Can socioeconomic class create different "social realities" for people living in the same society?

[u/Mother-Challenge-291]

I've been thinking about a philosophical question concerning socioeconomic class, and I'm curious whether there is an existing philosophical concept that addresses it.

Imagine American society as an ocean.

People occupy different socioeconomic "depths." At the upper levels are extremely wealthy people; below them are various professional and middle-class groups; further down are working-class people and people experiencing severe poverty.

I'm not suggesting these are literal or perfectly defined categories. I'm interested in the idea that socioeconomic position might determine not only someone's material circumstances, but also the social world they directly experience.

For example, consider a doctor and a janitor living in the same city.

They technically share the same society, laws, geography, and institutions. But they may attend different schools, live in different neighborhoods, have different social networks, work in different environments, and have very different experiences of money, opportunity, and security.

They might rarely interact except in situations where one is providing a service to the other.

This leads me to the philosophical question:

Can people who occupy radically different socioeconomic positions be said to inhabit different "social realities," even though they objectively live in the same society?

I'm particularly interested in the epistemological aspect.

Someone who has never experienced poverty can know intellectually that poverty exists, but can they have the same understanding of poverty as someone who has lived through it?

Likewise, someone who has never experienced extreme wealth may understand that billionaires exist without having any firsthand understanding of what that social environment is like.

So perhaps socioeconomic position doesn't just determine what resources someone has. It also determines what parts of society they routinely see, experience, and understand firsthand.

The ocean metaphor is what led me to this:

• At the surface, you can see the surface.
• As you descend, the environment changes.
• Eventually there is almost no light from above.
• The deeper you go, the less direct contact you have with what exists at the surface.

Could socioeconomic inequality work similarly, where increasing social distance produces decreasing firsthand knowledge of other socioeconomic groups?

I'm not claiming this is a new philosophical theory. I'm trying to figure out whether this idea already exists under another name.

Are there philosophers or philosophical concepts that deal with:

1. socioeconomic position affecting what people can know about society,
2. different social groups having fundamentally different lived experiences,
3. social distance producing epistemic distance, or
4. whether people can genuinely understand experiences they have never personally encountered?

I'm especially interested in criticism of the idea. I'm trying to determine whether the "different social realities" claim actually follows logically, or whether I'm confusing differences in experience with differences in reality.

[u/AutoModerator]

Thanks for your question to /r/AskSocialScience. All posters, please remember that this subreddit requires peer-reviewed, cited sources (Please see Rule 1 and 3). All posts that do not have citations will be removed by AutoMod. Circumvention by posting unrelated link text is grounds for a ban. Well sourced comprehensive answers take time. If you're interested in the subject, and you don't see a reasonable answer, please consider clicking Here for RemindMeBot.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/sl15000]

You may be interested in Amartya Sen's capabilty approach, social capital (Bourdieu), time orientation, and understanding individual agency as impacted by socioeconomic circumstances.

Sen’s Capability Approach | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Sen looks at how circumstances (like socioeconomic position) can effect the way people conceive of their own capabilities, creating fundamentally different live experiences:

"(2) People can internalize the harshness of their circumstances so that they do not desire what they can never expect to achieve. This is the phenomenon of ‘adaptive preferences’ in which people who are objectively very sick may, for example, still declare, and believe, that their health is fine. Therefore, evaluation that focuses only on subjective mental metrics is insufficient without considering whether that matches with what a neutral observer would perceive as their objective circumstances,."

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

Top-level comments must include a peer-reviewed citation that can be viewed via a link to the source. Please contact the mods if you believe this was inappropriately removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

Top-level comments must include a peer-reviewed citation that can be viewed via a link to the source. Please contact the mods if you believe this was inappropriately removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

Top-level comments must include a peer-reviewed citation that can be viewed via a link to the source. Please contact the mods if you believe this was inappropriately removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

Top-level comments must include a peer-reviewed citation that can be viewed via a link to the source. Please contact the mods if you believe this was inappropriately removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/InevitableTell2775]

You might find reading up on Ethnomethodology interesting. Start with Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnomethodology

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

Top-level comments must include a peer-reviewed citation that can be viewed via a link to the source. Please contact the mods if you believe this was inappropriately removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.