Class (Sociology)

Pierre Bourdieu and the Distinctive Body

by Nadeem Fayaz

Book Review: D. Oesch. Redrawing the Class Map: Stratification and

by Michelle Addison

(Re) constituting the past,(re) branding the present and (re) imagining the future: women's spatial negotiation of gender and class

by Michelle Addison

Who do you think they were? How family historians make sense of social position and inequality in the past

by Wendy Bottero

published in the British Journal of Sociology, 2012, 63(1): 54-74

How do social comparisons over time shape perceptions of inequality? In thinking about subjective inequality, it is... more How do social comparisons over time shape perceptions of inequality? In thinking about subjective inequality, it is important to ask which social comparisons matter in establishing people’s sense of relative social position and wider inequalities. These issues are discussed by drawing on a qualitative study of popular genealogy, which examines how people make sense of social position in the past, and explores how social change affects people’s sense of social hierarchies. The gaze of family history promotes certain sorts of social comparisons, between ‘then and now’, and between immediate kin, which can flatten the sense of social hierarchies. However, the ability to determine social position also depends on the quality of information available, and how different practical engagements facilitate ‘sideways’ comparisons between contemporaries, affording different fields of vision on relative inequalities. On this evidence, when exploring subjective inequality it is necessary to examine when and how people engage in social comparison as part of everyday practical activities.

Keywords: Social comparison; social position; family history; subjective inequality; social hierarchy; social class; social classification.

Neoliberalising violence: of the exceptional and the exemplary in coalescing moments

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2012. Neoliberalising violence: of the exceptional and the exemplary in coalescing moments. Area 44 (2), 136-143.

This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can... more This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can be considered as moments. From this shared conceptualisation of process and fluidity, I argue that it becomes easier to recognise how these two phenomena actually converge. Building upon this conceived coalescence of neoliberalism and violence, the second aim is to recognise how the hegemony of neoliberalism positions it as an abuser, which facilitates the abandonment of those ‘Others’ who fall outside of neoliberal normativity. I argue that the widespread banishment of ‘Others’ under neoliberalism produces a ‘state of exception’, wherein because of its inherently dialectic nature, exceptional violence is transformed into exemplary violence. This metamorphosis occurs as aversion for alterity intensifies under neoliberalism and its associated violence against ‘Others’ comes to form the rule.

Class Confrontations in Archaeology

by Randall McGuire

McGuire, Randall H. and Mark Walker
1999 Class Confrontations in Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 33(1)159-183.

An updated version of this paper appears in Archaeology as Political Action, 2008

Archaeologist not only study class they also live it. Archaeology as a discipline serves class interests and as a... more Archaeologist not only study class they also live it. Archaeology as a discipline serves class interests and as a profession,or occupation, it has its own class structure. The discipline of archaeology has, since its founding, primarily served middle class interests. It has formed part of the symbolic capital that has been necessary for membership in the middle class during this century. Archaeology has traditionally reproduced itself in the university using a guild model of apprenticeship and mastery. In both the academy and in cultural resource man agement today this guild model has become an ideology that obscures the existence of an archaeological proletariat of teaching assistants, adjuncts, and field techs. The ideology justifies denying these archaeologists respect, a living wage, job security, and benefits. A seven step program is proposed to rectify the structural class inequalities of modern archaeology.

This Shit Is Fucked Up and Bullshit

by McKenzie Wark

Theory & Event, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2011

The Enduring Salience of Class Analysis for Sociologies of Work

by Jane Parry

Review article, published in Sociology, 43 (5): 1-7.

Orientation, opportunity and autonomy: why people work after state pension age in three areas of England

by Jane Parry

Co-authored with Rebecca F. Taylor (2007), Ageing and Society, 27 (4): 579-598.

With the central players in the United Kingdom policy debate on pensions schemes and funding advocating an extension... more With the central players in the United Kingdom policy debate on pensions schemes and funding advocating an extension to the average working life (or, more precisely, a rise in the age of ceasing work), this paper reports the findings of qualitative interviews with men and women at or approaching state pension age that examined what motivated some people to continue to work after that age. By exploring their work histories and orientations to work, the paper shows that people from different social and occupational backgrounds not only conceive work and retirement in different ways but also have contrasting opportunities to continue in occupations after retirement age. Their attitudes and the opportunities they encounter shape the decisions they make at state pension age. Distinctions are drawn between those who articulated an identity as a ‘worker’ and those who defined themselves as ‘professionals and creatives’, and within those categories, between the employed and self-employed. The paper elucidates the tensions between individuals' normative expectations of retirement, their desire for autonomy and flexibility in later life, and the financial and occupational reality of life after state pension age. We argue that understanding the different cultural meanings of work and retirement for different types of worker has implications for the design and implementation of policies to extend working life.

