Staying Middle Class

Abstract

The analysis of strategies of class reproduction has become a key way of understanding the middle classes and different fractions of work, identity and lifestyle within them. It is the core of Bourdieu’s neo-Marxist sociology but is also crucial to more liberal, Weberian approaches concerned with social mobility (or the lack of it) (Goldthorpe, 1996). Ideas and categories drawn more directly from Marx have influenced strongly conceptions of class in urban studies from Castells’s The Urban Question (1979) onwards. These approaches have tended to see a strong mapping of class distinctions onto divisions of urban space, notably in links to the housing market. Marxist approaches suggest how, for instance, the middle class (conceived as a part of the bourgeoisie) dominates urban space. This domination is evident in the abundant research on gentrification that testifies to class division through expansion in urban space (into lower income neighbourhoods) and the resulting divisions and displacement of poorer residents. Bourdieu-inspired research also suggests this dominance of the middle classes in urban space, where their choices and affiliation determine the character and social composition of neighbourhood in forms of “elective belonging” (Savage et al., 2005).