Critical Social Psychology of Social Class [1st ed.] 9783030559649, 9783030559656

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-vi
Social Class: What Is It and Why Does It Matter? (Katy Day) (Katy Day, Bridgette Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse)....Pages 1-32
Psychology and Social Class: The Working-Class as ‘Other’ (Bridgette Rickett) (Katy Day, Bridgette Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse)....Pages 33-66
Conceptualising Social Class: Towards a Critical Social Psychological Approach (Maxine Woolhouse) (Katy Day, Bridgette Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse)....Pages 67-99
Class Discourse and the Media (Katy Day) (Katy Day, Bridgette Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse)....Pages 101-135
Classed Identities: Submergence, Authenticity and Resistance (Bridgette Rickett) (Katy Day, Bridgette Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse)....Pages 137-172
Critical Analyses: ‘Real-World’ Applications (Maxine Woolhouse) (Katy Day, Bridgette Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse)....Pages 173-201
Debates, Issues and Future Directions (Katy Day) (Katy Day, Bridgette Rickett, Maxine Woolhouse)....Pages 203-235
Back Matter ....Pages 237-285

Citation preview

Critical Social Psychology of Social Class Katy Day · Bridgette Rickett · Maxine Woolhouse

Critical Social Psychology of Social Class

Katy Day · Bridgette Rickett · Maxine Woolhouse

Critical Social Psychology of Social Class

Katy Day Department of Psychology Leeds Beckett University Leeds, UK

Bridgette Rickett Department of Psychology Leeds Beckett University Leeds, UK

Maxine Woolhouse Department of Psychology Leeds Beckett University Leeds, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-55964-9 ISBN 978-3-030-55965-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55965-6

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Alex Linch_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

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Social Class: What Is It and Why Does It Matter? (Katy Day)

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Psychology and Social Class: The Working-Class as ‘Other’ (Bridgette Rickett)

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Conceptualising Social Class: Towards a Critical Social Psychological Approach (Maxine Woolhouse)

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Class Discourse and the Media (Katy Day)

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Classed Identities: Submergence, Authenticity and Resistance (Bridgette Rickett)

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Critical Analyses: ‘Real-World’ Applications (Maxine Woolhouse)

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Contents

Debates, Issues and Future Directions (Katy Day)

203

References

237

Index

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1 Social Class: What Is It and Why Does It Matter? (Katy Day)

Introduction The central aims of this first chapter are to establish a rationale for this book and to ‘set the scene’ for the chapters that follow. In this chapter, we will examine and unpick social class as a complex, situated and multifaceted phenomenon. We will argue that social class division and inequalities based upon social and economic conditions are alive and thriving in contemporary societies across the world. However, further than this, we will also demonstrate that social class has important psychological and discursive dimensions that underscore its relevance for psychology as a discipline and for critical social psychology as a sub-discipline. Despite this having being recognised for decades, social class has and continues to be neglected by psychologists in comparison with other systems of categorisation and difference such as gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality. There are a number of reasons why we and other class commentators believe that this has been/is the case, which we will extrapolate and examine here. In short, we hope to convince the reader in this chapter that class is still relevant and important and that this is something that psychologists should be concerned with. The chapter will © The Author(s) 2020 K. Day et al., Critical Social Psychology of Social Class, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55965-6_1

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introduce some key themes and arguments that will be picked up and explored further in the forthcoming chapters; it is intended as a road map to signal where we are going next and to flag, at the outset, some of our key beliefs about social class.

Defining and Conceptualising Social Class: How Do We ‘Determine’ Someone’s Class? Social class is a rather complex and messy affair (e.g. Argyle, 1994), and how we define and measure social class (indeed, whether or not this actually exists at all in contemporary societies) is the subject of ongoing debate in the social sciences (Bullock & Limbert, 2009). For one, understandings and definitions of social class are not static; rather, these are historically, socially and culturally located. These shift in line with changing social, economic and political conditions and the agendas of powerful groups and institutions in society. It is beyond the scope of the current text to provide a complete and comprehensive historical overview of class systems across the globe; indeed, this would be a book (or even a series of books) in itself. What we will do here is highlight some of the major trends in theorising and researching class in the social sciences, as well as some of the major shifts that have occurred in recent decades in terms of how social class is conceptualised, defined and measured. In doing so, we will attempt to situate these within broader frameworks of meaning and historical events. Key questions have been whether it is possible to identify distinctive social classes and how to do so. According to the sociologist Savage (2015), the first attempts to map the class system occurred in the early decades of the nineteenth century and the first formal measures of households according to class in Britain were developed by the Registrar General’s Office in 1911. This system of classification was based on occupation, with ‘professionals’ at the top and ‘unskilled manual workers’ at the bottom. In the 1970s, the sociologist John Goldthorpe described a new occupational class scheme known as the ‘Goldthorpe Schema’ (Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1992; Goldthorpe, 1980/1987, 1997, 2007; cited in Savage, 2015) which became the basis of the system for

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class categorisation officially used today by the Office of National Statistics: The National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC). The NS-SEC describes a total of eight different social classes. These are (1) higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations, (2) lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations, (3) intermediate occupations, (4) small employers and own account workers, (5) lower supervisory and technical occupations, (6) semi-routine occupations, (7) routine occupations and (8) never worked and long-term unemployed. This system has been widely accepted and adopted across the globe and as can be seen above, defines and measures class (or socio-economic status—SES) according to occupation and employment relations. Goldthorpe believed that, despite a number of different categories as described, the fundamental divide was between employers on the one hand and employees on the other (Savage, 2015). It was believed that there were key differences between these groups in terms of the amount of control that they had (e.g. over the business or organisation) and their income (profits versus salary or wage). This distinction has also been a central one to Marxist theorists such as Marx, Weber and Gramsci (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1978) who similarly conceive of class in terms of definable groups with particular roles and positions in the economic system of production in capitalist societies (Wagner & McLaughlin, 2015). Capitalist societies are generally understood as having an economic and political system that is characterised by the private or corporate ownership of goods and services for profit, rather than being controlled by the state (Jenks, 1998). The different groups located within these systems, according to Marxist theorists, have fundamentally competing interests. Notably, a distinction was made between the workers (‘proletariat’) and the owners of the means of production (their bosses), whereby the former are exploited for profit by the latter. Class relations then for Marxist theorists are characterised by domination and exploitation. In addition, dominant cultural ideologies uphold this system of domination and exploitation by making this appear a natural and inevitable way of organising societies (Gramsci, 1971), a ‘functionalism’ that is critiqued and challenged by Marxists. It is believed that increased ‘class consciousness’ (an awareness of this exploitation) will eventually result in social revolution and the downfall of capitalism.

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The Office for National Statistics (2016) reports that the NS-SEC has been reasonably well validated as a predictor of health, educational and other outcomes related to social class or socio-economic status. Indeed, social scientific research utilising objective measures of SES has allowed important comparisons to be made between different groups in society. For example, research on health inequalities has shown that poorer health profiles and higher mortality rates plague those belonging to ‘lower socio-economic groups’ (e.g. Businelle et al., 2010; Richter, Leppin, & Gabhainn, 2006). Similarly, research on educational experiences and achievement has documented a range of barriers that those lower down the socio-economic hierarchy face. For instance, Rubin, Denson, Kilpatrick, Matthews, Stehlik, and Zyngier (2014) point out that studies have demonstrated how differences in income between students in higher education (or the income of their parents) impact on their participation, academic performance and retention. Such differences determine, amongst other things, the amount of time that they are able to devote to studying as opposed to part-time employment, as well as the study resources that they have available (e.g. owning a laptop or PC). Before moving on, it is important to stress that position within the labour market and access to material resources are, undeniably, important components of social class. Further, there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that income disparities and social inequalities have increased dramatically over the last few decades in Britain (see Dorling et al., 2007). The top 10% of income earners in Britain are reported to earn almost 17 times more than the lowest 10% (Office for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2015), and in modern-day Britain, 21% of the population are said to be living in poverty (Duffy, 2013). Similarly in the United States, there has been a pronounced rise in wage inequality from the 1980s onwards (Autor, Katz, & Kearney, 2008). On a global scale, there has been a near-universal trend towards greater inequality based on income (The Economist, 2007), and in 2014, the World Economic Forum highlighted income disparity as one of the main risks to economic and political security in recent times (e.g. Savage, 2015). This suggests that the detrimental impact of wealth inequality on health, wellbeing, performance and so forth (as highlighted by a wealth

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of research studies) is likely to become more rather than less pronounced if such trends continue. However, there are problems associated with categorising and measuring class according to occupation, income and level of educational attainment. For one, in the UK, such measures have traditionally been based on the ‘head of household’ (usually male), a practice which is problematic because such resources and status are not necessarily shared by all family members (e.g. Argyle, 1994). Further, these three things do not all map neatly onto one another. As an example, 3% of the ‘higher managerial, administrative and professional class’ are among the bottom 20% of earners (Savage, 2015) and high amounts of wealth are not always associated with high incomes as this can include accumulated wealth from previous generations of the individual’s family (Picketty, 2014). Similarly, those with the most economic capital are only slightly more likely to have received a university education than those lower down the socio-economic hierarchy (Hecht, 2014). As such, in contemporary Western societies, a person’s social class cannot always be easily read from their position in the labour market or education system (Holt & Griffin, 2005). Further, systems of classification are inevitably tied to particular sociocultural and historical contexts and so are in danger of becoming out of date (Rubin et al., 2014). For example, despite the enormous impact of Marxist theory on disciplines such as sociology, it has been argued that this is largely a historically-located account in that Marx’s analysis of class relations is located in the period leading up to and following the Industrial Revolution, a period of modern capitalism (Holt & Griffin, 2005), although it is worth noting that even before the Industrial Revolution, there were wage earners in agriculture (see Savage, 2015). A key feature of the industrial era was the division of ‘blue-collar’ factory workers, coal miners, dockers and labourers versus factory and mill owners, professionals and managers (see Kynaston as cited in Jones, 2011). Within this context, Marxist analyses make sense and still have much to offer our understandings of class exploitation and class conflict. However, there have since been considerable changes in the social and economic landscapes of modern societies such as the transition from industrial to post-industrial societies in many parts of the world. Recent decades have

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witnessed the decline (or decimation) of the manufacturing industries in Britain and the United States which has resulted in a serious reduction (in some cases virtual disappearance) of ‘blue-collar’ workforces. For example, in 1979, almost 7 million people worked in factories in Britain but by 2011, this was just over 2.5 million (Jones, 2011). In parallel to this, entire working-class communities based around a particular factory, steelworks or coal mine also broke down (Jones, 2011). This led those such as Gorz to declare ‘the death of the working-class’ (Gorz, 1982). Due to such changes, theorists such as Lazzarato (2015) have departed from an orthodox Marxist analysis of class to focus on the role of consumption rather than production in modern societies. In his book Governing by Debt, Lazzarato (2015) argues that in contemporary capitalist societies, debt is increasingly being used as a means of enslavement and subjection, especially given that debt has become infinite and increasingly difficult to pay back. According to Lazzarato, class division is no longer structured around capitalists on the one hand and wage earners on the other; rather, the important division today is between debtors and creditors. The author argues that consumption and debt have become a contemporary means of controlling populations and that the rise of technology has played a pivotal role in this by increasingly intruding into our everyday lives to promote products, services and lifestyles to us as ‘essential’. Today’s working or oppressed class for Lazzarato is no longer comprised of coal miners, dockers and factory workers (amongst others), but rather can be found in: A multiplicity of situations of employment, non-employment, occasional employment, and greater or lesser poverty. It [the working-class] is dispersed, fragmented, and precarious, far from finding the means to constitute a political ‘class’ even if it represents the majority of the population. (2013, p. 13)

Here, we can see a shift away from the notion of a ‘proletariat’ or ‘working-class’ that can be clearly delineated according to their position in the labour market and material wealth, towards the notion of people subjugated and oppressed by debt who are ‘dispersed’, ‘fragmented’ and occupy a fairly diverse range of employment situations. Lazzarato is not

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arguing that poverty, inequality and economic subjugation are a thing of the past, but rather that the form and nature of class oppression have changed in line with changing sociocultural and economic conditions. Indeed, organisations such as Gingerbread (2018)—a UK-based charity set up to support single-parent families—have highlighted how one of the consequences of contemporary austerity has been increased borrowing, plunging many lone-parent households into serious debt. Fiscal austerity was introduced in the UK in 2010 by the then coalition government as a response to the fallout from the global financial crash. This constituted an attempt to reduce the state budget, debt and deficits by reducing public spending (Blythe, 2013) and so involved cuts to state-run public services (e.g. those for children and young people), extensive welfare reforms and the widening of non-state or private provision (Lupton, Thomson, & Vizard, 2015; Mattheys, 2015). Austerity has resulted in many lone-parent families struggling to cover essential bills (e.g. rent/mortgage and utilities bills) due to high living costs. As a result, according to Gingerbread (2018), many lone parents have had to borrow money in order to make ends meet, despite the majority having an income from paid employment outside the home (an estimated 67.1%). Another major critique of traditional Marxist analyses is the viewpoint that capitalist oppression supersedes other forms of oppression on the basis of, for instance, gender or race and subsequently, their neglect of intersections between class and other systems of social categorisation (Griffin, 1993). ‘Intersectionality’ is the notion that different social categories and identities ‘intersect’ with one another, such as those based on (as well as class) gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, able-bodiedness and so forth. Likewise, different axes of oppression intersect or interlock (e.g. class oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) (Day & Wray, 2018). Although currently popular within sections of critical theorising in the social sciences, perhaps most notably within feminist work (Munro, 2013), intersectionality has a considerable history which will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 3. An examination of the impact of austerity in modern-day Britain underscores the importance of intersectional analysis. For example, a number of charities, non-government organisations (NGOs) and campaigning groups have highlighted evidence that austerity has impacted some groups in

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society more than others. Those groups that have suffered the most have included women (Fawcett Society, 2013), people with disabilities, people of colour (poverty disproportionately affects black, Asian and minority ethnic families—Belle & Doucet, 2003), as well as those on a low income (Reed & Portes, 2014). As outlined previously, lone-parent families have been hit particularly hard by austerity. Gingerbread (2018) estimates that there are around 2 million such families in the UK (accounting for around a quarter of all families with dependent children), 90% of which are headed by women (Gingerbread, 2018). In addition, it has been pointed out that women are expected to ‘plug the gap’ when public services are cut or when the services available are unaffordable such as assistance with childcare, as such caring responsibilities are more likely to fall to women (Fawcett Society, 2012). In such instances, class intersects with patriarchal expectations in ways that often doubly disadvantage poor and working-class women. Despite the above, those employing an orthodox Marxist framework to understand class oppression and class consciousness have often focussed on White men (e.g. Centers, 1949) and the proletariat has, in the traditional imagination, being largely comprised of male workers such as (in Kynaston’s terms) coal miners, dockers and car workers. Finally, it has been pointed out that the income of a family may be considered ‘low’ in relation to the population average, yet may be considered relatively ‘high’ within that family’s surrounding community or relative to other members of their social group, especially if the family belong to a minority or less powerful group in society (e.g. Adler & Stewart, 2007). As such, the status of that family may be relatively high, something that cannot be captured by universal and decontextualised systems of classification. A final problem with more materialist and objective measures and accounts of social class, as hinted above, is that these often screen out or neglect the important discursive, social, cultural, political and psychological dimensions of this. In everyday discourse, class is often referred to as something more elusive that cannot simply be ‘pinned down’ to wealth and income, such as people being referred to as ‘classy’ or ‘common’ regardless of wealth or occupation. For example, a senior member of one of the author’s (Katy Day’s) family is often described as a ‘classy lady’, despite living in poverty for most of her life. Conversely, celebrities from

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working-class backgrounds are sometimes derided in the British media for being ‘common’ or ‘chavs’, despite having accrued large amounts of wealth. The work of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu is of particular note here, who believed that class could not simply be reduced to the division of labour and notions of exploitation (as in Marxist analyses). For example, Bourdieu believed that ‘class privilege’ wasn’t simply material or economic and that economic capital in itself did not define class. Rather, Bourdieu discusses the notion of ‘cultural capital’ which refers to people’s tastes and preferences and the ways in which these are highly class coded. The consumption of certain kinds of ‘legitimate’ or ‘highbrow’ culture (e.g. visiting art galleries or going to the theatre) generates social advantages for the consumer because of the relative cultural status attached to these versus, for example, watching soap operas on television. Such advantages may include being able to converse with those who have more social and economic power and who may be able to ‘open doors’ for that individual. Or, having a greater familiarity and being more comfortable with the curriculum being taught in educational settings and therefore more likely to succeed in tests and exams, particularly as it has been pointed out that such assessments are often class as well as gender-biased (e.g. Shibley Hyde, 2007), privileging some forms of knowledge over others. Similarly, Bourdieu discussed the concept of ‘social capital’ which refers to the social networks that people are part of and able to draw upon in order to advance in life and secure benefits. An example would be an individual exploiting contacts with family members, family friends, colleagues, etc., in order to succeed in the education system or secure employment opportunities (exemplified by the saying ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’). Perhaps the most important contacts here are those who have access to opportunities and resources that the individual does not, such as a friend who works for the same organisation or is a member of the same sports club, but who has more wealth and social power. The fact that cultural capital and social capital are more opaque and subtle than economic capital often makes these forms of advantage and privilege more insidious. Of course, cultural capital and social capital are not entirely detached from economic capital. Bourdieu (1979) himself acknowledged this by describing a ‘homology’ between the three. For example, those activities

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that are deemed more ‘highbrow’ or ‘legitimate’ are also ones that cost more money and we are more likely to have access to networks of people with social and economic power if we have such power ourselves. This is particularly true of ‘elite’ groups (e.g. aristocrats and chief executives) which have been found to be more socially exclusive while at the same time, the poorest in society with no educational qualifications are the most socially isolated in that they know fewer people from other social groups (Savage, 2015). In short, social capital and cultural capital, at least to some degree, have an exclusive character/are not equally accessible to all, and these do seem to be related to occupation and level of educational attainment in important ways. However, Bourdieu did maintain that this was by no means a perfect or neat fit and that a fuller understanding of social class necessitated taking all of these different elements in account. As with other accounts of class and systems of classification, Bourdieu’s work is located in time and space, as his writings were based on his observations conducted in France in the 1960s. This was a world without the proliferation of technology and media that plays such a central role in many people’s lives today and which makes the avoidance of popular culture increasingly difficult; indeed, at the time of his research, only half of French households had television sets (Savage, 2015). In addition, again, class will intersect in important ways here with other systems of categorisation. Many of the cultural activities that are deemed ‘highbrow’ or ‘legitimate’ are associated with older generations, whereas those considered more popularist or ‘vulgar’ (e.g. watching reality television shows or listening to pop music) with younger audiences. Further, activities such as going to the opera or listening to classical music are coded as ‘white’. Relatedly, Savage (2015) argues that we are witnessing new, ‘emerging’ forms of cultural capital that are tied to the interests of younger generations. Of note, ‘hipster culture’ in the Western world is arguably replacing opera and classical music as an indicator of more refined tastes and lifestyles. Nonetheless, Bourdieu’s work has been extremely important in highlighting the multidimensional and often elusive nature of social class, transcending simplistic structural and materialist approaches by drawing attention to the relational and symbolic dimensions of ‘class-making’ (e.g. Bourdieu, 1987, p. 7). Drawing upon Bourdieu’s work, Skeggs (2004) argues that powerful groups often exercise power and domination via symbolic means, for

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example, in terms of the ways in which they represent those from whom they wish to claim a (moral) distance, such as the poor and workingclass. According to Skeggs, one way in which this is done is to ascribe fixed and essential characteristics to those lower down the social hierarchy (e.g. dirty, dangerous, unintelligent, uncouth). In the following chapter, we examine a tradition of scholarship in psychology which has done just that, thus positioning working-class people as inferior and justifying their lower position in the socio-economic hierarchy. Such work might therefore be read as an example of the exercising of symbolic power that Skeggs is referring to. Similarly, Skeggs (2004) points out that class is not a simple subject variable or objective societal demographic, but rather is something that is constantly happening/constantly in production. This is exemplified by, for instance, some of the changing discourses around class and struggles over meaning that have occurred. For example, referring back to the notion of ‘the death of the working-class’ (Gorz, 1982), Lawler (2004) observes that ‘now that the proletariat is held not to exist’, its place has been taken by the notion of ‘a feckless underclass’ (119). Similarly, Owen Jones (2011) argues in his book Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class that the notion of a British working-class with a proud history, collective identity and strong communities has been eroded and replaced instead with the notion of a ‘feckless underclass’: those who exist on the margins of society and who are a nuisance and a drain on public resources (see also Jensen, 2014). The making of such meaning can be understood once again in the context of modern-day austerity, with the emphasis on ‘scarce resources’, whereby the ‘undeserving’ are justly penalised by restricting and controlling their access to welfare. Such ‘anti-welfare common-sense’ (e.g. Jensen, 2014; Jensen & Tyler, 2015)—which could be read as a contemporary incarnation of Gramsci’s (1971) ‘dominant bourgeois ideology’—shall be explored more fully in Chapter 4 which examines media discourse around class, poverty and welfare dependence. Further, referring back to Lazzarato’s (2015) notion of how consumption has become a core feature of economic oppression in contemporary societies, Tyler (2008) points out how the meanings attached to some forms of consumption have shifted whereby, for instance, access to branded goods such as designer labels (traditionally taken as a sign of wealth and ‘good taste’) has been recoded as ‘vulgar’.

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She argues that as such goods have become more affordable and accessible, this represents an attempt by the middle and upper-classes (who often have greater power over ‘meaning-making’) to distance themselves from the poor and working-class. To summarise this section of the chapter, we have hopefully demonstrated four things. First, understandings and definitions of social class are not fixed or static, but rather shift in line with changing social, cultural, political and economic conditions. These also shift in line with the agendas of powerful groups and institutions who largely define the ‘truth’ (e.g. the recoding of certain forms of consumption as ‘vulgar’). This underscores Skeggs’ point that class is constantly in production. Second, such changes do not mean that social and economic inequalities, oppression and poverty have become things of the past or are no longer meaningful. Rather, as discussed here, such inequalities have increased across the globe. This, we would argue, makes scholarship on social class more and not less important. The third point is that class is not a discrete category or simple ‘subject variable’ that can be separated from other systems of difference and social identities, nor does class oppression necessarily supersede other forms of oppression on the basis of gender, race or able-bodiedness (amongst others). Rather, we contend here that contemporary analyses of social class are ones that must be intersectional and this is a thread that can be detected throughout the entire book. The final point is that class is multifaceted and encompasses more than just income, occupation and level of educational achievement. Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘cultural’ and ‘social’ capital, as discussed in the chapter, are particularly useful and illuminating here. In this section of the chapter, we have hinted at some more psychological components of social class. In the following section, we now turn to examine these in closer detail.

Psychology and Social Class Social class has often gone under-theorised and under-researched in psychology, viewed as the province of other disciplines such as sociology, politics and history (Holt & Griffin, 2005). By contrast, categories

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such as gender, race and ethnicity are argued to have received much more comprehensive treatment (Reimers, 2007). For example, in 2003, Ostrove and Cole made the following remarks: At a time when psychology as a discipline has increasingly defined itself as interested in the ways race, class, and gender critically shape our psychological experiences, it seems that class is the least explored of these three. (679)

There are a number of reasons, it would seem, why this has been the case. First, as outlined above, social class has been regarded as the ‘business’ of other social scientific disciplines. Class and poverty as topics are perhaps ‘too political’ for a discipline that has been keen to flag its status as an objective science of the individual (e.g. Teo, 2009). Likewise, although some high-profile psychologists have been influenced by Marxist ideas such as Lev Vygotsky (Parker & Spears, 1996), in general, Marxism has not had the same impact on psychology that this has had on its ‘cousin’ disciplines such as sociology, meaning that class relations and oppression have largely escaped critical scrutiny. Gender and race may have received greater attention in Western psychology (as contended by Ostrove and Cole) because these are regarded as more fundamental or stable properties of an individual that are biologically-rooted (although this is the subject of serious dispute); therefore, it is easier to categorise individuals in research studies according to such ‘participant variables’. In contrast, class or socio-economic status is regarded as more ‘fuzzy’, more difficult to pin-down, and is arguably more fluctuating due to social mobility. All of this has been bolstered by an increasing trend (described by those such as Tyler, 2008) to regard academic scholarship on class and class inequalities as unfashionable and out of date. This has occurred alongside the waning popularity of Marxism in the social sciences (Holt & Griffin, 2005) and a cultural ideal of ‘classlessness’ which has come to prevail in the Western world (Bradley, 1996). The upshot, according to Skeggs (2005), has been an ‘abdication from acknowledging class relations’ (p. 54).

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Yet at the same time, class is everywhere in psychological work. For instance, the use of convenience samples of college and university students from middle-class backgrounds in psychological research is commonplace and is a sampling ‘bias’ that is frequently acknowledged. Yet, it is rarely acknowledged that this results in the over-representation of middle-class participants, their viewpoints, practices and lifestyles. This is because in the same way that men have traditionally been treated in psychology as ‘generic human’ (Wetherell & Griffin, 1991, p. 361) rather than as gendered, and only people of colour are regarded as ‘raced’ (Ahmed, 2004); such convenience samples are not treated as ‘classed’. As well as reproducing the ‘normalness’ of being middle-class, this renders class invisible in these studies. Further, the individualism that characterises traditional and mainstream psychology (i.e. a focus on the individual as the key unit of analysis and principle site for change) reflects cultural and class biases (e.g. Bulhan, 1985), which is ironic for a discipline that prides itself on being an objective, value-free science. For instance, this not only reflects Western values, but also middle-class ones that emphasise individual autonomy, choice and agency over community and collective action. Finally, as Bullock and Limbert (2009) argue, class shapes just about every aspect of human life, so class will impact on the phenomena studied by psychologists even if this is not acknowledged. Despite the relative invisibility of social class within psychology, there are psychologists, typically employing more critical perspectives in their work, who have addressed the psychological components of social class more directly. For example, writing within the framework of liberation psychology, Moane (2011) argues that the forms of oppression and marginalisation associated with social and economic disadvantage have a profound impact on personal and psychological life. For example, numerous studies have demonstrated that working-class and poor people—including many who have ‘climbed’ the socio-economic ladder later on in life—often have negative experiences that are at least in part connected to class in a variety of everyday contexts. This, in turn, can have a detrimental impact on the person’s psychological wellbeing, sense of self and belonging, performance and success within those contexts (e.g. Ostrove & Long, 2007). Chapters 5 and 6 in particular examine such research evidence.

