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The rise of transnational and transcity education consumption suggests the increasingly important role of the capability to move in order to access quality schooling. Studies have examined the multidimensional inequalities underlying translocal education consumption. However, the role of mobility itself is not sufficiently understood. Two questions are rarely asked: (1) How is the capability to move acquired and practised to bring about translocal schooling consumption? and (2) How does the disparity in the capability to move restructure the established intergenerational capital transmission mechanism conceptualized by Bourdieu? This paper answers by theorizing a mobility-mediated, education-based intergenerational capital transmission mechanism. This framework is built upon a theoretical engagement among John Urry, Pierre Bourdieu, and Neil Smith. We substantiate this framework by examining a student migration regime in Sichuan, China. Attention is paid to the inclusion/exclusion of hypermobility-based schooling consumption regime. Empirical analysis is performed by the comparison of two social groups: (a) the middle-class households who employ mobility to chase after the footloose prime schooling resources and thus materialize their class reproduction strategy and (b) the immobile remainder who are stuck in a location deprived of quality schooling resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores teachers' conceptions of the ideal student, aspects of the hidden curriculum, and how each varies by neighborhood-level social class. I used a thematic analysis to analyze 30 semi-structured interviews with public elementary school teachers in the United States. Emergent themes indicate the creation of archetypes regarding the ideal student, their connection to social class, and their effect on the hidden curriculum. Most notably, teachers teaching in lower-class neighborhoods idealized the eager conformist; teachers teaching in middle-class neighborhoods idealized the well-rounded collaborator; and teachers teaching in upper-class neighborhoods idealized the independent innovator. Findings suggest that teachers' conceptions of the ideal student reflect the social conditions of the neighborhood where they teach, which impacts aspects of their teaching pedagogy and classroom-management techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its fuzziness, the term middle class has become increasingly attractive in the past two decades, not only among social scientists and market analysts but also as a term of self-description employed by upwardly mobile individuals. Research on middle classes in the Global South, and especially in Africa, confronts us with particular challenges. First, while conventional class theories take the nation-state as the obvious framework for defining class boundaries, African examples point to the importance of sub-national (as well as transnational) dimensions of class formation. Secondly, marriage ties and kin relations of upwardly mobile individuals in African societies often cut across class boundaries, resulting in 'multi-class' families and competing loyalties. The paper addresses these challenges by looking at the emergence of a national middle class in Ghana. More specifically, we discuss how social mobility and class formation play out in two different regions of what is today Ghana: a coastal region that since the seventeenth century has been drawn into global networks and was highly stratified by the end of the nineteenth century; and a marginalized savannah region with an egalitarian society until chieftaincy and education were introduced by the British colonizers in the early twentieth century. These regional disparities and resulting sub-national memberships intersect with the emergence of a national middle class. However, we argue that despite distinct regional trajectories, we are currently witnessing a certain 'synchronisation' of social stratification and the formation of a broader middle class that understands itself not only in regional, but national terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the connection between middle class and social protest by three Ghanaian cases: A protest in the 1890s organised by members of the middle class laid the foundation for political action, which finally led to Ghana's independence. In 1978, members of the middle class protested a model called Union Government by which the then military head of state Acheampong sought to perpetuate the military into government. In 2014, activists protested frequent power cuts, rising fuel prices and an economic crisis. Following this demonstration, several new middle-class groups evolved, among them 'Occupy Ghana'. This article looks at the protests and its leadership: How does the activists' class status relate to forms and practices of protest and resistance? By answering this question, the paper will discuss the specific interests and mobilisations for protest of middle-class activists in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educationalists tend to imagine school curricula organised solely around academic, formal knowledge or horizontal discourse. Yet, despite curricula organised around vertical discourses such as science, geography and mathematics, the working classes, the poor and minority ethnically groups achieve less well in education than the middle classes. The paper aims to re-think horizontal knowledge by paying attention to it as place-based, sensory, embodied, indigenous and historically developed forms of knowing in order: 1) to broaden debates about school knowledge; 2) to support teachers to recognise and legitimate forms of knowing beyond those prescribed by academic curricular and 3) to re-imagine it as living knowledge that has value. To illuminate what might be powerful in horizontal knowledge Gilbert Simondon's genetic ontology and his concepts of pre-individuation, persons are not fixed for all time, and transindividual, a uniquely collective form of knowing, are