Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i.

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2008:5 The Perception and Construction of Social Distance in Czech Society

Marta Kolářová, Kateřina Vojtíšková

This text looks at how in conversation people reconstruct the inequalities between social categories in Czech society and how they define the boundaries between them; at how ordinary people interpret inequalities, the characteristics, rights, and authority people assign to and their assessment of different social categories, and how people distinguish and distance themselves from or identify with these categories. Empirically the analysis is based on transcriptions of in-depth interviews that were conducted with thirty men and women with various educational backgrounds and social statuses who are working in Prague or Liberec. The authors focus on the categories that were identified as ‘those at the bottom’, ‘those on top’ and ‘normal’ people. Their analysis looks at whether people identify individual social classes. They examine which categories and groups are recognised and which are not, and how the narrators explain and legitimise their assessments. The interpretation focuses on the symbolic construction of given categories, the ways in which people represent categories, and how in this way they construct their own identity. The resulting social identity of the narrators is characterised largely in moral terms. The analysis of qualitative interviews is accompanied by an investigation into the concept and of social class and its context in contemporary Czech media discourse.

Keywords

Inequalities, social structure, social distance, categorisation, social class, media, elites, symbolic boundaries, social categories, social identity, qualitative research

Summary

This text looks at how in conversation people reconstruct the inequalities between social categories in Czech society and how they define the boundaries between them; at how ordinary people interpret inequalities, the characteristics, rights, and authority people assign to and their assessment of different social categories, and how people distinguish and distance themselves from or identify with these categories.

The main objective of this qualitative study is:
to map the views of ordinary people and the media on social stratification in Czech society, including on social categories that are outside the working sphere, and to do so without presenting them predetermined classifications (types of status or class);
to describe how particular social groups relate to each other and the construction of ‘us and them’ oppositions;
to answer the question what kind of social collectives (groups, categories, classes) people articulate in conversation, where they see and draw the lines between them, and what kind of characteristics they work with as constitutive.

In the collection and analysis of data the authors focused on the following research questions and themes:
What categories do people employ in their understanding of how society is structured and differentiated?
Do people see the social structure as a gradual hierarchical structure or rather as comprised out of closed categories?
In the narrators’ views, could it be said that in Czech society there are social classes with clearly defined borders?
How do men and women interpret the differences between social categories and how do they rank themselves in the social hierarchy?
Which social categories do people rank ‘at the top’ of society and which ‘at the bottom’ and based on what criteria?
Who deserves to be in the position they are in and whose position should change if society is to be more just?

Empirically the analysis is based on transcriptions of in-depth interviews that were conducted with thirty men and women with various educational backgrounds and social statuses who are working in Prague or Liberec.
The analysis examines how the narrators distance themselves from certain groups (out-groups, ‘them’) and the construction of their own social identity by constructing symbolic boundaries and through self-identification (in-groups, ‘us’). The discursive representation of groups located at the extreme ends of the Czech social hierarchy, those ‘at the bottom’ and those ‘on top’, was also addressed.
The analysis examined how social categories are constructed with the aid of criteria that define membership and with the aid of the characteristics, rights, and authority that people assign to different social categories. Groups and categories (e.g. the homeless, the unemployed, the working class, politicians) do not have clear boundaries and are constructed through interaction, but this occurs using shared cultural sources that facilitate inter-subjective understanding. For each category there exists a certain stereotype - a representation that the narrators see as the prevailing view in society and one that they relate to (confirming, questioning, or refuting it).
When asked about social hierarchies, relationships of subordination and superiority, people tend to mobilise two dimensions: a status derived from material and power inequalities in society (the dimension of class), and a symbolic social status (recognition). The perceived existence of a pronounced status inconsistency in these dimensions is openly challenged as bad and illegitimate.
What the participants share is the fact that they are citizens of the Czech Republic, have a common history and culture, make a living through honest work, are able to take care of themselves and their families, and pay their contributions to the state treasury. Yet the majority of the narrators share the feeling that in an emergency they are not adequately rewarded for this, either symbolically or materially. They distinguish themselves in critical terms from categories such as the Roma, the homeless, people who abuse social benefits, and also politicians, the wealthy, the upper classes, and celebrities.
When people construct for themselves a positive identity as an honest individual this allows them to make moral demands, criticise, and distance themselves from those who do not correspond to the norms of those considered ‘normal’. This is connected to this issue of social solidarity and redistribution, that is, who should receive help and under what circumstances. According to the narrators, they should limit their sense of solidarity to those who are in a particular (negative) situation by no fault of their own, who try and are willing to work and become active again, and accept the values and norms of the given society. People who are unwilling to work and contribute to the development of society should not be entitled to take from that society and should be excluded from it. Politicians who make decisions about these issues are described as only being interested in their own welfare and not interested in justice.

This analysis of the perception and construction of inequalities also involved examining whether people in society identify individual social classes. Specifically the authors examined what class represents to people, how they recognise it in society, how many classes they see in society, and in which class they rank themselves. The results of the analysis can be summarised in the following statements: 1. Whether or not people think about classes and social strata depends on what in their view the principle of stratification is; 2. People tend not to see but rather gradating strata, and at most they view the working class as an enclosed category, but even it is not without ambiguity; 3. The concept of class stratification is also connected with what the term class evokes in people’s minds. It is not an unencumbered term in contemporary Czech society, as it alludes to the official doctrine of the previous regime.
When the term ‘class’ means something to people, then it is usually something negative and at best neutral. In the narrators’ statements there were no positive identifications (class pride), not even among workers who, as manual labours, accept being ranked in the working class, but at the same time note the stigma attached with this category. People understand society as structured and differentiated, but not necessarily in categories of ‘class’. They are also aware that inequalities, though also apparent in the previous regime, tend to be on the rise.
On the whole categorising people within a class or in the stratification space is perceived as a multidimensional phenomenon. The significance of employment for determining class status is considered to be low, social behaviour is considered significant, but economic factors such as income and the related consumption is viewed as important. Perceptions of the principles of stratification reveal differences based on the gender and the social status of the respondents. In particular, women and men have differing perceptions of the area of consumption as a stratification feature.

As part of the analysis of the qualitative interviews, the term and context of social class in contemporary Czech media discourse were also examined. The authors made an ethnographic content analysis of articles from the Anopress database dating from 2005-2008.
On the whole the Czech media do not write much about class, and in the past three and a half years the subject appeared in around one hundred articles. In the given analytical units the authors mainly looked at two main through which class is interpreted and acquires certain (sub-)categories.
The ideological framework, often associated with Marxist rhetoric, is particularly typical of non-mainstream, minority media, while a descriptive framework, which is also however not free from normative aspects, tends to appear in the mainstream media.
In the first framework there is typically a close connection between class and interests, conflicts, and awareness, which is not strongly present in the descriptive framework. For example, the theme of the working class occurs in both frameworks, but the contexts and interpretations are different. In the ideological framework it is one among other typical aspects, it occurs in a relationship of conflict with the bourgeoisie, capitalists, and so on, and it is a positive category, but in the descriptive framework it occurs indirectly, in connection with a particular type of profession (manual labour), an amount of income or property (poverty), or with derogatory expressions.
Unlike the ideological framework, in which class is used extensively within the units of analysis, in the descriptive framework the mentions of it are brief, often just once in each unit of analysis (article) and usually without further explanation. In the descriptive framework class is mentioned incidentally, it is not the main theme of the article. Many media texts use the term ‘social class’ automatically, without explanation or discussion, as they have drawn it from western (mainly British and American) media and contexts.