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Furthermore, there is a well-documented link between social and economic inequalities and psychological distress or difficulties (e.g. Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Those who live in poverty are said to be more likely to receive a diagnosis for mental health difficulties than those who are better-off or higher up the socio-economic scale (e.g. Belle & Doucet, 2003; Liu, 2011). Conversely, equality, social justice and social cohesion have been argued to bolster psychological wellness (Moane, 2011). As argued previously, class also intersects with other dimensions such as gender, race and ethnicity. For example, poverty is more likely to affect families with minority ethnic status and single mothers are more likely to live in poverty than any other demographic group (e.g. Belle & Doucet, 2003). In more recent years, Psychologists for Social Change (previously Psychologists Against Austerity) have appeared in the UK. Psychologists for Social Change are a group of psychologists actively campaigning against austerity policies (described in the previous section of the chapter), citing evidence of the psychological damage that austerity measures have caused and continue to cause. For example, they have publicised the documented link between austerity policies and the nation’s worsening mental health (Psychologists Against Austerity, 2015; van Hal, 2015; Wahlbeck & McDaid, 2012). Mental health difficulties, anti-depressant use and suicide have all increased post-recession (Barr, Kinderman, & Whitehead, 2015; Frasquilho et al., 2015; van Hal, 2015). These effects, however, have been shown to be softened in countries that have retained strong social safety nets such as Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and Finland (van Hal, 2015; Wahlbeck & McDaid, 2012). In reviewing and synthesising a wealth of evidence, Psychologists for Social Change described five ‘austerity ailments’ which include humiliation and shame, fear and mistrust, instability and insecurity, isolation and loneliness, and feeling trapped and powerless. In the United States, researchers have similarly lobbied for policy changes that address economic injustice and the resulting psychological difficulties (e.g. Lott & Bullock, 2007). Here, we have provided some stark examples of psychological dimensions of social class. By returning to a discussion of how class might be conceptualised and ‘determined’, we can see an important psychological component of class here also. As argued in the previous section of the chapter, while socio-economic status and position in the labour market

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are important indicators of a person’s social and economic status and power, social class is arguably broader. For example, we discussed Bourdieu’s work on the systems of signs, values and practices that contribute to ‘class-making’. Similarly, class is argued to encompass a complex interplay of things such as a person’s life experiences, their family background, where they grew up, the social networks that they are part of, their lifestyle, their language and speech style, mode of appearance and so on (e.g. Kraus & Stephens, 2012). People are evaluated and treated differently according to such ‘class markers’ in a context in which middle-class culture is typically privileged over working-class culture (see Wagner & McLaughlin, 2015). These arguments come into clearer view when we examine scholarship that has focussed on class transitions (this body of work will be discussed more fully in forthcoming chapters). In short, research on class transitions has shown that people from working-class backgrounds who move up the social and economic scale often experience prejudice, isolation and ‘imposter syndrome’ which in turn impacts on their identification with the class group to which they supposedly now belong (e.g. Reay, 2002). As such, occupation and wealth or income are not always sufficient to claim authentic membership of the middle or more unusually, upper-classes, which opens up the possibility that class cannot be completely captured by measures of these things. Such scholarship also underlines the importance of people’s backgrounds, stories or histories rather than simply taking a ‘static shot’ of an individual’s current socio-economic status. For example, in addition to the important work on class transitions (as outlined above), Savage (2015) argues that people often compare their present economic position with their past lives when thinking about and discussing class and that this often impacts on how they make sense of their present situation. To draw upon the work of narrative psychologists, we make sense of ourselves and who we are, not simply by referring to the present, but by drawing upon the past also (e.g. Singer & Salovey, 1993). Such observations have led some class scholars to question the usefulness of objective measures of class and systems of classification (e.g. Skeggs, 2014). One response to this within psychological and sociological research has been to focus on perceived class status as an alternative (e.g. Walkerdine, 1996) or to consider subjective self-definition

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of social class alongside more traditional, objective measures (see Kraus & Stephens, 2012, for a review of research taking this approach). For example, some social and health psychologists have employed the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (e.g. Adler & Stewart, 2007). The scale represents a ‘social ladder’ with 10 rungs on which the top rung represents people with the most money, highest levels of education and high-status jobs, and the lowest rung represents those who are the worst off. Participants are then asked to position themselves on the ladder. There are two versions of the scale: one requires participants to position themselves relative to other people in their country and the second, to position themselves relative to other people in their community, as defined by the participant rather than the researcher (Rubin et al., 2014). There are a number of advantages associated with the utilisation of selfdefinitions of social class. For one, these are better-equipped to tap into the subjective and interpretational elements of social class than objective measures. Second, unlike objective measures, these allow context to be taken into account and acknowledge the ways in which social class may intersect with other social categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and regionality, amongst others (e.g. Ostrove & Cole, 2003), thus avoiding some of the problems highlighted previously with taking decontextualised measurements of social class or SES. Finally, there is evidence that subjective self-rankings are meaningful in that they correlate reliably, for instance, with mental and physical health (Schnittker & McLeod, 2005). Despite this, there are some important problems associated with relying on subjective or perceived social status. Rubin et al. (2014) describe how the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Task Force on SES has responded to the recent increase in the use of subjective measures of social class by recommending that researchers employ both subjective and objective measures in their research (Saegert et al., 2006). The problems associated with relying on self-definitions become apparent when there is a discrepancy between these and the economic and material ‘realities’ of people’s lives, raising questions around which measure or method of categorisation should be privileged and the relative implications of privileging each one. For example, research has found that respondents, regardless of wealth and occupation, tend to pitch

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themselves in the middle of the socio-economic scale (see Savage, 2015) and that White Westerners in particular tend to identify as ‘middle-class’ even when they have a low socio-economic status objectively-speaking (Bullock & Limbert, 2009). Similarly, in his book The Psychology of Social Class, Argyle reported that: ‘About a third of lower-class [sic] people accept the class system as just and legitimate, have no desire to change it and vote Conservative’ (1994, p. 226). It is possible that the individuals being described by Argyle were not critical of the class system because they did not identify themselves as the ‘losers’ within this system. Similarly, often, people simply don’t know which social class they belong to or are unwilling/reluctant to say. For example, sociologists Savage, Bagnall, and Longhurst (2001) conducted interviews with 200 residents of Manchester in the UK and found that the majority (two-thirds) were reluctant to identify themselves as belonging to any social class. Rubin et al. (2014) argue that these types of problems can be avoided if researchers employ meaningful response categories in their research studies. However, we would argue that such responses are meaningful beyond participants simply struggling because they were not presented with objective, easy-to-understand categories. Rather, we would argue, such participants are ‘doing class’ (or not doing class) in ways that can be understood, in part, by referring to the discursive and ideological landscapes within which they are located. We have addressed some of these already, such as the stigma attached to being a member of the ’feckless underclass’, a position that is arguably now more readily available than ‘being a member of a proud and strong working class community’ via a proliferation of cultural messages (see Jones, 2011). A related historical trend that may shed some light here is what is described as ‘embourgeoisement’ (becoming middle-class or ‘bourgeois’). Jones (2011) describes how this has been promoted in Britain in recent decades via social discourse and the various policies implemented by successive British governments. For example, in the 1990s, the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair is reported to have publicly announced that ‘we’re all middle-class’ (referring to British society in general), a claim that was endorsed and promoted by sections of the British national press (Jones, 2011, p. 139). Such ‘embourgeoisement’ is also argued to be a key feature of government policies such as the promotion of home ownership in

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the 1980s as opposed to ‘dependency’ on public housing, regardless of whether home ownership was within people’s financial means or not (Jones, 2011). So what we have witnessed here is a (probably intentional) broadening of the definition of what it means to be ‘middle-class’ (e.g. owning your home) in ways that encompass more of the population, this ‘normalness’ of middle-classness being juxtaposed with an undeserving ‘feckless underclass’. It is therefore unsurprising that many individuals struggle to identify as ‘working-class’ in any positive sense, and so the participants in studies such as that conducted by Savage et al. (2001) may have been actively attempting to dis-identify with a group to which they can be read as belonging. In addition to this, those such as Bradley (1996) have argued that an ideal of ‘classlessness’ currently prevails in British society. Although this may seem, on the surface, to contradict the notion of ‘embourgeoisement’, we would argue that the two dovetail. For example, if we are all middle-class, then class inequalities and indeed, the notion of class itself, begin to dissolve as meaningful concepts. This ideal makes the articulation of class identity and people’s willingness to openly discuss this, more difficult and remote. Indeed, social psychologists have found that class is considered taboo as a topic of conversation in contemporary British culture and that research participants often refer to and discuss this in highly coded ways (e.g. Holt & Griffin, 2005). This is explored in more detail in Chapter 5. At present, perhaps predictably, many social psychologists argue that social class encompasses both subjective and material components. For example, Kraus, Piff, and Keltner (2009) argue that ‘social class comprises both an individual’s material resources and an individual’s perceived rank within the social hierarchy’ (p. 922). There is a potential tension here between, as psychologists, listening to people’s voices and respecting their experiences and perspectives, and producing critical analyses of the class system and of social and economic inequality. For example, if social transformation is dependent upon ‘class consciousness’ as Marxist and other radical theorists suggest (see Gramsci, 1971), then findings which indicate that people struggle or are reluctant to identify as working-class suggest that the outlook for such transformation is a bleak one at present. We are not concerned here with determining whether or not people are ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ in their subjective assessments

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of their class. Rather, we are interested in how the sociocultural milieu and local communities within which the individual is situated and the social discourses available to them inform their understandings and identities. As argued by Nelson and Prilleltensky (2004), the choices and options that are available to people in terms of how they can act, be, what they can do and generally how they can live their lives will be severely restricted by their position within hierarchies of power and the social and economic resources that are available to them. We argue in this book that by adopting a critical social psychological approach to social class which considers the individual in context, we can hopefully listen to people’s voices and produce critical accounts of the class system. To summarise here, we have hopefully demonstrated in this section of the chapter that, despite social class traditionally been viewed as the province of other social scientific disciplines such as sociology, class is deeply psychological. It should be the ‘business’ of psychologists. We have presented worrying evidence here that the increase in social and economic inequalities described in the previous section of the chapter is having a profound, negative impact on people’s mental health. We have also demonstrated how social class is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon which includes psychological and discursive, as well as material and structural, dimensions. Due to this, those such as Valerie Walkerdine (1996) have called for more holistic analyses of social class which avoid reducing this down to objective measurements of socioeconomic status or treating it as a simple subject variable in psychological research. In both this and the previous section of the chapter, we have highlighted problems associated with understandings of class that define this in purely economic and materialist terms which conceive of people as belonging to fixed categories within a social hierarchy or as belonging to fixed social groups which may or may not reflect how they see themselves and their social status. However, at the same time, those that rely solely on subjective and phenomenological elements of social class (e.g. subjective assessments of class) are potentially problematic also, as these threaten to blunt critical analysis of class inequalities and oppression. We argue in this book that a critical social psychological approach to social class offers the potential to avoid both problems by locating psychological phenomena within more ‘macro’ social, cultural, economic and

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political conditions and structures of power (Moane, 2011). Transformed social conditions such as greater social equality and justice are necessary if personal changes (e.g. developing a positive sense of self ) are to be meaningful and enduring (Moane, 2011).

Scope and Aims of the Book The following chapter will provide a historical overview of the relationship between psychology and class. As argued in the current chapter, mainstream psychologists have often ignored class, regarding this as ‘too political’ and the province of other disciplines. Yet alongside this, the chapter will explore arguments presented by those such as Blackman (1996) that the ‘psy’ disciplines have a history of governmentality, regulation and pathologisation where the working-class are concerned. We will provide examples of research, theorising and practice that illustrate this. For example, this chapter will review and critique traditional and mainstream psychological research that has examined the relationship between class (or socio-economic status) and intellectual capacities, impulse control, attitudes, cognitions, motivations, behaviours and relationships. In doing so, we will highlight a number of trends that are notable within this work, such as the portrayal of working-class people as possessing inherent deficiencies (e.g. inherited lack of intelligence) which render them in need of paternalistic care and guidance at best and control and regulation at worst. We argue that such accounts have not just obscured social and economic inequalities by leaving these unexamined, but have actually served to rationalise and justify such inequalities by suggesting that these are the natural and inevitable consequence of individual differences in intelligence, motivation, hard work, rational decision-making and so on. Based on the evidence presented, we challenge the idea that empirical, mainstream work in psychology is politically-neutral and objective by examining the ways in which such accounts are saturated with politically-conservative ideologies such as meritocracy. Yet despite this ‘troubled history’, the chapter also reviews psychological work which while being located within the ‘mainstream’ (e.g. based

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on a positivist conception of science and utilising experimental methodologies) has offered up greater potential in terms of questioning practices and social conditions that contribute to class-related problems. This includes mainstream social-cognitive work on stereotype threat, class and intelligence testing (e.g. Spencer & Castano, 2007) and research that shifts attention towards social and economic inequalities as the cause of cognitions and feelings (e.g. low feelings of personal control and mastery) believed by cognitive psychologists to underpin ‘poor decision-making’ on the part of working-class people (e.g. Manstead, 2018). Having reviewed the worst and best of traditional psychological research and theorising around social class (or socio-economic status), in the third chapter, we turn to critical social psychology. While we acknowledge that there is no one single ‘critical approach’ that is readily definable and employed by everyone working within the field of critical psychology (e.g. Chamberlain & Murray, 2009), we attempt to highlight and outline some of the key characteristics and aims of critical psychological approaches. In doing so, we examine key theoretical and political influences on critical psychology, including feminism, Marxism and poststructuralist theory. We discuss what a ‘turn to language’ in poststructuralist-informed approaches such as social constructionism might mean for the study of social class and review (in juxtaposition to much of the research literature discussed in the previous chapter) work on social class that has been informed by the philosophical, theoretical and political undercurrents of critical psychology. Examples include research conducted by feminist psychologists on the place of social class in women’s lives and work that has highlighted important intersections between class and other systems of difference. In short, an overarching aim of this chapter is to ‘sketch out’ what a critical social psychology of social class might look like. Having established some of the key characteristics of and themes within a critical social psychology of class, the next two chapters are then focussed on research that has attempted to employ this type of approach. The first of these (Chapter 4) discusses vibrant and informative work from a range of disciplines (e.g. social psychology, sociology, cultural studies) focussing on the media as a powerful institution where problematic discourses around social class and classed subjects are reproduced.

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Focussing in particular upon the contemporary genres of ‘reality’ and ‘lifestyle’ programmes on British television, we demonstrate how such popular programming reproduces meritocracy discourse and ‘psychologises’ issues such as worklessness as being the result of individual deficits and failures (therefore, there are clear parallels between this chapter and Chapter 2). We also discuss work that has drawn attention to more explicitly hostile depictions of poor and working-class people in the media which invite judgement, ridicule and revulsion (e.g. Tyler, 2008). Once again in this chapter, we develop our arguments around the importance of intersectional analysis by, for example, highlighting how the focal object of disgust and desperately needed transformation is often a working-class woman (Ringrose & Walkerdine, 2008; Tyler, 2008), and arguments that the poor and working-class are often depicted in racialised ways via suggestions of ‘contaminated whiteness’ (Tyler, 2008). It is argued in this chapter that such media depictions, far from being innocuous or mere entertainment, inform people’s understandings of class differences and social and economic policies in ways that obscure exploitation and injustice, bolster class discrimination and discourage positive social transformation (Gramsci, 1971). In addition, media discourse also informs the subject positions or forms of identity on offer to working-class people themselves. This is then taken up in the following chapter. The focus of Chapter 5 is placed on class identities and class relations. We examine qualitative research on people’s everyday ‘sense-making’ in relation to class, the construction and negotiation of classed identities and subjectivities, and the impact that the discursive landscape (mapped out in previous chapters) has on these processes. In doing so, we highlight a number of key trends that are evident in the existing research. For example, we examine how the kinds of cultural tropes described in the previous chapter often infiltrate people’s everyday accounts of workingclass people and how stigmatising as well as vague and ‘muddy’ discourses around class have resulted in ‘submerged identities’ (Bradley, 1996). For example, it is argued that identification with a particular class group (especially the working-class) has become difficult and in some cases embarrassing or anxiety-provoking and so may be avoided altogether (e.g. Holt & Griffin, 2005). The chapter also considers how discourses

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around social mobility and meritocracy have led to notions of ‘fluid class selves’ which ‘fly in the face’ of evidence that parts of the world such as the UK have deep social mobility problems. Finally, the chapter considers evidence of working-class people negotiating more positive identity positions in a variety of everyday contexts and settings (e.g. educational, occupational and leisure) and in relation to a number of issues such as food consumption and work. For example, the chapter considers recent research which has shown how working-class fathers often resist discourses that interpellate them as absent and emotionally-detached. Such processes of negotiation and resistance are important in elucidating and demonstrating how, as discussed in the previous chapter, people are not simply ‘written’ by dominant cultural narratives around class. Yet while the discursive activity highlighted challenges class ‘stereotypes’ (e.g. working-class women as conformist and passive—Walkerdine, 1996), others are reproduced. We argue in this chapter that a critical discursive social psychological framework can accommodate such complexities where more traditional and mainstream approaches (e.g. Social Identity Theory—Tajfel, 1978, 1981) struggle. Having reviewed and discussed important social psychological and sociological research literature (as well as that from other related disciplines) in the previous two chapters, Chapter 6 then moves on to focus on how critical perspectives on social class can move beyond the ‘ivory tower’ of academia to be applied in ‘real-world’ settings. We argue that it is important to challenge practices in a variety of settings which reinforce class boundaries and which do a disservice to working-class and poor people in particular. The chapter will consider recommendations from critical psychologists and examine a number of interesting case studies and examples of ‘good practice’. In doing so, the chapter will focus on three areas in particular that are acutely impacted by social and economic inequalities: education, mental health and wellbeing, and physical health and illness. For example, we consider recommendations for policy and structural reforms to the education system which attempt to address practices that reinforce institutionalised classism as well as racism and the ways in which the two often intersect (e.g. Langhout & Mitchell, 2008; Langhout, Drake, & Rosselli, 2009). We also consider critiques of current dominant therapeutic models and practices as

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inadequate in tackling class-related problems and meeting the needs of poor and working-class service users (Liu, Ali, Soleck, Hopps, Dunston, & Pickett Jr, 2004; Melluish & Bulmer, 1999), as well as recommendations for addressing such shortcomings. These include multicultural competency training that fully integrates social class, class privilege and classism in order to understand the impact of these on individual wellbeing (Bullock & Limbert, 2009) and the exploration of the client’s psychological suffering through a ‘class lens’ (Liu et al., 2004). Finally, the chapter critiques current health-risk reduction and health promotion interventions that are based largely upon mainstream social-cognitive understandings of the causes of ill-health and ‘risky’ health practices, and which often target the poor and working-class. We argue that such approaches, amongst other things, can result in class-biased healthcare delivery (e.g. Poulton et al., 2002) and often fail to take the social and cultural aspects of health and illness into account (e.g. Chamberlain & Murray, 2009). The aim of the final chapter is to scrutinise a number of key, ongoing issues and debates in relation to analyses of class and class politics. For example, the popularity of poststructuralist and intersectional approaches in the social sciences has been critiqued by commentators as resulting in the ‘death’ of class analysis (e.g. Fisher, 2013). We also consider arguments presented by those such as Parker (1992) that a relativist approach can lead to political immobilisation. In addition, concerns have been raised about the ability of critical, discursive approaches to adequately capture the ‘extra-discursive’ components of social class, including the material realities of social class and poverty and the role of emotions and desires or ‘affect’. We attempt to respond to some of these critiques by, for example, considering the important role of values in critical discursive work and an analysis of affect as discursive practice. Finally, we consider some future directions for critical research on social class focussing on three areas: the accounting practices of the privileged; the usefulness of critical community psychology and participatory action research (PAR) for scholar-activists; and finally, the urgent need to understand and address the impact of coronavirus on working-class people, families and communities.

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2 Psychology and Social Class: The Working-Class as ‘Other’ (Bridgette Rickett)

Introduction This chapter aims, first, to focus on the themes central to contemporary research and theory within mainstream psychology around social class and, second, analyse the interrelationship with this present psychology and the history of the psychology of social class. By doing this, we will tease out a selection of ways in which the discipline of psychology has researched, theorised and practiced social class and how these ways have accounted for where we are now. Using this approach, we will consider arguments presented by those such as Blackman (1996) that the ‘psy’ disciplines have a history of individualism which shores up governmentality, regulation and pathologisation where the working-class are concerned and we will provide examples to illustrate this. We will also argue that these psychological accounts have enabled notions of class oppression, poverty and inequality to be an ‘absent present’ within this murky history. Last, despite this, we are able to review and highlight some examples of mainstream psychological work examining social class which have offered us an opportunity to, first, question social conditions and practices and, second, explore how these may contribute to class-related psychologies. © The Author(s) 2020 K. Day et al., Critical Social Psychology of Social Class, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55965-6_2

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Social Class and the ‘Psy’ Disciplines: A Troubled History Mainstream psychology and associated disciplines have historically pursued a scientific study of the human mind following a paradigm of positivism. This has been guided by the principles of objectivity, knowability and deductive logic which have mainly operated from the assumption that our minds and our practices can and should be studied scientifically, in a value-free manner, to pursue an objective, empirical and knowable truth (see Teo, 2018). Through this individualist philosophical lens, our practices are considered to result from the materiality or ‘workings’ of the human mind. However, rather than an objective value-free science, the discipline of psychology has been guilty of assuming, reproducing and arguably, constructing particular standards of personhood that serve to give value to one category of personhood while positioning others as left wanting. This produces disciplinary benefit for certain, standardised groups in our society. For example, feminists have long argued that psychology has assumed a male standard which locates men as a reference point which women are regarded unfavourably against or simply ignored (Gilligan, 1982). While Black psychologists and critical race theorists have similarly argued that White has historically been constructed and thereby treated as the standard and a ‘default’ (Richards, 2012) while people of colour are silenced as ‘non-white’ or derogated ‘other’ and in the process raced. Unsurprisingly perhaps, given this history, ‘class’ has often been a euphemism for ‘workingclass’, therefore the ‘other’ to the middle-class (Blackman, 1996). In turn, working-class people have had their selfhood, lives, relationships and day-to-day practices either habitually neglected in a manner that suggests voluntary inattention, or othered to signify pathology. Taking Foucault’s notions of genealogy (Foucault, 1971) or as Blackman argues as ‘history of the present’ (p. 364, 1996—see Chapter 3), the rest of this chapter aims to demonstrate that this present pathological other has been often constructed as naturally occurring, biologically determined and outside of normative selfhood. We will argue that this classed production of normal and abnormal personhood has been sustained through dominant discourse in regimes of truth within psychology that

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shape the way certain groups have been and continue to be treated. For example, Walkerdine (1990) argues that while a concept of freedom and full autonomy may be central to the normative modern bourgeoisie, ‘abnormal’, and inferior others are argued to require restrictions on such freedoms as a result of such ‘abnormalities’. Therefore, it follows that for those that deviate from the normal and ‘natural’ middle-class subject, state level interventions are required to regularise (Foucault, 1976) and massify so as to target them for: enforced medical procedures (e.g. forced sterilisation, Stern, 2016); regular quantification (e.g. IQ testing), behaviour modification (e.g. to make ‘healthier choices’); and social exclusion and containment (e.g. from asylums to modern penal spaces). Much of the justification of these ideas in psychology derive from early ‘psy’ disciplines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries where scholars of ‘old’ Social Darwinism heavily relied on individualism, essentialism and biological determinism (inordinate attention on the biological, particularly genetic, factors) to argue that the poor were genetically determined to have reduced mental capacities leading to ‘abnormal’ minds (e.g. Morton, 1849) which drove ‘abnormal’ practices. Later ‘new’ theory revised old theory to add on additional biological components to Social Darwinism to posit the necessary existence of social class division. For the recently discredited (see Marks, 2019), yet ever prominent theorist Eysenck (1973), a pursuit of a social egalitarian society would be unable to override this predetermined association between genetics and social class. Indeed, authors such as Belkhir (1994) have strongly asserted that a late twentieth-century revival of Social Darwinism in psychology has produced a discursive device to convince us there is no hope for a classless society since classed differences are natural, biologically determined and evolutionary strategic to the success of humans. Drawing on these discourses of inevitable and ‘natural’ class division, modern social psychologists have also argued that similarity with hierarchical systems in animals means social hierarchies in humans formed around class difference are ‘an inevitable feature of human society’ (Argyle, 1994, p. 63). In the only previous attempt to produce an analysis of Psychology of Class research across the history of the discipline, Argyle presents ‘fact’-based chapters that present evidence for

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class differences in our relationships, work and leisure, intelligence, sex, crime, religion, health and happiness. Here we are delivered a relentless narrative of a deficient working-class and a psychologically superior middle-class. While, on the one hand, these differences are repeatedly presented as inevitable, Argyle does suggest that problematic social segregation resulting from such hierarchies, euphemised into a social-cognitive construct of ‘social distance’, could be reduced via class modification. In sum, if ‘subordinate’ working-class people could be educated into the correct ways of the world, this would improve ‘relations between the classes’ (p. 63). As Ussher (1996) sagely argues in her incisive review of the text: ‘it implicitly rejects as inadequate or second rate everything that stands as ‘working-class’ culture’ (p. 465). Later developments of social-cognitive models have also reproduced such discourse. Here, as Argyle argued, working-class people’s thinking is characterised as problematic and therefore in need of attitude change intervention to change behaviour, with the failure of such interventions being blamed on the targets who, it has been claimed, are more resistant (presumably than middle-class people) to behaviour change (Lynch, Kaplan, & Salonen, 1997), therefore in need of more effortful and focussed attention by researchers. For example, this area of research draws on cognitive processes to understand how people construct their own social world (Greifeneder, Bless, & Fiedler, 2017; Fiske & Taylor, 1991) and applies theories and methods from cognitive psychology (e.g. memory, attention, inference and concept formation) to understand how we form perceptions of others to draw differences between working-class (in this case represented by low SES) and middle-class thinking and practice. As Hepburn and Jackson (2009) have noted, ‘this internalized or “cognitivist” focus has become one of the unquestioned premises for most forms of psychology’ (p. 176) where a focus on people’s inner features and processes reduces social class to individualised personhood, and therefore causes of problematic behaviour are inside people. This model of thinking can be considered a discourse that shapes and constructs who groups of people are. For example, according to Day (2012) it positions working-class thinking and therefore behaviour as problematic (e.g. ‘Why do poor people behave poorly?’; Lynch et al., 1997) and as with Social-Darwinist derived research, under theorises the

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social/cultural aspects of life outcomes, shores up the notion of a middleclass standard of thinking and practice and justifies interventions and governance of working-class communities. Last, much of this research suffers from the fundamental problem that rather than enlightening us about social class and psychology, it relies on data from mostly men as participants, either as fathers (e.g. through measures of fathers’ education level, occupations, mean income, etc.) or as young men (e.g. the predominance of using boys/young men in school as participants), thereby invisiblising working-class women and implicitly assuming a male standard, and arguably a White standard. We will now review the three main themes in the psychology of social class; inherent deficiencies, the (ir)rational mind(set) and ‘poor’ practices.

Inherent Deficiencies: Essentialising Social Class We will now review some examples of the traditional ‘mainstream’ psychological accounts which view social class in terms of inherent deficiencies or sufficiencies. In doing so, we aim to convince the reader that, despite the value-free and objective science this research derives from, this literature deviates from positivist science in four main ways. First, there is an implicit and uncritical deployment of ideology such as ‘meritocracy’ and the ‘rational mind’ used to reason for inherent deficit in workingclass personhood. Second, these assumptions failing to be reproduced in later research and/or found to be established by unrepresentative sampling. Third, some assumptions have been highly contested and, in some extreme examples, found to arise from fraudulent research practices. Last, despite these three problems clearly flouting strict adherence to empirical methods of verification associated with positivist science, this knowledge has not been the death knell we should expect. Instead this research theme within mainstream psychology is having somewhat of a heyday. In addition, we argue that this unrelenting, ideologically-driven research programme has had a clear, damaging impact on how societies see and treat working-class people, their families and their communities.

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A first theme from this body of research is around the notion of a genetically conferred link between intelligence and social class. Early Social Darwinists within psy disciplines were very much influenced by Paul Broca (1824–1880), the renowned French neurologist who made major contributions to refining early techniques for estimating brain size. He concluded that variation in brain size was related to intellectual achievement, understood to be underpinned by an ability to think and behave ‘rationally’. Indeed, findings were said to evidence the fact that very eminent individuals had larger brains than those less eminent; men had larger brains than did women; Europeans had larger brains than Africans and the working-class (here measured through those categorised as being unskilled workers) had smaller brains than skilled workers. Such conclusions were widely accepted in the nineteenth century (e.g. Broca, 1873; Darwin, 1871; Morton, 1849; Topinard, 1878). Following the Second World War (1939–1945) and the revulsion towards Hitler’s racial policies, craniometry became associated with extreme racist atrocities and virtually ceased while the early research was scrutinised, critiqued and fell into disrepute. For example, Gould reanalysed Morton’s (1849) work and alleged ‘unconscious … finagling’ and ‘juggling’ (1978, p. 503) suggesting biases influenced the data. However, in the last three decades, as argued earlier, the purported link between brain size and intellectual capacity has been having somewhat of a renaissance in the guise of a new Social Darwinism within cognitive neuroscience. Current researchers, such as Platek, Keenan, and Shackelford (2007), have called for a renewed respect for this early nineteenth-century research. In addition, Rushton and Ankney (2009) have argued that Morton (1849) may not have doctored his results to show class and racial superiority while Michael (1988, p. 353) concluded that Morton’s research ‘was conducted with integrity’ and that it is down to ‘politically correct’ and ‘egalitarian’ conclusions to state otherwise. Along with craniometry, an additional tool to test social class differences in intellectual capacity has been via the devising and implementing of intelligence measures in formalised tests. Intelligence tests have been under attack since their inception with critics (see Eckberg, 1979) claiming that, first, they measure nothing more than test-taking skills, second, are devised and conceptualised around White middle-class

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norms and therefore biased against certain raced and classed groups, and finally, are used as tools to ‘other’ low scorers and justify class (and race) division. Despite these criticisms, shored up by the resurgence in the brain size and intelligence theoretical work, other researchers have focussed on socio-economic hierarchies of modern societies in Europe, North America and Japan. They have argued that social class (measured via SES) is significantly correlated with scores on standard IQ tests (Gottfredson, 1986; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Jensen, 1998) such as the WechslerBellevue Intelligence Scale (Wechsler, 1958) which encompassed ‘the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his [sic] environment’ (Wechsler, 1958, p. 7). The often-repeated finding is that there is a difference of nearly three standard deviations between average members of professional and unskilled social classes. Researchers argue that differences in cognitive abilities are also correlated with differences in brain size, and both brain size and intellectual ability are correlated with age, gender, race and social class. Despite no such supporting empirical evidence, it is contended that, ‘the brainsize/cognitive-ability correlations that we have reported are, in fact, due to cause and effect. This is because we are unaware of any variable, other than the brain, that can directly mediate cognitive ability’ (Rushton & Ankney, 2009, p. 151). Belkhir and Ball (1993) considered at length why such ideas, which they consider illogical, not only persist but are having a renaissance. They argue that what is troubling in this research is that class differences are said to remain fixed. But, this is impossible under laws of genetics; indeed for anyone intending to reproduce social class hierarchies in intelligence capacities, genetics would be ‘a real foe’ (p. 76) and only social, economic and political policy practices which define a child as intelligent or not as a result of their class could preserve the status quo of social class. Belkhir and Ball maintain that current mainstream work on the intelligence and social class correlation by psychologists is best understood as a rise of scientific classism, akin to scientific racism with obvious intersections with race and class subjects. That psychological work on intelligence is value-free is a ‘grandiloquent claim’ (p. 53), because it originates in a

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society that continues to have problems with social equality between the classes, and in an incapacity to distance itself from dominant discourse and classist bound ideology of our history. It is critiques such as these mainstream psychology that strengthen the argument that it is crucial that any account of class and IQ avoids this kind of reductionism that ensures such social equalities are screened out and instead located within individuals. This renewed focus, critiqued by Bekhir and Ball, has had implications for research practice beyond cognitive neuroscience and behavioural genetics. For example, Claiborne (2014) draws our attention to applied sub-disciplines such as educational psychology which still very much carries baggage from the hierarchies of class in the work such as that of Cyril Burt (e.g. 1935) in the UK and Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve in the United States. She notes that when she recently proposed a critical educational psychology group, the most enthusiastic responses were from those who wanted to reinstate such ‘old school’ views, despite the damage they caused. In Burt’s case, generations of working-class young people were excluded from adequate education as a result of fraudulent research presented as truth in advice to policymakers who supposed that working-class people were less intelligent and therefore needed less education. One explanation for this renewed interest, in the face of such a murky history, is, she argues, as a result of meritocratic discourses underpinning the earlier version of educational psychology that still dominates in mainstream psychology. Meritocracy, while formally considered to be a social system, is also strongly conveyed via rhetoric, discourse and ideals around the existence of a social system whereby people’s success in life depends primarily on their talents, abilities and effort. The idea of a meritocracy has served the argument that social inequality results from unequal merit rather than discrimination, social injustice and poverty (Littler, 2013). When this is applied to social class, a body of literature seeks to pose questions that either assume the existence of a meritocracy or rest on the theory that being working-class is as a result of a lack of talent, abilities and effort rather than as a result of structural and political inequality.