introduced. The paper argues that by re-thinking horizontal knowledge young people can be imagined as having multiple ways of being and education can support them to become more; more than social class, more than poverty, more than an exam failure and more than an individual, fixed for all time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides one of the most accurate estimates of the size of the Indian middle class, using an eclectic set of variables rooted in three major theories of class; Marxist, Weberian, and Bourdieuian. Using this original and theoretically inclusive method offers a solution to the problem of capturing the conceptual complexities of the middle class and provides a holistic examination of its composition. Through statistical analysis of the India Human Development Survey II (2011–12), the paper reveals three significant findings: firstly, it calculates the size of the middle class to be 28.05% of the urban and rural population in India. Secondly, it demonstrates that despite the occupational diversity that exists among middle classes, a large proportion of the middle class are salaried employees. Thirdly, and most importantly, it demonstrates that contrary to common assumptions in the growing literature on the middle class, a considerable segment of the Indian middle class resides in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than the exception, social homogamy was the rule in past societies, where ascribed status was a key factor in the matching process. However, frameworks like the modernisation theory predict that as a society modernises, ascribed status loses influence against achieved status. According to this setting, the new economic and social opportunities offered by the industrialisation of an economy enhance the independence of young people from their families in the creation of a new household. This paper makes use of a newly assembled database of around 32,000 marriage records in Spain at the time of its modernisation. Our results show that as the secondary and especially the service sectors increased, the influence of ascribed status decreased and the influence of achieved status increased. The division of the sample in three different social groups shows that this pattern was clearer for the low and middle classes, while modernisation variables do not seem to play any significant role – positive or negative – in the elites, where the marriage markets show a very particular pattern. We believe that the importance of the service sector is related to new job opportunities that appeared for young individuals from the lowest social classes. Although these opportunities could help to improve their independence from their families strengthening their role in the marriage market, it is not that clear that it helped to improve their living conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper contributes to the analysis of the transformation of middle classes in Europe by linking the issue of spatialization of class at the transnational and urban levels with the question of mobility and skilled migration. We therefore analyse the migration motives and urban practices (lifestyle and residential choice) of about ninety mobile middle class French nationals in London and middle class British nationals in Paris. The respondents belong to various fragments of an emerging European transnational middle class, whose diversity is reflected in their reasons for moving and their experience in the new city. Drawing on the concept of elective belonging, we argue that both the transnational and urban levels are important for class making mechanisms. Our results illustrate the relevance of the transnational level, i.e. cross-border mobility, for the making and reproduction of middle-class status. At the same time, the urban level – both the city and neighbourhood – is a crucial element that facilitates or obstructs middle-class practices, e.g. related to lifestyle or residential choice. For our respondents, multicultural London presents the economic capital of Europe with abundant professional opportunities, while Paris is viewed as a provincial city, liked for its beauty and lifestyle, but economically far behind London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data from a larger ethnographic research project on intimacy and reproduction in Japan, a country that faces a “crisis of ultra-low fertility rates” (Jones, Straughan, & Chan, 2009). Proceeding from a symbolic interactionist perspective, the paper analyses the outcomes of interviews with 56 Japanese mothers aged between 29 and 45 from Tokyo and Kanagawa. The analysis identified “maternal instincts” (honn?), children’s schooling, and marriage as three major axes along which an understanding of how social class concerns influence the childbirth experiences and decision-making processes of these mothers could be gained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a response to the paper by Manley and Johnston (2014, “London: A Dividing City, 2001–11?”City18 (6): 633–643) which analyzed occupational class change in London 2001–14. While it queries some of their classifications, the census data show that middle class growth seems to have stalled in proportionate though not in absolute terms from 2001–11. However, this does not fundamentally challenge Hamnett and Butler's thesis that the middle classes, upper and lower, have grown substantially in London over the last 50 years as a result of changes in industrial and occupational structure. The paper discusses some of the possible reasons for changes in the last decade and reiterates the importance of using census data as a tool for the analysis of urban social change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using the example of European Somalis moving to Kenya, this article argues that although these middle class return migrants share many similarities, they also differ in significant ways. Focusing on economically independent migrants, this paper will show that their move to Kenya is both return and onward