|
see the thing is that class is not simple a question of money---it's alot of dispositions and options and the sense of options that are linked, usually, to economic class position by way of things like the way class segregation plays out spatially---in the states, spatial separation is a primary mode of class segregation across the board---mostly because there's room for it geographically---if you compare--o i dunno---chicago or philadelphia to paris, the differences in terms of social and economic segregation are pretty striking. in paris, there are homogenously weathly areas (most of the 16th for example) but they're not typical--generally you have a wide variety of income levels, a range of housing options, distributed across quartiers---the areas i've lived in were all like this, with different proportions (the 14th relative to the northern section of the 20th for example)---that's a function of different policies on the part of the state and city government concerning housing, of a decision to promote a particular kind of urban life--with the benefit to the state of perhaps buying a different type of poltical legitimacy--at the cost (if you want to see it this way) of a different politics of class. speaking very generally, class is a going political concern in many areas of paris simply because you see its effects as part of the ambient conditions---this is one explanation (again, very simple) for the anomalous situations in many of the poorer suburbs around paris which are subject to periodic bouts of violence...in the states, the spatial separation of class fractions is also a choice. one of the effects of that is (in general) that the relative nature of class positions can be disappeared because your experience does not necessarily lead you to cross hard class boundaries--you can organize your movements such that you move through relatively homogenous spaces.
the instances of higher mortality for the poor in the states than elsewhere follows from this general model, because the consequences of class stratification can be rendered invisible.
as for why folk gravitate toward particular neighborhoods--this is complicated, yes?
choices at the level of section 8 housing are not made from an infinite range of possibilities, yes? section 8 is accepted in some areas and not in others: why is that?
if that's true that section 8 is differentially accepted, and you were working with a population on section 8 who were looking for housing, it follows that they would at some level "choose" to live where the section 8 possibilties were available, yes?
see what i'm getting at?
it's not that i disagree with the information you posted, scout, so much as i wonder about the way you frame it.
and that's mostly what the thread's about: how you frame information about economic class and its consequences. we might agree that there are economic classes and that there are consequences, but diverge on why that holds and, on that basis, about what could be done to address them.
the who report bumps this to a level of medical well-being, which i think is interesting.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|