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Struggles for Value: Value Practices, Injustice, Judgment, Affect and the Idea of Class
Abstract
This paper is about the struggle for value by those who live intensified devaluation in the new conditions of legitimation and self-formation, by which the self is required to repeatedly reveal its value through its accrual and investment in economic, symbolic, social and cultural capitals. It explores how this value struggle is experienced: felt affectively, known and spoken through discourses of injustice. Drawing on a small research project, which uses the British New Labour government's Respect Agenda as an evocative device to provoke discussion, the paper details how those positioned as already marginal to the dominant symbolic, presented as 'useless' subjects rather than 'subjects of value' of the nation, generate alternative ways for making value. It examines how the experience of injustice generates affective responses expressed as 'ugly-feelings'. The conversion of these 'ugly feelings' into articulations of 'just-talk' reveals how different understandings of value, of what matters and what counts, come into effect and circulate alongside the dominant symbolic. The issue that most angered working-class respondents is how they are positioned, judged, blamed and held responsible for an inheritance over which they have no control, 'an accident of birth'. They were acutely aware of how they were constantly judged and de-legitimated and how practices such as selfishness and greed were legitimate for others. Showing how they refuse to authorize those they consider lacking in value but with authority and in a position to judge, the paper demonstrates how class relations are lived through a struggle, not only against economic limitation but a struggle against unjustifiable judgment and authority and for dignified relationality. The paper reveals a struggle at the very core of ontology, demonstrating how the denigrated defend and make their lives liveable; an issue at the heart of current austerity politics which may have increased significance for the future.
... This view of a submissive lower class has been heavily criticised later: scholars of many different contexts have shown that, on the contrary, there are feelings of resentment and anger among the lower classes (Hochschild 2016;Lamont 2018). Unlike the somewhat docile image painted by Bourdieu, subsequent scholars have argued that the lower classes are aware of being exploited (De Keere 2020; Savage et al. 2015), perceiving themselves as judged and their cultural practices as devalued (Skeggs and Loveday 2012). The most precarious groups often perceive living under a stigma (Savage et al. 2015) which is further corroborated through discriminatory labels, such as 'chav' (Jones 2016) or 'underclass' (Tyler 2013). ...
... This link to social approval is probably the key to understanding properly the resistance discourse. This discourse shuns highbrow-oriented, publicly recognised cultural practices while embracing at least some items from the fields of popular and everyday culture-yet with undertones of resentment and anger towards potentially judgemental upper classes (Skeggs and Loveday 2012). The idea of everyday participation, a possible compensation for 'lacking' cultural engagement, as a 'considerable informal involvement in kin-based and local circles, and in home-based activities' (Bennett et al. 2009, 64) or as a signal of social capital and social networks (Miles and Gibson 2016) does not fully capture this. ...
... Many interviewees felt that their cultural participation was worth nothing in the eyes of the groups higher up in the hierarchy. To summarise, there is a profound awareness of exploitation (Skeggs and Loveday 2012) in the resistance discourse. There is thus a strong pull towards the 'fatalistic worldview' that De Keere (2020) describes as dismissive, anti-establishment and nonconformist-therefore, for people close to the resistance discourse, 'the way to counteract and survive this situation is by not abiding by the rules and instead emphasizing one's own hedonism, straightforwardness and non-hypocrisy' (De Keere 2020, 5). ...
This chapter focuses on the resistance discourse which is inclined towards popular and everyday cultural participation. The discourse is based on an opposition to the norm of highbrow-oriented cultural participation. Most methodological challenges of the interviews are especially related to this discourse. The boundaries drawn in the resistance discourse are basically all directed upwards. They are either aesthetical (directed against highbrow-oriented cultural practices) or moral (directed against people considered snobbish). There is strong awareness of exploitation in the resistance discourse. People close to the resistance discourse are aware of their low status, but they call for being treated as equals. In the resistance discourse, clearly situated the furthest away from normative cultural participation, there is a desire for egalitarianism.
... In an effort to (better) understand how disability is created, I would argue that it is also adequate to link cognitive disabilities after ECT to the social model. Shakespeare (2010) is one of the spokespersons for disability policy (cf. Beresford, 2002) and highlights the concept of identity in disability studies. ...
... However, instead of being treated with dignity and respect at the unit for financial assistance, I was being interrogated by someone who stressed the ambiguities surrounding my memory loss in a way that made me feel like a liar. The sterile treatment became almost as traumatic as the ECT itself and, in contrast to Shakespeare (2010), I experienced a counterproductive shame of having suffered from mental health problems 'and' to have become even worse from what, according to the biomedical paradigm, would help. ...
... Research generally shows a strong correlation between narration and improved health, where one believes that the narrative itself contributes to 'order' in human life (Hydé n, 1997;Brown, 2009). In order for disabled individuals to have the opportunity to shape their lives based on the conditions given (e.g., crip time and societal attitudes linked to mental health problems), I argue that the social model of disability (Shakespeare, 2010) produces a cohesive framework for this endeavour. From my point of view, there is one recovery-oriented dimension concerning all disabilities. ...
This article aims to shed light on cognitive disabilities after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) from an expert-by-experience perspective. It illuminates the living conditions that may follow, with a particular focus on epistemic injustice, societal attitudes, narration and recovery. Since personal narratives about ECT are scant, an autoethnographic method was used through which I weave together my own experiences of ECT and the need for support from, for example, social services, with research in various nearby areas. These experiences were then placed in a wider psycho-social context. Three themes emerged when analysing own experiences of ECT, revealing both risks and important aspects of managing side effects such as cognitive disabilities: (i) At the social services office; (ii) Alienation in society; and (iii) Excerpt from a friendly conversation. Subjective experiences may broaden the understanding of a certain phenomenon which calls for greater (societal) knowledge regarding cognitive disabilities after ECT. It also emphasises the importance of different professionals, including social workers and psychiatric staff, working to promote recovery, legitimise users’ narratives and not seeing disabilities as given obstacles in everyday life.
... De Keere (2020) has recently studied moral positions as markers of class and found, using data from Flanders, that groups with low amounts of economic capital in particular exhibited a fatalistic worldview: ideals of anti-establishment and non-conformity as well as the idea of not properly benefitting from how society works. This echoes what Skeggs and Loveday (2012) characterised as the 'value struggles' that underprivileged groups have to confront in the face of a normative consensus that claims they are dysfunctional, antisocial, morally dubious and so on. Skeggs and Loveday concluded that the underprivileged classes are perfectly aware of the judgements and forms of exploitation coming from above. ...
