Class and ecology notes

Today with Luisa we wrapped up the last segment of our ecology series of lectures by looking at and speculating on class and ecology.

We started off with an open ended question on what is class?

It’s your social and economical position in society, relating to background, monetary place, way of living, dynamic, living and working conditions etc. It could be interpreted either sociologically or politically. Class happens when people as a result of common experiences (inherited and shared) perceive and articulate the identity of their interests between themselves and as against other groups whose interests are different to theirs.

For Marx there were two social classes – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. For Marx stratification and social class were more complicated. He argued that social class was based on a person’s *market position. He also introduced the ideas of power and status as making up a full picture of a person’s position in society.

*Market position = how much money or wealth they have and their bargaining power to get this.

We then discussed the paintings of Courbet, Highmore and Volpedo and compared how the depiction of class has changed through the medium of art and design. It was really interesting to learn that labourers were painted facing away as to show their shame of being in the socio-economic class and that socialites etc were painted front facing using regal colours such as reds and blues.

Then we moved on to the question of what’s labour? And what type of labour do designers do?

Labour is essentially work done for someone else for their benefit, typically very manual. It could be divided into material, immaterial, manual, intellectual, productive, reproductive, key or not key.

• Material labour = labour resulting in tangible, made goods and resting on high energy expenditure. Typically with lower pay for workers. Commonly associated with factory work.
• Immaterial work = a type of labour that produces a non-material good such as cultural exchange, communication, information, or knowledge. Such as PR work.
• Productive = labour resulting in goods and services that have a monetary value in the capitalist system and are therefore compensated by the producers in the forms of a paid wage.
• Reproductive labour = involves a plethora of often unpaid or underpaid activities that people do for themselves such as cooking, cleaning, bearing children, freelance etc.