Abstract
The last 15 years or so have witnessed an extraordinary revitalisation of sociological research on social class in Britain. For some time in the doldrums, under attack from within and without academia, it is now back high on the agenda thanks in large part to a progressive deepening of the theoretical scope of its core concept to grasp themes generally excluded from previous programmes of research. Class is not just about exploitation and economic inequalities, it is now established, but cultural and symbolic domination too; it is not just about life chances and ‘equality of opportunity’, but about self-worth, suffering and denigration as well; and it is tied not only to a politics of redistribution, as crucial as that is, but also, at the same time, a politics of recognition. In pursuing these themes the key source of inspiration for researchers has not been Karl Marx or Max Weber, the opposing couple at the heart of the sociology of class through most of the twentieth century, but the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu.1 For this Frenchman, social class is defined not by relation to the means of production, nor by possession of particular skills and capacities in the labour market, but by the possession of all forms of economic capital (wealth and income), cultural capital (education and ‘good taste’) and social capital (contacts, networks, names, club membership, etc.) which together shape the kinds of experience it is possible to have, the kinds of goods and opportunities it is possible to attain and the kinds of people one is likely to have regular contact with, and, in turn, the expectations, values, desires, tastes and lifestyles developed in adaptation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Particularly P. Bourdieu (1984) Distinction. London: Routledge, but also
P. Bourdieu and J.-C. Passeron (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (2nd Ed.). London: Sage.
R. Crompton and J. Scott (2005) ‘Class Analysis: Beyond the Cultural Turn’ in F. Devine, M. Savage, J. Scott and R. Crompton (eds) Rethinking Class. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cf. also Sayer, this volume.
Cf. T. Bennett, M. Savage, E. Silva, M. Gayo-Cal and D. Wright (2009) Culture, Class, Distinction. London: Routledge.
See M. Savage and K. Williams (eds) (2008) Remembering Elites. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bourdieu’s own key work on the field of power is P. Bourdieu (1996) The State Nobility. Cambridge: Polity Press.
N. Elias (1990) What is Sociology? Columbia: Columbia University Press.
P. Bourdieu (2003) Firing Back. New York: The New Press.
E. O. Wright (2005) ‘Conclusion: If Class is the Answer, What is the Question?’ in E. O. Wright (ed.) Approaches to Class Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 180–92.
See L. Wacquant (2012) ‘Three Steps to a Historical Anthropology of Actually Existing Neoliberalism’, Social Anthropology, 20(1): 66–79.
HM Government (2010) The Coalition: Our Programme for Government. London: Cabinet Office, p. 7. Notice the pernicious promulgation of meritocracy is exactly the same as that under New Labour and the previous Conservative government discussed in
W. Atkinson (2010) Class, Individualization and Late Modernity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 192–5.
See Y. Dezalay and B. Garth (1998) ‘Le “Washington Consensus”’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 121(22): 3–22;
J. Peck (2010) Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
D. Harvey (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 48.
For details see D. Cannadine (1998) Class in Britain. London: Penguin;
S. Hall (1989) ‘The Great Moving Right Show’ in S. Hall and M. Jacques (eds) The Politics of Thatcherism. London: Lawrence and Wishart;
M. Fourcade-Gourinchas and S. Babb (2002) ‘The Rebirth of the Liberal Creed’, American Journal of Sociology, 108(3): 533–79;
M. Prassad (2006) The Politics of Free Markets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. This is not to argue that Thatcher herself possessed a coherent and self-conscious worldview steadfastly applied to subsequent events, only that she had an orienting set of schemes of perception — even if highly contradictory ones, as Cannadine shows — that, in conjunction and contestation with others within the field, guided her projects and practice from situation to situation.
See A. Atkinson and J. Micklewright (1989) ‘Turning the Screw’ in A. Dilnot and I. Walker (eds) The Economics of Social Security. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
See the data in A. Atkinson (2000) ‘Distribution of Income and Wealth’ in A. H. Halsey and J. Webb (eds) Twentieth-Century British Social Trends. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
L. Wacquant (2009) Punishing the Poor. Durham: Duke University Press.
On the vagueness and vacuity of the ‘third way’ notion, see G. McLennan (2004) ‘Travelling with Vehicular Ideas: The Case of the Third Way’, Economy and Society, 33(4): 484–99. Much academic sociology, however, was increasingly caught looking the other way as it was battered by the ‘audit culture’ imposed on academia through the 1980s and 1990s, on which see the Conclusion to this volume.
For figures see D. Dorling (2010) ‘New Labour and Inequality’, Local Economy, 25(5–6): 406–23.
R. Levitas (2005) The Inclusive Society? (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan;
N. Fairclough (2000) New Labour, New Language? London: Routledge.
This began before New Labour, but they certainly accelerated it. The classic analysis, though some conclusions are overdrawn, is Z. Bauman (2005) Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Cf. L. Adkins (2011) ‘Practice as Temporalisation: Bourdieu and Economic Crisis’ in B. Turner and S. Susen (eds) The Legacy of Pierre Bourdieu. London: Anthem Press, pp. 347–65.
G. Agamben (2005) State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Will Atkinson, Steven Roberts and Mike Savage
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Atkinson, W., Roberts, S., Savage, M. (2013). Introduction: A Critical Sociology of the Age of Austerity. In: Atkinson, W., Roberts, S., Savage, M. (eds) Class Inequality in Austerity Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016386_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016386_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-43701-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-01638-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)