Class Consciousness Research

I chose the Class Consciousness issue because I find it interesting to make observations and assumptions of an individual based on clothing, age, race and etc. When doing this observational research I observed 3 different people. I first began observing a male. After sometime observing I made a guess that he was a part of the “Working Class” which we see as “the social class consisting of mostly blue collar or service industry workers who are less likely to have a college degree; they constitute about 30% of the us population.”(2016;186) When talking about Social Class which means “a system of stratification based on access to such resources as wealth, property, power and prestige.”(2016;184) we see that Structural Functionalism which the book defines as “the assumption that society is a unified whole that functions because of the contributions of its …show more content…
He was dressed in dirty jeans. He had what looked like 5 year old boots on. A big jacket that looked quite worn. The man also had a big beard. He had what looked like paint on his jeans. I estimated he was about 30-35 years old. I assumed he was some sort of painter who had just gotten off work. He also looked hispanic. From all of this I made the assumption that he was apart of the working poor class which is defined as “poorly educated manual and service workers who may work full time but remain near or below the poverty line”(2016;186) because often it's hard for minorities to find work especially if they are immigrants so they sometimes are resorted to low paying manual labor job like painting.
When making observations of people you can make assumptions about many things. You are also able to see some similarities in individuals characteristics with social class traits. I chose this issue because I find it fascinating to observe other using a sociological perspective which the book defines as “a way of looking at the world through a sociological