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This body of research seeks to examine, first, whether persons of a working-class (or lower class) background have lower levels of intelligence than their middle (or upper-class) counterparts, and second, whether these lower levels can, in part, explain their social and economic hierarchical positioning in work and life. A case in point is the highly cited work ‘Intelligence: Is It the Epidemiologists’ Elusive “Fundamental Cause” of Social Class Inequalities in Health?’ published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2004 by Gottfredson. This work utilises evidence that many measures of health and intellectual ability favour people located in higher class structures in that the scores adults achieve on intelligence tests are correlated with both their socio-economic and health status (e.g. Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). However, while critics (e.g. Croizet & Millet, 2012) argue that this is as a result of social inequalities, it is strongly suggested that these ideas do not hold up since multiple findings indicate an intelligence level grading through the entire class system and that these findings are constant across time and place. The paper goes on to argue that, for example, the relationship between SES and health outcomes are as a result of differences in intelligence which themselves predict achievements and social and economic positioning. By explicitly replacing the notion of unequal social class hierarchies with the notion of an IQ continuum—the ‘g’ factor—social class is dissolved into graded, intellectual capabilities to achieve and succeed in life. In addition, it is argued that these ‘differences’ are largely attributed to heritability to succeed and survive through the conferment of intelligence which, in turn, positions people and their families in hierarchical class structures through inheritance of these ‘capacities’. In addition, despite the author reporting that much of the research reviewed is based on father’s occupation as a social class measure and boys’ IQ as a measure of intelligence, while other research is based on young, White male participants, this issue with such unrepresentative sampling in the research is not only not discussed but the author generalises these findings to people in all class categories. A second highly cited study by Nettle (2003) focusses instead on the mechanisms for social mobility (the core goal of ‘meritocracy’). This research draws on ideas and findings that performance on intelligence tests is known to be associated with class mobility, with high

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scorers tending to move up the socio-economic hierarchy, and low scorers tending to move down, so-called the social slide. Drawing on much earlier social sciences research, it is argued that intelligence is causal in processes of social mobility by linking occupational attainment with intellectual ability. Rather than resting these ideas on the heritability of intelligence, it is acknowledged here that this process could be argued to be mediated through educational attainment. However, this is somewhat conflated with a reiteration of the findings that IQ scores are the best predictor of educational performance (McCall, 1977) and that there is evidence for a separate effect due, presumably, to the influence of intelligence on performance in the workplace itself (e.g. Waller, 1973). Lastly, the research seeks to question whether, as previous research has found (e.g. Robins, 1963), a working-class person would have to have higher levels of intelligence in order to reach a given position than someone from higher class positioning. To investigate these ideas, this research looked at longitudinal data from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS), an ongoing longitudinal study that started following a cohort of children born in 1958 and has conducted six points of data collection since on medical, educational and social and economic information. At the last sample point (in 2000) the sample size was 11.419—some 5000 smaller than its initial sample. It is important to note that this loss of sample was represented by participants fitting a working-class category and the analysis published on this data only presents results on the men in the sample. In sum, without acknowledgement, it tells us about the relationship between a middle-class man’s ‘intelligence’ and social mobility. The precise analysis looks at intelligence scores at 11 years old (General Ability Test—GAT) with attained social class (through fathers’ occupation) at the age of 42 years and ‘parent’s’ SES coded from father’s occupation at the age of birth and at the age of 11 for the participant. By subtracting the ‘parent’s’ (fathers’) class scores from the attained social class gives a score of ‘social mobility’. Results indicated a strong correlation between a father’s ‘social class’ (SES) and the child’s (male) attained ‘social class’ (SES). In addition, there was a correlation found between father’s ‘social class’ score and his son’s GAT score at 11. However, the author argues that the results show that intelligence test

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scores for all 11 year olds are associated with class mobility in adulthood uniformly across all social classes. The research also concludes that there is no evidence that (despite the lack of representative data) those from working-class backgrounds have to be disproportionately able in order to reach the professional classes, and they go on to conclude there is apparently a high level of social mobility and meritocracy in contemporary Britain. Another troubling feature of this body of research is that the location of the problem of a lack of social mobility is placed firmly within working-class/lower-class peoples rather than institutions that we see (or should see) to be responsible for provision of access to good education that are a requisite for educational success and positive health outcomes (Stephens, Markus, & Phillips, 2014). This is achieved by an uncritical reproduction of the meritocratic premise that assumes all people are exposed to the same level, quality and context of educational environment, therefore an (in) ability to achieve success within this ‘level playground’ is and must be due to something inside the working-class person, a ‘lack of ’, and to some authors (see above) an inherent deficiency. However, we know that this illusion of the ‘level playground’ is just that, and that working-class/lower-class children are repeatedly exposed to lower quality education and socio-economic disadvantage (e.g. Stansfeld, Clark, Rodgers, Caldwell, & Power, 2011). As Lott (2012) persuasively argues, even when working-class children do access well-resourced education, they are routinely short-changed; expectations from educators are much lower for them and social class can be a dominant force in the classroom whereby the working-class are ‘othered’ from the ‘ideal’ student (who is seen to be middle-class). This may leave working-class children less likely to learn, engage in education and profit from it than their middle-class counterparts (Lott, 2012). When we consider ‘intelligence’, rather than it being primarily genetically conferred, we know that successful engagement in quality schooling raises IQ scores (Brinch & Galloway, 2012) by cultivating intelligence (Martinez, 2014). As key authors have pointed out (e.g. Littler, 2013) these highly cited examples of research lead to an elitist ‘Myth of difference’ (p. 54) which continues to lead to what Dorling calls ‘apartheid education’ where

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disproportionate amounts of resources are spent on children measured or simply seen to be inherently ‘clever’, thus reiterating difference in attainment. In this model, people must be left behind, which legitimises social inequality and hierarchy while making the discourse of inequality almost impossible to raise. Lastly, uncritically reproducing the discourse of meritocracy obscures economic or/and social inequities, dissolving them into gradients of talent and inherent abilities and effort leaving it both harmful through legitimatising power and privilege and obscuring social and economic inequality as an explanation.

The (Ir)Rational Mind: Troubling Working-Class Minds Within this second research theme, the implicit and uncritical deployment of ideology such as notions of the ‘rational mind’ and ‘self-control’ are used to reason for a deficit in working-class people’s minds or ‘mindsets’. Within the positivist tradition of scientific inquiry, as argued previously, the construct of the ‘rational’ human mind is core. While critics in the deconstructionist, poststructuralist and social constructionist movements have exposed the problematic nature of traditional, modernist psychology’s claims to be founded upon a universal rationality (e.g. Burr, 2015; Ferrara & Evans, 1993; Gergen, 1999), it has traditionally been assumed that human minds possess the rational capacity to deduce, induce or otherwise grasp objects external to themselves, whereupon they can then determine the significance and meaning of those objects. As we will argue, standing back from one’s ‘self ’ or situation to gain control is often cited as a defining quality of higher order psychological activities where the self is constructed as battling between rational thought versus (irrational) feelings. These views form shared assumptions within many traditional psychological theories that see some feelings, emotions or ‘mindsets’ as the cause of not acting as we should (Laird & Apostoleris, 1996). Greeno, Collins, and Resnick (1996) have termed this the ‘cognitive/rational in psychology’ theoretical position. As previously argued, during the nineteenth century the workingclass were marked as the ‘dangerous class’ (Walkerdine, 1990) and very

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much understood to exist outside of conventions of rationality, with their bodies and practices as expressions of their dangerous, uncivilised, inferior minds while simultaneously eroticised by the ‘bourgeois imaginary’ (Johnston, 2002, p. 126). In addition, madness became viewed as a disease of sensibility which produced the working-class ‘other’, a moral disease which required treatment through the ‘morally sanitised’ asylum model where, as early psychologists argued, the dangerous classes were rendered more open to reason (Graham, 1858). However, what dominates and influences later eugenic approaches, viewed by some as psychiatric-Darwinism (see Maudsley, 1868), was a view that ‘bad stock’ was responsible for irrational minds and therefore required correction via sterilisation and containment via detainment. Within this positioning the working-class mind and body became as site for the primitive mind and body which lacked the capacity for self-regulation (Blackman, 1996). It is this history of this classed (and arguable raced and gendered) discourse of (ir)rationality which dictated that those who did not embody the rational required regulation and denial of the freedom and autonomy afforded to the middle-classes. Working-class communities have been presented as deficient in relation to self-control, which in itself is often theorised as a psychological characteristic of the mind which expresses itself in a bipolar manner (high and low). Within this framing, the (middle-class) valued standard is for high levels of selfcontrol while working-class subjectivities are constructed as being unable to control themselves due to their ‘impulses’ and their inherent ‘drives’ for immediate gratification. Similar to the rise, fall and resurgence of the IQ and social class hypotheses shored up by both a dogged adherence to positivist notions of the idealised rational mind and the uncritical reproduction of the meritocracy discourse, we also now see a re-emergence of a new Darwinism. This can be understood as cognitive rational, where our thoughts are constructed as cognitions and motivations which lay at the root of a rational mind. In turn, this rational mind is romanticised as idealised thinking and argued to serve survival. However, the irrational mind is seen to expose a clash between adaptations designed for the ancestral past and the demands of the present, therefore, troublesome and indicative of more primitive thinking.

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There is no better example of the focus on rational, adaptive selfcontrol than the concept of deferred gratification. Deferred gratification is understood as a person’s ‘willingness to defer immediate rewards in favour of delayed, more highly valued reinforcers’ (Bandura & Mischel, 1965, p. 698) and has been regarded as a key factor in the production of the ‘successful’ (middle-class) individual (see Rook, 1987). Regarded as the pioneers of theory around deferred gratification and social class, Schneider and Lysgaard (1953) followed earlier research (Davis & Dollard, 1940) focussing on ‘negro classes’ and ‘upper (presumably White) classes’ (p. 153) and argued perhaps that this research could be applicable to all of the American class system. As a result, they provided the earliest large-sample, quantitative study of a link between being middle-class (measured by SES) and a propensity to defer gratification compared with a lack of delay related to being working-class. Schneider and Lysgaard argued for this ability amongst the middle-class in all areas of life including career planning (further study versus immediate working), sexual practices (e.g. deferring sexual intercourse until becoming married) and consumption patterns (saving versus spending). Based on a sample of 15,000 high school boys, Schneider and Lysgaard found a slightly higher likelihood for middle-class than lower-class boys to have plans for further study, seen as a propensity to delay gratification. Wood (1998) argues that attention to the study findings is revelatory, e.g. the inclusion of questionnaire items such as ‘If you won a big prize, say two thousand dollars, what would you do?’ where most selected the responses that they would ‘save most of it’ as opposed to ‘spend most of it right away’. However, middle-class boys were slightly more likely to indicate saving as opposed to immediate spending (middle-class 73% versus 68% of lower-class). In addition, while most disagreed with a second item ‘In my family we always seem to be broke just before payday, no matter how much money is coming in’, the proportion of middle-class participants disagreeing was, again, slightly higher. In sum, these findings do not invite conviction for the delay of gratification for middle-class people, and the fact that lower-class boys are more likely than their middle-class counterparts to say that their family runs out of money before payday is hardly surprising.

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A second study (Brim & Forer, 1956) presented results from two questionnaire studies (from one sample of 2700 schools in Connecticut) which showed a small significant relationship between length of life planning measured in terms of weeks/months and years and father’s occupational status, and father’s education for the schoolboys only. Showing a shift from the new Social Darwinism of the adaptive rational mind, Brim and Forer did consider this relationship to be a result of both cultural differences, as well as structural conditions. However, as with the pattern emerging, it is unacknowledged that this research tells us only about boys, most of whom were White. An additional critique is that these supposed findings simply reflect larger discourses around rationality, control and social class, inherent, and reproduced in the history of psychology. For example, Levy (1976) argued that deferred gratification is a construct widely accepted as a classlinked variable despite the fact that there is no evidence to support it. Not only did Levy find no significant classed differences but in fact workingclass boys were more likely than their middle-class counterparts to choose a specific delayed reward. Despite these critiques, research from this school of thinking has continued unabated. In the 1970s, in a programme of studies aimed at identifying the psychological motivations for drinking alcohol, McClelland, Davis, Kalin, and Wanner (1972) concluded that working-class men who expressed the need for personal power and exhibited low levels of restraint were more likely to be heavy drinkers. Drinking, regarded as a behavioural manifestation expressing the need for power, was seen as an alternative to working-class men securing social power through other means such as holding a position of authority/leadership, something which is unachievable due to their lack of inhibition and impulse control. Thus, rather than considering the structural and ideological forces which shape working-class lives and limit opportunities to secure social positions of power, working-class men’s drinking and low social standing are understood as resulting from individual, psychological deficiencies (Parker, 1999) thereby justifying the status quo. Moving on to the 1990s, a similar picture emerges but moves from explicitly drawing upon a biological or inherited basis to a spurious move to social values, ‘prosocial’ practice or ‘mindsets’. For example,

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Kasser, Ryan, Zax, and Sameroff (1995) used mothers ‘nurturing style’ and family income (to measure level of social disadvantage) to reportedly find that adolescents whose mothers displayed ‘non-nurturant maternal behaviour’ (measured by type of emotional expression to child during a family interview) and had low family income were more materially-oriented, valuing financial success more than self-acceptance (e.g. hopes for autonomy), affiliation (e.g. hopes for positive relations with family/friends) and community feeling (desires to improve the world through activism). The authors argued that these young people value conformities more than self-direction therefore paying less attention to their own desires, preferring to seek rewards from external sources. Further, the authors argue that young people growing up in ‘high-crime, low-income environments’ (Kasser et al., 1995. p. 912) see conformity as a requirement for securing a job and financial success as a way of escape, therefore placing too much emphasis on money ‘relative to other more prosocial and growth-oriented values’ (Kasser et al., 1995, p. 912). Thus, personal growth, self-expression and self-directed behaviour are ideals which individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds fail to match up to. That those from middle-class backgrounds may have already acquired a level of financial security and material resources that enables them to direct their attention away from meeting basic needs and more towards ‘growth and self-expression’ is not acknowledged (Kasser et al., 1995, p. 907). In sum, poor and workingclass people are positioned as subscribing to a value system and having a ‘mindset’ which is not only different to socio-economically privileged groups but also inferior, superficial and detrimental to ‘self-development’. In addition, this justifies social inequality by implying that working-class minds and value systems are faulty while also obscuring an examination of structural and ideological barriers to social change. While Rindfleisch, Burroughs, and Denton (1997) examined links between family structure (i.e. ‘intact’ families vs. ‘disrupted’ families), levels of materialism and compulsive consumption and found that adolescents from ‘disrupted families’ had higher levels of materialism and compulsive consumption yet lower perceived levels of household wealth than those from ‘intact’ families. One explanation offered by the authors was that children from disrupted families may use material objects as

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substitutes for absent parents. Again, we are presented with a picture of working-class families as failing and dysfunctional. In addition, explanations are reduced to the level of individual blame (Parker, 1999) where significant social and material inequalities that commonly exist between single- and two-parent households are not considered, nor is the explanation that having less concern with material goods and consumption in more affluent families may be due to having less of a need for such. Within this second research theme, a classed construction of the mind and ‘mindset’ has firmly steered public policy. For example, in the UK, there has been a significant revision under way of the rational neoliberal subject towards a centring of self-control to ensure ‘good choices’ which has been figured in policy during the last three decades, a revision which is in part resourced by the contingent knowledge from psychology on to behavioural economics (Bradbury, McGimpsey, & Santori, 2013). In this refinement of the neoliberal rational subject, conceptions of happiness and success are contingent on rational moderation with motivations for ‘bad choices’ located in discourses that blame a relinquishing of self-control featured with regard to individuals who are not constituted as rational (O’Malley and Valverde, 2004; Reith, 2004). We suggest here that the costs of this normative subject making fall heavily on working-class communities.

‘Why Do Poor People Behave so Poorly?’: Cognition and Behaviour A final, third, theme of research rode in on the wave of the cognitive revolution in psychology (see Greenwood, 1999), and the rise of social cognition post the Second World War (see Fiske & Taylor, 2013—From Brains to Culture) to create a branch of social psychological research which was very concerned with social and economic impact upon lives, in particular illness ‘outcomes’. As Billig (2002) argues, rather than being simply scientific scholarship, this tradition of research reflected the climate in which it was produced, e.g. the continued assumption that there is a common, rational humanity was an argument against the Freudian and ethological understanding of the ‘blood and guts’ human

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or the instinctive position. However, despite its worthy and welcome focus on social inequalities, Wendy Stainton Rogers (1996) suggests it quickly became wrong-headed by concurrent political movements. For example, the rise of liberal humanism was wedded with this new branch of research in a ‘missionary evangelizing’ manner which promoted a type of ‘true faith’ (p. 75). This ensured that rather than it being egalitarian, it quickly became profoundly ethnocentric and served to ‘bolster the power injustices that run through the relationships between the rich and the poor, indeed anywhere where there are differentials of power’ (Stainton Rogers, 1996, p. 75). This time, rather than the working-class as social ‘animals’ battling (and losing) with rational and irrational thinking and practices, selfhood was reconstructed into a ‘faulty’ information processer, following rule bound thinking models to reach ‘poor’ decisions that would predict behaviours, soon to be called ‘health behaviours’ (a euphemism for prescribed, socially promoted behaviours). Alongside this move to self as a faulty processor, psychology became preoccupied with the wider societal health agenda where health came to be seen as the most important feature in contemporary living which impregnated most major disciplines, psychology being one of the most influenced (Crawford, 2006). As with much of the previous research already reviewed, class tends to be understood and defined in terms of SES determined by measures such as a person’s income level (or the income level of the ‘head of household’ in which they live), occupation and educational attainment. Research into inequalities in health has tended to focus on those of ‘lower SES’ and has sought to identify the biological, behavioural and psychological factors that contribute to disparities in health. For example, being from a ‘disadvantaged background’ has been associated with ‘negative’ cognitive-emotional factors such as hostility, anxiety and depression which have all been found to impact negatively on health (e.g. Hatch & Dohrenwend, 2007). The predominant focus though has been on ‘health-risk behaviours’, defined as ‘habits or practices that increase an individual’s likelihood of poor health outcomes’ (Goy, Dodds, Rosenberg, & King, 2008, p. 314). For example, as with the previous research reviewed, lower SES has been linked to a range of

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health-risk behaviours such as smoking, poor diet, physical inactivity and heavy drinking (e.g. Wardle & Steptoe, 2003). However, here, inequalities in health status are conceptualised in terms of differentials in individual health behaviours and lifestyle patterns (e.g. Richter, Leppin, & Gabhainn, 2006). Put more simply, working-class people, from this perspective, tend to be unhealthier because they do not take adequate care of their health and make poor choices. Indeed, a research paper by Lynch et al. (1997) is entitled ‘Why do poor people behave poorly?’ In attempting to answer this question, psychologists have pointed to and investigated health-related perceptions, beliefs and attitudes as determinants of health behaviour, signalling differences according to socio-economic group membership (e.g. Lee, Lemyre, Turner, Orpana, & Krewski, 2008). For instance, research into ‘health locus of control’ (beliefs about the factors controlling one’s health) and ‘self-efficacy’ (the extent to which the individual feels that they have the ability to perform a given behaviour or achieve a given outcome) has found that people from lower socio-economic groups tend to hold beliefs that result in them making ‘poorer’ behavioural choices (e.g. low HIV antiviral adherence; Halkitis & Palamar, 2007 and more opiate use in older adults with severe pain conditions; Musich, Wang, Slindee, Kraemer, & Yeh, 2019). Other examples include findings that lower SES peoples are more likely to hold beliefs that health status is due to chance rather than being under the individual’s control (e.g. Grotz, Hapke, Lampert, & Baumeister, 2011) and that people’s health is controlled largely by environmental and social factors rather than personal and lifestyle factors (e.g. Lemyre, Lee, Mercier, Bouchard, & Krewski, 2006), the implication being that the latter is not a valid belief. Such beliefs, it is proposed, contribute to a sense of helplessness and discourage efforts on the part of working-class people to maintain a healthy lifestyle (e.g. Lee et al., 2008). Unsurprisingly then, current health-risk reduction and health promotion interventions target the health behaviours of those from lower SES groups and the beliefs and attitudes believed to underpin these behaviours (Shagiwal, Schop-Etman, Bergwerff, Vrencken, & Denkta¸s, 2018; Tyhurst, 2015). Once again, here, working-class people are characterised as problematic, with the failure of such interventions being blamed on the targets who, it has been claimed, are more resistant

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(presumably than middle-class people) to behaviour change (Lynch et al., 1997). Walkerdine (2002) argues that psychology has played a special role in promoting the neoliberalist notion (which she contends is a fiction) of the subject of choice. Neoliberalist discourses (Rose, 1999) are said to be widespread in late capitalist societies and emphasise individualism, agency and the possibility of personal transformation. Similarly, Crawford (2006) argues that a good citizen is one that is widely regarded as taking personal responsibility for their health. Such discourses are detectable in the literature reviewed above wherein health inequalities are conceived of in terms of the lifestyle/behavioural choices that (working-class) people make, thereby assuming that they have choices. As discussed, the reasons for or causes of these choices are typically located within the individual in the form of cognitions and there is an assumption that these, along with the behaviours that they are regarded to underpin, can be altered or modified, even though such interventions are often unsuccessful. What becomes an ‘absent present’ within these discourses (and the literature reviewed above) are notions of poverty, inequality and class oppression (Ringrose & Walkerdine, 2008). There is some acknowledgement in the mainstream literature that class-related stressors (e.g. poverty) and discrimination may play an important role in health disparities. However, such factors have to date been underresearched and even when acknowledged, are typically treated as ‘bolt on’ variables in an overall conceptual model rather than pervasive and central issues that need to be tackled in social and political ways (see Myers, 2009). Further, such individualism/neoliberalism has important implications for notions of responsibility and blame. If we accept that people have a high degree of agency over their behaviours, have choices and can (relatively easily) change, then what follows is that (working-class) people become held as ultimately responsible and blameworthy for any harm that they suffer. Studies examining ‘self-improvement’ and lifestyle programmes on British television (e.g. Ringrose & Walkerdine, 2008) may be illuminating here. Such studies have found, for example, that the subjects to be transformed in such programmes are usually workingclass women who are depicted as insufficiently self-regulating, excessive

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and as making unhealthy lifestyle choices which in turn impact upon the health of their children. A central aim of such programmes is often to ‘shame’ these women into making changes/better choices (see Chapter 4 for further discussion of the ways in which such programmes invite ‘class disgust’ in contemporary Britain). This disgust, we would argue, is bolstered by neoliberalism. Such discourses may be played out in health settings and in the interactions between health professionals and patients/clients. For example, a documentary on ‘teen excess and the NHS’ (screened April 2009) featured footage of young (most working-class) people getting drunk and being admitted to hospital as a result and interviews with middle-class health professionals such as doctors. The young people in the programme were depicted as a significant drain on public resources. Indeed, Businelle et al. (2010) describe the primary motivation behind interventions aimed at reducing healthrisk behaviours as to ‘ultimately reduce the burden of [smoking-related] disease’ (p. 262), the implication being that the ‘burden’ refers at least in part to the financial burden on the public-purse. In addition, the oftenrepeated argument presented by the health professionals interviewed in the programme was that individuals who engage by choice in destructive health behaviours such as heavy drinking are not worthy (or are certainly less worthy) of NHS treatment than ‘others’ (e.g. the elderly). Such views may result in ‘class-biased’ health-care delivery which in turn can contribute to and bolster long-lasting health inequalities (Poulton et al., 2002). Within this research, first, there is a widespread and uncritically accepted notion that the working-classes characteristically engage in health-risk behaviours. It is perhaps important to point out here that there is mixed empirical evidence surrounding SES and some types of health-risk behaviour. For example, some studies have suggested that those from lower socio-economic groups (particularly young people) are sometimes less likely to engage in health-risk behaviours such as problem-drinking (see Kuntsche, Rehm, & Gmel, 2004; Richter et al., 2006), possibly due to a lack of financial resources to support this. Secondly, (working-class) people are conceptualised as having choices and all too often as making the wrong ones with regard to their behaviours and how they live their lives. The causes for poor health

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behaviours/choices are seen as residing mostly within the individual and therefore modifying these internal factors has been the central aim of interventions. Thirdly, those who engage in health-risk behaviours (and the person who does so is usually portrayed or imagined as working-class) are regarded as a drain on public resources.

Shifting the Blame and Highlighting Injustice Finally, we present some examples of mainstream social-cognitive psychological research that has explicitly attempted to draw our attention to the impact of social inequalities on our selfhood, thereby shifting our focus away from individual levels of blame and responsibility to societal processes, practices and structures. Going back to our first theme, ‘Inherent Deficiencies: Essentialising Social Class’, our first example is a body of experimental work that has troubled both the taken-for-granted individualist myth of social class as a cause of intellectual capacities, and second, that meritocracy is the explanation for social hierarchies. Instead, this work highlights the considerable impact of stigma and normative ideologies around economic inequities on measured performance in measures such as intelligence tests. A good example of this work is Spencer and Castano’s (2007) work that is primarily interested in classism in the classroom, theorised as ‘class bias’. Using research that suggests that teachers display classism when estimating their students’ abilities, the paper goes on to review a number of stereotypes associated with working-class children and held by middleclass educators and others. For example, educators described middle-class children as ambitious, whereas working-class children were ‘low-ability’, and ‘angry and at risk’ (Brantlinger, 2003, p. 90). However, the focus is on the existence of what is termed ‘stereotype threat’. ‘Stereotype threat’ is predicted to produce poor performance on tests as a result of the fear of confirmation of stereotypes. Spencer and Castano report conducting an experiment which consisted of 15 difficult questions from the verbal section of a general intelligence test. The experimental manipulation

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occurred through making social class salient to the children by the attachment to the materials of a demographic form that asked for parents’ income and occupation. The participants either filled out the form before or after completing the test. The former condition produced what the researcher named ‘identity priming’ which, in working-class children, created underperformance (compared with their middle-class counterparts) if they have their class made salient before the test. However, and importantly, they performed equal to their middle-class counterparts if they had their class made salient after the test. Therefore, in Spencer and Castano’s 2007 work, it is argued that negative stereotypes associated with working-class children result in ‘stereotype threat’ which produces poor performance on IQ tests as a result of students fearing confirmation of such stereotypes. Worryingly, provision of the kind of demographic information required in the research is commonplace before school and college tests and working-class children who apply for financial support for the costs of tests (common in the United States) often experience ‘humiliating’ (p. 428) levels of attention to these demographics to prove they are poor enough to be eligible. The research concludes that socioeconomic inequalities are one of the ‘last frontiers’ (p. 432) and we need now to recognise that economic diversity is a factor that relates to achievement. We now also need to find a way to combat such prejudice and the negative impact that this has on lives. Indeed, Croizet and Millet (2012) comprehensively reviewed stereotype threat research and were so convinced by the potential harm of ideology and practices in everyday testing that they concluded that: ‘Stereotype threat is the psychological manifestation of a symbolic violence embedded in evaluative settings. We suggest that future research should investigate how ideology (stereotypes), institutional practices (evaluative settings), and behaviour (performance) work together to recycle power and privilege into individual differences in intellectual merit’ (p. 188). A second example of mainstream psychological work provides us with a head-on critique of the research presented in our final theme, ‘“Why do poor people behave so poorly?”: Cognition and behaviour’. It does so by directly shifting the focus towards social and economic inequalities

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faced by working-class communities. Here, rather than feelings of a lack of control causing ‘poor choices’ thereby holding working-class people as directly responsible for their own ill-health, Manstead (2018) reviews the growing experimental social psychological research that has established that differing levels of self-reports of so-called low ‘self-efficacy’, ‘locus of control’ or a person’s sense of control, etc. are caused by feeling part of a hierarchical social class structure. This body of research is heavily influenced by sociologists such as Catherine E. Ross (Ross, Mirowsky, & Pribesh, 2001) who persuasively argues that communities with high levels of crime, all too common in areas of social disadvantage, shape perceptions of powerlessness to avoid or manage the threat and sense of personal control is eroded, causing feelings of alienation and depression. Following this line of argument, social-cognitive psychologists have experimentally manipulated subjective social class and examined the effects on measured different thoughts and feelings around control. They found that those with lower subjective social class status are also lower in their sense of personal control which is related to a preference for situational attributions for a range of social phenomena. In sum, the theory is that those who grow up in workingclass communities are likely to have fewer resources available to them, and this therefore is likely to explain various phenomena, ranging from income inequality to broader social outcomes that are beyond the control of the individual and therefore less self-determined (Kraus, Piff, and Keltner, 2009). Indeed, results from four different experiments found that there was a significant indirect effect of social class on the tendency to see phenomena as caused by external factors, via perceived control. In summarising these findings, along with other class-based findings, Manstead (2018) argued that: “The social class differences [in differing feelings of control] reviewed here have their origins in economic inequality, it follows that redistributive policies are urgently needed to create greater equality”. (p. 287)

These two examples of research, while following positivist psychology and using empirical experimental research and therefore mainstream in

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every way, manage to resist the kinds of reductionist accounts of social class differences reviewed in this chapter by shifting the focus from individual level deficiencies to social inequalities and making a call for social and policy change that addresses such inequalities.

Summary We have illustrated, through highlighting such examples of contemporary mainstream psychology, that experimental research can be more sympathetic to the anguish, pain and suffering associated with workingclass experiences, is able to formulate more complex psychosocial accounts of working-class minds and practices, and can and does seek to locate responsibility away from the individual. However, most of the research we reviewed fails to meet any of these standards. In sum, this chapter reviewed traditional and mainstream psychological research that has examined the relationship between class (or socio-economic status) and intellectual capacities, impulse control, attitudes, cognitions, motivations and behaviours. In doing so, we can now conclude that such accounts have not just obscured social and economic inequalities by leaving these unexamined, but have also served to rationalise and justify these by suggesting that they are the natural and inevitable consequence of differences in intelligence, minds, motivations, rational decision-making and so on and that social mobility is not fully possible for the ‘faulty’ working-class. We also argued that these accounts, some increasing in popularity, often derive from poor science, are generalised beyond their mainly male (and often White) samples and uphold politically conservative ideals such as meritocracy, thereby challenging the positivist ideal that empirical, mainstream work in psychology is politically neutral and objective. We also contend that the reproduction of such meritocratic and neoliberalist discourses around class leaves working-class people to be regarded as either a drain on or waste of public resources or as deserving of their social and economic positioning. This, along with notions of

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individualism and agency, bolsters classism (see Tyler, 2008). In addition, this mainstream psychology has played a pivotal role in this and rather than these ideas abating, in some instances they are having a renaissance (e.g. meritocracy and new Darwinism). It is unclear, and perhaps uncharitable to conclude that psychologists have intentionally set out to blame vulnerable people and place sole responsibility for social, economic or health outcomes on to individuals. However, as Day previously concludes in her analysis of health psychology and class (2012) ‘critical psychologists are concerned with the outcomes or consequences of theorising, empirical claims and actions (for example, interventions) rather than the intentions of individual psychologists’ (p. 65). We conclude that these potential outcomes, like the discourses that shore them up, have increased in popularity, and, therefore potentially pose more danger to working-class communities now than they have in more than a century. These dangers are both from the impact of policies aimed towards them and through the day-to-day practices towards them that are produced and sustained by such governmentality. For example, buttressed by classist ideology, or as Belkhir termed ‘Scientific Classism’, that has saturated much of the research reviewed in this chapter, just four years ago the UK publication, The Spectator (2016) warned us of the ‘The chilling return of eugenics’ in the UK. More recently we’ve seen, heard and read about government officials openly calling for a return to eugenics through policy ideas such as forced contraception for workingclass young people (UK Government Adviser Andrew Sabisky, reported in 17/02/2020, The Guardian). Finally, having reviewed the worst and best of traditional psychological research and theorising around social class (or socio-economic status), in our next chapter, Chapter 3, we will now turn to what critical social psychology is and what it has to offer us in our understanding of social class.

