Class Inequality in Austerity Britain

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introduction: A Critical Sociology of the Age of Austerity

   • Will Atkinson, Steven Roberts, Mike Savage

   Pages 1-12

3. Economic Crisis and Classed Everyday Life: Hysteresis, Positional Suffering and Symbolic Violence

   • Will Atkinson

   Pages 13-32

4. ‘We never get a fair chance’: Working-Class Experiences of Education in the Twenty-First Century

   • Diane Reay

   Pages 33-50

5. Banking on the Future: Choices, Aspirations and Economic Hardship in Working-Class Student Experience

   • Harriet Bradley, Nicola Ingram

   Pages 51-69

6. ‘Aspirations’ and Imagined Futures: The Im/possibilities for Britain’s Young Working Class

   • Steven Roberts, Sarah Evans

   Pages 70-89

7. Personalising Poverty: Parental Determinism and the Big Society Agenda

   • Val Gillies

   Pages 90-110

8. The Urban Outcasts of the British City

   • Matt Clement

   Pages 111-127

9. The Stigmatised and De-valued Working Class: The State of a Council Estate

   • Lisa McKenzie

   Pages 128-144

10. Broken Communities?

    • Mike Savage

    Pages 145-162

11. Facing the Challenge of the Return of the Rich

    • Andrew Sayer

    Pages 163-179

12. Conclusion: Three Challenges to the Exportation of Sociological Knowledge

    • Will Atkinson, Steven Roberts, Mike Savage

    Pages 180-187

13. Back Matter

    Pages 188-195

    PDF

When the Coalition Government came to power in 2010 in claimed it would deliver not just austerity, as necessary as that apparently was, but also fairness. This volume subjects this pledge to critical interrogation by exposing the interests behind the policy programme pursued and their damaging effects on class inequalities. Situated within a recognition of the longer-term rise of neoliberal politics, reflections on the status of sociology as a source of critique and current debates over the relationship between the cultural and economic dimensions of social class, the contributors cover an impressively wide range of relevant topics, from education, family policy and community to crime and consumption, shedding new light on the experience of domination in the early 21st Century.

• education
• government
• poverty
• society
• sociology
• British Politics
• development aid

'A timely and welcome attempt to make a public debate about enforced austerity and amplified entitlements. Drawing on substantive research findings from experts across a wide range of fields, the book is essential reading for those who want to understand what is really happening at the moment. It reveals how it is not just the economy and politics that are being radically reshaped but people's hopes, desires and futures.' - Beverley Skeggs, Professor of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

'Everyone wondered whether the 'Big Society', was just the latest example of political gesturing, blaming the poor for their poverty and suggesting that only those with the time and money to provide their own services deserve them? Are you, your friends and neighbours at risk of been duped into thinking that working-class communities in Britain are 'broken' and in need of punitive intervention? Then read Class Inequality in Austerity Britain: Power, Difference and Suffering.' - Danny Dorling, Professor of Human Geography, University of Sheffield, UK

• University of Bristol, UK

  Will Atkinson

• University of Kent, UK

  Steven Roberts

• London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

  Mike Savage

WILL ATKINSON British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol, UK HARRIET BRADLEY Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Senior Research Fellow in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol, UK MATT CLEMENT Associate Lecturer in the Department of Health and Applied Social Science at the University of the West of England, UK SARAH EVANS Engagement Manager for the Social Sciences at the British Library, UK VAL GILLIES Research Professor within the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research and the Families & Social Capital Research Group at London South Bank University, UK NICOLA INGRAM Research Assistant in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol, UK LISA MCKENZIE Leverhulme Research Fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Nottingham, UK DIANE REAY Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK STEVE ROBERTS Lecturer in Lifelong and Work-Related Learning in the Education School at the University of Southampton, UK MIKE SAVAGE Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University or York, UK ANDREW SAYER Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lancaster, UK

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