Class, Individualization and Late Modernity: In Search of the Reflexive Worker

by W. Atkinson

Overview

This book puts to the test the prominent claim that social class has declined in importance in an era of affluence, choice and the waning of tradition. Arguing against this view, this study vividly uncovers the multiple ways in which class stubbornly persists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230242005
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	10/13/2010
Series:	Identity Studies in the Social Sciences
Edition description:	2010
Pages:	245
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

WILL ATKINSON is a Researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Bristol, UK. He has published in a variety of journals on class, social change and social theory.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements viii

1 Introduction: From Affluence to Reflexivity 1

Part I Theoretical Preliminaries

2 Reflexivity and its Discontents 17

3 Conceptualizing Class and Reconceptualizing Reflexivity 44

Part II Searching for the Reflexive Worker

4 Educational Reproduction Today 77

5 Topographical Trajectories 106

6 Distinction and Denigration 133

7 'Class' as Discursive and Political Construct 160

8 Conclusion: Rigid Relations through Shifting Substance 187

Appendix: The Search Process 196

Notes 215

References 224

Index 239