... We have seen that there are many arguments and scholarly findings on feelings of cultural 'devaluation' among underprivileged classes (Charlesworth 2000;Gest 2016;Hochschild 2016), which have to bear many derogatory labels associated with them (Jones 2016;Skeggs and Loveday 2012;Tyler 2013). These findings go hand in hand with contemporary discussions on the 'cultural non-participant' in the field of cultural policy. ...
... We have seen that participation in culture, especially in cultural fields considered 'highbrow', functions as a status symbol. Although there are signs of a weakening of highbrow culture as an indicator of privileged status (DiMaggio and Mukhtar 2004;Peterson and Kern 1996;Peterson and Simkus 1992), it can be argued that a hierarchy of lifestyles remains, with many studies arguing that different underprivileged groups feel isolated and de-valued, even culturally stigmatised (Charlesworth 2000;Gest 2016;Hochschild 2016;Lamont 2018;Skeggs and Loveday 2012). There is evidence that, due to their 'lack' of cultural resources, they mobilise different moral boundaries to express their own dignity and worth. ...
This chapter contextualises cultural participation as one of the three dimensions of cultural practices. It first discusses cultural participation as a positional good and as a vehicle of social exclusion. The chapter then introduces some of the main contributions arguing that the highbrow-oriented culture could be losing its distinctive value—most importantly, the discussions on the ‘rise of the omnivore’ and the ‘meltdown scenario’. This chapter also summarises the research on the cultural practices of different underprivileged classes. It is argued that moral boundaries are an important means for underprivileged classes to defend their worth in a scenario of ‘lacking’ cultural or economic resources. Finally, this chapter shows that public cultural policy serves as an important tool for validating specific kinds of cultural participation.KeywordsCultural participationCultural exclusionMoral turnWorthOmnivorousness
... While middle-and affluent-class women were meeting normative expectations, working-class women with limited access to economic, cultural and social resources felt obligated to comply with authority and demonstrate respectability (which carries moral worth and avoids stigma). 76,77 Kylie (aged 62, working-class) strictly followed medical directives to screen, 'I will do it. . ...
... Wendy, however, was unconcerned about disclosure, and exemplified working-class tendencies of 'just getting on with their lives' and deflect class-based judgements. 77 Tracy (aged 52, working-class) a healthcare worker, with a family history of breast cancer, was aware she was actively avoiding screening. She had a mammogram in her 20s to investigate a lump but never returned. ...
Background
Population-level mammography screening for early detection of breast cancer is a secondary prevention measure well-embedded in developed countries, and the implications for women’s health are widely researched. From a public health perspective, efforts have focused on why mammography screening rates remain below the 70% screening rate required for effective population-level screening. From a sociological perspective, debates centre on whether ‘informed choice’ regarding screening exists for all women and the overemphasis on screening benefits, at the cost of not highlighting the potential harms. We dovetail these disciplinary agendas to contextualise the factors that impact mammography screening choices, interpreting screening status through a social class lens.
Objective
To understand how social class impacts informed choice-making among midlife women (45–64 years), regarding (non) participation in mammography screening.
Design
A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews.
Methods
We interviewed 36 Australian midlife women from differing social class groups who were ‘screeners’ or ‘non-screeners’. We conducted a theory-informed thematic analysis and used Bourdieu’s relational social class theory to consider how women’s access to social, cultural and economic capital influenced their screening identities. We conducted matrix and crosstab queries across themes to identify patterns by social class. We extend the findings from Friedman’s study of women’s screening perspectives as ‘attentional’ types utilising the ‘sociology of attention’.
Results
Our results map to Friedman’s four ‘attentional’ types (default or conscious interventionists, conflicted or conscious sceptics), and we show how social class impacts women’s attention to screening and participation. We show for middle-class women screening is a ‘given’, they align closely with normative screening expectations. Working-class women who screen, do so out of a sense of compliance. Affluent non-screeners make informed choices, while working-class women are more passive in their non-screening choices, being a group that sits outside of Friedman’s four attentional types.
Conclusion
Current approaches to screening communication and programme delivery can be improved by tailoring approaches to reflect the impacts of social class in shaping women’s ’choices’. Subsequently, equitable breast cancer prevention may be afforded, which impacts positively on population-level screening rates.
... Shame is a "feeling site" where individuals construct their identities in relation to their understanding of how others see them (Beswick, 2020). Historically, those in the working class are expected to demonstrate respect for those in classes above, but this respect is rarely reciprocated (Skeggs & Loveday, 2012). To mitigate shame felt in certain classes, it follows that individuals might de-emphasize class or distinguish themselves from the lowest ranking classes. ...
... Lacking resources while being informed of the accepted norms of living can bring shame and a sense of rejection (Beswick, 2020). Potentially facing disrespect and othering from different classes (Skeggs & Loveday, 2012;Lawler, 2005), de-emphasizing class identity then becomes a coherent strategy. Poverty class members may feel more than any other class the impact of economic and political changes, and this acute understanding of deprival makes them more aware of the vulnerability of their class. ...
In defining social class, researchers often rely on measures of objective class position, even though subjective perceptions of social class identity can better account for the creation of social class boundaries. We explore the relationship between measures of objective class position and subjective class identity using data from an online survey of 1155 residents in Alberta, Canada, a conservative province dependent on a fluctuating energy sector. We find that although most Albertans identified as middle class, the strength of class identity and views regarding linked social class fates varied across categories with poverty class and uppermiddleclass respondents standing out. In reporting class identity, respondents considered measures related to objective class position, especially their income and economic security levels, but gaps still remained. We then use the results of this exploratory study to advocate for more comprehensive measures of social class.
... Reay et al. 2001;Ball et al. 2002;Crozier et al. 2008;Waller et al. 2014;Read, Burke, and Crozier 2020). This rich scholarship demonstrates the varied, complex ways in which students are enmeshed in material, epistemic and symbolic struggles for value (Skeggs and Loveday 2012). Drivers include the neoliberalisation of student finance (Clark, Mountford-Zimdars, and Francis 2015); habitus disruption or hybridisation (Lehmann 2014); sectoral stratification (Crozier et al. 2008); deficit discourses (Webber 2014); exclusionary pedagogical practices (Haggis 2006) and geographical and regional inequalities (Milburn 2017). ...
... However, engaging in PGT was also a way of 'role modelling to my kids', by visibly challenging herself whilst simultaneously being physically present. These navigations are indicative of Skeggs and Loveday's (2012) person-values as, even if devalued by the dominant discourse, these feelings and bonds are powerful resources to navigate life. As Social Science student Frank at Oldsouth noted, 'what's so wrong about [prioritising] someone that you know will be there for you, provide support for you, look after you?'. ...