migration at the same time. The transnational socio-economic positioning of Somali returnees in Kenya, this article demonstrates, rests on the importance of legal capital for enabling transnational mobility, which in turn is relevant for the convertibility of capital in the various local settings in which migrants settle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on social capital theory to discuss the way social class plays out in the friendships of teenage students. Based on data from individual interviews and focus groups with 75 students in four London secondary schools, it is suggested that students tend to form friendships with people who belong to the same social-class background as them. Social-class ‘sameness’ is considered to be an element that importantly exemplifies the quality of their friendships, and hence close, inter-class friendships were significantly less common than close, intra-class ones. In addition, class differentials were evident and often reproduced by students, even in the context of the rarer inter-class friendships. This paper concludes that social class is of continuous importance in teenagers’ lives and despite some agentic negotiation of class boundaries, as in the case of omnivorousness, students’ friendship networks are dynamically informed by class inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In discussions of how social class matters during the transition to adulthood, the simultaneous importance of both class origins and future class trajectories is underexplored. In this paper, I use interviews with 60 emerging adults in the United States to investigate their stories about progress towards adulthood during the emerging adult years. I find that regardless of class backgrounds and trajectories, participants agree on three subjective criteria—identity exploration, learning responsibility, and gaining control—as most important to the project of becoming an adult. However, personal stories about living up to these subjective criteria diverge by future class plans. While those on class-advantaged (middle- and upper-middle-class) tracks draw heavily from traditional, concrete markers of adulthood to explain the accomplishment of subjective expectations, those on class-disadvantaged (working-class and poor) tracks stress the importance of "flexibility" as important in their stories about becoming an adult. While emerging adults use subjective criteria to explain reaching adulthood, this subjectivity also helps conceal the ongoing importance of access to material resources and opportunities for transitioning to adulthood along a normative path. Subjectivity also allows for individualization in emerging adults' stories, which helps obscure broader patterns of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a Marxist analysis of capitalist relations of class power and the class configuration in contemporary advanced capitalist societies, the paper investigates the consequences of the recent economic crisis and of the neoliberal capitalist strategies in Greece (austerity, market liberalization and privatizations), on the one hand for the class structure of the Greek society and on the other for the potential class alliances against neoliberal agenda, focusing especially on the coalescence of practices between the working class and certain subsets of the middle classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the methodological implications of conducting qualitative interviews when researchers and participants come from different social classes. Singling out class on its own terms, rather than considering it as an auxiliary structural factor, we examine the unique challenges that arise during cross-class interviews. Such challenges, we contend, require researcher reflexivity about how researcher-participant interactions unfold and the ways in which knowledge is generated during the interview process. In our discussion, we draw on Bourdieu's cultural view of social class to argue that cross-class dynamics between the researcher and the participant - along with the normalization of middle-class values often inherent in interview questions - create potential obstacles to establishing rapport and facilitating fertile conversation. We use examples from our own field research in a U.S. fast-food chain to illustrate these barriers. We also provide practical recommendations to researchers regarding how they can minimize class-based biases, reduce class saliency, and gain awareness of their own class positions during cross-class interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on recent ethnographic research in one single-sex, private primary school, this paper will explore what it meant for the girls in this setting to embody the discourse of the 'lady'. The paper will propose that classed and gendered discourses of respectability featured strongly in the girls' lives, as they were expected to behave like 'proper' upper-middle-class ladies. However, the paper will also suggest that these discourses were being reworked through post-feminist, neo-liberal notions of modern girlhood, meaning that the girls also felt compelled to make themselves as heterofeminine 'girly' girls; as sassy, sexy and successful, as well as respectable and upper-middle-class(y) enough. By exploring the clash between these two sets of discourse, the paper will specifically seek to examine the lived embodiment of intersections of class, gender and sexuality and to explore the relevance of Judith Butler's heterosexual matrix for these upper-middle-class girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, sociologists engaged in a heated controversy about class voting. Although empirical evidence accumulated, positions remained surprisingly divided. This paper argues that this disagreement is due to two factors. Firstly, it reflects diverging understandings as to the concept of class voting. Secondly, it is explained by the use of class models that do not satisfactorily represent today's social stratification in Western Europe. In consequence, this