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Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen (1957) presents the world of labour where the two social classes, the capitalist class and the working class, with hierarchies between each other and among themselves, clash, which ends with the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. The harsh working conditions at the restaurant, the changing pace of work, little time given by the employer to the employees to rest and socialise, and the dehumanising aspect of labour are presented through the relationships between the two social classes and also among the working class people. Hence, the aim of this paper is to argue that the relationship between the capitalist class and the working class based on labour and production and the working class people's submission to the practices of the ruling class in The Kitchen can be analysed through the Marxist concepts of class conflict and ideology, respectively. Accordingly, it will be demonstrated that class conflict is seen not only between the bourgeoisie, the owner of the capital, and the proletariat, the agent of production, but also among the members of the proletariat of different nationalities, which is expressed through racial hatred. Furthermore, it will be displayed that the employees of the restaurant not only consciously accept the economic conditions under which they work but also reveal their cultural/artistic tastes during short breaks that are set by the employer, which shows that both work and leisure are controlled by the capitalist class. [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 interrogates the relationship between working-class participation in higher education ( HE) in England and social and cultural mobility. It argues that embarking on a university education for working-class people has been construed in governmental discourses as an instrumental means of achieving upward mobility, or of aspiring to 'become middle class'. Education in this sense is thus not only understood as having the potential to confer value on individuals, as they pursue different 'forms of capital', or symbolic 'mastery' ( Bourdieu, 1986), but as incurring a form of debt to society. In this sense, the university can be understood as a type of 'creditor' to whom the working-class participants are symbolically indebted, while the middle classes pass through unencumbered. Through the analysis of empirical research conducted with staff from working-class backgrounds employed on a university Widening Participation project in England, the article examines resistance to dominant educational discourses, which understand working-class culture as 'deficient' and working-class participation in HE as an instrumental means of securing upward mobility. Challenging the problematic notion of 'escape' implicit in mobility discourses, this paper concludes by positing the alternative concept of 'fugitivity', to contest the accepted relationship in HE between creditor and debtor. [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 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]

Although the classed dimensions of ‘taste’ have, following Bourdieu, been widely discussed, expressions of disgust at perceived violations of taste have been less frequently considered in relation to class. This paper considers various expressions of disgust at white working-class existence and explores what they might tell us about middle-class identities and identifications. I argue that the narratives of decline and of lack present in such representations can be seen in terms of a long-standing middle-class project of distinguishing itself. Drawing on Bourdieu's critique of Kantian aesthetics, I argue that the ownership of ‘taste’ is understood as reflecting true humanity, and as conferring uniqueness. Ironically, however, this uniqueness is only achieved through an incorporation of collective, classed understandings. The paper calls for a problematization of a normative and normalized middle-class location that is, I argue, given added legitimacy by a perceived decline in the significance of class itself. [A]n account of class, rank or social hierarchy must be thin indeed unless accompanied by an account of the passions and sentiments that sustain it (William Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, p. 245). Social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat (Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 479). What we read as objective class divisions are produced and maintained by the middle class in the minutiae of everyday practice, as judgements of culture are put into effect (Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture, p. 118). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a brief examination of neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian arguments it is demonstrated that the class nature of the new middle class has yet to be established. The paper goes on to show that as well as differences arising out of material conditions (i.e. class differences), inequalities based on expectations of entitlement or norms are also significant in capitalist society. Weber's treatment of status has not encouraged an adequate understanding of the concept, and an alternative is outlined. The paper then argues that the differences between the so-called new middle class and the working class are reasonably understood on a number of criteria as differences between status groups which form part of a single class. Not only does this approach remove a number of difficulties from accounts of the salariat, it also helps explain the different political alignments of social collectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we review the empirical legacy that developed out of the theoretical and methodological agendas of class analysis and comparative methods of the 1970s and 1980s. Our review is restricted to studies that examine the variants in the class structures of the developed capitalist democracies. The paper is organized into four main sections. In part one. we examine variations in the organization of capital; part two takes up the still little-studied resurgence of the petite bourgeoisie and small capital; in part three, we review studies that have examined national variations in the size and composition of the new middle class; and