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3 Conceptualising Social Class: Towards a Critical Social Psychological Approach (Maxine Woolhouse)

Introduction Chapter 2 discussed historical and contemporary mainstream psychological research and theorising around class and drew our attention to the ways in which, purportedly, ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’ science has predominantly essentialised, pathologised and in some instances demonised poor and working-class people. Illuminated in the previous chapter, is the way in which mainstream psychology is politically-loaded, infused with conservative and neoliberal ideology while at the same time claiming to be ‘value-free’. The overriding aim of the present chapter is to make a case for a critical social psychology of class. By way of doing so, it begins with a discussion of the antecedents to (what is now commonly referred to as) critical psychology and what we regard as some of its key influences, namely feminism, Marxism and poststructuralist/discursive thinking. Along the way, we present a selection of research drawing on each of these approaches, and finally sketch out what we think a critical social psychology of class might look like.

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Undercurrents of and Key Influences on Critical Social Psychology In order to understand the emergence of, and key themes embedded within critical social psychology, it is useful to begin with a discussion of what has come to be known as ‘the crisis’ in social psychology. During the 1960s and 70s, many psychologists raised a whole number of concerns regarding the state of the discipline of psychology, but in particular social psychology wherein attention was drawn to ‘fundamental paradigmic problems’ (Kim, 1999, p. 2). Amongst the many and varied criticisms levelled at the discipline were: (1) the problem of reductionism and a narrow focus on the individual (e.g. Pepitone, 1976; Sampson, 1978); (2) an over-reliance on experimental methods and statistics (e.g. Boulding, 1980; Levine, 1974); (3) is historically- and culturally-bound (e.g. Berry, 1978; Gergen, 1978; Sampson, 1978); and (4) misguided in its claims to be objective and value-free (e.g. Gergen, 1973; Sampson, 1978). All of these problems (amongst others) are central in the shaping and formation of critical social psychology and are therefore discussed in further detail below.

Reductionism and Individualism A pervasive criticism during the ‘crisis’ period pertained to the theoretical unit of analysis assumed in most social psychological research. That is, psychological and behavioural phenomena observed in experimental and real-world settings are assumed to be the result of individual (and internal) characteristics and processes (Pepitone, 1976). Sampson (1977) referred to this as ‘self-contained individualism’ (p. 769) which is central to the North American cultural ethos and reflected in social psychological research and theorising. Reductionism and individualism were argued (and still are) to be problematic for several reasons. First, because it offers understandings of human behaviour which are purported to be universal, generalisable and value-free (Pepitone, 1976; Sampson, 1977, 1978) when quite clearly

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they are not—rather, they reflect the particular individualistic-oriented cultural lens of those promoting such interpretations. Sampson (1977) argues that the self-contained individual (e.g. self-sufficient and ‘needing or wanting no one’—p. 770) is the ideal model of the person in North America and, as a consequence, psychological concepts are based around this; those who do not ‘measure up’ are found to be lacking and inferior. To illustrate this, Sampson (1977) uses the example of altruism and the characterisation of an ‘altruistic person’ presented by Bryan (1972). Bryan argued that a helpful person may actually be interfering, moralistic, simply conforming to socially expected standards of behaviour, and generally curtailing the individual freedoms of those who are recipients of their altruism. Sampson (1977) notes how such an interpretation of prosocial behaviour is only understandable in an individualistic-oriented cultural context: ‘Egoism and altruism are in opposition only in an individualistic setting; their opposition is not written in granite, genetics, or our fundamental human psychology’ (p. 770). A second problem of reductionism and individualism in the discipline is that any difficulties that people experience are regarded as residing within them. For example, workers who experience occupational stress are sometimes regarded as having ‘faulty’ perceptions of stressful situations or an inability to successfully cope with work-related pressures (Richardson & Rothstein, 2008). When conceptualised in this way, the solutions to such problems are targeted at the individual, for example offering cognitive-behavioural skills training, meditation, help with goal setting and so forth (Richard & Rothstein, 2008). The obvious implication here is that by locating people’s problems as individual and internal, it detracts from the wider sociocultural, economic, political and structural conditions which produce such problems in the first place, necessitating the individual to adapt to those conditions and meaning that problematic institutions need not change (Marecek & Hare-Mustin, 2009). A further implication is that of victim blaming politics; if an individual is seen as deficient in some way, then they become the problem and the solution to any difficulties they experience (Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2009).

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Experimental Methods and Statistics The predominant use of experiments and statistics in social psychology also came under attack from numerous critics during the ‘crisis’ period. Broadly, these criticisms fell into two camps, one being focussed on the technical shortcomings of experiments (but shortcomings which could be addressed through conducting ‘better science’—Hepburn, 2003; see Romanyshyn, 1971, for a critique of the ‘do better science’ arguments) and the other camp arguing that experimentalism is not suited to the subject matter of (social) psychology. It is the arguments from this latter camp which are shared by most critical psychologists and therefore of concern here. The central argument around which others cohere is that human behaviour and experience is far too rich and complex to be suited to experimental methods (e.g. Brewster Smith, 1972; Elms, 1975; McGuire, 1973; Romanyshyn, 1971). For example, Brewster Smith (1972) stated that there is an incongruity between experimental methods and social psychological phenomena and that such methods had contributed very little to advance our understanding of humanity. Results from experimental research would only ever provide, at best, a partial and skewed glimpse into human psychology. Critics highlighted that human activity is purposeful, interactional and is time- and contextdependent; people are engaged in sense-making and invested in their actions—none of these can be explored nor understood through their participation in experiments (e.g. Brewster Smith, 1972; Elm, 1975; Gergen, 1973; McGuire, 1973; Romanyshyn, 1971. Also see Hepburn, 2003). As Brewster Smith (1972) pointed out, the experiment is a social interaction yet, we mostly only ever read about statistical interactions. Nevertheless, the strength of the commitment to experimental methods, measurement, quantification and statistics prompted critics to argue that methods were dictating what types of things were studied; aspects of human life not amenable to scientific investigation, measurement and/or quantification were being overlooked (Cartwright, 1979; McGuire, 1973; Romanyshyn, 1971). For example, McGuire (1973) lamented about the discipline’s lack of relevance to real-world problems

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while Romanyshyn (1971) suggested that psychology’s dogged commitment to notions of objectivity and experimental methods has almost exclusively defined the nature of the discipline: ‘In effect, the choice of a particular method for a psychological experiment means the creation of a circumscribed, well-defined universe within which certain events are attended to while others are ignored’ (p. 99). Not only was it argued that experiments and measurement were not the ‘right tools for the job’ and limited the scope of our enquiries, but that aspects of the experimental situation were unethical. By their very nature, experiments require the researcher to pre-determine a limited set of response options (Danziger, 1990) and therefore serve as a form of social control whereby the participant has little choice but to adhere to the rules of engagement (failing to do so renders their participation invalid—Romanyshyn, 1971). As such, it was argued that experiments are depersonalising and dehumanising, removing agency from the participant and creating a power imbalance between the observer and the observed. Romanyshyn (1971) argued that in the name of striving for supposed objectivity, the experimenter and the subject (participant) must remove their personhood from the experimental setting, resulting in the researcher only being interested in the subject (participant) as data source, not in the subject as person. In sum, he concludes that the relationship between the researcher and participant is one characterised by ‘power, deception and manipulation’ (p. 100).

Historically- and Culturally-Bound During the ‘crisis’ period, a number of scholars (from in and outside the discipline) argued that psychological knowledge produced does not represent the steady accumulation of ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ which exist independently of our activities; rather, such knowledge is a product and reflection of the time and place within which it is produced. Particular cultural and historical lenses will shape every aspect of knowledge production processes, from the types of phenomena selected for investigation, the methods employed, and the ways in which research ‘findings’ are interpreted (Cartwright, 1979).

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For example, Cartwright (1979) argued that the Second World War was the most important single influence on the shaping of social psychology in terms of the types of phenomena to be investigated (e.g. conformity; obedience; prejudice; inter-group conflict and so on) and the typical demographic of social psychologists, i.e. White, male, middleclass North Americans (due to the collapse of social psychology in Europe and the migration of many European social psychologists to the United States). This resulted in the discipline very much reflecting the values, concerns and political ideology of North American society. Cartwright provides the examples of: the value placed on the individual; a belief in the power of the environment to change people; a belief in the power of rationality, science and technology to aid human progress; and a belief in the benefit of public education to bring about social change. Such beliefs came to reflect which topics of interest dominated the field, for example, attitude change, public opinion, social learning, motivational processes and so forth (Cartwright, 1979). In a similar vein, Cartwright argues that an archaeological excavation of the layers of research literature would reveal the (North American) social concerns of any given period, from sex roles in the 1970s through to post Second World War research on topics such as obedience and conformity. Similarly, Gergen (1973) argued that in the natural sciences, events are stable and therefore predictable—the passage of time does not impact on, for example, the laws of physics. The same cannot be said for human activity, which changes across time and place, and is to an extent a product of the wider cultural environment. That wider environment includes social psychological knowledge; as it enters into the public domain, people may adjust their behaviour accordingly to avoid being labelled in undesirable ways (e.g. ‘the conformist’) and begin to understand themselves and others through the very concepts which psychology has manufactured. Thus, rather than social psychologists establishing universal and transhistorical laws of human behaviour, they are at best telling us something about a small number of people in a particular time and place. For this reason, Gergen claimed that ‘social psychology is primarily an historical inquiry’ (1973, p. 610).

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Misguided in Its Claims to Be Objective and Value-Free The ‘crisis period’ also prompted challenges to the cherished belief that psychological research and knowledge is objective and uncontaminated with values. For example, Sampson (1978) argued that mainstream psychology operates on the assumption that it is simply discovering pure facts and that the knower’s perspective is separable and separate from the knowledge produced. So deeply entrenched is this assumption, he argues, that it is illustrated by the fact that Rosenthal (1966) apparently ‘discovered’ experimenter effects rather than these being a given. Counter to this assumption of objectivity (and mirroring Cartwright, [1979] and Gergen, [1973] as outlined above), Sampson argued that facts and truths are always embedded within and shaped by the particular contexts within which they are produced, and rather than this being something to be ‘dealt with’, it should be regarded as ‘part of the very process by which knowledge and facts are generated’ (p. 1334). Clearly, the concerns raised during the ‘crisis period’, as discussed above, paved the way for the emergence of a radically alternative approach to conceptualising and studying psychology, one that has come to be known as ‘critical social psychology’. Although it is generally agreed that critical psychology proves difficult to define (Chamberlain & Murray, 2009) and is by no means a unified field (Parker, 2015), there are undoubtedly some shared concerns and values amongst those who identify as ‘critical psychologists’ (and indeed amongst those who may not identify as such). Parker (2015) summarises these shared understandings arguing that critical psychologists (i) object to the artificial division between ‘psychologists’ and their subjects of study (i.e. ‘nonpsychologists’) and the unequal relations of power produced in the researcher-researched relationship; (ii) object to the study of the individual in isolation from their social, political, cultural and economic surround; (iii) reject hypothetico-deductivism and the associated use of experimental methods; (iv) challenge the mainstream belief that they are merely describing human behaviour rather than engaging in interpretation; and (v) related to the previous point, challenge the purported objectivity and value neutrality of mainstream psychological research.

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This ‘critical lens’ was adopted in various guises by feminists, Marxists and more recently poststructuralist scholars and their thinking has influenced the development of critical (social) psychology. It is to this work that we now turn.

Feminist Psychology: The Place of Social Class in Women’s Lives Feminist psychologists were amongst the first wave of critics to draw attention to the shortcomings of mainstream psychology (voicing all the concerns discussed above) but in particular they argued that the discipline did nothing to serve the interests of women. As Wigginton and Lafrance (2019) argue, Naomi Weisstein (1968 cited in Wigginton & Lafrance, 2019) was one of the first feminist psychologists to draw attention to the androcentric nature of the discipline, resulting in the portrayal of women as either irrelevant and therefore unworthy of study (Crawford & Marecek, 1989) or as deficient, abnormal and generally as a problem (Tavris, 1993). It was noted how in psychological research and theory, men were treated as the norm to which women (when considered at all) were unfavourably compared, serving to bolster the notion of male superiority (Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1988). Specifically, feminist psychologists challenged traditional, mainstream psychological research on a number of levels, for example, the observation that most research participants were White, middle-class males (e.g. Lott, 1985; Lykes & Stewart, 1986) with women largely being excluded (Lott, 1985; Lykes & Stewart, 1986; Unger, 1979). Furthermore, findings from White male samples were generalised to establish universal psychological and behavioural norms believed to be representative of all humans (Lykes & Stewart, 1986). Unger (1979) also noted that research areas in which males were defined as the most appropriate participants were also those that received the most attention, for example the disproportionate number of studies on achievement as opposed to nurturance, studies on aggression rather than cooperation and so forth. Additionally, where women have been the ‘subjects’ of investigation, feminists have

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argued that they are often found lacking and inferior to men (Eagly, 1995; Lott, 1985; Lykes & Stewart, 1986; Marecek, 1989; Morawski, 1997; Unger, 1979, 1982).

Feminist Psychology and Social Class For the most part, early feminist psychologists working in the early 1970s set out to address the discipline’s shortcomings by increasing the inclusion of women and conducting ‘better science’ (Magnusson, 2011) without confronting the underpinning philosophical assumptions and methodological traditions upon which the discipline was built. However, not all feminist psychologists agreed with the ‘add women and do better science’ approach and, especially in later decades, began to directly challenge ‘…the very epistemic roots of science’ (Morawski, 1997, p. 671). Later feminist psychological scholarship, in line with the broader movement often referred to as the ‘turn to language’ (e.g. Burman & Parker, 1993; Potter & Wetherell, 1987) and an increased interest in identity work, saw a greater recognition of intersectionality (Magnusson, 2011). For example, work began to flourish investigating the ways that gender, ‘race’, sexuality, class (and so forth) shape women’s psychological experiences (Magnusson, 2011; Ostrove & Cole, 2003). However, as outlined previously in Chapter 1, Ostrove and Cole (2003) argued that compared with gender and ‘race’, class has received less attention. Nevertheless, there is a considerable body of feminist work on class to which our attention now turns. In the UK context, feminist psychologists began to trouble the notion of class mobility and the assumption that ‘climbing the social ladder’ is, without question, desirable and unproblematic. In a special issue in 1996 of the journal Feminism & Psychology, Walkerdine noted how a small number of women from working-class backgrounds had entered psychology and were conducting research on classed identities and subject formation informed by their own class transition experiences (including Walkerdine herself ). For example, Walkerdine (1996) discusses the emotional conflict experienced by her and others who

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have pride in their achievements (e.g. having moved into a professional job) but feel pain, loss and guilt for what and whom they have left behind, and struggle to feel ‘at home’ in their new middle-class environment. Similarly, Pini (1996) who conducted a life story interview with her mother observed a discursive tension between her mother’s pride but also embarrassment about her Irish and working-class roots, as well as a desire to escape the poverty and hardship she experienced growing up yet a dislike of inherited wealth, believing that success should be earned through hard work. What research such as this points to is that, contrary to the widespread championing of aspiration and social mobility, upwards social mobility can be emotionally painful and complex rather than a straightforward cause for celebration as we are often told. More recently, Morris and Munt (2019) explored the opposite trajectory; that is, the experiences of White British middle-class women who had unexpectedly become single mothers. A common narrative drawn upon by the mothers was that of the Judeo-Christian ‘fall from grace’ (p. 235), which, as the authors note, is more associated with women (than men) and depicts a state of decline (usually moral decline). The mothers had envisaged following a ‘respectable’ heteronormative middleclass life trajectory consisting of marriage to the fathers of their child/ren and all the trappings of a middle-class lifestyle. However, finding themselves single (for a variety of reasons), they expressed a sense of shame, disappointment, failure and envy of what they construed as the ideal, middle-class two-parent family. While some of the mothers recognised the stigmatised and vilified status of single mothers which they felt was unfair, others drew upon the ‘feckless and benefit-scrounging’ discourse (discussed in further detail in the following chapter) and were keen to distance themselves from those Other single mothers who had supposedly opted for lone parenthood as a lifestyle choice. For example, one participant talked about another single mother she knew who has ‘six children by four different fathers’ is ‘on the social’ and has ‘regular gym sessions and lovely nails’ and ‘I pay tax to support that’. Not only does this research powerfully illustrate the intersections of class, gender, sexuality and ‘race’, but also the utter contempt directed towards the working-class or in this specific case, working-class single mothers,

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and the discursive strategies employed by (some) middle-class (single) mothers to dissociate themselves from the abject Other. Within feminist scholarship on class, much attention has been paid to educational contexts, which Ostrove and Cole (2003) argue are an ‘ideal stage on which to watch the dynamics and contradictions of class play out in both individual and social psychology’ (p. 678). For example, in the US context, Ostrove (2003) explored the recollected experiences of working- middle- and upper-class White women of attending an elite college in the 1960s, with a particular focus on their experiences of ‘belonging’ and ‘wanting’. Unsurprisingly they found that the experiences of these groups of women differed significantly according to their class background. A sense of alienation, predominantly experienced by working-class women, was tied to things such as feeling poorly academically prepared and academically inferior, and experiencing social isolation and having financial constraints. In contrast, a sense of belonging and fitting in was most common amongst the upper-class women and related to following the family tradition (e.g. their mothers being alumni of the college) and fulfilling family expectations. Finally, for the working-class women, attending an elite college represented an opportunity for social mobility and for garnering family pride in ways that it did not for the upper-class women. In sum, the women’s class backgrounds and previous educational experiences very much marked out who belonged in the elite space and who did not, and for the working-class women (and some of the middle-class women) produced painful feelings of inadequacy and isolation in contrast to the upper-class women whose experiences were self-affirming. Staying within the US educational context, Jones (2003) interviewed female university professors from working-class backgrounds and of various ethnic identities. The aim was to explore their subjectivities and consciousness of class. She found that within the space of academia, their classed identities were particularly salient and coupled with their own experiences of classism and a lack of belonging in educational contexts; they made a conscious effort to incorporate teaching about social class into their courses wherever possible. One participant, a second-generation Latina who taught predominantly White workingclass students, found that they were resistant to engaging in class issues,

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something which she attributed to their unquestioning belief in meritocracy—individual hard work alone would result in their social mobility. Similarly, a Polish American participant made a conscious effort to incorporate teaching about class issues into her History classes but had to frame these as ‘conflicted interests’ as her students were from uppermiddle class, wealthy backgrounds and who, in the participant’s own words, ‘don’t get class’ (p. 815). Lisa, an African American participant, noted how her female working-class students of colour tended to overprivilege gender or ‘race’ but under-privilege class; in other words, they didn’t have the same consciousness of class-based oppression as they did of sexism and/or racism, something which Lisa as their professor tried to address with them. In the UK and other parts of the world, increasing numbers of working-class young people are entering higher education (Stich & Freie, 2016, cited in Reay, 2018). While in popular discourse this is presented as something to be celebrated and a sign of social mobility and future success, as Reay (2018) points out, the reality is much more complex and muddied. Research conducted with working-class students in higher education suggests their experiences to be depressingly negative (for the most part). For example, Reay, Davies, David, and Ball (2001) conducted interviews with working-class university applicants and found they were beset with anxieties, fear and ambivalence in ways that their middle-class counterparts were not through their greater resources of social, cultural and economic capital. For example, one participant, a Chinese working-class student, turned down an offer from Cambridge when he realised the huge disconnect between the institution (e.g. its buildings, culture and traditions, etc.) and everything that was familiar to him. Another participant, a Black working-class woman, discussed the dilemma of wanting to attend a more ‘prestigious’ university but not wanting to ‘stick out like a sore thumb’ (Reay et al., 2001, cited in Reay, 2018, p. 533) or attending a ‘lower status’ university which would have a greater number of Black and working-class students. In a later study, Reay, Crozier, and Clayton (2009) examined the experiences of working-class students who were attending an ‘élite’ UK university, with a focus on the processes of exclusion exercised by the dominant middleand upper-middle class students. Participants told tales of the classist

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remarks made by other (non-working class) students; their exclusion from social clubs and activities; feelings of not being clever enough; and a longing for home and people ‘like them’. They also commonly referred to the university as a ‘bubble’ and separate from normal life and the real world. One strategy they employed to counter their lack of social and cultural capital (and relative social isolation) was to immerse themselves in their studies and capitalise on their academic ability. The authors argue (echoing the participants) that such elite institutions need to admit a much more diverse student population, not just for the academic opportunities that may be offered to students, but for what working-class and other minority groups can offer to the social culture of élite universities. In sum, feminist psychologists have drawn attention to the androcentrism in psychology (alongside highlighting many other problems, as discussed above) and over the last several decades have produced a body of work aimed at addressing those shortcomings, including paying closer attention to other dimensions of difference and the ways in which these intersect (Magnusson, 2011). However, as we have argued elsewhere (e.g. Day, Rickett, & Woolhouse, 2014) and others (e.g. Holt & Griffin, 2005; Ostrove & Cole, 2003), there is still a relative neglect of class-focussed research in critical social psychology more generally, and feminist psychology specifically. This may be accounted for by the predominance of middle-class feminists in academia and the lack of recognition of their own classed worldview (Day et al., 2014). In addition, feminist research on class has sometimes been accused of being grounded in middle-class concerns and producing individualising and psychologised accounts of class (Brewer, 1996; Taylor, 2005). We believe, (as discussed towards the end of this chapter), adopting a critical social psychological approach will go some way to address these concerns.

Marxist Psychology: An Oxymoron? As outlined in Chapter 1, compared with other disciplines such as sociology, politics and economics, Marxist thinking has not made significant inroads into mainstream psychology (Augoustinos, 1999—although it has exerted influence on critical social psychology as discussed below).

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One of the key reasons for this is the aspiration for value neutrality in mainstream psychology and the belief that science and politics don’t mix (Arfken, 2017; Parker & Spears, 1996). As Parker and Spears (1996, p. 1) remark, ‘for psychology, the political is always only personal, and a politics that sees the personal as rooted in social relations, as Marxism does, is usually seen as a personal problem’. In addition, as implied in this quote, mainstream psychology’s focus on the individual and internal processes is deemed as incompatible with a theory with social relations and economic structures at its heart (Arfken, 2017). In a nutshell then, mainstream psychology treats those with affiliations to Marxism with suspicion. However, aspects of Marxist theory and critique (especially the emphasis on inequalities and oppression—Hepburn, 2003) have undoubtedly influenced the development of critical social psychology and critical work on class. Before discussing these ‘influences’, we first begin with a brief overview of the key tenets of Marxist theory. The central premise of Marxism is that the specific mode of production in any given historical period constitutes the economic structure of society, structures social relations and corresponds to particular forms of social consciousness (Marx, 1977 cited in Arfken, 2017). Under capitalism, work is organised around the production of surplus-value and the private ownership of the means of production (Arfken, 2017). The mode of production forms the ideological superstructure which encompasses social institutions such as the family, religion, legal systems, media, science and so forth (Hepburn, 2003). Marx saw capitalism as exploitative; not only as economically exploitative (where the owners and controllers of the means of production reap the financial rewards from the labour of the workers), but also as ‘psychologically’ exploitative in the form of alienation. First, because workers (the proletariat) produce goods which they neither own nor will utilise (Billig, 1999), they become alienated from their labour, and second, because they have to sell their labour, they become commodities in the workforce and therefore dehumanised and unable to control their own destinies (Hepburn, 2003). For Marx (and Marx & Engels, 1976 cited in Augoustinos, 1999), the mode of production and consequent social relations find their expression in the ideological superstructure; the ideas of the ruling class are always

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the dominant ideas (i.e. the economic ruling class is always the intellectual ruling class) and moreover, serve to conceal, distort and disguise the true nature of unequal and oppressive conditions and justify the inequitable system (Augoustinos, 1999). Because, according to Marx, ideology constitutes people’s consciousness, people will not be cognizant of their own exploitation (Augoustinos, 1999; Hepburn, 2003). This lack of recognition is conceptualised as ‘false consciousness’, one of the most contested concepts of Marxist theory (Goldberg, 1999). Goldberg (1999) argues that ‘false consciousness’ is to be understood not as ideology affecting the mind, but as constituting the actual content of the mind, all the while convincing people that they have arrived at their views and beliefs through individual free will and choice (we return to a discussion of ‘false consciousness’ in the final chapter). The question remains then, how does Marxist theory view the possibility for social change? For Marx and Engels (1964, cited in Hepburn, 2003) it isn’t ideas, critique nor debate that will overthrow the status quo; rather, it is only when the existing modes of production change that social change will occur, and this will only come to fruition through the proletariat organising a revolution. As capitalism advances, the true exploitative and oppressive nature of capitalism will come into sharper view as conditions for the proletariat worsen, paving the way for a socialist revolution and the emancipation of the working-classes. Quite clearly, there are some common themes apparent in Marxist theory and critical social psychology. For example, the emphasis on historically-specific cultural, political and economic contexts and structures in the formation of subjectivities rather than on individuals and internal phenomena (e.g. Islam & Zyphur, 2009); psychology as an ideology rather than a producer of truths (e.g. Parker, 2009); the goal of social transformation rather than individual adaptation to oppressive conditions (e.g. Fox et al., 2009); and an analysis of power as pivotal to understanding social relations and subjectivities (e.g. Hepburn, 2003). Specifically, such themes are evident in the body of Marxist-informed critical psychological scholarship on class, to which we now turn. In an intriguing study, Grigoryan et al. (2020) argued that there is a lack of research into class stereotypes in communist or former communist countries and, contrary to existing theories that working-class people

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are negatively stereotyped universally (Volpato, Andrighetto, & Baldissarri, 2017 cited in Grigoryan et al., 2020), proposed that people living in former communist countries would hold the working-classes in higher regard compared with populations in capitalist countries (with no communist past). The basis of their argument is that stereotypes are ideological and reflect and justify the existing social structure. For example, in meritocratic ideology characteristic of capitalist societies, success is construed as resulting from individual hard work, talent and ambition; the flip side to this is that a lack of success is seen to arise from the individual’s personal deficits rather than any kind of structural disadvantage, thus producing (to use Grigoryan et al.’s terminology) negative stereotypes of poor and working-class people (see Chapter 2). In contrast, central to the communist project was to position workers (i.e. the working-classes) as the heroes of society and in doing so, elevate their status (Grigoryan et al., 2020). To test this theory, they conducted a questionnaire study across several former communist countries and capitalist countries and found that, in the post-communist samples, working-class groups were mentioned more frequently and evaluated more positively, and the upper-classes were evaluated more negatively. Specifically, working-class people were rated as warmer, and upper-class people as less competent compared with capitalist country participant responses. In addition, in post-communist samples, the perceived competitiveness of different social classes was negatively related to their perceived warmth, they believed less in meritocracy and scored higher on embeddedness (‘collectivity’) compared with their capitalist country counterparts. The authors concluded that the findings reflected the ideological legacy of communism whereby the working-classes were held in high esteem and the upper-classes were despised, as was competitive individualism. The legacy of such values (and conversely those held in capitalist societies) shaped the ways in which participants perceived and evaluated different social groups. Drawing more explicitly on Marxist theory, Mendoza (2015) explored the experiences of women workers who had formed a cooperative as part of the Recovered Factories Movement in Argentina in the first decade of the twenty-first century after many factories had been declared bankrupt. The women had been involved in a socio-legal and political dispute

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with former employers and managers and subsequently built a cooperative based on non-hierarchical relationships and self-management. The aim was to examine how new collective identities were formed in the context of a new sociopolitical situation and the dilemmas the women faced working in a cooperative of ‘self-managed egalitarianism’ (ibid., p. 83). Analysing data from interviews conducted in the workplace with women sewing machinists, the author identified a number of dilemmas in their talk. One such dilemma revolved around the production process; on the one hand, the workers had purposefully diversified their tasks on the production line to avoid the relentless monotony of a division of labour and worked in a mutually cooperative manner, helping out slower workers and covering for absences. However, given that, in the wider context the factory had to compete in a free market economy, they still faced the pressures of production in order to pay co-workers’ wages; this meant that they felt obligated to one another and unable to ‘say no’ (ibid., p. 85). Similarly, how absenteeism and resistance to work was perceived had changed since becoming a cooperative; it was no longer a matter between the individual employee and the employer but rather a matter of responsibility towards fellow workers, as they had to undertake extra work as compensation. In terms of identity formation, Mendoza argues that the women were in the stage of consolidating a new collective identity, guided more by their moral conscience than by their previous compulsory compliance to the authority of their employer. A further dilemma for the workers was in regard to selection criteria for taking on new workers/partners; according to the logic of the old capitalist mode of production, selection should be based on existing skills and experience but, having taken on new but experienced workers, there was a threat to the egalitarian values of the cooperative as the new workers didn’t necessarily share those values and, to quote Mendoza (ibid., p. 87) ‘would jeopardize the foundational collective identity, forged by them in such a heroic struggle’. In line with Marxist theorising, Mendoza argues that the dilemmas faced by the cooperative partners and the precarity of their new collective identities were directly related to the wider capitalist context within which they were operating and thus were having to manage the competing demands of productive viability while maintaining the ethical values of the cooperative.

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Marxism undoubtedly offers a powerful critique of class relations and its impact has been far reaching and long lasting in terms of intellectual thinking and its implementation (in various guises) as state doctrine in many countries past and present (Hepburn, 2003). However, Marxist theory has always been fiercely debated and subject to numerous criticisms (Holt & Griffin, 2005). Below we discuss some of the concerns we have (as have been voiced by others) about adopting a Marxist framework for a meaningful exploration of ‘class-making’ and in doing so, make a case for a critical/discursive social psychological approach to the study of class. The first objection we raise concerns the materialist philosophy of Marxist theory and the contention that the economic base determines ‘everything that happens in society’ (Hepburn, 2003, p. 48) and one’s social class position results directly from the prevailing mode of production. That isn’t to underplay the importance of people’s position in the economic structure—clearly, this has far-reaching consequences for people’s lives. However, we argue that class encompasses far more than people’s position in the labour process (see also Chapter 1). For example, class is inscribed on to people’s bodies (‘the way value is transferred onto people’s bodies and read off them’—Skeggs, 2004, p. 13) and marked by things such as physical movement, speech, dress, lifestyle and values (Day et al., 2014). Class categories and boundaries are produced and reproduced through discourses across a variety of sites (e.g. media, education, law, politics, etc.—Skeggs, 2004) and in everyday talk (Holt & Griffin, 2005) and shape people’s experiences of ‘being a classed subject’ (Holt & Griffin, 2005, p. 246). In other words, as critical social psychologists we conceive of class as ‘socially and discursively constituted in specific social, historical and political contexts’ (Billig, 2002, cited in Day et al., 2014, p. 398). A further common criticism of Marxism relates to its lack of theorising around forms of oppression (e.g. connected to gender, ‘race’, age, sexuality and so forth) other than those related to class (Hepburn, 2003; Magnusson, 2011; Teo, 1999). As Walkerdine (1996) notes, the gendered division of labour and women’s reproductive roles were absent from traditional Marxist accounts. Similarly, Holt and Griffin (2005) argue that the experiences of minority ethnic groups in Western labour

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markets and education systems cannot be accounted for by traditional (i.e. Marxist) theories of class, and Leonardo (2004) states that Marxist theory doesn’t have the discursive features to indicate why women are relegated to the domestic sphere and why ‘non-white’ people are disproportionately represented in the working-class. A final criticism to be discussed here is in regard to the opacity of Marx and Marxist-inspired writing. Magnusson (2011) alludes to the intellectual elitism characterising much Marxist scholarship and argues that, if Marxists want to reach beyond the boundaries of a select few, they need to find a clearer means of communication. This sentiment is echoed by Teo (1999, p. 429) who remarks that ‘It…seems tragically ironic when Marxist colleagues enthusiastically distribute information brochures and leaflets in front of factories while most workers in such factories are uninterested in papers written in awkward academic jargon’. Taking such critique of Marxist theorising of class into account, we advocate for a discursive and poststructuralist-informed approach to conceptualising social class, one that considers the symbolic, relational and psychological dimensions of class formation (e.g. Skeggs, 1997, 2004) and drawing on the ideas of those such as Foucault (e.g. 1972, 1977) and Bourdieu (e.g. 1984—see Chapter 1 for a discussion of Bourdieu). To begin with then, we sketch out below the influence of social constructionism and poststructuralist theory on critical psychology with a particular emphasis on the work and ideas of Michel Foucault. This is followed by a ‘mapping out’ of what we envisage a critical social psychology of social class might look like.

