1. "static" in that they did not explicitly consider the possibility that
   1. classes arise historically through processes of struggle
   2. classes require specific work by people involved in all the classes to maintain them.
2. unconcerned with the possibility of productive activity by the people involved, particularly those in the "ruled," "oppressed," or otherwise "subaltern" classes. That is
   1. when class position is used as a variable mechanically explaining variation in behavior, then the analyst will find it difficult to consider that people in their local circumstances might be, or become aware of their limitations, and act on them
   2. when class position is treated as a condition with which people produce their lives, then the groundwork is laid for resarch that makes of the people's awareness something like "an independent variable. "
   1. the difficulty here lies with the evidence to be used as evidence of "awareness."
      
      

It would seem that something was preventing them from acting, and the concepts of hegemony or habitus might appear to do the trick by proposing that individuals came to accept the legitimacy of their position through the pedagogic activity of institutions such as the school (or the media).

1. i.e., if you can be made to believe that you have failed "fairly," then you cannot contest your fate.

The problem with this hypothesis is that it returns investigation to where it started, that is with the working hypothesis that social position is always the independent variable "causing" (and thus explaining why) people end up where they do.

Miller is prototypical.

1. The paper can be read in the spirit of Lévi-Strauss's pages on culture as transforming biology, except that now "biology" is the social and historical conditions that people find as they get born.
2. It might also be read, controversially, in the spirit of Benedict's understanding of what happens when populations isolate: each kitchen then becomes the artifact of a minor sub-sub-culture
   1. One might thus hypothesize that the patterning of the kitchen somehow replicates the patterning of the living room, and probably other practices of this household also.

Myerhoff contributes something similar but from a very different source. She is part of a kind of spiritual rebellion against the apparent intellectualism of (Lévi-Straussian) structuralism. Like the tenants in the British "estate," the Jewish senior citizens of Venice (California!) makes themselves visible (that is distinct) through their own ritual (artistic) activity.