Although postgraduate expansion swiftly followed the massification of undergraduate provision, with classed inequalities in access, postgraduate taught (PGT) education has rarely received the same level of scholarly attention as the critical mass of undergraduate research. To address this partial research lacuna, the paper traces 41 biographical narratives of first-generation students enrolled on taught Master's programmes at four English universities, complemented by four dialogic analysis workshops. Theorising social inequalities as lived and navigated structure and process, the paper traces a continuity of familiar refrains of inequality from undergraduate to postgraduate study. However, it illustrates how these may be reformulations, rather than replications. Firstly, it discusses material and symbolic barriers to PGT affordability including high fee levels, familial histories of debt and religious beliefs. Secondly, it emphasises that geographical mobility may be impossible or undesirable for Master's students due to relatively more ‘complicated’ lives, emplaced commitments, the subjectivity of social space and affective ties to place. Finally, it underscores that ‘fitting in’ still matters at PGT, as students may either divert from or feel uncomfortable in ‘high-status’ spaces where they feel they do not belong. In concluding, the paper argues the case for fully integrating PGT into HE equity agendas.
... The order of "fatalistic" discourse is based on a set of dispositions relating to a sense of extraneousness and distance towards the institutional world. The features of a specific "subaltern" habitus can be observed, where a tacit dimension of distrust and mistrust towards, both legal and scholastic, institutions can be observed (Willis 1981, Dolby and Dimitriadis 2004, Weis 2004, Archer et al. 2007, Reay 2009, Sayer 2011, Skeggs and Loveday 2012. The "fatalist" narratives would also seem to intertwine, at a discursive level, with dynamics of demarcation of symbolic boundaries. ...
The study explores the legal consciousness of young people in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, concerning the management of personal relationships vis-à-vis the legal regulation enacted by the Italian government. We aim to account for the forms of legality that have granted to sustain, criticize, engage, and resist the law, and to understand the mechanisms that contributed to shaping specific experiences of legality. We refer to a theoretical framework based on legal consciousness, the Neo-Bourdieusian approach to moral judgment and Douglas’s theory of risks. Based on the analysis of 70 narratives, our findings show different ways of experiencing the law by young people. Different recurring narratives can be identified: individual translation, trust in procedure, fatalistic claims, and cooperative criticism. These narratives are not fixed attributes of individuals but recurring repertoires of perceptions and practices that emerge from specific interaction contexts where pre-reflective dispositions and conscious deliberation intersect.
... Realistycznie ujmując są to obecnie strajki, bojkoty, blokowanie dróg, manifestacje uliczne i zinstytucjonalizowany konflikt klasowy, który przybiera postać negocjacji i zawierania umów między związkami zawodowymi a pracodawcami i państwem. Otóż zakładając -jak argumentują niektórzy badacze (Skeggs, Loveday 2012; Bottero 2013) -że walka klasowa dokonuje się również na polu kultury, to nie polega ona na chodzeniu na demonstracje i wiece, ani też na rokowaniach ze związkami zawodowymi a kadrą zarządzającą. Symbolicznym wymiarem konfliktu kulturowego są kluby towarzyskie -ostoja ekskluzywności wyższych klas średnich -i korporacje (lekarzy, prawników), które kontrolują zasady rekrutacji i możliwości awansu. ...
Symboliczne dystanse klasowe polegają na kategoryzowaniu zjawisk społecznych: są tym, jak ludzie oceniają i porządkują siebie i innych. Opierając się na danych z badań prowadzonych metodami ilościowymi i jakościowymi próbuję ustalić, w jakiej postaci występują one w społeczeństwie polskim. Wskaźnikami oddziaływania symbolicznych dystansów klasowych na strukturę społeczną są siła zgodności w ocenie prestiżu zawodów i „sprawiedliwych” wynagrodzeń. Z przedstawionej tu analizy wynika, że zjawiska te z niejednakową siłą kształtują hierarchię społeczną. Zgodność między przekonaniami o sprawiedliwych zarobkach jest znacznie silniejsza. Wskazywałoby to na większe przyzwolenie na dystanse kreowane przez sprawiedliwość dystrybucyjną w porównaniu z prestiżem zawodów. Za oddziaływaniem symbolicznych dystansów klasowych na strukturę klasową przemawiają również wypowiedzi respondentów uzyskane metodami jakościowymi.
... Liberal-capitalist societies like Canada tend to promote a meritocratic ideology that frames poverty and homelessness as personal moral failings rather than societal failures. Our participants consequently faced the full brunt of class stigma, as their homeless status made them hyper-visible to the public as 'devalued' members of society (Sayer 2002(Sayer /2007, see also Skeggs 1997Skeggs , 2004Skeggs and Loveday 2012). ...
Advocates and academics have increasingly called on governments to recognize anti-homeless violence as a hate crime and type of domestic extremism, representing a broader trend in Westernized countries for responding to social issues through anti-hate policies. Can these approaches protect unhoused people? Drawing upon ethnographic interviews and observation with 50 unhoused community members in a Canadian city, we outline their experiences with anti-homeless and anti-Indigenous violence. Our findings show how hate crime approaches often (1) fail to consider intersectionality, especially how class contributes to vulnerability, and (2) overlook place-based victimization and how institutions enable class vulnerability. We call for more localized analyses of hate crime and introduce the concept of ‘cumulative risk of hate crime victimization’ to help address intersectionality.
... Mothers' agency is also expressed in the nature of their relationships with the welfare authorities. Mothers who receive support and assistance negotiate with welfare agencies and social workers in a way that enables them to be valued subjects within the community without undermining their social position (Skeggs & Loveday, 2012). They perceive receiving support and assistance as a violation of their dignity. ...
... The larger pro-social benefit associated with moral anger has also been reported by past studies as a motivational force to stop/discourage injustice (Niesta Kayser, Greitemeyer, Fischer, & Frey, 2010;Halmburger, Baumert, & Schmitt, 2015), appraisals of unfairness (Skeggs & Loveday, 2012), and uphold integrity and reputation (Yamagishi, Horita, Takagishi, Shinada, Tanida, & Cook 2009 Leaders act as role model for employees. Due to their very position, certain roles are associated with them. ...
