Valor-aparência: aparências de classe e hierarquias do cotidiano

Abstract

Taking into consideration the many possibilities of reducing or increasing social inequalities, this Dissertation is about the ones related to the criteria of classification through appearances. We understand that among the many capitals held by different people, the social capital, i.e., the relationships network, can be one of the factors that give access to important opportunities for a person’s social ascension. Marriages, employments and friendships can change a person’s place in the social arena. However, independently of how people manipulate their own appearance (or themselves), through consumption and through their behavior in public places, the value it is given – either positively or negatively charged – will depend on the criteria adopted by the classifying individuals, as well as on existing social norms. In order to investigate this, we have applied a questionnaire to 201 persons, at consumption places in Goiânia - GO: Santa Genoveva Airport, Feira da Lua and Camelódromo Central (a market for cheap merchandise), and also performed 18 interviews in those same places, with people from middle and lower classes. What we could observe was that the classified individual’s class is seen as an important criterion, which either boosts or lowers his or her appearance-value: personal hygiene, being properly dressed, with clothes and shoes in good state, having good manners, showing proper behavior, being discreet and even how much his or her appearance reveals in terms of sexual availability and general responsibility are taken into consideration in the moment of classification, in such a way that the higher the perceived class, the more positive the assessment of the given attribute. There is, therefore, an idealization of the middle class’ consumption and manners, generally perceived as being simple, clean and discreet, and a negative view of the lower classes, to whom a taste for the excessive, the gaudy, colorful and noisy are attributed. As for the classifying individual’s class, there are not many differences in representations, and a flow of ideas in the opposite direction was not detected. As in a cascading effect, the negative representation of the lower classes takes place with relation to the class considered inferior to that of the classifying individual, and that happens in every layer, including the lower ones, which shows us the strength of the hegemonic discourses on the norms of a “good appearance”, which remain the same through all the strata. However, looking at things through the dominant class’ lens does not keep prejudice against oneself from being noticed and felt, with the perception that the lower a person’s class is, the more negative judgments he or she will face, and slimmer will be their chances of being chosen for jobs and personal relationships, based on their personal appearance when compared to that of persons of a higher class. Since we have worked more closely with the social representations that differentiate middle class from the lower class, we sought to make a mapping of contents that present and represent those classes, coming to the conclusion that, by a large measure, there is a coincidence between the meanings of already crystallized representations about social classes and their anchored attributes, and also a movement – albeit very incipient – of appropriation of a constructed notion of “new middle class”, especially by people with higher formal education.