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The article explores the interactional management of class relations using atrocity stories as a conceptual device vis‐à‐vis new case study data. We argue that interactionist ideas are well placed to comment on the hidden injuries of class in the higher education sector and demonstrate this using atrocity stories and Goffman's work. We use the atrocity stories of atypical cases (non‐traditional graduates of an elite university) to expose class differences. Atrocity stories and Goffman's work on cooling, impression management, and total institutions were used here to unlock extended interviews with graduates from the 1960s–1980s who attended one elite British university. The findings expose the manifestation of the English class structure and a variety of responses. The conclusion finds evidence of resistance rather than challenge. A call is made for more longitudinal ethnographic research exploring how universities might promote access agendas—with particular attention to those both upwardly and downwardly mobile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper commences with a theoretical exposition of the current UK government's policy commitment to the idealised notion of the Big Society and the social capital currency underpinning its formation. The paper positions this debate in relation to the rural and adopts an ethnographically-informed methodological approach to provide an in-depth look at two contrasting English rural primary schools and their relationship with their village communities. The empirical investigation seeks to explore the extent to which the potential for building social capital is evidenced in current rural school-community relations within these two locales. The findings reveal a highly differentiated countryside in which any attempt to essentialise the abilities of rural schools to generate social capital in order to build the Big Society should be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2001 foot and mouth disease broke out in the UK and millions of farm animals were slaughtered in order to eradicate it. This affected farmers, town dwellers, adults and children. Based on a small sample of 56 e-mails to a children's BBC (CBBC) message board and using an ethnomethodological approach, this article explores the way in which children in rural and urban areas responded to the effects of this epidemic and how they structured their understandings of one another through the use of rural and urban stereotypes. It shows that the stress felt by some of the children who lived on or near infected farms during the outbreak was exacerbated by the fact that they felt misunderstood by other children living in surroundings not directly affected by foot and mouth disease. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]