The 90s/00s saw many popular analyses of a supposed “new class” - Reich’s “symbolic analysts,” Florida’s “creative class,” Brooks’s “bobos.” But these accounts generally underestimated the degree to which this class is defined by status anxiety and declining overall prospects./1
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Reich’s point that “symbolic analysts” have fared better overall than manual and service workers still holds but the variant outcomes among “symbolic analysts” and the hypercompetitive status seeking their meritocratic ideology produces is arguably more impactful politically./2
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Brooks and similar pop sociology of “bobos” fixated on their competitive ethical consumption (keeping up with the Joneses in buying fair trade organics) but didn’t see these as a vector of radicalization amidst declining dividends in competitive “symbolic analyst” careers./3
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“Elite overproduction” and “elite radicalization” theories are useful in filling this gap in the literature but my theory is that gravitation towards radical politics is in part a compensatory form of meritocratic status seeking amidst the symbolic analysts’ declining fortunes./4
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Yes, overproduction of elites is only part of the problem. The desire to use new language in support of a cultural/class distinction, is probably a larger part of it (to not seem "conventional" or "middle class" for 60s folk like Leonard Bernstein / to not be "deplorable" today")
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