Social Constructionism, Poststructuralism and Critical Psychology: Discourse and Identity According to Stam (2001), social constructionism serves as a label representing a series of positions that ‘…have been influenced, modified and refined by other intellectual movements…’ (Stam, 2001, p. 294) including (amongst others) poststructuralism. Similarly, Edley (2001)

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suggests that the theoretical foundations of discursive or social constructionist research have been provided by ‘…the postmodern theorisation of language…’ (Edley, 2001, p. 433). Congruent with this, Burr (2015) also acknowledges that there is no single defining feature of social constructionism but, a number of key assumptions underpinning social constructionist approaches can be detected. The first of these assumptions (Burr, 2015) refers to taking a critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge of the world and ourselves. Social constructionists do not assume that ‘what we know’ is a direct reflection of the world around us; rather, all knowledge is regarded as socially produced. Following on from this is that all knowledge and forms of understanding are culturally and historically contingent and are therefore tied to prevailing social and economic arrangements. The third assumption outlined by Burr (ibid.) is that knowledge is sustained through social processes; it is through the course of daily interactions that ‘…our versions of knowledge become fabricated…’ (ibid., p. 4). The final assumption is that knowledge is always tied to social action. That is, different ways of understanding invite (or discourage) particular forms of action. These tenets of social constructionism point to a conceptualisation of language that is radically different from that which is generally assumed in positivist and empiricist psychology. That is, the notion that language actively constructs knowledge and meaning rather than simply reflecting objective truths about the world (e.g. Baxter, 2003; Burr, 2015; Weedon, 1987) and, as noted above, social constructionism has been influenced by the wider cultural postmodernist movement and poststructuralist theories of language (Edley, 2001; Stam, 2001). These are outlined below. According to Baxter (2003), poststructuralism is a branch of postmodernism. The latter refers to a more general philosophical movement pervading all fields of knowledge and expressing scepticism towards modernist beliefs in truth, reality, universal claims and causes (Baxter, 2003), and the pursuit of these through the application of reason and rationality (Ryan, 1999). Poststructuralism also refers to a collection of theories (Weedon, 1987) rather than being rooted in a single theoretical framework (Baxter, 2003) but, ‘…the specific locus of its interest

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is in language as a “site” for the construction and contestation of social meanings’ (Baxter, 2003, p. 6). As such, poststructuralism is therefore a form of discursive enquiry which places language as central to an understanding of knowledge, power and subjectivity and is commonly associated with the work of the French theorists, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault (Baxter, 2003). Derrida’s work (e.g. 1976, 1987, cited in Baxter, 2003) is rooted in, but departs from that of the French structuralist theorist, Saussure (1974, cited in Baxter, 2003). Structuralism contests a number of key humanist assumptions (Hepburn, 2003). For example, the existence of a ‘real’ world that is open to discovery and description through language; language as reflecting and expressing individual meanings, intentions and an essential self; and the self as the centre of meaning and creativity (Hepburn, 2003). In contrast, structuralism posits that meaning, thought or intention is produced within language rather than language being reflective of these or derived from individual experience. Further, it is the structure of language that lies at the centre of meaning (as opposed to the self ) and is that which produces realities and subjectivities (Hepburn, 2003). Saussure (1974) introduced the notion of the sign as a means of conceptualising ‘things’ (e.g. objects, concepts) that ‘…populate our mental life…’ (Burr, 2015, p. 58). Signs are divided into two parts, one being the ‘signified’ (i.e. the thing being referred to) and the other as the ‘sign’ (i.e. the word, sound or image used to refer to the ‘thing’). Importantly, Saussure argued that the relationship between the signified and the signifier is arbitrary; the meaning of a sign is not derived from any essential properties (of the sign or the speaker), but rather from its differences from all other signs (Hepburn, 2003). In other words, meanings are made possible from the system of signs available to us in any given time and place. Meaning is always relative to something else rather than to reality: ‘…each word or concept carries within it all other words and concepts that are different from it’ (Hepburn, 2003, p. 203). Derrida’s point of departure from structuralism centred on the Saussurean argument that, although the relationship between the signifier and signified is arbitrary, once established it is fixed so that the same

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word always has the same meaning (Burr, 2015). However, for Derrida (and therefore within poststructuralist thinking), the stability of this relationship between the signifier and signified is problematic; it cannot explain how the meanings of words change over time, nor how the meaning of utterances is context-dependent (Burr, 2015). Thus, for Derrida and indeed poststructuralist theory, meaning is never fixed and stable; rather, meaning is fluid, unstable, variable and temporary, and language is therefore a site of contestation and struggle (Burr, 2015). The poststructuralist conceptualisation of language as a site of struggle over meaning in the context of social interaction suggests ‘…we are inevitably dealing in power relations’ (Burr, 2015, p. 63). Foucault (e.g. 1972, 1977) was particularly concerned with the complex relationship between language and power. For Foucault, language is always located in discourse, discourses that are culturally and historically contingent and are ‘…practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972, p. 49). Thus, discourses inform (and legitimate) practices that work to produce their objects of concern. Further, discourses are contradictory and offer competing versions of reality which serve different and conflicting interests (Baxter, 2003). For Foucault, Baxter (ibid.) argues, these power interests often locate within large-scale institutional systems (e.g. the family, media, law and so forth) and therefore provide a discursive network ‘…by which dominant forms of social knowledge are produced, reinforced, contested or resisted’ (Baxter, 2003, p. 25). As such, power operates in and through discourse and discursive practices, and power and knowledge are inextricably linked (Flynn, 1994). That is, discourses produce particular ways of making sense of ourselves, others and the world around us (Hepburn, 2003). For Foucault then, power is not something possessed or not possessed by some individuals or groups. Rather, Foucault conceived of power as an effect of discourse, and importantly, as productive rather than repressive (Burr, 2003). That is, discourses produce knowledge, but such knowledge is open to contestation and may be resisted by drawing upon alternative discourses. Therefore, for Foucault, power and resistance are relational, each making the other possible (Burr, 2015).

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Considerations for a Critical Social Psychology of Class Above we have set out what we see as useful theoretical frameworks and concepts for developing a critical social psychology of class. We therefore finish this chapter by highlighting what we regard as important foci for class research and present a selection of existing work to indicate what a critical social psychology of class might look like.

Genealogy of Subjectification and Classification As Beverley Skeggs (2004, p. 3) reminds us, ‘class is not a given but is in continual production’. In other words, class is discursively produced and historically and culturally contingent. If we accept this, and reject the notion of ‘classes’ as a pre-given entity, then a useful starting point is to take a historical-discursive approach (genealogical in Foucauldian terms e.g. 1971, 1979) to trace the discursive production of class, ‘to render class intelligible’ (Blackman, 1996, p. 361) and make sense of subjectification processes produced through class discourse and discursive practices. For example, Skeggs (2004) identified several converging discourses which produced what came to be known as class, including that of ‘the dangerous outcast, the urban mass, the revolutionary alien, the contagious women, the non-recuperable’ (p. 3). Similarly, although with a greater focus on the links between class, gender and the psy disciplines, Blackman (1996) examined the ways in which the working-classes became objects of psychiatry in the nineteenth century and the psy disciplines’ role in governing and regulating the ‘dangerous classes’. According to Blackman, during this period there were seen to be two categories of madness—a more complex form where the mind was ‘in error’ but could be rectified through the ‘application of moral therapy’ (p. 369), and a simpler form of madness manifesting in those who had never developed the capacity for reason (i.e. a physical, congenital explanation) or in those who lived outside of the civilising influence of rational society. Perhaps unsurprisingly, gender and class were central in determining to which category people were assigned. Women were regarded

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as naturally at risk of madness due to their constitution, as were the working-classes whose condition and position in life were purported to be biologically determined. Both groups were construed as limited in their capacity for reason and therefore more vulnerable to insanity. Increasingly throughout this period, the working-classes and (particularly working-class) women’s ‘lack’ came to be linked with crime, degeneracy, unemployment and vice; they were a contagious threat to the population and this thinking informed policies around enforced sterilisation and removal to the labour colonies (Blackman, 1996). Scholarship of this kind is invaluable as it serves to remind us of the complex discursive and contingent production of ‘class’ and classed subjectivities. In addition, we can clearly see here how ‘class cannot be made alone, without all the other classifications that accompany it’ (Skeggs, 2004, p. 3). This leads us on to the importance, for a critical social psychology of class, of considering the intersectionality of identities (Crenshaw, 1993). Kimberlé Crenshaw first coined the term ‘intersectionality’ (Crenshaw, 1989 cited in Crenshaw, 1993) as a means of understanding the ways in which various systems of oppression intersect to produce experiences for one group which are qualitatively different from the experiences of another. Crenshaw (1993) was referring specifically to the ways in which women of colour are subjected to both racism and sexism and that feminist and anti-racist discourse overlooks the fact that the experiences of women of colour are different from those of White women, and different from men of colour. Since then, intersectionality has become central not only to feminist scholarship and critical race studies, but within a wide range of fields, especially amongst poststructuralist-orientated scholars (Davis, 2008). Although in the intervening years since Crenshaw introduced the concept it has become the subject of much debate (see Davis, 2008, & Magnusson, 2011 for a discussion of these debates), we argue that any meaningful examination of class/classed identities must take into account other dimensions of difference and the various ways in which people are positioned within complex networks of power relations. One example of an intersectional analysis was a study conducted by McDermott (2006) exploring the experiences in the workplace of women who identified as lesbian and/or gay and were categorised as

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either working-class, middle-class or university educated from a workingclass background. Regardless of class, all the women shared experiences of homophobic harassment at work and the regulation of their sexuality. However, the extent to which the women were able to perform and ‘out’ their lesbian identities depended on the extent to which heterosexuality was regulated in their place of work; for the middle-class women and working-class women working in professional environments and who tended to occupy more powerful positions, this was less of an issue and they were able to exert more control over the situation. However, for the working-class women, who were more likely to work in environments where heterosexuality is heavily policed, ‘coming out’ was too risky, meaning that they either had to masquerade as heterosexual or self-silence in the face of homophobic comments from fellow workers, strategies that negatively impacted on their psychological health. Not only were the working-class women working in places where heterosexuality was more strictly regulated, they also had fewer employment options, meaning that sometimes the only choice was to leave their job and become unemployed. More broadly, what this research illustrates are the multiple oppressions experienced through the intersections of class, gender and sexuality and thus highlights the importance of taking dimensions of difference into account in class-focussed research. Finally, we agree with Wetherell (1999, in her appraisal of Marxist accounts of class) who argued for attention to ‘the particular and the empirical’ and ‘on practices per se and moments of articulation’ (p. 402). In other words, it is fruitful to examine how class ‘plays out’ in people’s everyday lives and how class discourse is deployed and reproduced by individuals, groups and across a range of cultural sites in the process of identity formation. Holt and Griffin’s (2005) study provides a useful example here. They took groups of (predominantly White but a mix of straight, gay and bi-sexual) middle-class students and professionals on ‘nights out’ in a variety of pubs and bars followed by group interviews with the participants about their experiences. Using a poststructuralistinformed discursive approach, the authors noted a number of themes in the interview data. First, that participants used coded language to refer to class by describing pubs/bars as being frequented by ‘Kevs and Shazzes’ (in the UK, these names are colloquially understood as working-class

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names), suggesting that the direct naming of class is problematic. When participants were asked for an explanation of these references, there was embarrassed laughter and disclaimers such as ‘but that sounds like really, really snobby’ (p. 255), again indicating the troubled status of class discourse. Finally, it was noted how participants constructed ‘Kevs and Shazzes’ as geographically immobile, lacking in aspiration and prospects, and resentful of ‘people like them’ (i.e. university educated/professionals). This discursive strategy allowed them to distinguish and distance themselves from the working-class Other. Interestingly though, there was also talk of sometimes ‘venturing’ into working-class pubs, something which was framed as risky but worthwhile to gain a more ‘authentic’ experience. Holt and Griffin (2005) interpreted these contradictory discourses (of fear of yet at the same time, desire for the working-classes) as an expression of ambivalence but it could also be argued (from a Bourdieusian perspective) that the middle-class respondents are able to ‘dip’ in and out of working-class spaces due to their cultural capital (and therefore greater social power) in ways that may not be possible for working-class people to easily occupy middle-class spaces. Nevertheless, we agree with Holt and Griffin’s argument that examining class through a critical/discursive approach allows for the capturing of such nuance and contradiction in ways that conventional social psychological research (e.g. attitudinal surveys) would not.

Summary In this chapter, we have traced some of the antecedents to critical social psychology through a discussion of the ‘crisis’ in psychology and the criticisms directed at the discipline several decades ago. We then provided an overview of the key tenets and arguments of what we see as key influences on the development of critical psychology, namely Marxism, feminism and poststructuralist-informed discursive approaches, while simultaneously presenting a selection of class-focussed research informed by these respective approaches. Finally, we pointed to what a critical social psychology of class might look like, drawing attention to the need

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for historical-discursive approaches to understanding subjectification and classification; the importance of intersectional analyses; and attention to the ‘everyday’ of class-making—how class discourse is deployed and reproduced by individuals, groups and across a range of cultural sites in the process of identity formation. One such cultural site is that of the media and is the focus in the following chapter.

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4 Class Discourse and the Media (Katy Day)

Introduction As explored in the previous chapter, class is in part discursively constituted. Social, cultural and historical discourses inform people’s understandings of group differences, social and economic inequalities and the nature and causes of these. This chapter will now focus on a body of work that brings these arguments into clearer view. Recent years have seen some vibrant and illuminating work conducted within a range of disciplines such as social psychology, sociology and cultural studies focussing on the media as a powerful institution where problematic discourses around social class and classed subjects and bodies are reproduced. As such, the work reviewed here (as with much of the book) is inter-disciplinary in nature. In this chapter, as well as reviewing such work, we highlight its relevance and importance to critical social psychological studies of social class. You will note important parallels here with Chapter 2 and the further ‘fleshing out’ of some of the arguments presented there in relation to media discourse. For example, we will

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argue that far from being politically-neutral, media discourse (as with the discourse evident in many mainstream psychological accounts of class or SES) invites the judgement, surveillance, regulation and control of working-class people. Alike the psychological literature discussed in Chapter 2, this can also often be seen as justifying social and economic inequalities in terms of individual deficiencies/pathologies, or the problematic lifestyle ‘choices’ made by communities relegated to the margins of society. This underscores an important argument presented by critical and discursive psychologists that texts produced by experts and scientists are constructed and interested in the same way that media texts and other kinds of text are. By ‘media text’ here, we mean any kind of text (a text being anything that can be read for meaning—Parker, 1999) that is derived from a media source. It has been noted that an intense preoccupation with class in society can be detected in a range of contemporary media sources including reality television shows, films, documentaries, comedy sketch shows and investigative journalism, amongst others (Frampton, 2018). ‘Media texts’ then are texts that are derived from any such sources. In this chapter, we focus on research that has examined portrayals of class in the British media. For one, this is the cultural context that the authors are from and we have lived experience of growing up in working-class communities in the UK. In addition to this, the UK is also described as a nation that is especially wrought by class hierarchies and antagonisms (e.g. Tyler, 2013). For example, Tyler cites the British historian David Cannadine in proclaiming that ‘it remains a generally held belief, not just in Britain but around the world, that class, like the weather and the monarchy, is a peculiarly and particularly British preoccupation’ (Cannadine, 1998, p. 1; cited in Tyler, 2013, p. 154). We focus in this chapter in particular on British television shows and online responses to these, as well as print media. In doing so, we will examine recent coverage of a number of issues pertinent to class such fiscal austerity, poverty and worklessness.

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The Media: What Does This Have to Offer Critical Social Psychological Enquiry? The media has long been recognised as supplying images and information through which we understand ourselves, our lives, each other and the world around us (e.g. Hall, 1973; Williams, 1960). It reflects as well as informs widespread, ‘common-sense’ and/or ‘expert’ knowledge on an infinite range of topics (Livingstone & Lunt, 1994; Morant, 1998; Rose, 1998). In addition, Ferguson (1983) argues that media texts can be regarded as important historical documents as studying these can reveal much about the particular society, culture and historical period from which these are derived, such as what is considered ‘good’, ‘healthy’, ‘correct’ or ‘normal’ in relation to a vast array of practices, lifestyles and forms of personhood. For example, popular culture provides powerful textual sources that contain explicit and implicit messages about how we should look, dress, act, what kinds of lifestyles we should lead, relationships we should have and so on. These prescribed ‘ways of being’ are often dictated by mainstream culture and the systems of categorisation to which we are assigned in terms of gender, race, sexuality and social class (amongst others) (e.g. Betterton, 1987; Douglas, 1995; Ferguson, 1983; Skeggs, 1997). It is important to underline that from a critical social psychological perspective, the media does not merely reflect social realities or the ‘truth’ in a transparent objective way and it is not simply a fairly benign source of information or entertainment. Rather than simply reflecting social realities, it contributes to the construction, maintenance and alteration of those social realities (e.g. Clarke, 2004). Media texts are made up of discourses ‘that systematically inform the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1974, p. 19). Further, according to Weedon (1987), those discourses that become particularly visible, dominant and widely available are typically ones that have firm institutional bases. The mass media is one of those institutions, along with the law, medicine, science and the ‘psy’ disciplines (amongst others). In this sense, the mass media can be regarded as a technology of governance which aims to persuade us to

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see the world in certain ways and not others and these ‘acts of persuasion’ are often motivated by the commercial and political interests of powerful social groups, organisations and institutions (Williams, 1960; Van Zoonen & van Zoonen, 1994). Therefore, the study of such texts can also tell us about the social position and relative power of different social groups at that time and in that place (e.g. society or culture), such as who is defining the truth and who are the targets or objects of those descriptions, instructions or advice (see Rose, 1998). But to what extent do people take notice? Research has found that the mass media is one of the most relied upon sources of information for people with regards to an infinite range of issues and topics such as disease and medicine (Clarke, 2004) and that this is particularly true in the absence of personal lived experience (e.g. Seaton, 2003; Culley, Ogley-Oliver, Carton, & Street, 2010). In other words, when people have no direct personal experience of a social problem, group of people, type of trauma or illness and so forth from which to draw meaning and understanding, they use the mass media as their reference point and source of information. However, it isn’t just ‘ordinary’ people who use the media in this way. For example, ‘experts’ such as physicians and scientists are also said to draw knowledge about the objects and people with which/whom they work from the media (e.g. Levi, 2001). Since the media has intruded into our everyday lives more and more (e.g. with the rise of the Internet and social media), it has become increasingly impossible to ignore its influence on people. That said, from a critical social psychological perspective, individuals exist in dynamic relation to media texts rather than just passively absorbing the messages on offer. Studies within mainstream social and health psychology that have been dominated by a social-cognitive framework and that have utilised positivist, quantitative research methods have typically been concerned with the impact of consuming media information upon the individual’s attitudes, behaviour and thinking (e.g. Groez, Levine, & Murnen, 2002). The concern here is with causeeffect relationships, whereby media images and information are the cause and particular attitudes, behaviours and cognitive styles are the effect. While this work has been important for highlighting the often

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negative impact of the mass media (e.g. on our psychological wellbeing), such work is arguably based on a rather passive and reductionist information processing model of the person which divorces them from their surrounding social and cultural milieu. Adams and Raisborough (2008) argue that although constructions of class (e.g. in the media) are powerful, we should not assume that working-class people do nothing to resist or appropriate these for their own purposes. People can, will and do take a range of different readings from the media, depending upon their experiences and social positioning (e.g. Eldridge, Kitzinger, & Williams, 1997). Indeed, a number of studies have highlighted the ways in which people make sense of, decode and often reject, the messages that they encounter in the mass media (e.g. Sender & Sullivan, 2008). In her classic ethnographic research on family foodwork (i.e. all of those tasks involved in feeding a family including food shopping, meal planning and meal preparation), DeVault (1991) found that middle-class mothers had a greater deference to advice from ‘experts’ in the media regarding nutrition and healthy eating, than working-class mothers who were more likely to treat this with greater suspicion and scepticism. As well as challenging cultural stereotypes of working-class people as naïve and more easily-influenced, this underscores the importance of social positioning and experience. One explanation for this finding that DeVault offers is that the education that the middle-class mothers had received (these had typically received a higher level of formal education than the working-class mothers) was one which encouraged deference to and trust in expert knowledge. Indeed, our own critical discussion and deconstruction of media discourse around class in this chapter is evidence in itself of people’s abilities to resist this (we do not regard ourselves as having some extraordinary power to do so that others do not possess). As argued by Johnson Thornton (2010), a sustained critique of institutionalised discourse is an important part of any emancipatory political project and therefore an important element of critical scholarship. Due to the ability of people to reject and resist media discourse, Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes and Sasson (1992) argue that referring to consumers or audiences as ‘readers’ may be more useful, as ‘consumers’ or ‘audience’ suggests that people absorb meaning in a way that is homogenous and passive, whereas ‘readers’ suggests that people are active interpreting

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agents (Wodak & Busch, 2004). Bearing this in mind, from this point forth, those who are exposed to media texts will be referred to largely as ‘readers’ (unless we are employing the language that the researchers themselves have used). At this point, we would like to summarise some of the main arguments that we have presented relating to the importance of studying the media for critical social psychological scholarship. First, the media has long been recognised as a powerful social institution that impacts upon our psychological worlds, practices and relationships with one another in important ways. As this increasingly intrudes into our everyday lives, the study of this becomes more and not less urgent. Second, the study of media texts can reveal much about the social conditions prevailing at that time in that place, such as the positioning and relative power of different social groups and institutions (e.g. who gets to define the truth and who are the objects of this truth?). Relatedly, the media is a useful resource for conducting genealogy in relation to discourse (e.g. ArribasAyllon & Walkerdine, 2009), tracing the ways in which discourses may have changed over time in line with changing social, economic and political conditions. Finally, critical researchers have embraced arguably more sophisticated understandings of the relationship between media texts and readers that importantly, acknowledge and open up space for resistance. In the remainder of the chapter, we examine scholarship on the ways in which class and classed subjects are represented in the media. While discussing this work, questions that will be addressed include: What are the key discourses that are in operation here? Why are these discourses being promoted and not others? Whose interests or what functions do these discourses serve? And finally, what are the possible implications and consequences for those groups in society who are being portrayed in these ways?

‘Chavs’, ‘Gypsies’ & Class Disgust We will begin by examining some more obvious and overtly hostile examples of classism within the mass media. Research has found that working-class and poor people are often portrayed in the media in highly stereotyped ways, including as ‘crass’, dangerous, lazy and suffering

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(e.g. Kendall, 2005; Mantsios, 1998). ‘Discourses of demonization’ (e.g. Tyler, 2013, p. 160) in relation to the working-class have been evident across a range of British media for decades, inviting judgement, ridicule and revulsion. A classic example here is the cultural trope of the ‘chav’, ‘a figure of sloth, ignorance and welfare dependence’ (Tyler, 2013, p. 166). ‘Chav’ was the buzzword of the year in the UK in 2004 (Jensen & Ringrose, 2014) and became synonymous with the British ‘underclass’ (see Chapter 1), and more specifically, with the indigenous White poor within contemporary British society. According to Tyler (2008), the contemporary figure of the ‘chav’—often authorised through comedy (see also Raisborough & Adams, 2008)—serves two major functions. First, this serves to publicly sanction middle-class contempt for the ‘lower-classes’ or indulge in what Billig (2001) describes as ‘the pleasures of hatred’ (p. 267). For example, in her article ‘Chav Mum, Chav Scum’, Tyler (2008) quotes a British newspaper journalist as referring to ‘chavs’ in the following way: ‘…And for the rest of us too frightened to take them on in person, there is a delicious release to be had from laughing at them’. (‘In Defence of Snobbery’, Sunday Telegraph, 2004; Cited in Tyler, 2008, p. 22). In the quotation above, the journalist’s reference to ‘us’ carries the assumption that the readers being addressed are like them in classed terms in that they share common classed experiences and values. Entwistle and Hancock-Beaulieu (1992) found that newspapers tend to be acutely aware of who their readership or target readership are and that this is reflected in the content of the newspaper, style of reporting and the topics covered. As Lawler (2005) argues, such media texts often employ a figurative ‘we’ that symbolically excludes anyone who is not middleclass, particularly those that are aimed at a middle-class readership, for example, British broadsheet newspapers such as the Sunday Telegraph (Entwistle & Hancock-Beaulieu, 1992). Further, these processes are integral to the making of middle-class identities (Lawler, 2005) as identity construction is relational. In other words, we gain a sense of self via an understanding of what we are not or do not want to be. The reference to being ‘too frightened to take them on in person’ also suggests that there is something to be afraid of. They are not just Other, but an aggressive

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and potentially violent or dangerous (savage) Other. Such grotesque caricatures of the poor are reminiscent of Edwardian and Victorian English portrayals of the working-class as immoral and dangerous (Tyler, 2013). According to Tyler, this ‘Othering’ functions as an attempt to distinguish the White upper and middle-classes from, and as superior to, the poor which is deemed necessary at a time when traditional visible markers of class (e.g. access to branded consumer goods and higher education) have supposedly been eroded. Adam and Raisborough (2008) noted that over the last century, social class has become increasingly defined by taste and in relation to the working-class, a lack of taste. Indeed, one distinguishing characteristic of the ‘chav’ is excessive consumption of branded goods such as designer labels (e.g. Burberry), once a marker of wealth and good taste but now reframed as ‘vulgar’ (Tyler, 2008). A second major way in which the media caricature of the ‘chav’ functions is to garner support for government policies and agendas, such as the government’s austerity drive as detailed in Chapter 1. A notable vehicle for eliciting such support, according to those such as to Jensen (2014), has been ‘reality TV’ programmes such as Benefits Street (Channel 4, 2014) and On Benefits and Proud (Channel 5, 2013). The former example (Benefits Street ), a show which drew audiences of up to 4.3 million, followed the lives of residents living on James Turner Street in Birmingham in the UK where it was claimed (e.g. by British newspapers) that 90% of the residents claimed state benefits (Sandle, Day, & Muskett, 2018). Such shows have portrayed welfare recipients as ‘entitled’, ‘irresponsible’ and ‘skivers’ (Jensen, 2014). According to Jensen, programmes such as Benefits Street (sometimes referred to as ‘poverty porn’ or ‘austerity porn’—Allen, Tyler & De Benedictis, 2014) have played a crucial role in implementing ‘anti-welfare common sense’ by positioning welfare recipients as the ‘undeserving poor’ and as abusing an ‘over-generous welfare state’ (Allen, Mendick, Harvey & Ahmad, 2015, p. 915) that rewards worklessness. This lends reductions to public spending such as cuts to state welfare ‘a plausible appeal’ (Green, Buckner, Milton, Powell, Salway, & Moffatt, 2017, p. 7) and deflects anger away from any structural problems and social inequalities ‘towards class peer groups who are imagined as retaining undeserved privileges in a time of austerity’ (Negra & Tasker, 2014, p. 1). Such

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programmes have even been cited by British politicians during discussions of welfare reform in the British House of Commons (Jensen, 2014). Writers such as Tyler (2008), Cherrington and Breheny (2005) and Lawler (2002) have found that working-class women in particular are often the focus of negative media portrayals of classed subjects and are often characterised by ‘a mingled horror of, and fascination with, working-class women’ (Lawler, 2002, p. 103). For example, ‘chavs’ are often depicted as young and (quite frequently) lone mothers (e.g. Tyler, 2008; Frampton, 2018) and similarly, research suggests that constructions of young and lone motherhood are intimately bound up with class. For example, Frampton (2018) identified stark contrasts in the ways that teenage pregnancy and motherhood were depicted in two British newspapers, The Daily Mail and The Guardian, according to the social class of the girl. She found that readers were invited to have sympathy for middle-class girls who had fallen victim to unwanted pregnancies through their innocent and naïve involvement in sexual activity, and that middle-class girls who had become mothers at a young age were positioned as ‘inspirational’ due to their efforts, for instance, to balance their education with motherhood. In contrast, working-class teenage motherhood was portrayed as the consequence of irresponsibility and excessive sexuality, and the mothers themselves as disrespectful, unintelligent and temperamental. Further, while young, middle-class women were afforded a voice in the newspaper articles, offering advice to other young women who may find themselves in a similar situation, young, working-class mothers were firmly positioned as abject figures to be judged and commented upon. Social anxieties surrounding young and/or lone motherhood as ‘illegitimate reproduction’ which is a threat to social order and stability have a long and well-documented history (e.g. Carabine, 2001), as does the idea that motherhood at a young age is a catastrophe for the young women themselves (Duncan, 2007). Therefore, such discourses are nothing new, but at the same time, reflect contemporary anxieties and concerns. For example, in the 1990s (the run up to ‘chavs’ receiving peak interest in the British press), an increase in divorce rates and a declining marriage rate meant that lone motherhood became more prominent and led to a so-called moral panic (e.g. Beaujouan & Bhrolchain, 2011) to

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the extent that the then New Labour government made a policy pledge to ‘support’ (target) lone motherhood. Yet, it was unemployed lone mothers in particular who were vilified by a media who saw them as selfish, irresponsible, sexually promiscuous ‘benefit-scroungers’ (e.g. Oerton & Atkinson, 1999; Cherrington & Breheny, 2005). It appears therefore that teenage pregnancy is construed as a social problem in particular when the young mother is economically inactive and dependent on state welfare. It may be assumed that young middle-class women are less likely to be in this position, hence the different classed constructions of teen pregnancy and motherhood identified by Frampton (2018). Similarly, in their analysis of make-over and self-improvement shows on British television, a genre of TV programmes that focus on ‘improving’ an individual in one way or another (e.g. their appearance, their diet, their lifestyle), Ringrose and Walkerdine (2008) argue that the focal object of transformation in such shows is usually a working-class woman. Furthermore, she is held up as an example of what we must not be (e.g. fat, loud, stupid, tasteless and morally suspect), ‘the antithesis of the autonomous, rational (middle-class) subject that we are encouraged to be’ (Lawler, 2002, p. 109). Women from traveller communities are often portrayed in the media as similarly embodying an uncivilised, ‘excessive’ femininity. One example of this can be seen in the British television programme My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (Channel 4, 2010, 2011, & 2012) which was analysed, along with online responses to the show, by Jensen and Ringrose (2014). As the authors point out, such programmes often have a ‘multi-media’ format in that in addition to the programme itself, there is often an accompanying website where audiences (or readers) are invited to judge and comment upon those who feature in the show. They describe how traveller weddings, the focal point of which is the ‘gypsy bride’, are framed as vulgar, excessive and tasteless, inviting both fascination and revulsion on the part of the reader. Again, this echoes Tyler’s (2008) point about how displays traditionally associated with affluence in British culture, such as the adorning of designer labels and ostentatious weddings, have been inscribed with different meanings in contemporary times in order to achieve social distance from the poor and working-class and redraw class boundaries in a changing cultural and economic landscape.

