53 SEVEN Class The idea of ‘class’ is used in three main ways. The first is the Marxist sense, which understands class in terms of relationship to the means of production. This includes the ‘bourgeoisie’, who own the means of production, and the ‘proletariat’, who work for them. Marx thought that, within time, only these two classes would be left. He was wrong about that, as he was about many things80, but that does not mean that his concept of class is not useful. People form classes depending on their relationship to the labour market: there is a difference
4 Class There is a clear polarisation in British society over access to jobs, job security and income inequality. The informational economy around knowledge and service sector skills has concentrated job opportunities and wealth in major cities, particularly London. The drastic wealth disparities in Western societies were also exposed during the global financial crisis of 2007–08. Occupy, the multi- platform, anti-inequality social movement, reiterated this point by declaring that ‘We are the 99%.’ The movement highlighted the concentrating of global
71 FIVE Snobbery and social class Introduction I am approaching the heart of this analysis of snobbery: the relationship between snobbery and social class. While we can readily draw up a complex snobscape of cross- cutting practices, of snobberies in relation to food, drink, films, sport, music, speech and so on, running beneath all this are currents of social class. From Thackeray’s use of the term ‘snob’ in the 19th century to the present day, snobbery has been about class. Whether snobbery is only about class is a question that I shall defer to the
Political and public stories about class and food rarely scrutinize how socio-economic and cultural resources enable access to certain foods.
Tracing the symbolic links between everyday eating at home and broader social frameworks, this book examines how classed relations play out in middle-class homes to show why class is relevant to all understandings of food in Great Britain.
The author illuminates how ‘good’ food, and the identities configured through its consumption, is associated with middle-class lifestyles and why this relationship is often unquestioned and thus saliently normalised.
Considering food consumption in a wider social context, the book offers an alternative understanding of class relations, which extends academic, political and public debates about privilege.
101 FIVE Dynamics of disadvantage: race, gender and class ‘Inclusion’ as an approach is founded on a morally infused stand against discrimination. Commitment to support all learners as being equally entitled and valued carries the implicit recognition that pupils may be treated differently because of the social and structural classifications they occupy. Yet ‘inclusion’ policies tend to be characterised by a one-sided preoccupation with celebrating diversity and promoting equality, with this positive message all but drowning out more critical assessment
363 FIFTEEN Class segregation Danny Dorling Introduction This chapter concentrates on the causes, outcomes and implications of social and geographical segregation by class, using the example of how social geography has changed in Britain since around 1968, and putting these changes into a wider geographical and historical context. (Northern Ireland is not included for numerous reasons, not least because it has a special and very different recent history of segregation.) Here I argue that the antecedents of the current growth in class segregation in Britain
Class became central to debates about Brexit (and the wider conjuncture) in several ways. As we saw in the last chapter, one argument was that Brexit was a ‘working-class revolt’. This chapter explores some of the problems associated with this claim before arguing for a more relational understanding of social divisions. The argument ignores evidence about the substantial contributions of the middle classes to the Brexit result. At the same time, there are conceptual questions about the remaking of the working class in deindustrialised times and the
This chapter begins by engaging with debates about class and identity, paying particular attention to the concept of habitus. This permits me to then consider how middle-class identities are positioned as synonymous with authorized ideas of individuality. I then mobilize these conceptual tools in order to evaluate sociology of consumption literature and more specifically the consumption of food. Here, I engage with the cultural omnivore thesis to locate food consumption within increasingly fragmented dynamics of taste. The final section of the chapter engages
27 ONE The creative economy, the creative class and cultural intermediation Orian Brook, Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor* Introduction ‘Culture is one of the things that unites us all and expresses our identity. We ignore that at our peril.’ Tony Hall, Director General, BBC ‘In challenging times, the diverse cultural riches of the UK provide some of our most potent assets, and play a vital role in presenting the UK as an international, outwardly focused and creative nation.’ Graham Sheffield, Director Arts, British Council ‘Arts are one of the greatest forces
the country where the Industrial Revolution began – and, as E.P. Thompson chronicled, the English working class were made – the vertical class system that capitalism needs to function is in great shape. There has been a redistribution of wealth from the poorest upwards since 2010 ( ONS, 2021 ). The divisions between the rich and the poor both in the UK and in Europe have never been greater in modern times, and there is now a full body of work from academics studying economics, sociology, anthropology and urbanism, focusing on the elites and the ever-growing wealth