Emotions play significant role in shaping subsequent attitude and behavior. However, prior studies on prevalence of employee silence over growing incidents of unethical leader behavior in organizations has paid limited attention to the role of emotions. We investigated the relationship between unethical leader behavior and employee quiescent silence through mediating role of moral anger. Drawing upon Affect Theory of Social Exchange, we propose that unethical leader behavior will elicit emotions, which in turn will provoke employee silence, depending upon intensity of the emotions. We theorize that unethical leader behavior will trigger moral anger, which will further shape employee quiescent silence. Data were collected at three time intervals with 3-4 weeks lag, from 306 respondents employed in public and private sector hospitals located in country’s capital-Islamabad and KPK’s provincial capital- Peshawar. Analysis of results reveal that moral anger mediated the relationship between unethical leader behavior and employee silence. Findings contribute to existing literature through highlighting the significance of emotions in shaping employee silence over unethical leader behavior. The study broadens theoretical understanding of the potential underlying mechanism of employee silence over unethical leader behavior, which carries significant managerial and contextual implications.
... However, as this section will demonstrate, when residents are asked to talk about Shirebrook on their own terms, they do not simply reproduce stigmatising accounts but provide alternative narratives about place. As such, this negotiation strategy represents a form of resistance or contestation where residents find alternative forms of value (Skeggs and Loveday 2012) beyond dominant stigmatising images of Shirebrook. However, this often involves highlighting Shirebrook's proximity to other places and so can be interpreted as a "way of escaping the stigma" (Cuny 2018:903) imposed on Shirebrook. ...
This paper draws on a multimethod ethnographic study, conducted between 2016 and 2017 in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, England—a small and relatively isolated deindustrialising colliery town—examining how residents negotiate living in stigmatised territory. In doing so, microspatial strategies of distancing, avoidance, and deflection are illustrated, revealing how residents reassign and deepen stigma in particular locations within a stigmatised territory. This highlights the relationship between social and physical space, and while spatial strategies of negotiation do not mitigate stigma, they do (re)produce internal social hierarchies within a place that is homogenised from the outside through disparaging narratives. A key contribution reveals the significance of the racialised production of space in shaping how territorial stigma is negotiated within this distinct socio‐spatial location. Residents use strategies to redirect the stigma toward those seen as out of place and draw attention away from sticky sites of racialised urban stigma towards symbols of unspoilt rural Englishness.
... You would put your skates on in the snow, and off you went. (Jarmo,67,retired) Sports seemed in general to provide a means of showing off capitals among the interviewees: in a milieu of popular and mundane cultural practices that the interviewees probably recognised as de-legitimised by the classes above them in the hierarchy (see Skeggs and Loveday 2012), practising sports was linked in the interviews to values such as perseverance, activity and self-maintenance, something many interviewees saw as a viable alternatives to simply lying around or 'staring at too many screens'. For instance, Karla, a 40-year-old masseuse on maternity leave living in a small village in the north of Finland, has very few possibilities for traditional cultural participation due to time and location restraints, at least, but she seems to compensate for this lack with a sporty attitude that resembles multitasking: ...
This chapter focuses on the second out of three discourses found in the data. Within this ‘functionality discourse’, there is mainly popular and everyday participation. This discourse emphasises the practical usefulness of cultural practices: it is an area of personal ‘feelgood’. The functionality discourse is marked by a link between cultural participation and the structuring factors of life. At the same time, cultural participation is rarely conceived of as culturally distinctive. There is an emphasis on modesty, but the boundaries drawn are aesthetical and directed upwards towards impractical cultural practices. In other words, in the functionality discourse, there are delicate traces of anti-elitism. This indifferent and self-assured attitude towards cultural participation that characterises the functionality discourse could be considered a version of egalitarianism.
... On the other hand, the process of individualization in post-reform China enhances the 'ontological ambivalence' experienced by working-class 'exceptions'. In Western countries, like the UK and France, the legacy of labor unions and class-based political parties and collective struggles fosters a clear class awareness and sense of community (although the sense of class solidarity is being decomposed by neoliberalism) working-class people can draw on to oppose neoliberal negation and rebuild working-class social value (Skeggs and Loveday, 2012). In comparison, China lacks such a class-based reference of community. ...
China’s transition from a redistributive economy to a market economy has created an evolving and intensifying social class structure that requires a class perspective and class analysis tools to capture reconfigured social relations and new patterns of social inequalities. Drawing on a three-year life-story study of working-class students at elite universities in China and working with Bourdieu’s theoretical tools, this article highlights the emotional costs of class mobility and two associated forms of ‘ontological ambivalences’. The findings show ‘mundane reflexivity’ in class struggles against classifications but more importantly, demonstrate the symbolic violence involved therein and indicate the difficulties of individual agency to achieve politically effective resistances. Although based on the specific context of China, this article contributes to reflections on neoliberal policies elsewhere by shedding light on how neoliberalism relates to and enhances class struggles and the significance of adopting a relational class perspective to understand and address social inequalities.
... The connection of the resistance discourse to egalitarianism is twofold. On the one hand, there is a strong awareness of exploitation (Skeggs and Loveday 2012) and, therefore, a tendency to adopt a dismissive and non-conformist 'fatalistic worldview' (De Keere 2020). On the other hand, in the resistance discourse, there is an explicit wish to return to a more egalitarian scenario-the interviewees closest to the resistance discourse express their desire to be treated as equals instead of following naturalised class inequalities (see Jarness and Flemmen 2019). ...
This chapter summarises the main findings. First, cultural non-participation is first and foremost a methodological artefact. Second, cultural non-participation (in highbrow-oriented activities) is only in some cases ‘compensated’ by informal social of kin-based participation. Rather, there are generally very active people and people who mostly engage in everyday pursuits. Third, the three main categories of talking about cultural non-participation in Finland were the following three: ‘affirmation’, ‘functionality’ and ‘resistance’ discourses. The chapter then discusses the problematic role of cultural policy in subverting existing hierarchies. After discussing briefly the main limitations, the chapter concludes that the best possibilities for equalising or at least balancing cultural participation lie in an equal society and that understanding this is key in our societies characterised by cultural divides.KeywordsCultural participationCultural non-participationAffirmationFunctionalityResistanceCultural equality
The first volume concentrates contributions defined by the key concepts of otherness, reactionary politics, and the class gaze. Departing from the watershed event of the Greek economic crisis and its long-term effects in the Greek socio-political life during the last fifteen years, the contributions of the volume focus on media practices that we frame as reactionary, such as demeaning representations of ethnic and class others, conspiracy theories in mass media, historical revisionism, as well as far-right media content and discourses, which are nowadays proliferating in the Greek public sphere. Additionally, a notion of the self-as-other emerges in some of the volume’s contributions, in which the histories and cultures of Greek refugee and migrant as a classed and gendered subject are outlined in classical cinema, and experiences of working-class migrant women are narrated through self ethnography.