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Although members of nomadic communities (particularly Romani and Irish Traveller communities) have made political claims to be recognised as having their own distinct ethnic identity under race relations law, Jensen and Ringrose (2014) argue that their study indicates collapsed distinctions between ‘chavs’ and gypsy/traveller/nomadic communities. For example, one reader, commenting on the programme online, contended that this should be called: “My Big, Fat, Pikey, Chav Trash Wedding…so take a chav and give it a Catholic religion and you have what we saw on the programme” (Jensen and Ringrose, 2014, p. 374; emphasis added). They also highlight the overlaps or interchangability between the cultural figure of the ‘chav’ and the ‘Gypsy’, including the argument that the term ‘chav’ derives from the Romany word for ‘child’ and the claim that council estates or ‘chav neighbourhoods’ are often populated by second and third generation settled Travellers (Gidley & Rooke, 2009). However, despite these overlaps, whereas the female ‘chav’ is a ‘ladette’ imbued with aggressiveness and a lack of morality, the ‘gypsy bride’ is portrayed as a hyperfeminine, passive victim of an archaic, patriarchal culture and therefore deserving of the reader’s pity (Jensen & Ringrose, 2014). Cairns and Johnston’s (2015) concept of ‘calibrated femininities’ may be useful here. They argue that the performance of acceptable middle-class femininities often consists of a ‘balancing act’ in order to avoid the penalties associated with extremes of femininity and sexuality that are problematised in contemporary discourse. The female ‘chav’ and ‘Gypsy bride’ could be read as cultural examples of these extremes that must be avoided. Whereas the former is too assertive, loud, aggressive and sexually promiscuous (therefore abject), the latter is invoked in postfeminist discourses of gender equality (see Gill, 2007; McRobbie, 2008) as too passive, traditional and sexually oppressed (therefore abject also). Yet to complicate matters, the ‘sexual morality’ of traveller girls and women is also troubled in My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding via numerous lingering, objectifying camera shots of their bodies, focussing in particular on their ‘revealing’ (‘trashy’) clothing, platform heels and heavily made-up faces, as well as their ‘provocative’ dancing. Rather than this being offered to readers as evidence of sexual liberation (thus challenging the positioning of these girls and women as passive and oppressed),

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it appears that readers are being invited to read this display as inauthentic in one of two ways (possibly both). First, this casts doubt on the supposed code of sexual morals in traveller communities, as demonstrated in some of the online and print media responses to the show (e.g. ‘they can bump and grind pretty well for virgins’ [online comment]— Jensen & Ringrose, 2014, p. 376). Second, the extent to which traveller girls and women are genuinely sexually liberated and acting out of choice is also questioned, given the ‘outdated’ or ‘backwards’ religious and cultural values of the community. Rather, ‘sexually liberated’ is a subject position which more readily lends itself to non-traveller, middle-class girls and women who have the educational and financial resources to be self-sufficient and agentic and to off-set classed notions of ‘sluttishness’ (see Evans, Riley, & Shankar, 2010; McRobbie, 2008). In short, the modern, empowered, sexually-liberated woman in the post-feminist imagination is middle-class. Continuing on the theme of a lack of authenticity, it has been noted that ‘chavs’ and ‘Gypsies’ (although as we have argued, the distinctions are often troubled) are often portrayed in the media as occupying an inauthentic ethnic identity. For example, Jensen and Ringrose (2014) note in their study that some online responses to My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding proclaimed that those portrayed on the programme were ‘not real Gypsies’ (e.g. did not have a Romany heritage) and so could make no real claim to this as an ethnic identity. Similarly, both groups have been portrayed as having a liminal, precarious relationship with whiteness (Nayak, 2009). Such sections of society are regarded as ‘white trash’ who are ‘not quite white’ (Wray, 2006), and so ‘whiteness’ takes on a classed as well as racial and ethnic significance. For example, Tyler observes that media depictions of ‘chavs’ often have racist connotations by positioning ‘the chav’ as representing ‘borderline whiteness’ or ‘contaminated whiteness’ rather than ‘respectable whiteness’. This ‘contamination’ is shown to occur through appropriations of Black American popular culture (via clothing, music and forms of speech) and by having sexual relationships and children with working-class Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and immigrant populations. Tyler relates middle-class concerns about the so-called excessive and illegitimate reproduction of the working-class to social anxieties around falling fertility rates amongst

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the middle-class. This hints at fears of a future dystopia whereby the working-class have ‘flooded’ the population with their inferior and racially contaminated genes, a dystopia that is depicted (again authorised through comedy) in the 2006 American science fiction film Idiocracy. As discussed in Chapter 2, this notion of the genetic inferiority of the working-class has been assigned credibility via the scientific rhetoric of Social-Darwinist mainstream psychological research. In sum, Tyler describes representations of working-class people (working-class women in particular) in the media as being shot through with ‘class disgust’. It may seem that this concept refers to the kind of individualised, psychologised thoughts and feelings that are a cornerstone of mainstream psychology and that have been critiqued previously. This may also seem at odds with a focus on language and discourse. However, theorists have pointed out that ‘disgust’ is a socially and culturally meaningful concept. For example, Michelle Meagher (2003) argues that ‘objects are rendered disgusting or dirty through implicit social agreements’ (p. 32). Similarly, Ngai (2005) argues that disgust reactions are ‘saturated with socially stigmatised meanings and values’ (p. 11). It is contended by such authors that disgust reactions tell us less about the disgusted individual or the object of disgust than about the culture in which disgust is experienced and performed. Only certain social groups and individuals can be portrayed as ‘disgusting’ and this is dependent upon social agreements and conventions that create the conditions of possibility for this and foster a ‘confidence’ amongst the producers of such media that readers will respond positively to negative portrayals. This in turn reflects the power, status and position of those groups rendered ‘disgusting’, as discussed earlier in the chapter. This ‘class disgust’ does not just reflect class inequality; it actively contributes to and reproduces it. For example, as shall be explored in the following chapter, research has found that people often draw upon these kinds of cultural tropes in their descriptions and derision of workingclass people, despite having had little contact with such groups in their everyday lives (e.g. Phoenix & Tizard, 1996). As found by Seaton, (2003) and Culley et al. (2010), and as outlined earlier in the chapter, people are more likely to use the media as a frame of reference in cases where they have limited direct lived experience of the social group, object or topic

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in question. If the media is people’s only or primary source of knowledge about working-class people, then it is not difficult to see how this can bolster class prejudice and discrimination. In addition, such representations and media discourse have had a direct impact upon policies and practices. As discussed previously, these have bolstered support for austerity policies in Britain that have seen the shrinking of the welfare state. In addition, the public policing of people in Britain wearing ‘chavstyle clothing’ such as hooded tops and trainers, based on the assumption that they are likely to commit a crime or engage in anti-social behaviour, has been noted (Tyler, 2008). Therefore, such media depictions are far from innocuous.

Contested Meanings and ‘Chav Pride’ As outlined previously in the chapter, ‘readers’ can take a range of different meanings from media texts and do not necessarily passively absorb the messages that are promoted or offered up by the producers of these texts. It is important to note for example that the portrayals of ‘chavs’ and ‘Gypsies’ discussed previously have not gone unchallenged in media spaces. For example, liberal and left-wing journalists and commentators such as Polly Toynbee and Owen Jones have denounced the use of the term ‘chav’ and associated imagery as, for example, ‘poisonous class bile’ (Toynbee, 2011; cited in Tyler, 2013, p. 168). However, it isn’t just commentators such as journalists who have registered their objections. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (as discussed previously) resulted in a great deal of criticism and media activism from members of travelling communities (e.g. via online discussion boards) regarding misrepresentation and factual inaccuracies (Jensen & Ringrose, 2014). Likewise, the explicit anti-welfare stance of programmes such as Benefits Street has attracted widespread criticism—Benefits Street received almost 700 complaints from viewers for stirring up hatred towards benefit claimants and led to the launch of an online petition demanding that the show be cancelled (Collier, 2014). Further, in their analysis of this television show as well as responses to it, Allen et al. (2014) noted various readings of one of the show’s main characters known

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as ‘White Dee’ (Deidre Kelly), a lone mother in receipt of welfare. Despite being positioned by the media (e.g. British newspapers) as ‘the skiver par excellence’ (para 2.7), the informal and unpaid care work that White Dee was shown performing, not just for her family but also for more vulnerable residents of James Turner Street, led to her being positioned by some viewers as a ‘working-class hero’. Similarly, Tyler (2008) argues that portrayals of ‘chavs’ have become increasingly complex and sometimes, those interpellated as ‘filthy chavs’ have reclaimed or appropriated this term in order forge more positive or affirmative sub-cultural identities. Frampton (2018) refers to this as ‘chav pride’. This involves the embracing of a working-class identity and a rejection of ascribed middle-values and ideologies (Martin, 2009). The above demonstrates two important points. First, the media is a space in which struggles over meaning often occur and therefore more dominant discourses are always ‘transient and inherently unstable’ (Gavey, 1989, p. 462) because these are constantly under the threat of subversion from alternative, counter-discourses (see Foucault, 1979; Voloshinov, 1973). Second, this demonstrates the fluidity of class identities and youth cultures (Frampton, 2018) (class identities are discussed in greater detail in the following chapter). While the public critique of classist discourse in the media is encouraging, as pointed out by Tyler (2013), these struggles over meaning have highlighted additional problems and concerns. As outlined previously, media portrayals of working-class and nomadic people have often invited doubt as to the authenticity of their identities in relation to, for example, ethnicity and sexuality. One method of challenging and deconstructing media discourse around ‘chavs’ has been to posit the existence of an ‘authentic’ working-class identity (e.g. as proud, determined and hard working) which is not accurately captured by such grotesque stereotypes (e.g. Jones, 2011). Clearly, adopting such arguments would be problematic for scholars such as ourselves who are employing a poststructuralist approach as this relies on a realist and essentialist frame of reference (i.e. that there is a truth to how working-class people really are). In addition to this, as argued by Tyler (2013), by drawing a line between ‘unreal’ stereotypes and ‘real’, authentic working-class ways of being, those such

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as Jones unwittingly reproduce categories such as ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. This is because he seemingly ‘buys into’ the idea that characteristics of the ‘chav’ such as worklessness and becoming a parent at a young age are undesirable, thus seeking to deny the ‘reality’ of such claims. Similarly, Allen et al. (2014) point out that even positive readings of ‘White Dee’ focus predominantly on her ‘worklessness’. This illustrates how powerful such discourses are in reproducing ‘taken for granted’ assumptions that, for example, worklessness and young motherhood are undesirable qualities and result in some ‘missed opportunities’ in terms of taking the critique further. For example, Allen et al. (2014) argue that ‘White Dee’ has the potential to be a figure representing ‘slower and caring forms of community relations and inter-reliance’ (para 4.3). However, because the current discourse around labour excludes the idea that such voluntary community work is ‘real’ work, it is difficult for people/readers to construe her practices (as depicted in the programme) in this way. As such, although people can take a range of different readings from media texts, these are constrained by the discourses available which lay down important restrictions on the variety of ways that are available to us to construe the world around us and the possibilities for resistance to the messages on offer (see Foucault, 1988; Parker, 1992). In the following section of the chapter, we continue to examine the issue of ‘worklessness’ against the supposed benefits of paid work and the ways in the which the media has responded to some of the criticisms and forms of resistance highlighted above.

Meritocracy and the Making of the Neoliberal Subject The previous section of the chapter highlighted and discussed some more explicit examples of classist (as well as sexist and racist) discourse in the media that is characterised by shaming and ‘Othering’. However, problematic portrayals of class and classed subjects can be more subtle, implicit, appear to be underpinned by benevolent intentions and even contain a ‘feel good’ factor. For example, Beresford (2016) argues that the subtext of ‘austerity porn’ (as discussed in the previous section of the

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chapter) can be ‘ambiguous and complex’ (p. 422). As outlined previously, British television shows such as Benefits Street and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding have received public criticism for the ways in which they have portrayed some of Britain’s most vulnerable and oppressed communities. Yet, it has been noted that such criticism and resistance, rather than resulting in the ‘squashing’ of such media discourse, often result in the media producing more sophisticated and more nuanced versions of what are essentially the same messages. For example, those such as Cairns and Johnston (2015) have noted that widespread criticism of the promotion of the thin ideal and unrealistic beauty standards in the media has resulted in the repackaging of diets as bolstering health and wellbeing when, ultimately, these are largely about pursuing the same old tired body and appearance ideals. It is to work around these more subtle or implicit depictions that we now turn. In doing so, we will return to the contemporary genres of ‘self-improvement’, ‘lifestyle’ and ‘reality’ programmes on television (e.g. Andrejevic, 2004). These genres are argued to provide the audience with instructive ways of ‘manag(ing) the self ’ (Biressi & Nunn, 2012, p. 5) and provide guidelines for living (Oulette & Hay, 2008) that are heavily classed (and often, heavily gendered and raced also). A dominant theme in such programmes is, once again, the working-class ‘Other’ who is falling short of these ideals and therefore in need of correction or education. Examples of such programmes that have been aired in recent years on British television (where these types of programmes have notably dominated the schedules) include You Are What You Eat (Channel 4, 2004–2007); Honey We’re Killing The Kids! (BBC3, 2005– 2007), Super Nanny (Channel 4, 2004–2011) and Great British Menu Budget (BBC1, 2013). Such shows provide knowledge and instruction on ‘correct’ diets, the ‘correct’ diets to provide to one’s children and how to parent ‘correctly’. The typical format of such shows is a ‘transformation arch’ which begins with recognisable depictions of poverty and ‘failure’ such as worklessness, a reluctance to seek waged work, ‘poor’ diets, chaotic family lives and even unkempt physical appearances. The subjects of such programmes are then ‘tracked’ through a period of transformation while receiving the advice of ‘experts’ and emerge ‘at the other end’ transformed in some way or what Raisborough (2011, p. 4) refers

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to as ‘the money shot’. This ‘new self ’, according to Ringrose and Walkerdine (2008), is typically a bourgoise style of subjectivity. However, it is important to note that rather than being ‘life changing’, the transformations that are depicted are often quite modest, such as a more positive attitude towards finding waged work, despite failing to actually secure a job. On the surface, such programmes appear to have good intentions, such as improving the health, wellbeing and employment/financial prospects of the individuals who take part. However, these are deeply problematic and have been the focus of critique. For one, the starting point of such transformation shows is usually to arouse shame and guilt in the participants in order to instigate change (e.g. Skeggs, 2009) and by virtue, imply that their practices are ones that are deserving of shame and guilt. The changes that are recommended not only normalise middleclass ways of being and living as being ‘correct’ without question, but are also often ones that are only accessible (or more accessible) to those with more economic power and social and cultural capital. For example, the phenomenon of ‘intensive parenting’ (Hays, 1996) is often advocated in shows focussing on the parenting practices of those who take part, a style of parenting which requires parents (usually mothers) to invest extensive time and resources into various aspects of their children’s lives (e.g. their diet and nutrition, education, and psychological wellbeing). However, the ability to ‘micro-manage’ children’s lives in this way is dependent upon having the time and material resources to do so, which are more likely to be available to middle-class than working-class parents (Shirani, Henwood & Coltart, 2012). Yet this is rarely acknowledged, with ‘poor practices’ being attributed more typically to a lack of knowledge or just sheer laziness (e.g. Hernandez, Thompson, Cheng & Serwint, 2012). In addition, Ringrose and Walkerdine (2008) note that at the same time as encouraging personal transformation, ‘better’ ways of being and engaging in ‘better’ practices, such shows also often caution that transformation from ‘chav’ to middle-class respectability might not really be possible. For example, in shows such as Ladette to Lady (ITV1, 2005–2010); Australian Princess (ITV2, 2005–2007) and ASBO Teen to Beauty Queen (Channel 5, 2006), the focus is placed on whether it is possible to transform (often violent) working-class and/or colonial girls

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into someone who could pass for a ‘lady’. The typical format of these shows involves posing the question (usually towards the end) of whether or not the contestants will be able to maintain their new look and lifestyle (maintain the ‘new way of being’—Wood & Skeggs, 2004) after the cameras have stopped rolling, with the suggestion often being that they cannot. For one, this suggests that the main purpose of such shows is voyeuristic rather than any genuine concern with ‘improvement’ as this is often portrayed as a failed, wasted endeavour. Secondly, this works to re-establish class boundaries, positioning working-class subjects as ‘beyond hope’ while inviting the viewer to feel okay about this because at least the ‘experts’ tried. This resonates with Beresford’s (2016) argument that such shows often tell ‘sad stories’ (e.g. about failed personhood) while offering no substantial strategies for change, even if we accept that change is desirable or necessary. The upshot, according to Ringrose and Wakerdine (2008), is that these shows depict a spectre of ‘working-class failure’ and ‘failed subjectivity’ that endures despite the best efforts of well-intentioned, middle-class ‘experts’. Similarly, a number of British television shows from the genre of ‘reality TV’ that have been aired in recent years have focused on those who are unemployed and reliant on state benefits. Examples (in addition to Benefits Street which has been discussed in the chapter already) include Future State of Welfare (BBC2, 2011), Life in Debt Valley (BBC1, 2016), Benefits Britain 1949 (Channel 4, 2013) and The Fairy Jobmother (Channel 4, 2010–2011). Sandle et al. (2018) analysed the discourses evident in such shows during a period of fiscal austerity in the UK. They argued, first, that a distinction was drawn in the programmes between what was regarded as ‘real/valued’ and ‘invalid’ labour. For example, although a number of participants in the shows (like ‘White Dee’ in the show Benefits Street ) were engaged in unpaid voluntary work in the local community or unpaid care work for family members such as children, it was clear that the only kind of valid labour was constituted as paid labour. In addition, the discourses around waged labour that were identified in the programmes situated this (and only this) as essential for positive mental health and wellbeing. Again, this lends support to government discourse and policy during this period. For example, a review commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP)

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in the UK concluded that there are ‘economic, social and moral arguments that work is the most effective way to improve the wellbeing of individuals’ (Waddell & Burton, 2006, p. 7). Similarly, in 2015, the UK Conservative government announced a ‘Fit For Work’ initiative, the aim of which was to facilitate employees’ return to paid employment after a period of sickness. The government justified this initiative on the premise that ‘being out of work has a negative impact on your health and wellbeing’ (fitforwork.org). We are not arguing here that unemployment is not damaging to mental health and wellbeing; there is ample evidence that it often is. However, organisations such as the mental health charity Mind have challenged the association that has been drawn between paid employment and positive mental health, pointing out for example that not enough is being done to support wellbeing in the workplace and that workplaces can often be ‘toxic’ environments when it comes to people’s mental health (Mind, 2014). Similarly, Butterworth, Leach, Strazdins, Olesen, Rodgers and Broom (2011) found in their research that although their participants who were in waged work tended to report higher levels of wellbeing, those in poor quality work were more likely to experience poor mental health than those in receipt of welfare. Disability scholar-activists have also questioned and challenged the idea that the labour market can be a source of empowerment and liberation for people with disabilities, a premise that has underpinned campaigns centred on disabled peoples’ rights such as the ‘Right to Work’ campaign (e.g. Graby, 2015). Indeed, many of the people featured in the programmes analysed by Sandle et al. (2018) reported having mental health difficulties and/or a disability that prevented them from working in paid employment. Finally, bell hooks (2000) critiques the idea that participation in the labour market can be liberating for all women. She argues that women of colour and White working-class women have been forced to participate in the labour market out of economic necessity which has often been experienced as dehumanising, alienating and degrading, in contrast to work in the home caring for their families which has often been more affirming and rewarding. Further, hooks argues that even those women who fought for entry into the workforce have often faced disappointment after being confronted with workplace sexism, discrimination and

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unhealthy competition. In short, employment may not be a ‘cure’ and may actually exacerbate or lead to poor psychological wellbeing, particularly if working conditions are poor. Add to this that working-class people, particularly those who have disabilities, women and people of colour are more likely to be subjected to poor working conditions and low (or non-existent) pay if they do manage to secure employment (see MacDonald, Shildrick, Webster, & Garthwaite, 2010) and the picture appears less promising still. Further, the barriers to securing paid employment are attributed within such shows to the ‘negative attitudes’ and ‘lack of motivation’ of the subjects of transformation, suggesting that the unemployed need to engage in work on the self. For example, the format of shows such as The Fairy Jobmother and Great British Benefits Handout (Channel 5, 2017) involves a pseudo-therapeutic process whereby the ‘experts’ (Hayley in the former case and Honey in the latter) draw upon psychological discourses to ‘counsel’ the unemployed participants in the show and coerce them into ‘admitting’ that they themselves are the root cause of their worklessness (Hamad, 2014). An example is as follows: Hayley: “You look for the negative in everything…I don’t understand why” Tammy: “I haven’t got that much self-esteem…cus I was bullied throughout school.” (‘The Fairy Jobmother’, Channel 4, July 2011; as cited in Sandle et al., 2018, p. 7)

Here, Tammy’s ‘low self-esteem’ and ‘negative attitude’ are firmly located as the psychological barriers causing her lack of paid employment, and therefore, this is what needs to change. This applies also to those with complex mental health difficulties which are often depicted (and undermined) in such programmes as being solvable via self-management, a positive attitude and a ‘can do’ spirit. As pointed out by Brijnath and Atoniades (2016), this move towards ‘self-management’ is concerning because when we attribute social problems to ‘internal factors’, we erase social-cultural contributors such as class, poverty and inequalities, and the state is absolved of responsibility for change (Brijnath & Antoniades,

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2016). It is individuals themselves who are responsibilised for their lack of paid employment and for overcoming the personal barriers that are preventing this. In addition, in their analysis of the UK reality television programme The Jeremy Kyle Show (ITV, 2005–2019), Atkinson and Sumnal (2020) noted that unemployment and welfare dependence were linked to social problems such as substance use. Members of the public appearing on the show who were overwhelmingly from lower socio-economic groups (Marsh & Bishop, 2014) were positioned as fully responsible and blame-worthy for their alcohol and illicit drug use through framing this as a ‘rational choice’, and in turn, because drug use was construed as a barrier to paid employment, for their dependence on welfare also. Further, the provision of state welfare was problematised as enabling or funding drug use at the expense of the taxpayer (see also van der Bom et al., 2018; Wincup & Monaghan, 2016). Finally, emotional and personal reasons for substance use were foregrounded, such as a lack of self-control and the use of drugs as a ‘crutch’ or coping mechanism, while structural contributors were ignored. Rimke (2016) labels this ‘psychocentricism’ which is where the blaming and correction of individual character flaws is favoured over economic and social justice. A consequence of psychocentricism, according to Friedli and Stearn (2015), is that concerns over the impact of austerity on people’s mental health and psychological wellbeing have been squashed by reframing associated problems such as unemployment, poverty and substance abuse as reflecting ‘individual failures’ and ‘bad attitudes’, the solutions therefore being to ‘modify attitudes, beliefs and personality…through the imposition of positive affect’ (p. 40), a solution which is very clearly offered up and enacted in the television shows analysed by Sandle et al. (2018). Further, Friedli, and Strearn (2015) note that this sculpting of a ‘work positive’ outlook is now common and often mandatory within welfare practice. They refer to this as ‘psycho-compulsion’ whereby unemployment is reframed as a mental health issue in that individuals will find paid employment if only they adjust their thinking and adopt the right attitude. Here, we would like to refer you back to Chapter 2 and the discussion presented there around how problems that have been linked to low SES such as health risk behaviours (e.g. drug use) have been theorised by mainstream psychologists as being the result of

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‘dysfunctional’ attitudes and beliefs (e.g. around the factors controlling one’s health), and so, the solution is to alter or modify those attitudes and beliefs. There are clear parallels between this literature and the media discourses discussed here. Yet, further than this, commentators have suggested that even such individual, psychological change is not deemed really necessary in order to perform the role of ‘good citizen’. Rather, it has been suggested that the mere performance of positive affect is sufficient to fulfil this role and to progress in the journey towards paid employment and be successful in this. For example, Sandle et al. (2018) note that even when the subjects of transformation in such shows express discomfort and dislike for the tasks that they are given (one example being serving food at a homeless shelter), they are instructed to perform ‘service with a smile’ (The Fairy Jobmother, Channel 4, July 2011). This suggests that the crucial thing is to act out such positive affect (even if it is not felt) with the ultimate goal of securing and succeeding in paid employment (see Couldry, 2008 for a discussion of the requirements surrounding emotional labour in the workplace). This directly undermines any claims that the drive to get benefit claimants into paid employment is genuinely motivated by their wellbeing, mental health and happiness and ‘acting out’ such positive affect here simply becomes another arena for self-work. Similarly, Atkinson (2015) points out that wellbeing was once regarded (e.g. in government rhetoric) as an end-point of policy and a marker of progress. However, now, it is construed as a necessary factor or ‘stepping stone’ in achieving other policy goals. The media discourse discussed within this section of the chapter can and needs to be understood within the context of neoliberalism (Woodstock, 2014; see also Atkinson & Sumnal, 2020; see also Chapter 2). Neoliberalism has become a somewhat ‘slippery’ concept in the social scientific literature which is delineated in various ways (Scharff 2015). For example, some authors use the term in a purely economic sense to refer to free market capitalism. Here, we are employing Foucauldian notions of neoliberalism (e.g. Rose 1992) to refer to the contemporary discursive context in which state and collective responsibility is de-emphasised and the individual is located as fully responsible for their life biography (Scharff 2015). However, this Foucauldian usage

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of the term is clearly linked to capitalist economic structures rather than departing entirely from this usage of the term; a difference here is that neoliberalism is being employed in a broader sense and is regarded as ‘leaking into’ various different aspects of our lives. The neoliberal discursive landscape operates as a form of governmentality wherein individuals are encouraged to self-regulate and to make and remake themselves into good, productive, successful citizens in both their personal and professional lives (Sender & Sullivan, 2008; Woodstock, 2014). The individual, especially the individual who ‘falls short’, is therefore required to perform psychological work on the self in order to achieve, or at least be seen as trying to achieve, the standards that are set. This has required instilling in people a sense of duty to engage in self-surveillance and self-monitoring, to ‘look within themselves’ for ways in which they can improve rather than struggling collectively against stigmatisation, inequality or oppression. Lazzarato (2015) refers to this as the ‘entrepreneurial self’ arguing that since the global financial crisis, people are required to be adaptable and to manage individual skills as resources to be capitalised upon (‘human capital’). However, such discourse around self-management has a longer history. For example, in her book Revolting Subjects, Tyler (2013) discusses how the well-known sociologist Anthony Giddens, a key architect of the New Labour project in 1990s Britain, argued for the abolishment of class as a conceptual framework, to be replaced instead with an emphasis on mobile, flexible and individualised notions of selfhood. He argued that an individual’s life chances were dependent, not on the conditions of their birth, but on their ability to ‘script’ themselves and make the ‘right’ lifestyle choices. Gilles (2005) argues that for Giddens, poverty and disadvantage were the result of poor self-management. We believe that this underscores two important points. The first is that despite being legitimised as ‘expert’ knowledge, there are often very clear parallels (sometimes little difference) between media discourse and academic discourse. The second is that the kinds of discourses that we have identified here are by no means incidental; rather, they can and should be located within a broader sociocultural, economic and political context and read as reflecting the agendas and ideologies of those with power/voice.

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Neoliberalism provides the breeding ground for what is often described as the ‘myth of meritocracy’; that is, the idea that hard work and effort are rewarded in a fair and just society and so those that are less fortune are deserving of their lot in life. The discourse of meritocracy has been promoted in Britain by successive governments, with senior politicians such as the ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair declaring that Britain is a meritocractic society (Tony Blair, 1997). However, this is often referred to a ‘myth’ due to the competing idea that social and economic inequality is the result of a rigged and unfair social system rather than individual characteristics. Scholars who have examined media portrayals of class and wealth have noticed that this ‘myth’ is often knitted into media discourse. For example, Kendall (2005) and Lott and Bullock (2007) have noted that Western news media and popular programming tend to depict poverty as a personal failing and wealth as a personal achievement that is earned (e.g. via hard work) rather than ascribed or being the result of structural advantage. Construing wealth and privilege in this way justifies social structures based on class difference and invites challenges to class privilege to be met with defensiveness (hooks, 2000; Smith, 2007; see also Chapter 7). Such arguments echo Marxist literature on the role of ‘dominant bourgeois ideology’ and how this serves to obscure exploitation and injustice (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1978), excluding the possibility of social change (Gramsci, 1971).

