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This paper was written as the result of research I've conducted
on six New Zealand middle-class women who identified themselves
as having experienced downward social mobility following the breakdown
of their respective marriages.
Three significant themes emerged from the interviews - one concerned
the perceptions of class in New Zealand, another was the effect
that various government policies have on separated middle-class
women and the other, the focus of this paper, concerns changes in
their self-respect and the respect they felt they were accorded
by society.
I have copies of a fuller written version of this paper available,
but this morning I shall speak primarily to those areas of the paper
which relate directly to the empirical research, that is, the interviews
with the six research participants.
The drive for societal respect is found in all societies, whether
hierarchical or more egalitarian. I also believe that one of the
early meanings of respect, that of "connection", is particularly
apt when looking at the social significance of respect. "Connection"
in its social sense was important to the research participants and
it was the sense of loss of "connection" to the class to which they
had belonged that had wide-ranging negative effects for them. It
wasn't that they wanted to be held in high regard, esteem or honour.
What they wanted to remain linked to those people and social institutions
whose values and lifestyle they had shared.
This need for social connection, the drive to belong to and remain
connected to one's social group requires one to fulfil certain roles,
big and small, imposed by the expectations of the group. It is from
these expectations that the concept of respect arises.
In a class-based society each class has its own, often unspoken,
criteria which must be met, and met continuously, in order to attain
and retain respect and position within that class. The focus of
my research has been the experiences of six women who, following
the breakdown of their respective marriages, were unable, for a
time, to meet the criteria of the class to which they had belonged
during their marriage. That inability meant for them the loss of
social connections with, and respect of, the remaining members of
that class.
Susan Oyama, a philosopher of biology, discusses the relationship
between cognitive and developmental formation (2000:168). She writes
that "[p]eople's cognitive constructions of themselves affect, and
are affected by, other aspects of their development. A political,
psychotherapeutic, or religious conversion, for instance, requires
a reunderstanding of oneself and one's relationship to the
world, and thus, changed ways of relating to it. One becomes a different
person in a different world." A separation is a kind of conversion.
At the time that each of the research participants separated from
their respective partners they became "a different person in a different
world". They were transformed from one social identity which carried
with it certain roles and means of accessing respect, to another
with a different set of roles, rules and access to respect. In the
years following separation all of the participants came to understand
themselves differently and to understand their social world in a
different way. All were required to learn new ways of living or
being.
Oyama also writes that "We may be formed as much by what we reject
as by what we embrace..." (2000: 230). Some, not all, of the women
in this research were "rejected" by their husbands. They did not
choose to reject, yet they too could be said to have been formed
as much by their being the object of rejection as those who choose
to reject. They were not only rejected from their marriages but
also from a set of social connections. Their rejection was accompanied
by a loss of self-respect and the loss of access to their means
of attaining respect. Other means of gaining respect became available
to them, and as they came to know their "different world" better,
they learned these other ways.
While I said earlier that each class has its own, often unspoken,
criteria which must be met to attain and retain respect, I believe
that in New Zealand, and in fact in other Western, class-based societies,
the values of the middle classes, the ways in which they gain and
attain respect are the most transferable through all tiers of society.
Middle-class occupations, education, expectations of children, conventions
associated with food, housing styles and clothing fashions all reflect
the dominant social standards. The necessity for those in the middle
classes to earn income in order to maintain their social position
forms a link between the middle classes and the working classes
as an ideology common to both classes.
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