Understanding Social Class in Sociology and its Relation to Culture

This report delves into the sociological understanding of social class, examining how societies differentiate individuals based on wealth, prestige, and social status. It explores the various definitions and models of social class, particularly within the contexts of the United States and the United Kingdom, highlighting the impact of factors like wealth, education, and occupation. The report further analyzes the relationship between social class and popular culture, discussing how social class influences cultural traits, health outcomes, and interpersonal behaviors. It also addresses the role of popular culture in shaping societal attitudes and the influence of mass media and consumer culture on different social classes, including the upper, middle, and working classes. The report concludes by summarizing the complex interplay between social class, individual experiences, and societal structures.

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TABLE OF CONTENT
MAIN BODY .................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

MAIN BODY
Social class refers to those classes having a group of people within the same society
having the same socio-economic status. These class are basically based on the factors like
wealth, educational, attainment, income, occupation and membership in a social network. This
report will outline the that in what ways social class has been understood sociologically and how
the social class related to popular culture with examples.
It is one of the most important in order to understand the needs and wants of the society.
These class refers to the division of the society or people on the basis of economic and social
status (Manstead, 2018). American believes that there are three types of social class are there
which are working class, middle class and upper class. The working class individuals are
engaged in the manual work, having the low level of education. There jobs includes the heavy
labouring and works related to the factories. Middle class people are engaged in the non-manual
work and they are having good and high level of education. This class of individuals are
basically engaged in jobs related to doctors to lawyers and the upper class that is the elite class
which enjoys the majority of wealth and power in the society. Sociology is the simple
phenomenon that means that the group changes the behaviour of the individuals. It is basically
the systematic study of the society and interactions with the society. In United States, social class
is a controversial issue because it has very competing definitions, models and many
disagreement on this topic. Most sociologist believes that in U.S. It follows the social class
structure in which the people are ranked hierarchically. It is basically depends on the race,
position of birth, religious affiliation, etc. In the United Kingdom social class depends on the
family lineage. The social network is the web of the individuals, family and businesses who used
to provide resources and opportunities. The person studying the society is called sociologist who
study the all aspects and different levels of the society. A society is the group of people in which
members interact with others, reside in the respected areas and share the same culture. Culture
includes the practices, beliefs, artefacts and norms.
The social class is the description of the number of people in the society have
differentiated themselves on the basis of importance, wealth, prestige and compensation (What is
a Social Class? - Definition & Concept, 2021). This has adverse impact on the sociological
environment as differentiating individuals on the basis of there birth, prestige and wealth
(Simandan, 2018). The person who belongs to the upper class will dress differently as compared

to the members who belong to the working or middle class. As upper class people are the
doctors, lawyers business man, etc. they used to wear the business suits whereas other class used
to prefer jeans.
The class is related to the popular culture of the united Kingdom people as it includes in
the psychological and health outcomes. The cultural system shapes the manifestations of the
social class. Social class has affected the lines of the individuals in the UK as it affect the health
inequality. The structure of the UK has highly influenced the meaning of the social class which
affect the British society in the present time as well (Durante and Fiske, 2017). The definitions of
the social class varies as it is influenced on the factors which are wealth, occupation and
education. British society has a great change from the second world war. It includes the
expansion of the higher education and home ownership, change in role of women in the society
and have the more individualist culture which has great impact on the social landscape of the
United Kingdom.
The biggest study of the social class in the UK is the Greta British Class Survey which
divided the social class in different ways (Liu and Lin, 2017). From the research it is studied that
social status in the United Kingdom is separate from the social class. Popular culture is generally
the set of practices, beliefs and objects that used to share meaning of social system in the society.
It basically includes the media objects, entertainment, leisure, fashion and trends, etc. This
culture is associated with the mass culture or folk culture. It differentiated the high culture and
other culture which are political culture, educational culture, legal culture etc. The popular
culture in association with the mass culture leads to focus on the culture's position within
capitalist mode of the production whereas the association of the folks culture with the popular
culture leads to focus on the cultures and subculture related to the youth or the ethnic culture.
This subcultures shows the different set of practices which has great impact on the performance.
The issues in the sociological analysis of the popular culture basically includes the representation
of some groups.
Sociologist are studying the class and founded every social class has its unique and
cultural traits. Many upper class person take part in the popular culture as high culture is the
superior to the popular culture. Popular culture are also mass culture or pop culture which
recognize by the members of the society related to their practices, beliefs and objects that are
prevalent in the society. It has influenced the people attitudes on the certain topics in the society.

There are some popular culture categories which includes entertainment such as films, music,
television etc., news, sports, fashion and trends, politics and technology. There are some
countries that thought to have popular culture are United Kingdom, Japan and United States.
With the increase in the social media, it has become easy to remove the different culture
and adopt the one culture. The popular or mass culture affects the society in many ways. This
culture emerges through the new shared experience and it also produced at industrial scale by the
companies (Grossman, 2020). The popular culture began to merge with the mass culture,
consumer culture, media culture, etc. the social class has its different popular culture as its
differentiate the individual in the different class that are upper class, middle class and lower
class. These three level of economic class model defines the social class related to the popular
culture.
The upper class is that social class which has the greatest political power. For example in
the United Kingdom, the upper class are related to the aristocracy and royalty, if the individual is
having less wealth than they are playing a less important status in the society. The individuals
who are born or get married to the aristocratic bloodlines are considered as the members of the
upper class. The upper class are basically contained with only one or two percent of the
population. It contains 87% of wealth of the society and considered as the most wealthy persons.
The middle class is the best class in these three categories, which makes the individual
socio-economic according to wealth, occupation and education. Middle class workers are also
called the white-collar workers which used to produce the good products. The pop culture is also
has and affect in the middle class workers. These workers are paid more than they don't go below
the poverty line. Examples of the middle class workers that are factory workers, teachers,
sportsperson, chefs, etc. The size and number of middle class person in every society is same.
For example, middle class are of that group individuals who hods about 12% of the wealth of the
society.
The lower class which are commonly known as the working class, are engaged in
employed and paid low wages jobs and have little income and economic security. The working
class has no interest in the pop culture as they are paid low for their work. These are basically
called the persons with the low income. These are separated into those who are having jobs but
lacking in the financial security. For example, the middle class are facing more problems because

of their low paid wages and creating discrimination in the society. Understanding the problem
and relationship between the individual and society is the most difficult sociological problem.
There are some social privilege which has impact on the social class and the pop culture.
These are education, health and nutrition and employment. Not only the social class leads to the
different patterns of the interpersonal behaviour but it also leads to the individual experience
that mismatches the social class of the person. From the above report it is summarized the ways
social class been understood sociologically. And further it describes the social class related to the
popular culture with the examples.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Durante, F. and Fiske, S. T., 2017. How social-class stereotypes maintain inequality. Current
opinion in psychology, 18, pp.43-48.
Grossman, D., 2020. Sexuality and Popular Culture. Companion to Sexuality Studies, pp.279-
298.
Liu, Y. and Lin, A. M., 2017. Popular culture and teaching English to Speakers of Other
Language (TESOL). Language, education and technology, pp.87-101.
Manstead, A. S., 2018. The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts
thought, feelings, and behaviour. British Journal of Social Psychology. 57(2), pp.267-
291.
Simandan, D., 2018. Rethinking the health consequences of social class and social
mobility. Social Science & Medicine, 200, pp.258-261.
Online
What is a Social Class? - Definition & Concept. 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-a-social-class-definition-lesson-quiz.html>