Summary Studies of media discourse around social class and classed subjects have noted a number of often interrelated trends which have been explored in this chapter and which we shall summarise here. First, media discourse marks out ‘borders of respectability’ (Jensen & Ringrose, 2014) and dictates as well as reflects who has value in society and who does not. Despite some resistance and counter-discourse, as outlined previously, portrayals of working-class people in the British media tend to be negative and position them as problematic and disgusting. A second notable trend is that media discourses around class justify the status quo and invite support for government policy, portraying the class system as the

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natural or inevitable result of individual differences in ability, talent, hard work, motivation and attitudes. As such (and this leads us on to the third point), it is the individual and problematic cultural values (e.g. in the case of nomadic communities) rather than social and economic inequalities, that are pointed to as the problem and the thing in need of transformation, while discourses of class oppression and poverty are largely absent. Although ‘self-improvement’ and ‘lifestyle’ programmes on British television—shrouded in a cloak of pseudo-therapeutic concern for the poor—aim to ‘transform’ those things that are said to be holding people back (such as negative attitudes or low self-esteem), as discussed in the chapter, this is a project that is often depicted as having very limited or modest (if any) success and involves a public spectacle of shaming. We agree with Jensen (2014) that these appear to be fresh and recycled representations of the ‘feckless’ working-class subject. More recently, (and leading onto the fourth point), it has been noted that this ‘psychologisation’ of class and poverty has been extended further, by construing paid employment as not just an economic and moral obligation for the ‘good citizen’ (e.g. by not being a drain on public resources), but as an essential requirement for good mental health and wellbeing. As argued by those such as Burman and Parker (1993), discourse is a valid focus for social and political change. More specifically, an important goal of critical social psychological scholarship is to expose the functions of institutionalised and normative discourses and disrupt these as far as possible, particularly where those discourses are problematic, oppressive and discourage social change and justice. For this reason, we believe that critical scholarship on media discourses around class is an important and worthwhile endeavour. However, what this scholarship doesn’t explore is how such discourses ‘play out’ in the daily lives of people. For example, we need to know whether and under what sorts of conditions the subject positions that are created by such discourse are taken up, reworked and resisted by working-class people and to what extent and in what ways these frame their understandings and identities, as well as the understandings and identities of those from other class groups. This is of crucial importance given that those such as Rancière (1999) have characterised class struggle as the struggle against classification and being ‘written’ or defined by ‘class names’ circulating in the public

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sphere. Rancière’s (2011) research on those involved in the nineteenthcentury labour movement in France and Skeggs’ (1997) research with White, working-class women in the north of England, despite the clear differences, converged on a common theme. Both studies found that working-class people were keen to deny an identity that was imposed on them by Others, or in other words, their identities were produced through disidentification. The kinds of media discourses described in this chapter may be crucial to identity formation, but this identity formation may be characterised by opposition and resistance, which (as suggested by Rancière and Skeggs) is an important form of protest. The focus of the following chapter will therefore be on class identities and ‘everyday’ sense-making in relation to class.

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5 Classed Identities: Submergence, Authenticity and Resistance (Bridgette Rickett)

Introduction This chapter will, first, review social psychological and sociological work that has sought to unpick how culturally-shared ideology produces classed identities to discriminate and minimise the space for collective, class-based resistance. Second, empirical research will be reviewed that highlights instances of working-class people negotiating more positive identity positions for themselves and each other in a variety of everyday contexts and settings (e.g. families, education, occupational and leisure) and in relation to several issues (e.g. foodwork and parenting). To achieve these aims, the chapter is organised around four main themes. The first theme explores how class prejudice can arise from the ways in which we engage with socially produced patterns of meaning around social class. In addition, this theme will consider how these ways constitute our sense of ourselves and others in relation to the worlds we live in. A second theme captures research findings that illuminate how explicit discourse in relation to social class is often unavailable or avoided, leaving it discussed in indirect and highly coded ways. Third, we will explore some recent empirical research that has elucidated how © The Author(s) 2020 K. Day et al., Critical Social Psychology of Social Class, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55965-6_5

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such socially produced classism can produce an emotional realm where we strive to see ourselves and others in ways that release us from the pain and anguish often associated with classism. Fourth, we consider empirical literature which highlights instances of working-class people negotiating more positive identity positions for themselves and each other. This is structured around two sub-themes: femininities and masculinities. Both of these are directed via a keen interest in how gendered and classed (and often raced) identity work can conjure up emancipatory opportunities for discursive resistance to unequal classed relations and stigmatising identities. Finally, we will focus on the challenges that have arisen from our four themes before summing up.

Classification, Social Identities and Class Prejudice As discussed in previous chapters, a body of critical social psychological work on social class has afforded a central role to language and discourse (e.g. Holt & Griffin, 2005; Phoenix & Tizard, 1996; Willott & Griffin, 1999). These studies are important in highlighting the role of discourse in the justification of social structures based on class difference. In addition, as pointed out previously, this work arguably builds upon early Marxist literature on the role of ‘dominant bourgeois ideology’ and how this serves to obscure exploitation and injustice in capitalist societies (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1978), excluding the possibility of social change (see Gramsci, 1971). Crucially, this empirical scholarship provides us with important accounts of stigmatisation of the working-class via the analysis of dominant discourse that emanates from politics, government policy and the media (see Chapter 4). However, outside of the scope of this research are answers as to how such discourses are represented and mobilised in relation to selfhood and the understanding of others. In order to produce such key knowledge, some critical social psychological and sociological studies have examined how peoples talk Others working-class communities via the deployment of prevailing discourse.

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A good example to begin with is the late twentieth century social psychological work by Phoenix and Tizard (1996). This research involved interviews with young Londoners (aged 14–18) of different genders and from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds. A main finding was that middle-class participants often drew upon figures from popular culture such as TV shows (see previous chapter) who they believed typified working-class lifestyles. Using such figures, working-class lifestyles were derided, and working-class people positioned as inferior. We argue that these earlier accounts demonstrate the impact of class ‘stereotypes’ identified in popular culture by those such as Ringrose and Walkerdine (2008) and Tyler (2008) can and do have an impact on everyday understandings and class relations. More recent research by Valentine and Harris, carried out more than two decades later (2014), sought to investigate how people talk about and define certain (classed) groups, with a particular aim to seek to understand how these groups are positioned as being less or more worthy than one’s own. This focus, the authors argue, enables a consideration of the production of power differentials that can result in wider social consequences. In terms of methodology, the researchers interviewed 30 participants from diverse social backgrounds, ethnicities, genders and (dis)abilities, across multiple communities in Leeds, UK. During these interviews, the authors found that the cultural representation of the ‘chav’ saturated the way in which the participants talked about working-class people. As presented in Chapter 4, the cultural trope of the ‘chav’ was the media buzzword of the year in the UK in 2004 (Jensen & Ringrose, 2014), became synonymous with the British ‘underclass’ (see Chapter 1), and more specifically, with the indigenous White poor within contemporary British society. Interestingly, in Valentine and Harris’ research, despite the character of the ‘chav’ being talked about as not being associated with social class, it was consistently called upon as a class signifier. Here, the working-class were presented as deficient, irrational, feckless and worthy of disgust, particularly women, while working-class men were more likely to be depicted as aggressive, lacking impulse control and prone to risk-taking and criminal activities. As noted in previous chapters, this is nothing new, indeed these stereotypes reproduce prevailing discourse, such as the working-class as

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inherently deficient, irrational and out of control, in our media (see Chapter 4) and in the production of scientific understandings of social class (see Chapter 2). As argued in Chapter 4, this additional differentiation across both gendered and raced lines has dominated media and popular culture (e.g. Tyler, 2013). Additionally, important research from applied psychologists has gone on to investigate how language used both reflects socially shared values around social class and drives social exclusion in education settings. For example, Cleland and Palma (2018) examined the institutional discourse deployed by senior leadership in medical schools. Again, language used reinforced culturally-located classed stereotypes about ‘us’ and ‘them’, even when initiatives to achieve diversity and equality dominated in medical education. As with previously presented research, discursive tropes drawn on often radiated from both dominant scientific classist research and the media, such as working-class, as, by default, uncivilised, irrational therefore unstable, and unsuitable for admission. The data revealed that assumed classed differences, derived from the economic background of applicants and/or their families, were drawn on to conclude inherent, ‘fixed’ characteristics that reinforce a classed ideology of difference. As Valentine and Harris (2014) have persuasively argued, such findings illustrate that judgements are moralising, produced from cultural ideologies, and they matter because they justify contemporary social exclusion (e.g. who should be allowed to go where and when). Importantly, often these portrayals are utilised by working-class participants about their own communities, which, in turn, they sought to other themselves from by using narratives that hold people responsible rather than social, economic and political conditions. Therefore, disadvantage is reconfigured as an individual problem emanating from the morally and economically worthless poor. In general, in this body of research, the participants often distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them’ based on commodities, practices and lifestyles that have strong class connotations (e.g. housing, dress, behaviour and economic resources). While most of the participants lacked familiarity with people from other social class groups, therefore class relations were largely imagined rather than ‘lived’. As argued by Walkerdine (1996),

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such constructions of working-class people probably reveal more about the ‘middle-class imagination’ with its fears and desires than they do about what working-class people are actually like. For example, on first reading, seemingly positive culturally situated identities are drawn on to cast working-class people and their communities as something to desire. However, as Lawler (2005) argued, in popular media and everyday lives, this outsider gaze is both repeatedly turned on workingclass people and is motivated by fascination. These two features lead to a production of ‘horrific and mystifying others’ (p. 432). This theorising has gained some traction in empirical research. For example, in Holt and Griffin’s (2005) research which was discussed previously in Chapter 3, they described how the class prejudice identified in their UKbased research with students was also shot through with an ambivalent desire for the exotic working-class Other (e.g. more sociable) and certain aspects of working-class culture were considered more ‘authentic’ than middle-class lives and spaces (e.g. ‘authentic’ working-class pubs versus corporate chain bars) which the authors argued was similar to tourists finding ‘authentic’ places on holiday. While recent research by the social geographer Hoekstra (2019) used interviews with a diverse sample of local ‘professional’ residents in three Amsterdam neighbourhoods. In this interview data, they identified an inclination by the participants to draw on discourse that conjured up orientalist imaginings of the exotic Other and the spaces they inhabit, and these were interlaced with narratives that argued for a profound need for the participants to distance themselves from the same (exotic) neighbourhood and its ‘dangerous’ diversity. In sum, the empirical work presented in this section provides nuanced and sophisticated accounts of social identities and social relations and the important role that social class plays in these to disparage the workingclass into an exotic, yet unworthy and dangerous Other.

Reconstructing Class: The Ideal of ‘Classlessness’ In this second theme, we carry on our review and analysis of classed identities and relations, by turning to the way in which explicit discourse in relation to social class is often limited, unavailable or avoided, leaving

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it frequently discussed in indirect and highly coded ways. This absence or, at the most, opaqueness leaves social class identities often difficult to claim and prevailing social class discrimination difficult to name as socially produced classism. For example, we will look at why referring to class has become somewhat taboo in societies. In addition, we will examine, using published empirical research, how an ideal of ‘classlessness’ and its sibling ‘class blindness’ is promoted through prevailing neoliberal discourses around a shared humanity, meritocracy, individual choice and the fluidity of class. Last, we explore how, within these frameworks, ‘working-class problems’ (e.g. lack of social mobility) are often individualised and construed as fixed, while ideologies about responsibilities and choice impact on us all to mask social and structural inequalities that radically shape those choices. A review of research illustrates that vague and subtly signalled language around social class appears to be widespread in Western societies and has continued to be so for several decades. For example, research by Phoenix and Tizard (1996) found that when they conducted interviews with young Londoners in order to explore the place of social class in their lives, most of the participants were vague about what class meant and which class group they belonged to. This led the authors to propose that the participants had restricted access to a discourse of class as a result of attempts by powerful groups to ‘dissolve’ notions of a society stratified along class lines. Indeed, as Holt and Griffin’s (2005) later research found, class was often referred to by participants in their study in highly coded ways. Although not referring to class explicitly, participants used terms in reference to groups of people and places that were clearly understood as being ‘classed’, and it was assumed that others had a shared understanding of this. One example was referring to people as ‘Kevs, Trevs, Sharons and Tracys’, ‘locals’ or ‘townies’ which were terms used to refer to working-class men and women. Holt and Griffin (2005) argue this is because talking about class and categorising people according to class is taboo in British culture; instead an ideal of ‘classlessness’ prevails (Bradley, 1996; see Chapter 1). Therefore, coded terms reflect the elusiveness of class when discourses around classlessness dominate. Pertinently, Holt and Griffin also found that the working-class participants were less likely to articulate a conscious identity position with

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regards to social class than the middle-class participants (see also Gorz, 1982); for instance, they were more likely to report that they did not know which social class they belonged to or what was meant by social class. While, if they did identify as belonging to a certain class, there was a general tendency for the participants to describe themselves as ‘middle-class’, a propensity, particularly amongst White people, that is well-documented (see Bullock & Limbert, 2009; see Chapter 1). In Cleland and Palma’s more recent work (2018), a key finding is that senior leadership teams in Medical School, again, differentiated between social class groups using subtle linguistic signalling. For example, working-class applicants were referred to as ‘WP’ (widening participation), while middle-class students were prominently referred to as ‘our students’. The authors argue persuasively that it is these kinds of vague referrals that allowed for a subtly classed Othering, enabling coded classed messaging while ensuring that responsibility for such hierarchical class-based discrimination was either denied or unacknowledged. Therefore, this body of work importantly highlights how limited or coded discourse around social class justifies class hierarchies and makes identities fraught or difficult, particularly for working-class and/or people of colour. As previously argued, an important feature in the invisiblising of social class inequities and classed identities is the saturation of neoliberalist notions of shared humanness, meritocracy and individual responsibility to justify class (and raced) privilege or indeed the lack of it. Enlightening work by social psychologists Thomas and Azmitia (2014) used a mixed methods approach to illustrate the importance of meanings around social class in 104 US young adults who were attending a state university in northern California. A first finding from this research was that ‘upperclass’ students often justified their privilege by reference to their parents’ hard work. For example, the authors share a story told by an Asian American upper-class woman about how she felt harshly and publicly criticised when a peer drew attention to her unique class privilege of which the peer didn’t have the benefit. In this story, the participant talked about how guilty that made her feel, and that it wasn’t her fault she was privileged. This talk was common in data from participants from middle and upperclass backgrounds and was often shored up by discursive social class

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distancing to avoid the associated responsibility for class status which, in turn, was validated as earned through (parental) hard work and merit therefore not to be ashamed of. These narratives produce a clear discourse of shame for those whose parents were assumed to not have worked hard enough (see next section) while justifying social structures and the power associated with them as ‘earned’. An additional finding in Thomas and Azmitia’s (2014) research was that examples of classed divisions raised by working-class peers (e.g. stress, or a lack of, around financial difficulties) were denied by middleclass students. Instead, the (middle and upper-class) participants drew on a ‘shared humanity’ discourse to establish humanity as the final leveller, the world as classless and them as ‘class blind’. Here then, claiming social class identities is avoided or denied, and this is achieved by positioning class as unimportant in the face of more powerful forces that did not discriminate on classed lines. Again, despite attempts by workingclass students to raise classed inequalities, this discourse was drawn upon across class boundaries and was commonly evoked by working-class participants of colour to minimise hierarchical class difference and the moral (un)worthiness associated with it. For example, a working-class Asian American woman said: Basically everybody’s about the same social class that I am, so I don’t see how it really affects anybody….We’re all equal, I mean, nobody should think they’re better than others. (p. 207)

The authors theorised that this way of talking about social class is a means to present college life and its inhabitants as ‘class blind’ and so impervious to the impact of classed inequalities and the resultant stigmatising identities. In addition, it was clear in this published data that if a classed identity was claimed, this was positioned as a matter of personal choice. We argue that key points from important critical race scholarship (e.g. Wise, 2010) about ‘colour-blindness’ can be helpful here too. Colour-blindness and class blindness are shored up by differing patterns of oppressive systems of control and are often dangerously positioned as competing (e.g. ‘it is not about race it is about class’). However, they

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can often be ‘bedfellows’ in that they both take the form of neoliberalism (Aramburu, 2020) and are weaponised to promote individualism, through the meritocratic and personal choice discourses that seep down into our everyday lives. This ideology of ‘class blindness’, while seemingly emancipatory through the reiteration of the discourse of a classless society, anchors the idea that class does not matter even when it blatantly does (Smith & Redington, 2010). In addition, as Cook and O’Hara (2019) argue, it also allows the middle-class to view their selves and their lives as earnt and without reference to continued, unfair, classed division and difference. In contrast to this prevalent construction of the classless society promoted in ‘class blindness’, these important examples of research continue to draw attention to late capitalist ideology around what is theorised as the ‘fluidity of class’. This includes a portrayal of the class system and those in it as existing without boundaries, where hard work and merit, as with Thomas and Azmitia’s work (2014), achieve social mobility. The fluidity of class is also tended to be understood along linear and unidimensional lines where working-class peoples, while being painfully conscious of their classed identities and the inequalities bestowed upon them, see upwards social mobility as a way to escape some of these inequalities along with their stigmatised working-class identity. Therefore, in this context, classed identities are fluid, and the class system is one without boundaries, and therefore, the working-class and poor are simply required to use drive, ambition and hard work to gain access to middle-class privileges by virtue of this individualised merit. This discourse echoes historical and prevailing scientific discourse around intelligence and social mobility presented in Chapter 2. For instance, research by Schwartz, Donovan, and Guido-DeBrito (2009) found a reproduction of the discourse of meritocracy in college student men’s talk about their futures, where education and hard work were referred to as something that would allow them to achieve social mobility in a fluid, unidimensional classed system. Here, students were very much conscious of their social class in relation to others and unfair limitations that posed and saw personal characteristics such as the way people spoke and dressed (middle-class) as signifiers of class. The

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researchers reported stories of how some of the students used these signifiers to imitate middle-classness so they could pass as middle-class and therefore reach career goals. As Bullock and Limbert (2003) similarly report, while most of the low income women they interviewed strongly identified with being working-class, they also imagined, as a result of the merit of their hard work and ‘drive to success’, that they would become middle-class and none of them expected to still be working-class or identify as such in these imagined futures. To be clear, we are not presenting a simplistic idea that ascribing to the discourse of a meritocratic fluid class system creates a socially mobile self. This process is complicated and fraught with structural and social barriers where bourgeoisie, white supremacy and patriarchy collude to ensure that classed, gendered and raced identities stick and Other to create a profound lack of belonging (Rickett & Morris, forthcoming). For example, in Farina’s (2020) research, a case study focus presents a moving account of a Latino woman aiming to become a professional. In aiming to do so, she acknowledges that gaining access to this world requires association with her ‘oppressor’ (p. 70), and despite resigning herself to ‘necessary’ plans to slowly erase her working-class Latino identity to embody White, middle-class identity signifiers, she would be at risk of continuing to be devalued. Therefore, this last body of research that identifies discourses of a fluid class system and the fluid self very much illustrates that for some, there is a firm understanding of unjust treatment and limited opportunities for working-class people. However, despite this cognisance, individualist discourses, often constructed by the dominant and most privileged in society to justify their own success, are being actively co-opted (along with other individual class markers) by working-class communities with an aim to be socially mobile enough to ‘escape’ such injustices. This construction here is less of a ‘classless society’ but of an acknowledged social hierarchy that is only inclusive to those who work hard, have the aspirations to merit inclusion and whose individualistic characteristics ‘fit’. At the same time, recent reports juxtapose a brutal reality that ‘Britain’s deep social mobility problem, for this generation of young people in particular, is getting worse not better’ (Social Mobility

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Commission, 2017, p. 5). As such, here it is argued that these constructions of the fluid self and the unidimensional, socially mobile society may also ensure that we deny inequalities as stemming from a structural and social level by using neoliberal notions of individualism and choice, despite the abject lack of social mobility for most working-class people. Finally, part of this ‘striving’ for working-class people is about both being understood to be worthy of such elevated social status (Valentine & Harris, 2014) and seeking to avoid the heavily stigmatised workingclass ‘skiver’ identity. Therefore, in this individualising and subjugating discursive terrain, it is unlikely that people will mobilise to challenge such collective class-based inequalities (Jay, Muldoon, & Howarth, 2018). While others may be very much motivated to distance themselves from ‘toxic’ working-class identities (Skeggs, 1997). Consequently, as Jay et al. (2018) argue, inequalities are hidden, and there is a lack of positive discourse about the working-class, while the (White) middle-class both seek claims to that identity, and, strive to deny its impact through a paradoxical reproduction of the classless society. This means that the economically advantaged do not critically evaluate or even acknowledge their privileged position and the economically disadvantaged are effectively silenced (Sanders & Mahalingam, 2012).

Submerged Identities in an Emotional Terrain As bell hooks once wrote, ‘no one wants to talk about class. It is not sexy or cute’ (hooks, 2000, p. 7). In the previous two themes, we have argued that the discursive landscape in contemporary Western societies may have resulted in social class being discursively camouflaged into what Bradley (1996) referred to as a ‘submerged identity’. Therefore, identification with a social class group, in particular, the working-class, is elusive, something to be avoided, or something that is temporary in the journey towards a middle-class identity. However, as Black middle-class writers such as Jenkins (2019) argue, the White middle-class bourgeois ideology reiterates white supremacist practices, and therefore, identifying as middle-class for people of colour is often fraught and elusive since membership of the (White) middle-class feels perpetually liminal

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through the production of profound experiences of shame, unbelonging and unworthiness. In addition, as previously argued, politicised ideology has meant that classed identities have been made more difficult and, in some cases, embarrassing or anxiety-provoking and so may be avoided altogether for many (e.g. Holt & Griffin, 2005). Interestingly, the startling paucity of research on class within psychology has led many authors to conclude that one additional reason for such an important omission of thought on the subject, as Sayer (2005, p. 1) has argued, represents the societal level milieu where ‘class is an embarrassing and unsettling subject’. Holt and Griffin’s (2005) research also reported that talk around class was often accompanied by nervous laughter or an apology, perhaps indicative of acute embarrassment. This emotional realm that is produced through social meanings around class has been discussed in more recent research. For example, Crozier, Burke, and Archer (2016) found in their higher education student research that, while not the same as the reluctance to discuss race that saturated their data, there was also a sort of squeamish unwillingness to discuss class. While Glodjo (2017) found embarrassment and taboos surrounding open discussion on social class, coupled with a dominance of middle-class norms, prevented economically privileged persons from critically reflecting on their class identity and how it might impact on social relations. These processes, Glogjo argued, reinforce dominant societal ideologies that shame, marginalise and silence working-class people. Instructively, hooks (2014) reflects on her own experience of the emotional realm of class: Demands that individuals from class backgrounds deemed undesirable surrender all vestiges of their past create psychic turmoil. We were encouraged, as many students are today, to betray our class origins. (p. 182)

Sociological studies similarly suggest that being marked as or identifying as a member of the working-class engenders feelings of shame and guilt (Reay, 2005; Sayer, 2005; Skeggs, 1997). For example, amongst a group of women interviewed in earlier work by Nenga (2003), those from working-class backgrounds remembered the shame and anxiety they

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experienced in situations where their clothing or food was discursively marked as violating middle-class norms perpetuated in popular culture. In addition, they argued that this production of shame silenced them from raising the injustice of such stigmatising normative comparisons. Importantly, this shaming was so Othering that it often also signified a threat to social bonds and created trouble for friendships and wider relationships (Scheff, 2003). Following these arguments and a turn to emotion in research and theory, researchers such as Kallschmidt and Eaton (2019) have investigated how such shame, stigma and embarrassment is both created and reproduced in work settings. The argument they present is that this leaves the stigmatised to engage in emotionally fraught identity management of the self and their practices in order to survive. As previously argued, people manage identities invisiblised through taboos in different ways and for different reasons. In this research, twenty working-class White men in the United States revealed that they often concealed their class not just because of fears of class discrimination, but that it was felt to be deeply emotional and personal or that they feared feeling ashamed as a result of the ensuing pity and condescension inferred from classist moral positioning. Of course, as argued earlier, concealment is also both a survival strategy and a means to gain the privilege associated with middle-classness, and this is often drawn on gendered, raced as well as classed lines. For example, the authors also argue that concealment allowed these men to maintain a raced and gendered privilege that comes from conforming with hegemonic masculinity. However, these research findings further reiterate the argument that strongly identifying as working-class can create social stigma and related emotional pain and anguish which can only be partially side-stepped via concealment. To sum up, this marked and socially forced decline of ‘class consciousness’ in the Western world (Wagner & McLaughlin, 2015) should concern Marxists who believe that this is a prerequisite for class conflict and collective political action on the part of the working-class (e.g. Marx, 1970), or at the very least a questioning of what is often ‘passed off ’ as the natural order of things (Bourdieu & Ferguson, 1999). Finally, these findings cannot be adequately theorised by employing more mainstream social psychological approaches to identity such as Social Identity

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Theory (Tajfel, 1978, 1981) (for more extended discussions of the limitations of Social Identity Theory in theorising social class, see Argyle, 1994; Day, Rickett, & Woolhouse, 2014; Holt & Griffin, 2005). In addition, the process of Othering, apparent in aforementioned research, is a means by which people consolidate and assert a sense of valued identity, for example, one more individual, educated, sophisticated, cultured, etc., than the working-class Other. On the surface, this may appear to be a finding that could be explained by drawing upon Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1978), whereby the ‘out-group’ (the working-class) is being portrayed in ways that bolster the self-esteem of members of the in-group (the middle-class). However, Holt and Griffin (2005) pointed out that their participants’ talk around class was also imbued with ambivalence and that there was evidence in the data of desire for the working-class Other, a finding that cannot be adequately accommodated by Social Identity Theory. Furthermore, as Walkerdine’s early work (1996) argues, this process of Othering is instructive, not just for revealing how identities are constructed, negotiated and consolidated but also because of what this reveals about the anxieties of the middle-class imagination.

Implications for Transformative Politics: Authenticity, Resistance and Social Protest The previous three themes within research have presented a disheartening account of largely negative discursive constructions of the working-class (e.g. in the psychological literature, media and everyday talk). However, we would now like to present critical social psychological and sociological literature which highlights that despite prevailing classist discourse, there is evidence of working-class people resisting and negotiating more positive identity positions for themselves and each other in a variety of everyday contexts and settings. This literature will be the focus of the remaining part of this chapter. Following this, and the main gendered focus within that literature, we will organise our arguments around classed intersections with gender (and race).

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To begin with, it is worthwhile looking at how the possibilities of resistance have been theorised in critical social psychological work. Scholars, particularly feminists, have long sought to understand the constraining and oppressive functions of, for example, gendered roles and constructions (e.g. Millett, 1971; Wetherell, 1995). However, early critics have pointed out that such explanations can fall foul of determinism that obscures notions of agency (e.g. Madill & Doherty, 1994). Despite these critiques, as will be presented, critical social psychological work has been drawn upon to explore agency within various sites. Here, writers argue that the (classed) subject can reflect upon the discourses and discursive relations that constitute them and that they have some leeway in choosing from the options available (e.g. Day, Johnson, Milnes, & Rickett, 2010). Further to this, it has been suggested that we have the potential to ‘rewrite’ ideologies of class by subverting dominant discourses through the mobilisation of ‘alternative’ or counter-discourses that position working-class people in more powerful ways (e.g. Day, Gough, & McFadden, 2003). Such discourses could provide the potential to liberate classed subjects from constraining classed ideals by offering counter-discourses (e.g. Loveday, 2015), by parodying middle-class ideals (e.g. Rickett & Morris, forthcoming) and by offering positions in multiple and competing discourses (e.g. Woolhouse, Day, & Rickett, 2019). Here then, discourse becomes a crucial site for active resistance to class ideologies, which in turn opens possibilities for positive action and social change. Secondly, as discussed in Chapter 3, there is a long tradition within sociology and critical social psychology of examining how socially positioned language and discourse serves to constitute both social class and gender identities. Following Crenshaw (1989), a strand of research has theorised class and gender (and often race) by adhering to an understanding of intersectionality that coincides with poststructuralist argument (Butler, 1999) and follows Foucauldian understandings of power (see Knudsen, 2007). This work tends to focus on how social categories articulate with one another, particularly on how class is gendered and often raced. Here, the exploration of intersections of class and gender is through the deconstruction of multi-layered meaning around identities that are conceived to be multiple, shifting and often contradictory.

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It is broadly within these two theoretical frameworks that the following body of research has sought to understand how social class coincides with femininities and masculinities to create pockets of resistance to classed and gendered norms.

Working-Class Feminine Identities, Authenticity, Resistance and Social Protest As identified earlier, feminist scholars have a solid history of theorising and researching intersections between social class and femininities in ways that create opportunities for agency and resistance to unfair classed and gendered normative ideals. One theme detected in the literature is the resistance of working-class girls and women towards dominant, bourgeois ideals of femininity as conformist, passive and frail (e.g. Skeggs, 1997). In addition, critical work in the field of organisational psychology has found that working-class women employed in occupations traditionally associated with men and masculinity (e.g. door supervision and police-work) reject constructions of the ‘ideal female worker’ (as safe, risk-aversive and ‘ladylike’) as inconducive to the kind of (physical, often violent) work that they do (e.g. Rickett, 2014; Rickett & Roman, 2013). In contrast, participants often discursively positioned themselves as courageous, wily women who were unafraid in the face of violence (Rickett, 2014). While a second broad theme focusses on claims to authenticity and legitimacy which are often central to the formation of social relations in working-class women (e.g. taking a no-nonsense approach to foodwork—Woolhouse et al., 2019). As we have previously argued, challenges surrounding identity and authenticity are sharply felt by those who identify with or are marked as a marginalised person, especially those that may be socially or culturally stigmatised such as working-class people. As such, as we will argue, for many, powerful authentic workingclass identities need to be negotiated and recognised as such within the wider sense making of working-class people and their communities.