paper uses a detailed multi-class schema and examines two cleavages running through the social structure: (i) the economic divide separating holders of organizational power from the workingclass, (ii) the cultural divide opposing high-skilled classes engaged in interpersonal work settings (who hold a liberation view of community) from low-skilled classes occupied in object-related tasks (who hold an authoritarian view of community). Based on individual level data, our analyses show that classes continue to systematically differ in their party support. There is strong electoral evidence for the traditional economic cleavage in Britain's and Germany's class structure, while in Switzerland the cultural cleavage seems more salient. Hence, class voting continues but appears to involve more (and different) class-party alliances than just leftvoting by the woking class. Among others, we find salaried professionals in the social and cultural services to rally the libertarian left, while managers support parties on the right. Moreover, where a right-wing populist party alternative exists, it attracts disproportionate support from production workers and small business owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper arose from research into a class of 11-year-olds' relationships with poetry. The paper describes how by analysing the children's comments about poetry it became clear that their parents were active in rigorously selecting, censoring and generally controlling the children's reading diet, most markedly with poetry, and that patterns began to emerge of how they went about this task. In an analysis drawing on Ball and Vincent's (2005) work it became clear that processes of social reproduction were at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a qualitative study about middle-class mothers’ experiences of school choice in Chile. It draws on Butler, Berlant and Hardt’s work on affects, and on feminist contributions to the intersection between school choice, social class and mothering. These contributions help us deepen our understanding of school choice as both a form of passionate attachment to the education market and affective labour. In addition, these perspectives motivate us to go beyond social research sustaining the dominant critical discourse of advantages that middle-classes gain over working-classes through their work in the education market. Our analyses suggest that school choice configures cruel passionate attachments to the education market on middle-class mothers through the construction of working-class ‘others’, and models public education as an abject object through the intensification of mothers’ affective labour, thus reinforcing their experiences of gendered and affective inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contributes to the debate on London’s social class structure at the start of the 21st century. That debate has focused on the use of census metrics to argue the case for whether or not the capital has become more or less middle class in composition between 2001 and 2011. We contend that the definition of the middle class has become confused in the course of this debate and is of less critical importance for an understanding of the city’s contemporary class structure than is a focus on London’s elite. We make use of data from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey (GBCS) to shed light on the social, cultural and economic resources of this group, in addition to their spatial location. We then return to the census data for 2001 and 2011 and posit that belying the image of stability in London’s class structure these data suggest clear and localised patterns of intensification in class geographies across the capital, an intensification characterised by a growing cleavage between Inner and Outer London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The occupation of public urban space is a prominent feature in most descriptions of the global wave of protests after 2011. This paper examines the occupation of one significant space, New York’s Zuccotti Park, to investigate how first, ‘occupying’ became the central form of practice of what later was called Occupy Wall Street. By reconstructing the habitus of the movement’s core constituency and its resonance with the practice of the occupation, this investigation also explains why it was so difficult for the movement to evolve into other forms. It sketches out how the practice of occupying influenced the cooperation between members of different social classes participating in the protest and compares the development of this occupation to the very different trajectory of the Occupy movement in Germany. It is argued that the US occupation only temporarily overcame obstacles to mobilizing the discontent of those young adults that found themselves biographically blocked from joining the new petty bourgeoisie and to building alliances with other social groups in the USA of the post-recession era. Since the eviction from the park reinforced these obstacles, it triggered a de-mobilizing dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One important phenomenon to be observed in the world today is the rapid growth of the middle classes in emerging economies, especially in Asia. This development called for a new concept, the global middle class. The purpose of this paper is twofold: one is to examine the ways this term is currently used and clarify its meaning, and the other is to examine one empirical case of South Korea and highlight important processes involved in the making of a global middle class. The term global middle class has 2 meanings: (1) all the middle classes that exist in the world or (2) the affluent and globally oriented segments of the middle classes in developing countries. These 2 different conceptions serve different purposes and address different aspects of globalization's effect on the affected economy and society. While the expansion of the middle classes around the world is an unquestionably welcome phenomenon, the rise of the affluent