This thesis examines whether participatory arts practices can be deployed in changing urban contexts without getting co-opted into that change and, instead, help to resist its uneven aspects. It presents a participatory arts and research project which responds to the politics and aesthetics of 21st century state-led gentrification, with a specific focus on Deptford, south-east London (UK). The project challenges dominant gentrification narratives by making visible and audible a variety of alternative perspectives that highlight the lived experiences of gentrification-induced displacement. It proposes a novel art and research methodology that, while emphasising participation and ethical practice, pays attention to the politics and aesthetics of creative research. It is underpinned by feminist participatory action research and the radical tradition of community arts and activism. Combining sociological research with a community arts project and the production, publication and launch of a book, this research offers rich understandings of the lived experiences of gentrification-induced displacement while also enacting these representations in the public sphere to support local housing activism. Therefore, my practice not only counters widespread depoliticised participatory practices that make community artists complicit in uneven urban change, it also offers a counterpoint to urban research that, while critically describing processes of change, does little in the way of actively engaging with those processes.
This research is an example of public sociology, engaging with non-academic and academic audiences. Publishing the research data on alternative media under the title Deptford is Changing to encourage public debate also challenges traditional modes of dissemination. It offers space for a multiplicity of voices and forms of representations with the aim of addressing a wide and varied audience. It is recommended to read the accompanying book of the same title alongside this thesis (The book can be downloaded here: https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/34788/). The thesis argues for a creative activist sociological imagination, a Radial Visual Sociology which gets actively and creatively involved in working towards social justice.
This volume is a comprehensive reference for conducting political analyses of emerging welfare systems in the Global South. These countries have adopted a development-oriented approach, one distinct from the social policy trajectory observed in industrialized capitalist states. However, the pervasive influence of globalization since the 1990s has significantly reshaped policy priorities in these regions. Notably, the political discourse surrounding social policy concepts developed in Northern capitalist states has gained prominence. Irrespective of the geographical focus of the chapters, the volume delves into fundamental social policy concepts and debates, including the ongoing discourse between ‘universalism’ and ‘selectivity’, the challenges posed by the welfare residuum, the intricate role of institutional norms and apparatuses in achieving justice or engendering feelings of shame among social assistance recipients, and the examination of ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ poverty. Additionally, the volume investigates the pendulum shift within social welfare policies, the complex politics surrounding the portrayal of welfare recipients, and the newly established link between poverty and shame. Comprising 12 chapters, the volume employs a case study–based approach to test the applicability and universality of social policy theories and concepts. The central focus lies in assessing the adaptability of concepts and theories developed in the Global North to comprehend the intricacies of welfare politics in the Global South. These case studies contribute to theoretical generalizations that can explain universal principles relevant to both the Global South and North.
This chapter, pointing out the power relations within which the interviewees live, explores how they experience a sense of masculinity that is nonessential/constructed, that is, feeling oneself to be not a “typical man” to whom each person who identifies as a man on the earth can relate irrespective of social backgrounds. Embodying what makbul corresponds to in practice when dealing with affects like shame, anger, and awkwardness that destabilize men’s sense of self, it investigates how men’s sense of being not a typical man is entangled with mukaddesatçı makbulhood, which is a particular way of feeling Turkish.
This chapter, which connects the country’s decades-long sociopolitical and economic transformations with men’s experience of fatherhood, points to the fact that makbulhood is susceptible to affective destabilization. And the interviewees under the impact of such transformations modify their affective practices constituting their makbulhood as a requirement for being a considerate father. Yet this is not a smooth process, because of their class position in a neoliberal age. They both privatize the way they and their children feel and are confined by their limited means. However, this effort is embedded in a negotiation with their adult children as part of a peculiar kind of politics of fear regarding fathers. They are as considerate as possible as long as their children consider their own actions components of their fathers’ makbulhood so that their fathers will not be the object of siyaset as a father.
This paper contributes new understandings of the dynamics and processes of gentrification that contribute to wider transformations of class relations. We argue that the hospitality sector, specifically the tastes, dispositions and practices of young hospitality workers, are central in how gentrification processes currently function. We extend concepts of elective and selective belonging, and reflexive complicity, to analyse how young hospitality workers understand their own labouring practices as contributing to gentrification in their local areas. We show how their aesthetic and ethical orientations to place, especially their workplaces, make their experience of hospitality work more palatable. At the same time, their tastes are ‘put to work’ in venues that contribute to the vibes and aesthetics aimed at middle class consumption practices, while creating symbolic boundaries for long‐term residents who are being ostracised in the process. In this way, the high cultural capital bar workers possess thus become spatial bouncers for high economic capital property developers, where reflexive complicity is instrumentalised as a process of symbolic violence. We propose that hospitality labour, and the everyday relationalities and working practices of young workers, are crucial for understanding the contemporary processes of gentrification and class formation.
This article is about the perspectives of student teachers from working class backgrounds in Ireland about social class. In the context of drives to diversify the teaching profession internationally, examining how those from under-represented groups understand their identities assumes great importance. Employing constructivist grounded theory, 31 interviews were conducted with 21 student teachers from working class backgrounds exploring their perspectives on social class. While participants were clear that class ‘existed’ and remained highly relevant in Irish society, they emphasised silence about class in Ireland, except through forms of euphemising. Despite describing themselves in classed terms, most were critical of class categorisations believing they involved looking down on someone or being looked down on, resulting in feelings of shame and unworthiness. The findings are discussed relative to previous scholarship regarding silences about social class in Irish policy and cultural sociological theories of (class) disidentification.
This article explores the impact of the gastronomic boom on gentrification processes in Lima, Peru, during the last two decades. It is an ethnographic study conducted in 2012, 2014, and 2016 in the Santa Cruz housing development, which used to be a working-class neighborhood located in the Miraflores district. The central focus is the analysis of the personal narratives of change and belonging of residents, workers, and visitors, supported by photographic practice. In particular, it is based on the experience of Carlos, a young actor who after living several years in London returns to Peru to start a business and, taking advantage of competitive prices in Santa Cruz, opens a gourmet bakery in the neighborhood. Using the notion of “cosmopolitan imagination,” we show the different ways in which Carlos recontextualizes his experience in London in the specificity of La Mar, negotiating the limits, meanings and values of the places, people, and cultural practices that arise from inhabiting this space of change. Ultimately, Carlos’s bakery becomes a meeting point for linking or negotiating different strategies and experiences of belonging to the area, materializing power dynamics that emerge inside and outside the business, thus shaping the commodification of Santa Cruz.
