Class, Moral Worth and Recognition

Abstract

The article advances a case for greater consideration of the moral aspects of the experience of class, and the concerns that people have regarding their class position and how others view them. First it outlines an approach to understanding lay normativity, especially morality, in which moral sentiments are viewed as evaluative judgements on how behaviour affects well-being. Drawing upon concepts from moral philosophy and examples of moral boundary drawing and shame, it argues that lay morality is weakly differentiated and assumes a universalizing character. Secondly it considers the close relations between economic distribution and recognition, arguing that it is necessary to distinguish between conditional and unconditional recognition, and internal and external goods in order to understand the struggles of the social field. Class inequalities render equality of conditional recognition impossible, because they prevent equal access to practices and goods worthy of recognition.

Virtual money, practices and moral orders in Second Life

“…In Second Life, as in everyday communities, boundary drawing (Lamont 1992;Sayer 2005aSayer , 2005bSoutherton 2002) (Dodd 1994;Hart 1986Hart , 2000, or distinguishing between intimate social relations (Zelizer 1996(Zelizer , 1997(Zelizer , 2005, but this analysis explores how monies and virtual money practices are used to constitute and categorise moral subjects. Moral assessments also define the limits of communities, justifying opinions about who is deserving of what virtual rights and privileges.…”

“…while the possession of the claimed virtues is held to be localized, the valued norms themselves are assumed to be universally applicable. (Sayer 2005a:953) For Sayer (2005aSayer ( , 2005b, these boundaries are part of the reproduction of social class in England. For respondents, class is less relevant than distinctions between land owners and 'homeless' users, as Boellstorff (2008:99) services, debt accumulated through property ownership -to further marginalised unemployed or disabled people, students and workers in precarious employment.…”

“…Yet virtual monies are still embedded in societies (Granovetter 1985). As Thrift and Leyshon (1997:20) practices, are entangled with moralities and assessments of others' respectability, social position, appropriate rights and dignity (Lamont 1992;Sayer 2005aSayer , 2005b.…”

“…My secondary aim is a proof by example that economic sociology and the sociology of morality are an analytically useful combination deserving further exploration. Recently there has been renewed sociological interest in morality (Abend 2008;Hitlin and Vaisley 2010;Sayer 2005aSayer , 2005b, but beyond Zelizer's (1997Zelizer's ( , 2005 work on families and intimacies, economic sociology has maintained an arm's length relationship with questions of economy and moral order (Massengill and Reynolds 2010:486). Through an analysis of moral boundary drawing using virtual money practices in Second Life, this paper contributes to efforts in economic sociology and anthropology to elucidate -through empirically grounded examples -money's moral and political entanglements.…”

“…Dodd (1994:154) argues one of the key dimensions to a conceptualisation of money is its association with 'unfettered empowerment, of complete freedom'. Yet monies and moralities remain under-explored in sociology, except by proxy in studies of class (Lamont 1992;Sayer 2005aSayer , 2005b. As Hart (1986:638-639) has argued, 'money is at the same time an aspect of relations between persons and a thing detached from persons'.…”