global middle classes in developing countries represents a more complex and problematic phenomenon. The Korean case demonstrates that the emergence of the global middle class is associated with growing internal division within the middle class and intense processes of class distinction and educational pursuits in the global education market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the concept of internal colonization is applied to the Soviet initiatives of re-socializing the large parts of the population and creating a socialist working class from peasantry, artisans, and residues of the bourgeoisie. The internal colonization, or the power relations between native Communists and their subalterns in Lithuania, is analyzed on the basis ofRoses Are Red, a novel by Bieliauskas. Here, class is invented as substitute of race. The Soviet socialists stand for hegemonic standards of “normalcy,” whereas bourgeoisie is portrayed as subject of difference, as internal Orient and as internal colony, and the relationship between the two can be legitimately defined as internal colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There has been a recent debate regarding London's changing class structure and residential mosaic. Using census data for 2001 and 2011, this paper addresses key hypotheses in that debate regarding the expansion of the middle class and a consequent decline of the working class—both numerically and in the areas of the city where they dominate. The analyses falsify those hypotheses: London's working class did not decline over that decade, nor was there any marked shrinkage in the area where it dominated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the context of concerns regarding work–life balance, questions have been raised in relation to the weekend and whether it is being ‘lost’. This paper presents new empirical evidence regarding the weekend of the middle-class family, who are the section of the population perhaps most likely to be subject to time pressure yet have the greatest ability and inclination to protect the weekend. The evidence comes from 73 semi-structured interviews with parents and children from 48 middle-class families living in and around a small city in the north-west of England. The data indicate that the middle-class family’s weekend is not being ‘lost’, as the paid work of most parents is undertaken during the traditional Monday to Friday working week, and Saturdays and Sundays are viewed and experienced differently to weekdays. However, the weekend is undergoing significant changes in that middle-class parents do considerably more ‘work’ in relation to their children and families. Children spend a large proportion of the weekend doing homework and organised activities, while their parents assist, transport and supervise them. Also, though ‘purposive’ family activities are limited at the weekend, parents spend a substantial amount of time with their children and doing things for them. Overall, the middle-class family’s weekend today appears to be more child-centred and structured than in previous generations. These changes can be explained by the very different social context in which parents have to parent, as well as the contemporary perception of ‘good’ parenting to which parents are subjected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an ethnographic exploration of two television news channels, Star News in Hindi and Star Ananda in Bengali, part of Rupert Murdoch's burgeoning media empire in India. It seeks to explore two basic questions: in the world of private television news, who are the producers and who is their audience. Through these questions, it tries to understand the fundamentals of the news business; the intricate links that exist between ratings, audience groups, the journalist's news sense and content. It explores corporate policies in television organizations, which in pursuit of advertising revenue, not only curtail editorial independence but editorial imagination. I claim that despite the proliferation of news channels, the economics of the industry enforces a hegemonic class based articulation of content. This suppresses all other possible constructs and promotes a unitary vision of an affluent nationhood; an India articulated by the middle classes for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies classes using evidence from surveys taken in 2009 among nationally representative samples of approximately 2000 households from each of the three South Caucasus countries –Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Information on employment, education and income is used to identify clusters of both individuals and households, in each case a middle class, a working class and a lower class. Using individual classification, the lower classes are the largest classes in each country, which therefore appear to have pyramid-shaped class structures. However, classifying households gives the class structures a diamond shape, with larger working classes than either middle classes or lower classes. The evidence shows that the main differences between classes of households lie in their standards of living, and are driven by differences in income levels. The main differences between classes of individuals are driven primarily by education, which result in differences in attitudes and (to some extent) individual lifestyles. It is argued that in economic and socio-political terms there are as yet just two real classes among actual and potential employees in the South Caucasus –middle classes and lower classes –and that although these classes differ in their standards of living and political dispositions, these are unlikely to become bases for conflict between them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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In this paper we draw on three studies of social class change amongst the middle classes undertaken in London over the last 25 years to reflect on the changing values expressed by respondents to school choice. We argue that there has been a