The term “white working-class” has emerged as a focal point in recent discourse, igniting fervent debates around its usage and purpose. Critics like Gillborn have contended that the term, often wielded by right-leaning academics and commentators, artificially segregates the working-class. In this article I seek to understand this, and other criticisms raised in relation to the rise of populism, which have been aimed at the usage and purpose of the term “white working-class”. By weighing these criticisms against one another and acknowledging the intersectionality inherent in class formation, I propose a more specific and limited application of the term that I think better aligns with scholarly pursuits and helps to mitigate some of these critics core concerns around the term’s overgeneralisation in-particular. Thus, while I also acknowledge that the term “white working-class” ignites debate, it can also unveil intricate social realities, as evidence from Skeggs and Reay suggest. It must ultimately be employed judiciously to avoid sidelining the struggles of other marginalised groups within the class. Balancing its use with caution is essential to harness its potential without undermining the broader context of class-based issues that affect individuals from all backgrounds.
Financial analysts often work for organizations, such as brokerage houses, banks, and credit rating agencies. We ask whether these organizations condition the work of analysts and, if so, how and why. Through a qualitative study of the sovereign government rating departments of four credit rating agencies, our paper sheds light on the bundle of social practices and material arrangements through which rating agencies shape the evaluation work of financial analysts. Our findings indicate that this bundle is designed to resolve the dilemma that characterizes rating agencies - namely, how to elevate the standing of ratings from subjective opinions to collective knowledge. We label these processes the “epistemic governance” of evaluation practices and comment on their implications for critical management and organization studies.
This paper sets out the importance of teaching contextualized understandings of value within different disciplinary contexts in order to enhance employability and to foster greater levels of engagement with enterprise and entrepreneurship education. Key research has recognised the broader benefits of enterprise and entrepreneurship education, including that of developing graduate employability. Yet enterprise and entrepreneurship may not feel comfortable or relevant to students (EEUK, 2012; Henry, 2013). It has been identified that students can better relate to enterprise and entrepreneurship when it is contextualised in professions, sectors and communities of practice, moving away from a focus on venture creation and start up (Gibb, 2005). We argue that taking an approach which is explicitly based on value creation is a crucial driver of student engagement with enterprise and entrepreneurship education. This needs to be based in students’ individual values, embedded in their disciplines, and related to the communities of practice which as graduates they will go on to be part of. When grounded in the creation of value at an individual, disciplinary, and societal level, enterprise and entrepreneurship education can appeal to a wider constituency of students. In this paper, we discuss how value creation is understood in three diverse academic disciplines, Business, Biomedical Science and Music. Building on key research and drawing on our extensive practice as educators, we argue that explicitly foregrounding understandings of value within our different disciplinary contexts and developing appropriately contextualized, experiential forms of value creation-based pedagogy, is key to student engagement and enhances graduate employability.
Austerity policies in Portugal unleashed a violent crisis of well-being and social reproduction which intensified the ‘triple burden’ placed upon women, making them the primary ‘shock absorbers’ of the crisis. This article addresses the critical role of working-class women’s various forms of paid and unpaid care work in responding to the material and immaterial needs of impoverished individuals and working-class households. It is shown that women’s care-based responses and distributive struggles sought to minimise the risks that the agency of those they cared for could be compromised in the present and the future. Expanding feminist approaches and broader contributions decentring agency from the ends of individual choice and freedom, the article argues that agency is a distributed capacity and potentiality produced by, and productive of, embedded interdependent caring practices, relationships and investments across space and time to define, fulfil and negotiate the inescapable existence of fundamental needs.
This article examines some of the conditions that can explain the rise in young workers’ mental health and well-being problems in early work life. Based on 30 qualitative interviews with Danish workers under 30, who all had experienced different kinds of mental health and well-being problems in early work life, it shows how poor working environment and employment conditions often are triggering factors for young workers’ mental health and well-being problems. Mental health and well-being in early work life seem to be linked to the conditions through which young workers’ cultivate themselves as valuable working subjects in a time where work is a crucial arena for self-formation and self-realization. It is concluded that the combination of performance-oriented workplace cultures, temporary employment, and young workers’ aiming to achieve success in their work life, is a toxic combination for mental health and well-being.
Second paradigm school bullying scholars are challenging the reliance on psychological and behavioural paradigms both in Australia and globally. Approaching bullying as ‘social violence’ has enabled previously underexplored social and cultural dimensions to receive much-needed focus. Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic violence’ offers an avenue to explore the moral and affective dimensions of school bullying as ‘social violence’, yet it contains a controversial complicity dynamic that must not be overlooked. This paper considers three narratives of teacher-to-student bullying gathered through interviews and focus groups with 11 young people 17–20 years of age enrolled in secondary education in South Australia. Through these narratives, we reimagine symbolic violence as ‘affective violence’ where complicity is attributed to the institutional and social dynamics. This approach focuses away from discourses of individual responsibility reinforced by the first paradigm of school bullying and identifies the institutional and social origins of harm.
While academic attention to class has fluctuated in tandem with wider social struggles, it invariably returns from relative quiet periods with a renewed vigour, reasserting its usefulness in understanding and connecting unequal social transformations. Contributions here look to extend class analysis toward the affective and emotional dynamics of social life in a period of social polarisation and fragmented class politics. In this introduction we advocate for a renewed critical discussion on class trajectories and transformations across social sciences, everyday life and political economic agendas. We are prompted here by the contributions to the collection, which inspire a (re-)exploration of the interrelations between fields of action in their approaches to class. The discussion is structured around three processes central to contemporary class relations: reconfigurations of class(es); the (de-)homogenisation of meanings and feelings of class; and the reconstitution and historicisation of margins and inequality.
This article discusses the social harms arising out of stigma experienced by people who use drugs (PWUD), and how stigmatisation compromises ‘human flourishing’ and constrains ‘life choices’. Drawing on Wellcome Trust qualitative research using in-depth, semi-structured interview data (N = 24) with people who use heroin, crack cocaine, spice and amphetamine, this article firstly provides insight into how stigma is operationalised relationally between people via a lens of class talk and drug use predicated on normative ideas of ‘valued personhood’. Secondly, it turns to how stigma is weaponised in social relations to keep people ‘down’, and thirdly, it shows how stigma is internalised as blame and shame and felt deeply ‘under the skin’ as ‘ugly feelings’. Findings from the study show that stigma harms mental health, inhibits access to services, increases feelings of isolation, and corrodes a person’s sense of self-worth as a valued human being. These relentless negotiations of stigma are painful, exhausting and damaging for PWUD, culminating in, as I argue, everyday acts of social harm that come to be normalised.
