe going to graduate school, and I wanted to talk to you about how to apply.”

Conclusion Feminist scholars such as Smith (1987, 1997) and hooks (1984, 1993, 2000) and sociologists such as Bourdieu (1984, 1986), Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), and Willis (1977) have shed light on the relationship between the Other, the academy, and the reproduction of the status quo. The notion that universities reproduce inequality, while at the same time promoting the ideology of meritocracy, must continue to be explicitly problematized from a theoretical and pedagogical perspective. It is crucial to connect existing social structures and the resulting cultural distinctions that they produce with individual experience and everyday practices. Social structures possess an everyday component or microcomponent because it is people who reproduce them.2 The practices that sustain the class ceiling actively reinforce institutional inequality when they are enacted or performed in graduate classrooms, professors’ offices, and other mundane institutional contexts. Educational institutions that promote egalitarianism are guaranteeing that the upper ranks of the academy will continue to be dominated by the culture of the elite. In turn, this supports inequality and oppression outside of institutions, creating a cultural and economic gap between the working and privileged classes. As less privileged students learn the ropes and struggle in isolation to gain access into the academy, those with professorial capital quickly advance because they are presumably brighter and more hardworking. The voices of graduate students with low levels of discursive and cognitive capital will continue to be obscured, or as is often the case, remain mute if professors do not take radical, purposeful steps to address the power dynamics of the classroom. Giroux (1997) writes that


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in order for radical educators to demystify the dominant culture . . . and to understand the dominant ideology at work in schools, they will need to attend to the voices that emerge from three different ideological spheres and settings: these include the school voice, the student voice, and the teacher voice. (p. 141)

Critically deconstructing multiple voices is a central component in what Giroux (1997) calls border pedagogy. He argues that when educators engage this practice in the classroom, it can help to facilitate students’ ability to communicate, write, and listen. No longer marginalized and mute as border crossers, blue-collar graduate students have the potential to become agentic, engaged individuals who are more intellectually and emotionally equipped to confront, cross, and remap borders between established academic knowledge and experiential knowledge. Through the act of border crossing, professorial capital, particularly discursive and cognitive, is directly challenged. Correspondingly, “border pedagogy provides opportunities for teachers to deepen their own understanding of the discourse of various others in order to effect a more dialectical understanding of their own politics, values, and pedagogy” (Giroux, 1997, p. 158). Through legitimating the narratives and experiences of the marginalized, educators also become border crossers. Although I do not suggest that working-class rhetoric and culture should replace proper grammar and knowledge of the classics, it is imperative to include alternative forms of talk and an explicit analysis of popular cultural practices within the classroom. Educators committed to democracy must commit to a radical pedagogy. Radical pedagogy hinges on integrating experiential knowledge and everyday discourse as part of a conscious effort to directly problematize the relationship between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. The everyday dynamics of class exclusion within the academy must be further explored. Just as feminist scholars exposed institutional sexism and racism, the class ceiling must be made visible. I propose that a theory of professorial capital may contribute to developing a greater understanding of how class works in social science and humanities doctoral programs because it explicitly links experience to structure. It is my contention that professorial capital supports the class ceiling through everyday practices. Those of us who identify as members of the working classes who are lucky enough to join the professoriate must work to change the system from the inside. Because of our unique class standpoint (outsiders who have made it in), I believe that we have a responsibility to make class visible. We did not get an invitation, but it is time to crash the party. Notes 1. The term click is borrowed from Ms. magazine and Ward’s (1996) A World Full of Women.



2. For a discussion on the relationship between agency and structure, see Sewell (1992).

References Belanoff, P. (1993). Language: Closings and openings. In M. Tokarczyk, & E. A. Fay (Eds.), Working-class women in the academy: Laborers in the knowledge factory (pp. 251-275). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, codes and control. London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood. Bourdieu, P, & Passeron, J. C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage. Clifford, J. (1988). The predicament of culture: Twentieth century ethnography, literature, and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. (Eds.). (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and power of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dews, B. C. L., & Law, C. L. (1995). This fine place so far from home: Voices of academics from the working class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Ellis, C. (1997). Evocative ethnography: Writing emotionally about our lives. In W. G. Tierney & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Representation and the text: Reframing the narrative voice (pp. 115-139). Albany: State University of New York Press. Ellis, C., & Flaherty M. G. (Eds.). (1992). Investigating subjectivity: Research on lived experience. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Giroux, H. (1997). Pedagogy and the politics of hope: Theory, culture, and schooling. Boulder, CO: Westview. Giroux, H. (2002). Educated hope in an age of privatized visions. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 2(1), 93-112. Gos, M. (1995). Overcoming social class markers: Preparing working-class students for college. Clearing House, 69(1), 30-42. hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Boston: South End. hooks, b. (1993). Keeping close to home: Class and education. In M. Tokarczyk & E. A. Fay (Eds.), Working-class women in the academy: Laborers in the knowledge factory (pp. 99111). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. hooks, b. (2000). Where we stand: Class matters. New York: Routledge. Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York: Crown. Levine, D. (Ed.). (1971). The stranger. In Georg Simmel: On individuality and social forms (pp. 143-149). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lincoln, Y. (1997). Self, subject, audience, text: Living at the edge, writing in the margins. In W. G. Tierney & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Representation and the text: Reframing the narrative voice (pp. 37-55). Albany: State University of New York Press.


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Peckham, I. (1995). Complicity in class codes: The exclusionary function of education. In B. Dews & C. Law (Eds.), This fine place so far from home: Voices of academics from the working class (pp. 263-276). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sewell, W. H. (1992). A theory of structure: Duality, agency and transformation. American Journal of Sociology, 98(1), 1-29. Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Smith, D. (1997). Schooling for inequality. Signs, 25(4), 1147-1151. Tokarczyk, M., & Fay, E. A. (Eds.). (1993). Working-class women in the academy: Laborers in the knowledge factory. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Ward, M. (1996). A world full of women. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor. Aldershot, UK: Glower.

Mary Kosut received her Ph.D. from New School University, New York, in May 2003. Her primary research interests include gender, embodiment, art, youth subcultures, and popular culture. She has taught at New School University and Manhattan College, where she is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Sociology.
