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This paper examines the processes by which middle-class belonging is generated, through the exploration of social and spatial trajectories in narratives of residential choice and mobility. It is based on an understanding of residential choice as indicative and constitutive of social mobilities. In particular the paper builds on the discussion of the match between habitus and field that lies at the root of the notions of middle-class belonging and place attachments to draw attention not only to the conditions under which ‘fit’ is possible, but also acknowledge that belonging is a dynamic process, generated and maintained through residence that feeds back into understandings of classed identities. This paper argues that residential space is not just appropriated to reflect pre-existing tastes and lifestyles, but may also contribute in the transformation of habitus to fit to particular neighbourhoods and ways of living. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on a series of ethnographic encounters collected while hanging around at a seafood stand in east London, the following article aims to explore the relationship between individual expressions of distaste and the production of class, ethnic and generational forms of distinction. Starting with the visceral expressions of distaste directed towards a seafood stand, the following paragraphs draw on a combination of historical and ethnographic data rendered through a matrix of anthropological, sociological and psychoanalytic theory, to explore the role of everyday ambient experiences and the stratifying processes that cut across the lives of the city's inhabitants. Arguing against purely biological explanations of disgust, the paper explores how social histories and cultural experience inflect gut responses to the sensoria that suffuse urban environments. Moving the focus beyond the social construction of urban sensibilities, the paper goes on to develop an account of culturally inflected forms of distaste, shaping the city and the lives of its inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]