This Social Class Identity Builder helps students explore how class identity is formed through a combination of structure, culture and lived experience. By clicking through social class, gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality and consumption, students can see that identities do not develop in isolation, but overlap in ways that shape life chances, status, belonging and self-image.
The activity also encourages students to connect these overlapping identities to key sociological ideas and research, including Bourdieu on habitus and capital, Willis on working-class subcultures, Savage on distinction, Lawler on respectability and judgement, and debates from Lash and Urry and Pakulski and Waters about whether class still matters in a more fluid consumer society.
Identity Builder
Formation of Different Social Class Identities
This activity helps students explore how social class identities are formed through class position, lifestyle, gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality and consumption. It also links these choices to key sociological concepts such as habitus, capital, field, life chances, subculture and debates about whether class still matters.
How it works: students click through each identity dimension, build a profile, then generate a sociological summary.
The summary draws on ideas linked to Bourdieu, Saunders, Scott, Savage, Roberts, Lawler, Willis, Jones, Lash and Urry, Pakulski and Waters and Woodward.
Best used for: class identity, intersectionality, revision overviews, and short paragraph planning.
Build an identity profile
Choose one option in each category. Students can then see how identities overlap rather than treating social class as a single fixed label.
Social class
Definitions of class, life chances and class cultures.
Traditional working class
New working class
Middle class
Elite / upper class
Underclass / excluded
Gender
How class identity is shaped by masculinity, femininity and respectability.
Masculine identity
Feminine identity
Non-binary / fluid identity
Ethnicity
Belonging, exclusion and how class identities are lived differently.
Majority ethnic background
Minority ethnic background
Migrant / diasporic background
Age
Different generations experience class identity in different ways.
Youth
Young adult
Mid-life adult
Older age
Sexuality
Sexual identity can overlap with classed ideas of normality, status and lifestyle.
Heterosexual identity
LGBTQ+ identity
Fluid / questioning identity
Consumption and lifestyle
Culture, taste, distinction and status display.
High cultural capital lifestyle
Aspirational mainstream lifestyle
Street / subcultural lifestyle
Precarious / low-cost survival lifestyle
Current identity profile
Key concepts activated
Sociological interpretation
Click Generate sociological summary to produce an explanation of how this identity might be formed.
This profile has now been interpreted through class structure, culture and identity overlap.
Research links
How to read the profile
This is not about putting people into fixed boxes. It helps students think sociologically about how class identity can be structured by economic position, cultural taste, stigma, status, life chances and social difference.
Structure still matters
Use ideas from Scott, Saunders and Roberts to show that class still shapes opportunities, occupations and life chances.
Culture and distinction matter too
Use Bourdieu, Savage and Lawler to show how taste, judgement, respectability and symbolic boundaries shape class identity.
Subcultures and resistance
Use Willis to explain working-class subculture, and Jones to examine stigma and negative labels linked to the underclass.
Debates about whether class is fading
Use Lash and Urry and Pakulski and Waters to explore the argument that identities are now more fluid and consumption-based, even if class has not disappeared.
This interactive activity is designed for AQA A Level Sociology: Beliefs in Society and fits the part of the specification covering the relationship between social change and social stability, and religious beliefs, practices and organisations. Beliefs in Society is taught and assessed within Paper 2: Topics in Sociology, so students need to be able to…
This activity is designed for Cambridge OCR A Level Sociology, Paper 2: Researching and understanding social inequalities. OCR’s specification says learners should explore social inequality in relation to social class, gender, ethnicity and age, and should examine patterns and trends across different areas of social life rather than treating one inequality in isolation. The OCR…
This interactive activity is designed for AQA A Level Sociology: Beliefs in Society. It fits the part of the specification that covers the relationship between social change and social stability, and religious beliefs, practices and organisations, so it works well for revision of debates about whether religion mainly supports the status quo or helps create…
The Sociology Guy is a pseudonym originally used by Craig Gelling when he was working in an FE College to provide an outlet for his frustrations with how he was expected to teach and strict rules around intellectual property in his former employer. The Sociology Guy name came from his early years as a supply teacher, where students would often not know his name and ask for ‘the sociology guy’ when coming to the staff room. Initially set up in 2018 as an anonymous You Tube channel, Craig has since written, recorded and presented for many different organisations and education providers. His purpose is to try and make sociology both accessible and understandable for all students and support teachers to inspire the next generation of sociologists.
Discover more from The Sociology Guy
Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
Leave a Reply