This article examines the changing experience of love at a time of deepening inequalities. Drawing on the ‘love story’ of one resident of London’s Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea – arguably the UK’s most unequal space – it builds a relational account of love to describe the forms of attachment and detachment that accompany everyday life in an increasingly divided place. This approach signals three wider contributions. First, by tracing love through life course and life world, this article conceptualises the sustained and far-reaching way inequalities are lived and felt in everyday life. Second, the foregrounding of love stories as methodology highlights the roles of agency and narrative in how we tell and write about inequalities. In drawing these points together, this article thirdly conceptualises inequality as processual, situated and contested – as an emergent process of ‘becoming unequal’ through which we can trace shifting relations between space, time and power.
The purpose of this book is to situate the place beyond the city as an epistemological vantage point for researching youth. Existing frameworks about young people privilege large urban centres or ‘global cities’ and create forms of marginality that are at once spatial and epistemological. This book interrogates and moves beyond these boundaries, turning the margins into a unique position for understanding youth and examining forms of difference within and between urban and rural spaces. The book is organized into four sections: inequalities, focusing on the structural and cultural divisions shaping the margins; materialities, focusing on sensory embodiment and the lived environment; identities, focusing on place attachment and mobility; and temporalities, focusing on the history of place and the role of temporality in shaping identities and modes of place attachment. Across the book we develop this agenda through international contributions, with chapters across the global north and the global south, and including East and South-East Asia, Northern and Western Europe, and Australia. The margins therefore emerge as a complex topography of identities, modes of embodiment and processes of social change that cross spatial and epistemological divisions.
Despite its significance in determining poverty risk, family size has received little focus in recent social policy analysis. This paper provides a correction, focusing squarely on the changing poverty risk of larger families (those with three or more dependent children) in the UK over recent years. It argues that we need to pay much closer attention to how and why poverty risk differs according to family size. Our analysis of Family Resource Survey data reveals how far changes in child poverty rates since 1997 – both falling poverty risk to 2012/13 and increases since then – have been concentrated in larger families. Social security changes are identified as central: these have affected larger families most as they have a greater need for support, due to both lower work intensity and higher household needs. By interrogating the way policy change has affected families of different sizes the paper seeks to increase understanding of the effects of different poverty reduction strategies, with implications for policy debates in the UK and beyond. In providing evidence about the socio-demographics of larger families and their changing poverty risk it also aims to inform contested debates about the state’s role in providing financial support for children.
This article deals with the affective aspects of indebtedness in present-day Serbia. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Belgrade and Šabac during the period 2016-19, it analyses gendered aspects of affective states created and triggered by indebtedness. Indebtedness is here conceptualized to involve not just material and financial obligation, but also asymmetry in emotional labour. That way, the article contributes to the line of research that challenges understandings of debt as a binary relationship between creditor and debtor and argues for a perspective that encompasses the complex affective involvements of indebted subjects and the imbrication of indebtedness, emotional labour, love and care in the everyday life. The ethnographic fieldwork setting is kafana, a tavern with the live neofolk music, which is a space for reflection, expression or venting of the affects, but primarily for their modification, and therefore a primary site for research on postsocialist affect(s). Through the ethnographic vignettes of requesting, performing and consuming songs, as well as material obtained from the pre- and post-performance conversations with employees and customers who found themselves in different situations of debt, it analyses the affective registers of indebtedness and points out that the gendered asymmetry in care debt is formulated in the language and logic of emotional capitalism.
Across Western European nations, politicians often problematize immigrants’ cultural values and question their fit with majority society. Within this discourse, immigrant women, especially those of Arabic origin, occupy a central place, since they are portrayed as un-agentic victims and reproducers of an oppressive culture that they pass on to their daughters. In this article, we study how, in a climate of suspicion and devaluation, these women make sense of themselves, their values, and their place in society. The research presented here departs from existing work on the role of values in immigrant integration that focuses on attitudinal differences or similarities between immigrant minorities and national majorities. Using the theoretical perspective of boundary-drawing, we seek, instead, to shed light on how women of Arabic origin actively mobilize cultural values to establish (in)compatibility between themselves and majority society and claim their worth. We situate our analysis in Denmark, where the problematization of immigrants’ values is salient, and analyze 12 interviews with pairs of Arabic-origin mothers and daughters. We show that mothers often activated values otherwise presented by Danish politicians and the media as “un-Danish” to demonstrate their fit with and contribution to Danish society. Contrary to political and academic concerns about the children of immigrants feeling constrained or experiencing value conflict, we find that daughters established dual bases of worth by mixing values from different cultural repertoires. We use these findings to discuss the potential of studying values as meaning-making tools used by immigrants and their children in the integration process.
Stigma is powerful: it can do untold harm to a person and place with longstanding effects (Ahern, 2006, Baumberg Geiger, 2016, Chang, 2016, Hatzenbuehler, 2013, Pemberton, 2016, Room, 2005, Scambler, 2018). Stigma can regulate and reproduce what, and who, is and is not valued in any given time or space, and it can be weaponised to justify vast, pernicious and entrenched inequalities (McKenzie, 2012, Devine, 2005). In this chapter, we introduce our edited collection which unpicks why it is that stigmatisation happens to people who use drugs (PWUD). Having power to name, shame and blame through stigma produces advantages for individuals and organisations who wish to retain and protect their accrued privileges and capital (economic, social, cultural) as symbolic and legitimate. We discuss how stigma operates as a powerful way to ‘police’ and regulate often the most marginalised and vulnerable in society.
In the last three years a new vocabulary of social class has emerged in Britain. The word “chav,” alongside its various synonyms and regional variations, has become a ubiquitous term of abuse for the white poor. This article explores the emergence of the grotesque and comic figure of the chav within a range of contemporary British media focusing on the role played by disgust reactions in the generation and circulation of the chav figure through popular media. Concentrating on the figure of the female chav, and the vilification of young white working-class mothers, this article argues that the “chav mum” is produced through disgust reactions as an intensely affective figure that embodies historically familiar and contemporary anxieties about female sexuality, reproduction, fertility, and “racial mixing.”
In his discussion of power, Foucault establishes a new, interpretation that challenges the typical view of power as a possession held by certain people and groups in a society. Foucault argues that it is the set of force relations that constitute a perpetual struggle among people as well as the strategies that people employ as they attempt to control the behavior of others. This differs from previous views of power in that it sees power as existing everywhere and deriving from everywhere. No person holds power. Rather, power is expressed in relationships between people. Related to this view is Foucault's argument that resistance is inextricably linked with power and also exists everywhere. No single point of power or resistance can be found. Each point at where power is exercised also reveals a point of resistance. Power is also intimately connected with discourse because discourse becomes a mechanism of power. Not only is discourse both an instrument and an effect of power, but discourse can serve both to liberate and oppress.
