Class and/or Classism?

Dealing with a Conceptual Difference

Abstract

In recent years, a controversy has developed in the German-speaking world over the use of the terms ‚class‘ and ‚classism‘. In the debate, Marxist representatives of class theory and protagonists of the classism approach, who argue more in terms of identity theory, are skeptical of each other, sometimes even hostile. Assuming that conceptual questions are neither contextless nor inconsequential, I first reflect on the potentials and pitfalls of these two terminologies. Then, using the example of my research on Berlin secondary schools, I show that the approaches can also be understood as complementary, mutually supplementing versions of understanding class divides. European ethnology is particularly suited to combining social theory und (auto)biographical approaches and thus contributing to a multifaceted form of class analysis.