part four reviews the postindustial and gendered nature of the working class. Our conclusion highlights important labor market developments of the 1980s that have largely been missed by conventional class models and comments on their significance for the future of empirical research in class analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous essays exist on the lived experiences of academics from working-class or poverty-class origins. Yet, to date, there exists no systematic analysis of the class origins of university faculty members. This study utilizes surveys from a random sample of full-time university professors at all 95 Canadian universities affiliated with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) to analyze the ways in which socioeconomic background impacts experiences within university and graduate school. Findings indicate that several measures of socioeconomic background are indeed significant predictors of this experience. Qualitative data reveal that working-class faculty members are hyper-aware of the ways in which their class backgrounds affected their educational trajectories; while conversely, academics from middle-class backgrounds were also reflective about the ways in which they were privileged. The paper concludes with implications for developing public policy that shifts focus away from apolitical discussions of diversity, toward promoting inclusivity for those from working-class or lower-income backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper argues that inequalities can be more clearly understood by combining tool kit theories of culture that stress convergence between institutional expectations and individual behavior with symbolic interactionism, which emphasizes the interpretive and situational nature of behavior. I base these arguments on an ethnographic analysis of student responses to ambiguous expectations around help-seeking. Teachers’ shifting expectations created interpretive moments, to which middle-class and working-class students responded differently. Through a logic of entitlement, middle-class students saw ambiguities as opportunities for reward and tried to seek assistance. Through a logic of appeasement, working-class students saw ambiguities as opportunities for reprimand and sought to placate teachers by avoiding requests. Teacher responses to student behavior varied across situations but helped to perpetuate inequalities. Such findings suggest that the activation of tool kit resources and the stratified profits that result are more interpretive and situational than scholars typically acknowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

This paper draws on the results of two qualitative research projects examining parental engagements with the childcare market in the UK. Both projects are located in the same two London localities. One project focuses on professional middle class parents, and the other on working class families, and we discuss the key importance of social class in shaping parents' differential engagement with the childcare market, and their understandings of the role childcare plays in their children's lives. We identify and discuss the different 'circuits' of care available to and used by families living physically close to each other, but in social class terms living in different worlds. We also consider parents' relationships with carers, and their social networks. We conclude that, in order to fully understand childcare policies and practices and families' experiences of care, an analysis which encompasses social class and the workings of the childcare market is needed. [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 tests a theoretical model proposing that feelings of relative deprivation play an important part in translating the experience of economic hard times into more left-leaning economic beliefs. Survey data reveal that Albertans who had been forced to cut back on expenditures because of the recession of the mid-1980s were more likely to agree with statements about the need for a redistribution of wealth in society. This pattern of relationships was observed among members of the working class but not within the middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between social class and social mobilization through reviewing the case of new social movements. The middle-class membership of new social movements is well documented but poorly explained by current New Class, New Social Movement, and Cultural Shift theories. These theories fail to recognize the interdependence between interests, values, and expressed ideas. Class culture provides an alternative framework for interpreting the complex relationships between class interests and consciousness in these movements. Through a comparison of working- and middle-class cultures, it is proposed that social class orders consciousness and shapes the interpretation of interests. Class cultures produce distinct class forms of political and organizational behavior while not defining any particular content of movement issues or politics. In particular, the middle-class membership of new social movements is explained by the cultural form of these movements which is distinctly middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports social class differences in the emphasis placed upon the use of language in two areas of the socialization of the child: inter-person relationships and the acquisition of basic skills. The sample of 100 mothers is a sub-sample of 120 mothers who live in a middle class area and 192 mothers who live in a working class area. (The correlation between area and the social class position of the family is 0.74.) The results obtained from the use of a closed schedule show that the middle class mothers, relative to the working class mothers, place a much greater emphasis upon the use of language in the person area; whereas the working class mothers, relative to the middle class mothers, place a greater emphasis upon the use of language in the transmission of basic skills. The results are consonant with the prediction derived from the theory of restricted and elaborated linguistic codes which has also been used to generate a model for the understanding of social learning and forms of cultural discontinuity between the home and the school. [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]