The idea of social exclusion is part of the new political language. When Labour came into government in 1997, it launched the Social Exclusion Unit to pursue this central theme. But what exactly does social inclusion mean? This revised and updated edition of The Inclusive Society? identifies three competing meanings of the term in contemporary British Politics, emphasising poverty, employment and morality. Ruth Levitas argues that there has been a shift away from understanding social exclusion as primarily a problem of poverty, towards questions of social integration through paid work and moral regulation.
This chapter focuses on anti-social behaviour (ASB) and the notion that ASB is a gendered issue. It presents findings from a three-year evaluation of six Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) which were established in 2003 to provide services to families who were under the threat of homelessness as a result of complaints of anti-social behaviour. It also compares and contrasts the discourses of women in the FIPs with those of judges of the Court of Appeals when considering cases concerning anti-social behaviour. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the framework for the analysis used in this chapter. In this section, the attention is directed to the locales of conflict, in which the public and private spheres are interconnected. In the policy interventions of the state which at the time were normally saturated by moral discourse, the calls for increased ‘parental responsibility’ were dominated by gendered rhetoric wherein the mothers rather than the fathers were held to be primarily responsible for the conduct of their children. The section examines the lived material realities of ASB, through the experiences of lone-parent women who were referred to the FIPs. The third section discusses the recent Court of Appeal ASB judgements. It highlights the ways in which judgements have been informed by the use of moralising binary divides to apportion responsibility. The chapter ends with some observations on the contradictions inherent in the formation of women as gendered welfare subjects and emphasises the need for development of a more finely nuanced gendered analysis.
The unremitting explosion of reality television across the schedules has become a sustainable global phenomenon generating considerable popular and political fervour.
Successive moral panics have cast poor or socially excluded mothers - associated with social problems as diverse as crime, underachievement, unemployment and mental illness - as bad mothers. Their mothering practices are held up as the antithesis of good parenting and are associated with poor outcomes for children. Marginalised Mothers provides a detailed and much-needed insight into the lived experience of mothers who are frequently the focus of public concern and intervention, yet all too often have their voices and experiences overlooked. The book explores how they make sense of their lives with their children and families, position themselves within a context of inequality and vulnerability, and resist, subvert and survive material and social marginalisation. This controversial text uses qualitative data from a selection of working class mothers to highlight the opportunities and choices they face and to expose the middle class assumptions that ground much contemporary family policy. It will be of interest to students and researchers in sociology, social work and social policy, as well as social workers and policymakers.
Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children. The first edition of Unequal Childhoods was an instant classic, portraying in riveting detail the unexpected ways in which social class influences parenting in white and African American families. A decade later, Annette Lareau has revisited the same families and interviewed the original subjects to examine the impact of social class in the transition to adulthood.
I. Empire of the Home 1. The Lay of the Land 2. "Massa and Maids 3. Imperial Leather 4. Psychoanalysis, Race and Female Fetish II. Double Crossings 5. Soft-Soaping Empire 6. The White Family of Man 7. Olive Schreiner III. Dismantling the Master's House 8. The Scandal of Hybridity 9. "Azikwelwa" (We Will Not Ride) 10. No Longer in a Future Heading
Property, Bureaucracy and Culture places the British middle classes in their historical and regional contexts in order to explain how they exercise a powerful impact in present-day British society. The authors develop a new theoretical perspective on the middle classes, criticizing fashionable but unhelpful theories of the "service class," and drawing upon the work of Wright and Bourdieu to develop a theoretical realist perspective which is sensitive to the variety of ways in which middle-class formation takes place. They argue that the British middle class has been split between a cohesive and well-established professional middle class, and an insecure and marginal managerial and self-employed middle class. The book shows how this split has been widened by recent changes in economic structuring and explores the implications for society today.
En se penchant sur les interviews restitues dans La misere du monde par Pierre Bourdieu et son equipe, l'A. en deplore le manque de contextualisation socioculturelle. En effet, selon lui, cette approche nuit au projet affiche de rendre la parole a ceux qui en sont prives, en ne mettant en avant que les elements de privation et de souffrance sociale
Political attention to the plight of the 'socially excluded' in contemporary Britain suggests a renewed interst in issues of class and inequality at government level. This paper addresses the nature of that engagement by analysing the dominant discourse of welfare reform as a cultural of the reconstruction project which refrences goals of modernisation and multiculturalism. The centrality of the white working-class poor to the realisation of these goals is examined as a racialised positioning, a stage in the reconstruction of nation through the reconstruction of white working-class identities. The shift from naming the working-class poor as 'underclass', a racialised ans irredeemable 'other', to naming them 'the excluded', a culturally determined but recuperable 'other', is pivotal to the recasting of Britain as a postimperial, modern nation. Analysis of the modes of modernisation ansd multiculturalism through which new definitions of nation are being established shows the constructive role of neoliberal and class-based interests. The use of the white working-class poor as symbols of a generalised 'backwardness' and specifically a culturally burdensome whiteness, is examined as a form of class racism, the product of a dominant class-based anglocentrism. The paper concludes with a consideration of class as an illegitimate discourse within the dominant representational fields of media, politics, and academia and the author argues the need for a politics of representation that can recognise difference within it may not be visibly marked, that can see class through whiteness.
Class affects not only our material wealth but our access to relationships and practices which we have reason to value, including the esteem or respect of others and hence our sense of self-worth. it determines the kind of people we become and our chances of living a fulfilling life. Applying concepts from moral philosophy and social theory to empirical studies of class, this accessible study demonstrates how people are valued in a context of the lottery of birth class, or forces having little to do with moral qualities or other merits.
Introduction PART ONE The Subjects of Production The Production of Subjects Governing Organizational Life The Cult[ure] of the Customer PART TWO Retailing and the De-Differentiation of Economy and Culture Re-Imagining Organizational Identities Consuming Organization Setting Limits to Enterprise Appendix: Research Details
The American Diabetes Association currently recommends that all youth with type 1 diabetes over the age of 7 years follow a plan of intensive management. The purpose of this study was to describe stressors and self-care challenges reported by adolescents with type 1 diabetes who were undergoing initiation of intensive management. Subjects described initiation of intensive management as complicating the dilemmas they faced. The importance of individualized and nonjudgmental care from parents and health care providers was stressed. This study supports development of health care relationships and environments that are teen focused not merely disease-centered and embrace exploring options with the teen that will enhance positive outcomes.
