Class and Culture debate

Class Politics

Ben Little

Ben Little, who edited the online debate for the June seminar, reflects on some of the themes that emerged.

Comment on global meritocracy and clientelism

Liv Sovik

Beneath the rhetoric of meritocracy discrimination still occurs but in new forms. Liv Sovik argues that to unpack the privileges of the “networking classes” we should look at resistance to clientelism in the South for new ways to address the issue. ...

Between Marx and Muhammed: Class politics and British Muslims

Amir Saeed

Amir Saeed argues that the left and working class Muslims have a common enemy in market fundamentalism, yet neither group seems able to overcome their prejudices to see it. ...

Class, Culture and the Recent Redistribution of Income and Wealth

Edward Fullbrook

Through statistical evidence of changes in inequality since 1979, Edward Fullbrook argues that the Labour governments have been redistributing wealth upwards and challenges political parties to put a stop to it. ...

The Filofax Twenty Years On: Self-Organisation in the Age of Cybernetic Systems

Wendy Wheeler

Wendy Wheeler argues that a lack of understanding about complex communication systems helps to explain New Labour’s failure to comprehend what people want. ...

Poverty, Work and Care

Valerie Bryson

Focusing on poverty in the caring professions, Valerie Bryson argues that despite improvements since 1997 there are still major issues of gender inequality..

Class, sector, race and politics

Eric Shaw

In this article Eric Shaw makes the case that class no longer has a generalised bearing on voting patterns; instead, employment sector and ethnicity are becoming the primary factors in deciding who to vote for … ...

A Brief History of the Class Debate in the Labour Party

John Gallaghan

In this reflection on the discussion of class in the 1950s and 1960s, John Callaghan suggests that the Labour party’s relationship with the working class has always been complicated … ...

The Unfortunate Fate of Class in the Time of Individualization, Contingency Consciousness and Consumerism

Tony Blackshaw

Tony Blackshaw argues that two revolutions in the late twentieth century - one social, one economic - have made class a metaphor that no longer resonates with the majority of ordinary people. In this article he makes the case for the Left to develop new narratives of social progress. ...

Cultural Diversity in the Welfare State

Tony Fitzpatrick

In this extract from his forthcoming book, Tony Fitzpatrick offers a critique of existing studies of multiculturalism. He argues that if we recognise material inequality and scarcity of public service resources as the context for this debate then criticism of multiculturalism becomes far less significant.......

Forward March of the Middle Class Halted?

Andrew Pearmain

This piece looks at the shifting terrain of middle-class culture since the Second World War and asks where the ‘public-spirit’ has gone as we enter a new phase of cultural values... ...

Communities and villages of our imagination

Mark Perryman

Mark Perryman argues for an England for all as the key symbol of a new politics of the national-popular. ...

The Middle Classes: The Fearful And The Phobic?

Zoe Gannon

Zoe Gannon proposes that contrary to the image of a ‘phobic’ Middle England found in the right-wing press, the working and middle classes can be brought together through common concerns. ...

Whatever happened to class politics?

Ruth Levitas

In this article Ruth Levitas looks at how a politics of class from below has been effaced, while a class war from above has achieved hegemony. She argues that, with the gap widening between the super-rich and the rest, a resurgence of class consciousness is needed. ...

The Transnational Capitalist Class

Leslie Sklair

In this article, adapted from the Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Leslie Sklair gives an overview of current thought on the class that runs the globalised economy...

Inequality

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

Previewing some of the argument from their forthcoming book, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett state that the root cause of social injustice can be traced to differing levels of material wealth, rather than the tensions caused by two opposed classes. ...

Socialism and Class

Michael Prior

Michael Prior looks at how the relationship between socialism and class has changed over the time, and asks what being a socialist might mean now. ...

Reflections on the 'Undeserving Poor'

Heather Nunn and Anita Biressi

Heather Nunn and Anita Biressi argue that as class has disappeared from political discourse it has reappeared in the media in a way that reinforces a naturalised middle-class entitlement... ...

Class and Politics

Jonathan Rutherford

Jonathan Rutherford argues that class is as salient to politics now as it has ever been ...

Living in 'X Factor' Britain: Neo-liberalism and 'Educated' Publics

Nick Stevenson

Nick Stevenson argues that at the core of the 'knowledge economy' is a set of values for education that seek to change the relationship between work, learning, culture and the individual. ...

Ten Propositions on Contemporary Class Formation: its Geography and its Implications for Politics

Jane Wills

Jane Wills sketches out the way in which the radical changes in the labour market over the last thirty years can be seen to reorganise the concept of class and gives examples of the first steps towards a new paradigm of labour organisation... ...

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