hardening of attitudes to school performance and a loss of middle-class autonomy towards schooling. Increasingly we note a concern to navigate the few areas of privilege in a school system designed for working class children but now expected to cater for a vastly increased and educationally-anxious middle class. We specifically address the way in which choice of school has become enshrined in legislation but has itself become constrained by the lack of places in popular schools. We argue that the consequence has been to diminish the amount of choice and ensure that 'distance from school' becomes the sole arbiter of access to most popular schools. Thus an attempt at widening access to education has in effect restricted it to those able to access the housing markets nearest to the most popular schools. Taken together with a series of policy interventions designed to circumvent middle-class families playing the system, this has in effect reduced the element of choice by forcing most parents to play for the 'safe option' in the fear of being allocated to something worse. We conclude by suggesting that this policy is unsustainable in the longer term and suggest that the government policy of building new Academies is a means of re-engineering London's system of secondary education to reflect the aspirations of those living in its recently gentrified areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1840s chess was a popular game among the middle classes in Britain, commanding great respect because it was regarded as being an 'improving' recreation. In 1851 London staged the world's first international chess tournament, and from then until the 1880s large numbers of players, both British and foreign, endeavoured to earn their living from the game. These 'professionals' were gradually undermined by two attacks on the game's respectability. Foreign players were attacked on simple xenophobic lines, but more broadly all professional chess players were also undermined by a disapproval of the financial element of the game. The paper pays particular attention to two professionals, Staunton and Steinitz, who embodied the transformation in attitudes towards professional chess. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the historiographical trajectory of merchants in Eastern Mediterranean ports, from a commercial bourgeoisie to cosmopolitan citizens. The paper argues that despite recent historiographical trends, class is still a valuable analytical tool, and is compatible with the notion of cosmopolitanism. A class dimension when approaching the history of Mediterranean ports is important because it emphasizes the urban inequalities and intra-communal hierarchies and can explain the inter-communal conflicts that characterized most of these ports in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines some aspects of the making of middle class identity in Argentina during the first half of the 20th century. Its main argument is that this identity only crystallized when it was articulated through racial discourses accompanying the empowerment of the Peronist working class during the 1940s and 1950s. If a middle class identity was not clearly articulated earlier, it was due, in part, to 'common sense' understandings of the nation as homogeneously white, European, and socially mobile, notions that did not favor the circulation of the concept of a middle class. This paper thus analyzes two processes-the profound and persistent identification of the Argentine nation with Europe, and the racialization of the social and political 'Other' performed by anti-Peronist forces-in order to better understand the relatively late appearance of an unambiguously middle class discourse, as well as the intertwined construction of whiteness and middle class identity in Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses a specific kind of choice, choice of the local school, by a specific middle class group, characterized by its high cultural capital, its ‘caring’ perspective and liberal political orientation, in two cosmopolitan, ‘mixed’ settings, London and Paris, with a focus on values and how ethical dilemmas raised by confrontation with the social and ethnic mix in schools are solved. It draws upon a small‐scale comparative study of urban middle class parents conducted in 2004–2005 at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris in collaboration with the London Institute of Education. Using the same open‐ended schedule, 28 interviews were carried out in one London locality and 38 in a similar locality in the Parisian periphery (plus 12 others in a nearby private school). Its main purpose was to use a cross‐Channel comparison to test and enrich a comprehensive model of school choice that tries to take into account the complex interaction between policies, strategies, contexts, resources and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the history of the education of the middle classes with particular reference to the historical experience of the English grammar schools between 1868 and 1944. It indicates a general neglect of the history of middle‐class education and an opportunity to develop this in greater depth in terms of the range and diversity of provision, the experience of education and the emotions of social class. The historical development of grammar schools from the Taunton report of 1868 and the writings of Matthew Arnold to the Norwood report of 1943 and the Education Act of 1944 is outlined as an example of the characteristics of the education of the middle classes, with lasting implications that help to explain the continuing conflicts over secondary education in the early twenty‐first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between parents and schools. Over the last 30 years the importance attached to parents’ views on education has increased significantly throughout the Western world. Policy‐makers encourage parental participation and involvement through the creation of councils in which parents have a say. In Flanders in Belgium in 2004 a new