'WHITHER MARXISM?': a review of Gregor McLennan, Marxism, Pluralism and Beyond

by Kevin Magill

Scroll to p. 40 in pdf. Published in Radical Philosophy, 61, Summer 1992.

Daria Berg. “Female Self-Fashioning in Late Imperial China: How the Gentlewoman and the Courtesan Edited Her Story and Rewrote Hi/story.”

by Daria Berg

Daria Berg. “Female Self-Fashioning in Late Imperial China: How the Gentlewoman and the Courtesan Edited Her Story and Rewrote Hi/story.” In Reading China: Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse—Essays in Honour of Professor Glen Dudbridge, ed. Daria Berg. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007, pp. 238-289.
Reproduced with the publisher's permission. http://www.brill.nl/reading-china

In this study Daria Berg explores the ways in which women fashioned representations of the female self by editing and... more In this study Daria Berg explores the ways in which women fashioned representations of the female self by editing and publishing their own and other women’s writings. The publishing boom in late Ming/early Qing China propelled literary women into prominence, both as producers and consumers of literature. Berg analyses the literary and cultural aspirations, social anxieties and financial motivations of two women editors from the opposite ends of the social spectrum—a gentlewoman and a courtesan—in the economically prosperous and flourishing cultural environment of seventeenth-century Jiangnan, the Yangzi delta region. As women set out to edit women’s writings, they discovered that the process of rewriting China’s literary history empowered them in new and different ways. In the role of editor, women perceived their work as a means to change the course of history and their own representations within it.

Tales of the 50-somethings: selective schooling and lifelong learning

by Jacky Brine

Published 2006
GENDER AND EDUCATION, 18(4)431-446

Through a discourse of diversity, specialism, equality and choice, selective schooling is again on the UK education... more Through a discourse of diversity, specialism, equality and choice, selective schooling is again on the UK education agenda. A previous selection policy operated between 1944 and 1964. The argument that some children are more suited to a vocational education and others to an academic one is evident now and then. This paper focuses on the life-histories of four '50-something' women sent to 'bilateral' schools in Bristol, England. With children from the same primary school or street, they found themselves on differing sides of a divide between grammar and secondary-modern education. The paper explores the practices through which White working class children received contrasting experiences of the same school, where different gendered-classed identities, aspirations and expectations were constructed. The co-existence of firmly separated grammar and modern streams within one school allows an analysis of everyday practices of selective schooling, of the means by which one was constantly constructed against the other.

The everyday classificatory pratices of selective schooling: a 50-year retrospective

by Jacky Brine

Published 2006
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION, 16(1): 37-56

The fifity-year retrospective has led to recent media interest in the comprehensive school. Bristol, located in the... more The fifity-year retrospective has led to recent media interest in the comprehensive school. Bristol, located in the south-west of England, is frequently portrayed as an early provider. This article draws on documentary evidence and life-history interviews with ex-pupils to explore this claim. It finds that they were not comprehensive schools, but selective bilaterals that, despite including grammar and secondary modern streams within the same physical site, constructed, through their curricular and non-curricular practices, a rigid divide between the two. The selective schooling of the bilateral consolidated the classificatory practices that began in primary school. Framed by Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, disposition and classificatory practices, it is a study of explict selective schooling that was reliant not only on key moments of selection, and differentiated curricula, but on everyday practices and signifiers of difference.

Mockery and morality in popular cultural representations of the white, working class

by Jayne Raisborough

Raisborough and Adams (2008)

We draw on 'new' class analysis to argue that mockery frames many cultural representations of class and move to... more We draw on 'new' class analysis to argue that mockery frames many cultural representations of class and move to consider how it operates within the processes of class distinction. Influenced by theories of disparagement humour, we explore how mockery creates spaces of enunciation, which serve, when inhabited by the middle class, particular articulations of distinction from the white, working class. From there we argue that these spaces, often presented as those of humour and fun, simultaneously generate for the middle class a certain distancing from those articulations. The plays of articulation and distancing, we suggest, allow a more palatable, morally sensitive form of distinction-work for the middle-class subject than can be offered by blunt expressions of disgust currently argued by some 'new' class theorising. We will claim that mockery offers a certain strategic orientation to class and to distinction work before finishing with a detailed reading of two Neds comic strips to illustrate what aspects of perceived white, working class lives are deemed appropriate for these functions of mockery. The Neds, are the latest comic-strip family launched by the publishers of children's comics The Beano and The Dandy, D C Thomson and Co Ltd

