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Social Class In Australia Essay

1633 Words7 Pages

Socioeconomic class remains a consistent and highly influential factor on the many factors of contemporary Australian society. There are three key identifiers of class in modern Australia, economic wealth and inequality, levels of cultural capital, and state of health; these factors need to be addressed in order to demonstrate the impact of class on society today. Economic inequality is overwhelmingly apparent in Australian society, with the distribution of wealth aligning with the traditional ideas of class. Culture is used as a weapon against those deemed to possess less cultural capital within Australia, even those who hold considerable wealth, highlighting the cultural aspects of class that remain relevant within society. Health is a large …show more content…

The depictions and attitudes towards people who are generally viewed as economically and culturally lower than the perceived norm can be explained through social interactionalism and the concept of Otherness. During the 2000s, working class individuals who gained large amounts of wealth through the Australian mining boom were depicted as being culturally inept and accused of spending money incorrectly by the media (Pini et al, 2012). This is due to the cultural authority of the middle class and media using the class differences of these ‘bogans’ to generate an image of them as an Other, this image is further recreated as individuals interact with the image and replicate it in further social interactions, thus committing symbolic violence against the working class (Pini et al, 2012). It could be argued that this backlash to the financial improvement of the working class comes from a position of insecurity, seeing that the economic class hierarchy was being challenged the middle- and upper-classes used the distinct cultural differences between them to maintain the strict stratification of the classes. This cultural authority is further exemplified by the fact most Australians identify themselves as middle-class (Huang, 2023). The middle-class is seen as one of the most desirable and achievable positions in Australia, however, symbolic violence from the middle-class towards the working-class limits the possibility of social mobility, a key factor in class position and perception, which continues to highlight the class hierarchy that exists in society today (Pini et al, 2012; Huang, 2023). Cultural differences continue to be reproduced in a manner which reinforces the distinct class hierarchy present in Australian

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