participation law was passed. We study the impact of this law on the micropolitical relations between parents, school heads and teachers. We conducted in‐depth interviews with teachers, parents, school heads and members of the organizing body in four primary schools and observed parents’ gatherings. Starting from the partnership–conflict opposition, we focus on the functioning of the parents’ associations and the way parents’ associations, school heads and teachers are dealing with this new law. We found that the parent–school relationship differs greatly from school to school. While the socio‐economic middle class predominates in the four parents’ associations, the results show that parental empowerment is enhanced only in those schools with mainly socio‐economically weak families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to map cultural participation and taste in the UK. It constructs what Bourdieu calls a space of lifestyles from evidence collected in a national random sample survey of the British population in 2003. MCA constructs the space relationally on the basis of similarities and differences in responses to questions about a large number of cultural items in several sub-fields including music, reading, TV and recreational activity. These items are mapped along two axes and their clustering indicates affinities between tastes and practices across sub-fields. The cultural patterns are described. We then superimpose socio-demographic variables, including class, educational qualifications and age, the distribution of which indicates tendencies for certain categories of person to have shared tastes. The analysis reveals meaningful, socially differentiated patterns of taste. The space of lifestyles proves to be structured primarily by the total volume of capital (resources) held by respondents and by age. Strong oppositions are revealed. An older, educated middle class shares ‘legitimate’ established cultural preferences. The repertoire of a younger middle class group contains more contemporary and ‘popular’ items. Less well-educated, working class groups are characterised often primarily by lack of cultural participation, but also, especially among the young, by an aversion to ‘legitimate’ culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses whether the massification of higher education (HE) in the majority of developed countries over the last few decades has led to changes in the form of involvement in universities for the masses, or massive universities for the expanding middle classes. Situating our argument with the evidence of massive expansion of HE in England and Spain, and using Bourdieu's theoretical framework, we compare two studies that looked at whether these changes led to a revised structuring of educational opportunities by social class and to universities accessible to the masses or merely massive universities. The English study considered the choices, and the Spanish study, the experiences of students and how they felt about being students. Our conclusions stress the relation between the social construction of the category ‘youth’ or young people in relation to HE, and the different structures of economic rights and duties of different social classes. While upper and middle class male and female students live their university lives with a clear feeling of entitlement, lower middle class and working class students need to justify their economic dependence on the family and so their university status. Developing concepts used in the English study for ethnic minority students we distinguish an ‘embedded’ style, that is a taken for granted perspective, from a ‘contingent’ style or one where students need to justify their choices of being students. These lead to different degrees of legitimacy of higher educational investments corresponding to different ‘familial habituses’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Basil Bernstein's insights into education and social class, and in particular the relevance of his work for understanding the British middle class. Bernstein is one of the few sociologists of education to recognise and explore differences and tensions within the middle class. We begin by exploring some of the influences of Bernstein's theorisation of social class in general, and outline his main ideas on the relationship between the middle class and education in particular. We then examine the relevance of his work for research on education and middle-class differentiation through drawing on data from our 'Destined for Success' project. This project traced the educational biographies of 300 young men and women from the beginning of their promising educational secondary school career to their mid-twenties. We argue that the distinctive dispositions and orientations of the 'new' and 'old' middle class proposed by Bernstein are evident within parental preferences for types of school, processes of student engagement and, ultimately, differentiated middle-class identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the close relationship between education and the middle class has long been recognised in the sociology of education, its various dimensions have rarely been examined in detail. Through investigating the educational histories and occupational destinations of 199 recruits into the middle class, this paper explores whether there is any clear connection between educational pathway and occupational location. In particular, it analyses the cohort’s various careers against suggested cleavages within the middle class (professional/managerial, symbolic/material, public/private). The data indicate that educational pathways influence occupational locations along a number of directions. Some schools, notably those that are private and academically selective, feed a greater proportion of students into high-status universities and out into high-status occupations. However, in terms of the level of occupation, the status of university seems more important than the school. Whether a school is public or private does not appear to have