What can Sociology say about Fair Trade? Class, Reflexivity and Ethical Consumption

by Jayne Raisborough

Adams and Raisborough (2008)  Sociology

This article critically considers the `fit' between FairTrade consumption and conceptualizations of the reflexive... more This article critically considers the `fit' between FairTrade consumption and conceptualizations of the reflexive project of selfhood. By outlining the ways in which FairTrade products are marketed, we argue that a particular and partial reflexivity is invoked and mobilized. Following from recent class debates which apply a Bourdieusian analysis to explore the operations of everyday class distinctions, we explore what such an analysis can offer to the project of critically mapping out the dynamics of this particular reflexivity and ethical consumption. However, FairTrade's emphasis on `just' consumption and invocation of a deserving farmer/worker allows some scope for problematization here too. By turning to an emerging literature on the `moral economy' we reach past the homogenizing tendency in some `new' class analyses to suggest possibilities both for a psychosocial imagining of ethical consumption and for fleshing out the conceptualization of a `situated reflexivity' demanded by recent social theory.

The self-control ethos and the 'chav': unpacking cultural representations of the white working class

by Jayne Raisborough

Adams and Raisborough (2011) Culture and Psychology

This paper applies Joffe and Staerkle´’s self-control ethos to cultural representations of the white working class. We... more This paper applies Joffe and Staerkle´’s self-control ethos to cultural representations of the white working class. We initially follow their identification of three aspects of the self-control ethos – mind, body, and destiny – to show the explanatory value of the concept, before considering four possible avenues through which the self-control ethos may be developed: the extent to which it is the interrelationship between the separate
aspects of the self-control ethos which lends them their visceral, emotional, and symbolic power; that gender differentiation is an important element in the specific content of stereotypes; that some stereotype content relates to issues of containment; and that a tighter contextualization is afforded to the self-control ethos by considering self and other relations in the terms of a consumer culture. These are offered as possible directions for the future development of a social representational approach sensitive to thecontemporary cultural context.

Creating 'festivity': household Christmas lights displays and community cohesion.

by Steve Millington

The Lighting Journal: The Official Journal of the Institution of Lighting Engineers. June, 2010. 34-40.

In a paper which challenges social cliches and stereotypes, Tim Edensor and Steve Millington examine the... more In a paper which challenges social cliches and stereotypes, Tim Edensor and Steve Millington examine the often-denigrated phenomenon of residential Christmas lights - and argue for their positive role in the creation of local identities and community cohesion.

Il ceto medio nella società post-fordista, tra transizione e marginalizzazione

by Domenica Farinella

Interrupted Happiness: Class Boundaries in Turkish Melodrama

by Barış Kılıçbay

in Ephemera: Critical Dialogues on Organization, 3 (3), 2003.

(the pdf file is password protected, so embedded viewing is not possible)

'Post-colonial renaissance: ‘Indianness’, contemporary art and the market in the age of neoliberal capital'

by manuela ciotti

Third World Quarterly 33: 4, 633-651

Arjun Appadurai has argued that ‘the materiality of objects in India is not yet completely penetrated by the logic of... more Arjun Appadurai has argued that ‘the materiality of objects in India is not yet completely penetrated by the logic of the market’ (2006:18). However, the entry and the visibility of modern and contemporary Indian art into the circuits of the global art world increasingly challenge this argument. That of modern and contemporary Indian art is the story of the inscription of local objects and their ‘Indianness’ into the above circuits, with market value being created in the process. If the globalisation of the art world provides a conceptual and material arena where objects are circulated, displayed, and bought and sold through auction houses, exhibitions, biennales, and art fairs, this article analyses an event that epitomises some of the forces at play in this arena: the contemporary art exhibition ‘The empire strikes back: Indian art today’ held in 2010 at the Saatchi Gallery, London. An artistic cum business instantiation of ‘India in Europe’- and one that challenges the visual and aesthetic canons ‘traditionally’ associated to India - this article examines this exhibition as an entry-point into the analysis of how neoliberal capital produces ‘culture’, and into the tension between the commodity form and the infinite possibilities, and unintended consequences, opened up by this very status.