deconstructing_class | getting started

Hello! I hate writing 1st posts because i always feel like a pretentious twit, but i couldn't talk any of the cats into doing it for me so here goes.

The initial proposal for this community was a reading group, possibly using Barbara Jensen's bibliography from the class zine from WisCon 33. I haven't read anything from the biblio yet myself, but several titles looked likely (these are in no particular order except that i put the ones that seemed country-specific at the bottom) -- tho' i'm not sure how academic in tone they might be. Also, links go to Worldcat so you can see if your local library has a book:

Where We Stand: Class Matters. (bell hooks. Routledge, 2000.)
Inequality: Social class and Its Consequences. (Eitzen, D.S., & Johnston, J.E. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2007.)
Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. (Paul Fussell. New York: Touchstone, 1992.)
Economic Apartheid in America: a Primer on Economic Inequality & Insecurity. (Chuck Collins, C., & Felice Yeskel. New York: New Press, 2005.)
Money, Morals, and Manners: the culture of the French and American upper-middle class. (Michele Lamont. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.)

Any other titles anyone would like to suggest?

Other things i thought might be interesting to tackle in the community:

Sharing/analyzing news articles and weblinks. For example: I've been coming across a lot of articles recently about poverty and food in the U.S. and classist assumptions about how poor people do/should eat.
Possibly working toward a classism 101 toolkit: what is class locally/globally, what is classism, how can we recognize classism, how can we combat classism, et cetera.

Some ground rules (to be added to the community's profile page):

Don't be an asshole.
Locked, private posts are welcome (if something is sensitive and not for public consumption).
Please don't post links to web articles that are not freely accessible.

Last question: How do you each feel about introductory posts? Comfortable with brief introductions on who we are and what brings us to discussions of class? Or feel they're not really necessary?

getting started

no subject