influenced the choice of a managerial or professional career path, but school sector may contribute to horizontal differentiation of middle classes in terms of whether they take up employment in the public or private sector. The data suggest that schools reflect and reinforce contrasting allegiances to private and public forms of educational provision that then influence sectors of employment and political preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers models of the core curriculum, which it argues an inadequate as their understanding of social difference is truncated. Although these models recognise difference this is located within a pluralist framework and is implicitly viewed as an impediment that hinders equal opportunities. The effect is to normalise the white, male middle class subject and to ignore social antagonism. Skill in the core curriculum becomes technicised, and a differentiated and segmented curriculum is left in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opportunities for entrepreneurship within modern economies are concentrated primarily within the service sector. On the basis of recent empirical research this paper develops a conceptual framework which differentiates entrepreneurs according to the relative mix of capital and labour utilised. Four subcategories within the entrepreneurial middle class are identified and the implications for social mobility on the basis of capital accumulation are explored. In particular, attention is drawn to the significance of employment relationships as a factor which limits the growth of labour-intensive businesses. Despite its neglect within sociological theory the entrepreneurial middle class continues as a significant force within contemporary economies, and several areas for future research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American society has moved away from the two societies, black and white, separate and unequal that highlighted the 1967 Presidential Commission Report -- evolving instead into a profusion of worlds reflecting various combinations of races, ethnicities and classes. This paper analyzes two groups -- the black middle class and the white underclass -- that emerged and grew after the report and defy much of the theorizing sociologists have produced on race and class. It argues that the black middle class and the white underclass reflect "interlocking categories of experience" that are unfamiliar. It encourages a new understanding that captures the reality of these race/class groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of the contemporary class structure of the United States differ markedly in their interpretations of the class identification of professional and managerial employees. This paper argues that professional and managerial employees are a distinct new class formation particular to monopoly capitalism, that is, a new middle class. The gist of the argument is that monopoly capitalist relations of production and distribution have created conditions that allow new middle-class employees to receive a significantly higher price for their labor power than workers do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of Weber's city typology in relation to the Russian urban experience and to attempt to locate the Russian city within Weber's celebrated Oriental-Occidental dichotomy. The failure of various intellectual and revolutionary groups before and in 1917 to liberalize a traditionalistic societal system is correlated to the absence of a middle class in the Russian cultural context. Kiev, Novgorod, and Pskov existed long before the Mongol conquest of Russia in the thirteenth century and were exposed to certain Western influences due to the political connections with the neighboring Western countries. Unknown before the Mongols arrived, Moskva "still in the nineteenth century before the liberation of the peasants from slavery retained all the characteristics of a great Oriental city of about the time of Diocletian of the second century A.D." In addition to being the seat of the patrimonial ruler, Moskva was a "locality where rents from possessions in land and slaves as well as income from office holding were spent." Elsewhere Weber said that the cities in Russia "never arrived at freedom in the Western sense. Everywhere the military, judicial, and industrial authority was taken from the cities." This act of taking away autonomous-autocephalous authority is probably Weber's reference to the total destruction of Novgorod and Pskov by the Russian rulers as soon as they emerged from the shadow of Mongol dependence as well as to the Russian colonial conquest of the non-Russian cities and countries in the more recent centuries including the twentieth. Seven major characteristics basic to Weber's Oriental vs. Occidental typology of urban behavior, as tentatively modified in view of the needs and the contribution of recent research, will be utilized in examining the Russian experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of widening participation policies, polarisation of types of university recruitment and a seemingly related high drop-out rate amongst first generation, working class students, we focus on the provision offered by the universities to their students. We discuss how middle class and working class student experiences compare across four different types of higher education institution (HEI). Exploring differences between the middle class and working class students locates widening participation discourse within a discussion of classed privilege. We conclude that, whilst there is a polarisation of recruitment between types of universities, there exists a spectrum of interrelated and differentiated experiences across and within the HEIs. These are structured by the differential wealth of the universities, their structure and organisation; their ensuing expectations of the students, the subject sub-cultures, and the students' own socio-cultural locations; namely class, gender, age and ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]