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At the turn of the millennium, feminist research by Day et al. (2003) reported that the working-class women in their study, which examined talk around class and gender in the context of leisure and ‘nights out’, positioned themselves as women who were tough, clued-up and ‘could look after themselves’. The authors also found that the women used this kind of talk to produce an authentic identity within the night-time economy, while simultaneously Othering themselves from middle-class women who were ridiculed for being pretentious and inauthentic. A decade or so later, Rickett and Roman (2013) applied such findings to the organisational contest of UK Door supervision work. This work is traditionally seen as a working-class, masculinised line of work. In addition, it is deemed to be one that is physically risky, where violence is seen as a ‘tool of the trade’ and where ‘bodily capital’ and ‘fighting ability’ are paramount to the competent performance of the job. The study involved in-depth interviews with under 35-years-old, White, British, heterosexual women who worked as door supervisors in the UK. One analytic focus was on the way in which oppressive discursive constructions of working-class women’s identities were reworked and resisted through an intersection of class, gender and race. For example, the participants often claimed a White, working-class ‘hard matriarch’ identity that actively resisted classed and raced ideology that controls workingclass women’s identities and practices. For the participants, the ability of women to enact violence allowed for the rewriting of the passive woman and a nonconformist ‘hard matriarch’ identity demanded status and respect amongst working-class male colleagues and, often middle-class, customers. For example, ‘Angela’ represents herself as a maternal subject, while the middle-class male customer is drawn in relation to this as an infantilised subject achieved through a maternalised discourse of caring, responsibility and duty. However, rather than a simple reproduction of notions of mothering, the discourse is reconstructed to undermine White bourgeois and patriarchal structures of power. Historically, working-class women have had narrow options for potential employment, ranging from motherhood to being in a caring profession or service (Taylor, 2012), while, in recent history, other types of work they have carried out have had an inherent demand for emotional labour. Therefore, it may be difficult for working-class women to position themselves as

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successful women when their work sits so far outside of these understandings. The authors argue that by rewriting normative ideology around the maternalised working-class woman, in the guise of the ‘hard matriarch’, participants presented themselves in a higher status position and as disrupting ideals that may otherwise undermine them. By parodying masculinity and using the rewritten maternal discourse to infantilise, the power positioning of middle-class male customers is subverted. However, the authors also urge caution, noting how such authentic representations of the matriarchical woman not only essentialises womanhood, it can also serve to deny women an active sexuality, particularly for White working-class women (see also Skeggs’, early work, 1992, 1997). Current research by Rickett and Morris (forthcoming) explores how working-class academic women find authenticity and value in the elitist and masculinised contemporary UK Higher Education setting. To this end, 12 in-depth interviews were conducted with a diverse sample of self-identified, working-class women academics working in the UK. This research followed previous work that revealed that working-class women’s academic lives are littered with classism and sexism (Langhout, Drake, & Rosselli, 2009), while different processes of social segregation enable persistent devaluing and, sometimes, disregard (e.g. Reay, 2004), and bodies and practices are policed and regulated to fit masculinised, middle-class norms (e.g. Raisborough & Adams, 2008). Importantly for the purpose of the current focus, the authors identified resistant discourse around emotional labour that presented working-class women’s embodied cultural capital as producing superior skills (than their middleclass counterparts) in delivering student support. This discourse around work created potential space for empowerment, a sense of belonging and, arguably, resistance that claimed back authentic selfhood within UK Higher Education. For example, ‘Ellie’ centres her class as ‘more important (than being a woman or LGB) weirdly’ (p. 9) in determining whether she can be a worthy, highly valued citizen in this ‘modern’ HE context. Here then, working-class (and gendered) associated ‘skills’ are presented as valuable for the demands of the time as they symbolise modernity and progress. While ‘Maddie’ agrees that her working-class derived social and emotional capital ensures students see her as more ‘approachable’ and

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more ‘down to earth’ than her middle-class colleagues. In turn, middleclass colleagues were explicitly drawn as old-fashioned, unworldly and lacking the emotional resilience to deliver student support. For example, ‘Gina’ caricatures a colleague getting visibly emotional, presenting this to be both unwarranted and caused by emotional fragility seen to be typical of her unworldly, middle-class background. My colleague … started getting really upset about something she was talking about and …erm but she started nearly crying and getting really upset and I said why are you crying and getting upset about this … she has a very different background to me so she would of come up through the whole sort of Oxbridge kind of route. (p. 6)

In a second research context, research by Woolhouse, Day, Rickett, and Milnes (2012) explored food and eating in their study with workingclass, teenage girls attending schools in the South Yorkshire area of the UK. In doing so, they found that many culturally sanctioned practices around food consumption (e.g. ‘healthy eating’) and concerns with appearance and body image were derided as something that ‘posh women’ do and invest in. In an identified discourse around ‘everything in moderation’, the girls positioned themselves instead as more ‘sensible’ (p. 52) and down to earth. Similarly, in an ethnographic study on a US university campus, Armstrong et al. (2014) also found that women students from working-class backgrounds often construed those who were more privileged as pretentious, elitist and engaged in excessive consumption. This is interpreted by the authors as an attempt on the part of those with limited resources to try to avenge class injuries caused by damaging ideology. For instance, research (e.g. Phoenix, Woollett, & Lloyd, 1991) has demonstrated vividly how discursive constructions of the maternal subject often serve to privilege and therefore normalise White, middle-class women and, in turn, Other and derogate women considered to be working-class. In addition, this Othering shores up political, social and economic inequities through the denial of social housing, medical and social-care policy and practice and a pervasive derogation of them, their bodies and their lives (Weber, 1998). Thereby in this socially-located context, young working-class women are utilising

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discursive practices of survival to parody and resist bourgeois and sexist ideology to claim authentic, reasonable and balanced identities around food and their bodies. Much more recent work pursued these findings further to explore motherhood and cultural ideals around food preparation. In this interview research (Woolhouse et al., 2019), working-class mothers pointed to the unattainable and ‘classed’ ideals that are set by cultural expectations of ‘cooking from scratch’. In addition, some of the mothers attempted to challenge this cultural expectation through: questioning the value of freshly prepared food cooked by a mother, emphasising the difficulties presented by the conflicting demands of employment outside the home and carrying out family and domestic activities and suggesting that such expectations can be unrealistic and place mothers under significant pressure. Such counter-discourse was more evident from the working-class mothers who articulated a more pragmatic and ‘no-nonsense’ approach to family foodwork (see also Wright, Maher, & Tanner, 2015). For example, ‘Asha’, a working-class married mother of two who described herself as ‘Arab’, provided an account of mealtimes in her household which are staggered due to shift work and can result in the need for three cooked meals per night, and therefore, takeaways can be a convenient and pragmatic choice. While ‘Diane’ constructs the expectations placed on women (as represented in TV cookery programmes) as anger provoking (‘they piss me off ’, p. 292) and completely unrealistic for many women (‘who’s…got all day to stand baking …cooking… marinating something for seventy-five hours’, p. 292). Diane contrasts the lives of mothers who are employed outside the home with those such as ‘Nigella Lawson’ (a British ‘celebrity’ cook) whom she depicts as ‘posh’ and doesn’t have to work, suggesting that the domestic and cooking activities promoted by those such as Nigella Lawson are completely unrealistic for employed and/or single mothers and place unfair expectations on them. These findings follow Wright et al. (2015) and Wills, Backett-Milburn, Roberts, and Lawton (2011) research which found that working-class mothers’ experiences of surveillance and expectation were often construed as externally imposed (e.g. by health professionals). Similarly, here, Diane is explicitly challenging media messages/pressures, exposing and challenging the classed nature of

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hegemonic discourse around femininity and motherhood through which prescriptions for ‘good/normal’ mothering are built upon the values and social and economic circumstances associated with (White and married) middle-class mothers (Elliott, Powell, & Brenton, 2015). Last, we will focus on research that samples working-class young women and girls in educational settings where White, middleclass discourses prevail. Researchers, particularly US-based academics, have asked how working-class girls and women can resolve tension between working-class discourses and the middle-class discourses around schooling and scholarliness. A first example is a longitudinal research study (Hicks, 2004) that uses an ethnographic approach to explore how young, White, working-class Appalachian girls resist dominant ideologies by rejecting middle-class scholarliness as dull and consciously cultivated. In direct opposition to these, they claimed subversive and joyous learning identities. In this research, Hicks highlights the girls’ passionate interest in horror fiction and their desires to write about the outlandish and monstrous, which conflicts with the ‘highbrow texts held in favour by reading educators’ (p. 222). In the identity struggles to ‘negotiate the contradiction entailed by living in one social class domain and being educated in another’ (Hicks, 2004, p. 228), the girls engaged in loud conversations, swore and used sexual innuendos to subvert and parody the disciplinary power of middle-class discourse around both femininities and scholarliness. Following this, further work by Crumb, Haskins, Dean, and Avent Harris (2019) examined how Black, working-class women who are studying for their PhDs manage to carve out positive identities for themselves in hostile terrain where elitist, masculinist and White values dominate. This research follows Ostrove, Stewart, & Curtin’s (2011) findings that despite commonly shared interests and backgrounds with other Black women in these learning communities, classism is rife, and Black working-class women often feel a profound lack of belonging as a result of their classed identities as Black women. Research such as that by hook (2000) has also found that Black, working-class women are often overwhelmed with the triple layer of educationally situated inequalities, are seen to lack the cultural capital required and are often at the wrong

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end of racist and classist practice. Despite this, one way that the participants in this study forged positive identities was to call upon authentic working-class virtues, such as a built-in capacity for hard work, which they argued was instilled in childhood and helped them to meet the complex and conflicting demands of doctoral studies in a way that their middle-class counterparts were unable to. In addition, like the workingclass women academics in Rickett and Morris’ (forthcoming) research, they drew on narratives that wrote life experiences and adversity as a determinant of a resilient self, as such, positioned themselves as both more worldly and more geared up for academic life than peers. While these points of resistance may appear implicit compared to some of the bold, explicit counter-discourse examples in Hick’s 2004 research, within this triple layering of discrimination and Othering, they could be read as remarkable survival strategies to preserve a worthy and capable sense of themselves in relation to others. In sum, through the research we have presented on working-class feminine identities, authenticity, resistance and social protest, we argue that across multiple contexts, resistant identities and protest can take many forms to contest or actively resist classist, sexist and racist ideology. In doing, positive, genuine, legitimate and worthy identities are claimed, and potentially subjugating power differentials are challenged.

Working-Class Masculine Identities, Authenticity, Resistance and Social Protest Finally, we will look at examples of research that have explored workingclass masculine identities, resistance and protest. In early research, reflecting social concerns of the time, leisure and alcohol consumption were a common context for investigation. For example, research found that collective episodic drinking (particularly at weekends) provides opportunities for social bonding, camaraderie and the construction and validation of valued masculine identities (e.g. as ‘tough’) (e.g. Burns, 1980; Canaan, 1996). Such authors point out that other, more socially sanctioned means of validating masculinity, such as via material possessions or employment that indicates social status, are often blocked or

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unavailable to such men and as a result, they have sought other means. Further than this, those such as Tomsen (1997) have argued that heavy drinking and fighting on the part of working-class men can be read as a rejection of socially dominant, middle-class practices and values (e.g. respectability and restraint), which he characterises as a form of ‘social protest’. A second focus in this early research was how the high levels of unemployment amongst working-class men effected how they saw themselves. For example, Willott and Griffin (1997) conducted group interviews with a group of working-class men in the West Midlands in the UK who were experiencing long-term unemployment and as such could be regarded as a group lacking social and economic power. Despite this, the authors found that the men carved out positive identity positions for themselves as men who were still able to provide for their families (despite their unemployed status) and as men still engaged in public consumption. Following more contemporary concerns, recent work on masculinities and class has been more interested in exploring how working-class boys understand themselves and/or are understood in educational settings. While a growing body of research explores points of resistance and positive identity reclamation for working-class fathers. Within this research, we also see themes around the authentic self as a means of resistance to disempowering dominant discourse. For context, compared to other ethnic groups, White British students attending state schools score marginally below the average on school attainment at 16 years old, in the UK (Gov.uk, 2019) but are several times more likely to enter higher education than their peers of Gypsy, Roma and traveller backgrounds (Mulcahy, Baars, Bowen-Viner, & Menzies, 2017). However, a small subset of these students, specifically boys whose families are in receipt of free school meals (roughly 1 in 20 of White British children—Pickering, 2019), perform the lowest of all ethnic groups at attainment at the age of 16 (Gov.uk, 2019). Within this context, personal aspiration has been identified by some research to partially explain why workingclass White boys don’t perform as well as other ethnic groups such as boys from British Chinese families. This focus reflects contemporary neoliberal values around ‘success’ which can jar with working-class

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community level values leaving structural and social inequalities faced by these boys dismissed as individual character centred (e.g. Bagguley & Hussain, 2016). To consider this further, Stahl (2018) used ethnographic methodology to theorise how aspirations are shaped through discourse and how ‘respectability’ and ‘authenticity’ are integral to positive identity construction for the 23 White, working-class boys (aged between 14 and 16) in the study. The researcher found that the boys often identify with aspirational discourses while also constructing counter-narratives to neoliberal discourse in order to constitute themselves as valued. Earlier research (e.g. Weis & Cipollone, 2013) has argued that middleclass parents are driven to intensively parent and draw on networks of resources to produce particular identities in their children which reproduce power and power relations and normalise values around the need to gain power and use it to sustain or increase that in relation to others. In contrast, working-class boys generally draw on working-class values such as being authentic, having an anti-pretentious humour, ‘fitting in’ and not trying to better everyone else (e.g. Archer & Leathwood, 2003). A quote from ‘Harry’ in Stahl’s (2018) research illustrates that such values still dominate for young working-class boys in the UK: Cause I don’t care if I’m not powerful. I just want to be an everyday person. I don’t want to be like upper-class and stuff like that. (p. 564)

In sum, the author convincingly argues that boys such as Harry adhere to an ‘ordinary’ identity that directly resists middle-class values around both the centrality of power and the desire for social mobility. Stahl goes on to argue that the identity of the ‘everyday person’ is about reclaiming a bond to an authentic identity and resisting subjectivities that are not akin to oneself. A second research example scrutinises the way discourse in US schooling talk and practices disciplines Black masculinities and the way in which Black young men can leverage power and resistance to, often, pathologising discourse. In this study, Allen (2017) collected 300 hours of ethnographic data from teachers, parents and students to explore the positioning of four, Black working-class teenagers. Allen found that

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teachers often reproduced dominant classed, raced and gendered ideologies about the young men, understanding their practices as deviant, sexually or physically aggressive, and the author concluded that this positioning appeared to give little regard to intent. However, the students did actively resist condescension and blatant prejudice but also felt the level of discrimination towards them squeezed out any attempts on their part to be judged in a more positive manner. Teachers talk to you, like, they don’t put you at the same level as your intelligence or I could say that they stereotype a lot. Like, okay, say if I wear saggy jeans, doo-rag, or something like that, they write me off and don’t give me a chance to learn anything. (Andre, p. 274)

The author concludes by arguing that in resisting and directly calling out unfair treatment, the students performed a progressive Black, workingclass masculinity that stands against and names institutional racism, therefore a direct threat to colour-blind ideology which dominated teacher and other students’ talk and often disallowed protests against racism. Moving on, there has been some interesting and helpful work in the context of families, with working-class fathers who have, in recent times, become the source of blame for a number of issues (e.g. poverty and criminality) as a result of what some authors have labelled the ‘fatherless society’ discourse (see Tarrant & Ward, 2017). Recent research has been very much motivated by concerns for positive working-class fatherhood living in a society dominated with such a discourse. An interesting example of this research couples with this a critical concern around the increasing number of working-class boys given ADHD diagnosis in the UK (Allan & Harwood, 2016). An example of this work was carried out by Olsvold, Aarseth, and Bondevik (2019) who explored how middleclass and working-class fathers relate to their sons’ ADHD diagnosis. The authors argue that, within service provision, and in society more generally, there is a demand on parents to adhere to a dominant medical discourse of ADHD. Therefore, they were also particularly interested in how the intersection of class and gender shapes different fathering identities and practices. In this study, in-depth interviews were carried

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out with 16 fathers of boys diagnosed with ADHD. While all the 16 fathers interviewed were critical of the medicalised understanding of their sons, this discursive resistance is much stronger in the working-class fathers’ talk than in the middle-class fathers’. Seen in a wider context, the fathers’ critical voices offer considerable resistance to the medicalisation discourse. For example, working-class fathers were more likely to locate the blame at societal level barriers for their son’s hyperactivity (e.g. too few possibilities for physical activity). While others normalised hyperactivity and drew on their own childhood identities as boys to argue that this was not a new thing, only the medicalisation was new: Because when I was growing up, ADHD had not been invented, and children were outside and played. They did not sit in front of a computer or TV all the time. When I came home in the evening, I was tired, I had played all day with friends, and I went straight to bed. (Frank, p. 111)

The authors also report that working-class fathers often considered themselves as having strong empathy with their sons; this was particularly acute when they talked about their medicated son, where a reliance on medication was seen as a threat to the masculinised value of being independent and self-sufficient. Whereas middle-class fathers were more likely to draw on pathologising discourses of shame about their son’s unmedicated behaviour, such as displaying a lack of self-control and overt displays of emotion. To summarise, here working-class fathers contest overwhelming medicalising discourse about their sons. They also position themselves as emotionally-attached and compassionate fathers, therefore countering an absent father discourse for working-class dads and resisting shaming narratives. In conclusion, for working-class men participants, prevailing ideology about them as failing is contested, while authentic identities such as ‘ordinariness’ challenge middle-class ideals and emotional connectedness dispels negative stereotypes about working-class men. Last, as an act of social protest, classed, gendered and raced systems of discrimination are named and shamed.

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Cautionary Notes: Problems and Limitations We argue that the work we have reviewed in this chapter is crucial in highlighting both the force of and the extent to which undervaluing and subordinating discourse shapes selfhood and the way we relate to each other in all aspects of our lives, from homelife, education, work and leisure. In addition, the findings around the active construction and negotiation of class identities show that working-class people are not simply ‘written’ by dominant cultural discourses such as those evident in the British media (see Chapter 4). This develops identity theory beyond traditional theory such as Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1978, 1981). However, in this chapter, we caution against a number of conclusions. First, we need to guard against an uncritical celebration of instances of resistance and protest. Here, we can see working-class peoples as not simply positioned by existing discourses but also positioning themselves within these, variably taking these up, resisting, negotiating and tailoring them to achieve a desired identity (Court & Court, 1998; Davies & Harré, 1990). However, as previously argued, at the same time, the options available are not limitless; multiple processes of structural power can set down restrictions upon the ways in which, and the extent to which, we can do this. As we have seen, in cultures dominated by discourses around the fluid classed subject and the fluid class system, being able to disrupt class and colour-blind discourse by calling out marginalisation and unequal treatment is an act of protest, tied to agency and constitutes empowerment, nonetheless (e.g. Allen, 2017). A second cautionary tale is around an uncritical romanticised understanding of the authentic self as a means to resist conforming to damaging ideals. Indeed, the notion of working-class identities as more ‘authentic’ has been shown to have negative ramifications for women. For example, Rickett, Craig, and Thompson (2013) noted how transexclusionary discourse often construes trans women as well-educated and time and economically privileged and therefore having the resources to engage in an effortful (yet inauthentic) performance of femininity (e.g. through the purchasing of expensive cosmetic products and procedures). Such women are positioned against cis gender women (often coded as working-class) who are to be regarded as more authentic/‘real’ women.

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Indeed, the relational construction of identity evident in the studies presented has often involved the derision of more economically privileged groups, which has negative implications for classed relations and for people from other marginalised groups. We need to remember that authentic working-class selfhood is a feature of classism. As Skeggs (2005) argued, race and class can often collide to sometimes signify working-class communities as too authentic and too primitive (too much emotion, too loud) and work as a ‘fantastical menace’ (p. 970) to the middle-class. In addition, while the findings we have presented challenge some class stereotypes (e.g. working-class women as conformist and passive—Rickett & Roman, 2013; working-class fathers are distant/absent—Allan & Harwood, 2016), other harmful ones are reiterated (e.g. the working-class as lacking ambition—Stahl, 2018; working-class boys as naturally lacking impulse control—Olsvold et al., 2019). Finally, despite the pockets of resistance noted in the later part of this chapter, as argued early on, classist tropes dominate, while explicit discourses around class, class-based inequities and the emotional impact of classism continue to be rarely employed by research participants. Therefore class, classism and the pain and suffering associated with it remain opaque and largely unacknowledged, and therefore, examples of resistance and protest related to class identity work continue to be limited.

Summary This chapter has focussed on four main themes that we hope have made a strong argument that the way socially-situated understandings drawn upon to define how we see ourselves and others are at the centre of understanding classed identities, relations and discrimination. In doing so, this has allowed us to characterise the cultural suppression of the acknowledgement of class inequalities (Skeggs, 2005). Here, absence or, at the most, opaqueness leaves social class identities often difficult to claim and prevailing social class discrimination difficult to name as socially produced classism. Working-class participants within

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the prevailing ideology about them as failing and less valued do contest and resist, often using authentic identities to dispel negative stereotypes, and classed, gendered and raced systems of discrimination are named and shamed. But these possibilities are limited, often occurring simultaneously with conforming negative stereotypes, and are dwarfed by political ideologies that serve to camouflage classed identities and thwart attention to unequal classed differentials. In the following chapter, we will focus on the ways in which critical social psychological approaches may be used to go beyond academia and apply critical knowledge in the ‘real world’ to make impact beyond the constraints of the literature presented in this present chapter. In doing so, we will focus on education, mental health, physical health and aspects of life which are acutely impacted by social and economic inequalities, to derive clear implications for good practice that could provide the means for change from the ‘grassroots up’ to enable working-class people to live better lives.

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6 Critical Analyses: ‘Real-World’ Applications (Maxine Woolhouse)

Introduction: Coming Out of the Ivory Tower The previous chapter examined the cultural production of classed identities and highlighted the ways in which class ideology and classification constrain the ways in which people make sense of themselves and others. However, attention was also drawn to ‘moments of resistance’, whereby people are able to challenge, resist and rework the often negative and derogatory discourses within which they are interpellated. The current chapter builds upon this work but has a sharper focus on how critical perspectives on social class and related issues (e.g. classism) can be applied in ‘real-world’ settings in order to invoke positive changes. Here, we argue that it is important to move beyond the ‘ivory tower’ of academia in order to challenge practices in a variety of settings which reinforce class boundaries and which do a disservice to working-class and poor people in particular. The chapter will examine recommendations from critical psychologists and examine a number of interesting case studies and examples of ‘good practice’. The chapter will focus on three areas in particular: education, mental health and wellbeing and physical health and illness. © The Author(s) 2020 K. Day et al., Critical Social Psychology of Social Class, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55965-6_6

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Education Education has been highlighted in particular as one context in which those from a working-class background experience barriers to wellbeing and achievement, despite popular beliefs that this is a great facilitator of social mobility. For instance, there is evidence to suggest that workingclass children are repeatedly exposed to lower-quality education (e.g. Stansfeld, Clark, Rodgers, & Cardwell, 2011). Even when this is not the case, expectations from educators tend to be lower (e.g. Lott, 2012), and different explanations are employed for poor academic performance that relate to the social class background of the child (Walkerdine, Lucey, & Melody, 2001). These explanations tend to be ones that offer ‘less hope’ for improvement where working-class children are concerned, whereby, again, problems are often construed as fixed (this being a prominent discourse around ‘working-class lack’—Croizet, Autin, Goudeau, Marot, & Millet, 2019—that is highlighted throughout the book). The result is that working-class children often disengage with education and are thus less likely to profit from it than their middle-class counterparts (Lott, 2012). Further, in an ethnographic study conducted in the United States with the ultimate goal of providing the foundations for school reform, Langhout and Mitchell (2008) found that this was more likely to be the case where working-class, Black and Latino boys were concerned, as educational practices often reinforced institutionalised racism as well as classism. If we move up to higher education, we uncover a similar story. Classism is said to be rife at colleges and universities in both the UK and United States (Langhout, Drake, & Rosselli, 2009), which has a number of consequences for students from working-class backgrounds. These include a decreased sense of belonging, struggles around identity and authenticity, poor social adjustment, intentions to ‘drop out’ and poorer academic performance (e.g. Langhout et al., 2009; Reay, 2002). Below, we present in further detail the ‘current state of affairs’ (focussing predominantly on the UK) in terms of ‘attainment gaps’ and different experiences of education and examine some theoretical explanations on offer as to why such disparities occur. In doing so, we discuss a number of studies which have explored educational environments and propose changes to policies and practices.

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The Current ‘State of Affairs’ in UK Education In the UK, people living in poverty are overwhelmingly represented by the working-class and those from Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black and Chinese ethnic groups (Reay, 2019). And, children from families living in poverty are disadvantaged the whole way through the education system, with lower achievement in primary school (as measured by the Standard Assessment Tests [SATS]) and in secondary school (as measured through GCSE and A-Levels examinations taken at aged 16 and 18, respectively—Social Mobility Commission, 2019). Poor and workingclass young people are also less likely to go to university than their middle-class counterparts (Reay, 2019) and when they do, are less likely to attend the more ‘prestigious’ universities, more likely to drop out, and for those who do graduate, are less likely to obtain a 1st or upper second class degree (Higher Education Funding Council [HEFCE], 2018). Furthermore, six months after graduation, poor and workingclass graduates are less likely to be in graduate level employment or further study compared to their socially- and economically-advantaged counterparts; the only exception to this is for those who graduate with a first-class degree (HEFCE, 2018). Notably, the gap between the likelihood of being in graduate employment/further study widens in line with the lower the degree classification; put simply, obtaining a third-class degree has less of a negative impact on prospects for already advantaged students compared with poor and working-class students (HEFCE, 2018). This serves as a stark reminder that education is far from ‘the great leveller’ as we are so often told. Not only do working-class students fair worse in the education system in terms of tangible outcomes (e.g. qualifications and future prospects), but research consistently demonstrates that their subjective experiences of educations systems are negatively impacted, with a lack of a ‘sense of belonging’ being extensively documented (e.g. Langhout et al., 2009; Ostrove & Long, 2007; Paired Peers Project, 2013; Reay, 2019), although this could be re-framed as a lack of ‘institutional welcoming’ to avoid the implication that the ‘lack’ resides within, and is the ‘fault’ of working-class individuals. For example, Ostrove and Long (2007) conducted a study in a US Liberal Arts College examining the role of

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social class in student lives, specifically in relation to a sense of belonging, experiences of classism and academic performance. As might be expected, students from working-class backgrounds experienced less of a sense of belonging and that was related to poorer academic outcomes and social experiences. Ostrove and Long speculated that feelings of not belonging impacted practices such as participating in class and seeking help which, in turn, affected academic performance. In the context of France, Croizet et al. (2019) discuss research conducted in French preschools (Millet & Croizet, 2016) exploring the role that educational institutions play in reproducing and perpetuating social class inequalities. Specifically, they reported on a series of observational studies of preschool children involved in a teacher-led activity whereby children were encouraged to share stories of what they had done at the weekend. One child talked of having travelled on the TGV (France’s highspeed railway), something which the teacher showed great interest in and asked if any of the other children had ever travelled on the TGV (thus, implicitly denoting this experience as having value). One boy, Abdoullah, then attempted to join in the story-sharing activity by saying that his mother had bought him some toothpaste at the weekend, to which the teacher responded in a mocking tone and winked at the researcher. Croizet et al. (2019) argue that the values implicit within educational settings closely reflect the wider values of privileged groups in societies and therefore middle-class children are necessarily advantaged within and by the education system. This works in two ways: first, because they arrive at school with cultural capital (e.g. having travelled on the TGV) which enables them to fit in and feel at ease—the school feels like their space; second, because being more articulate, having the ‘right’ sort of knowledge and experiences (e.g. visiting museums and so forth) is interpreted as being intelligent and academically-minded, they are able to convert their cultural capital into symbolic capital in ways that working-class children are not (Croizet et al., 2019). Thus, rather than educational spaces being a level playing field and ‘engine[s] of social mobility’ (Owens & de St Croix, 2020, p. 1), they serve to ‘create the conditions for the construction, reproduction, and legitimation of the stratification of society’ (Croizet et al., 2019).

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Staying with the notion of education and meritocratic discourse, in the UK, Owens and de St Croix (2020) explored how teachers and sixth form students at a London secondary state school navigate this discursive landscape in a context of stark structural and social inequalities. Unsurprisingly, given the pervasiveness of meritocratic discourse, both staff and student participants emphasised the relevance of individual talent, hard work and taking advantage of opportunities in their accounts of educational success. However, this wasn’t consistently so; in some instances, teachers pointed to the lack of support and aspiration of students’ families and communities (i.e. the ‘family deficit’ trope) and schools having to ‘make up’ for this lack, but interestingly, the authors note that this wasn’t how the student participants framed their own families. However, all the teachers at some point did acknowledge the structural disadvantages faced by their students such as poverty, poor housing, historic educational disadvantage and so forth. Tellingly, photos taken by the student participants (of aspects of their environment which hindered or helped their educational opportunities) pointed to such structural advantage/disadvantage; one participant showed a photo of her small bedroom which she shared with three other siblings, one of a nearby alley which was used as place to study in the absence of a suitable space at home, and in contrast, a photo from one of the high attaining students which showed a private bedroom with a desk, laptop and several textbooks. One of the students also explained that she worked part-time in a factory and was the sole carer for her mother and brother while also trying to keep up with her studies. The teachers (to a greater or lesser degree) were aware of students who faced such disadvantages but generally found meritocratic discourse (e.g. the school will offer as many opportunities as possible, but it is students’ responsibility to make the those most of these) as ‘a more palatable alternative’ (ibid., p. 14) given their limited power to change the structural dimensions of students’ lives. To summarise, the burden of meritocratic discourse, with its emphasis on competitive individualism and personal responsibility, resulted in students and staff alike feeling the weight of pressure, anxiety and stress to succeed in the face of adversities outside of their control. As the authors state, ‘Faced with such uncertainties the practical question of what students and teachers can and

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should actually do to negotiate the demands of meritocratic expectations is vexing’ (ibid., p. 16). The findings and arguments presented in the selection of research discussed above can be summarised as follows: (1) that poor and working-class students at all levels of the education system, on average, benefit less in terms of tangible outcomes (e.g. grades, qualifications and employment prospects); (2) poor and working-class students have more negative subjective experiences of the education system (e.g. feeling alienated, excluded and lack a sense of belonging); (3) rather than educational institutions being engines of social mobility (Owens & de St Croix, 2020), they serve to reinforce and reproduce social stratification and class boundaries, and (4) that insidious meritocratic discourse obfuscates the multiple structural disadvantages which shape the educational opportunities, experiences and outcomes for many young (and indeed older) people. To end this section on education, we now outline a number of recommendations for policy and practice drawn from the literature. As referenced in the introduction to this section, in the context of a private, elite liberal arts university in the United States, Langhout et al. (2009) examined the relationships between social class, gender, ‘race’, experiences of classism, sense of belonging, psychosocial wellbeing, health and educational outcomes (e.g. intention to drop out of college). The authors found that students who had experienced classism were less likely to have a sense of belonging; that a decreased sense of belonging was related to greater intention to drop out of college and negative psychosocial wellbeing, and finally, that higher levels of psychosocial wellbeing were positively related to better physical health. Based on these findings, they make a number of policy recommendations for universities, including: • The implementation of orientation and transition programmes which include making visible ‘the rules of the academy’ (p. 177) to help students navigate the university system; • Introducing working-class students to working-class faculty and staff members who could act as mentors and help students develop a social network of support;

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• An examination of policies, procedures and practices for ways in which they might disadvantage and alienate poor and working-class students (e.g. a lack of library provision of compulsory but expensive textbooks; readings and other material that do not reflect the lives of workingclass students); • Raise a critical awareness of social class through the development of ‘social class studies’, and develop interventions which target staff in order to raise their awareness of class and classism. In the UK, researchers from a number of English universities conducted a longitudinal study called ‘The Paired Peers Project’ (Paired Peers Project: A degree generation? 2013; Paired Peers: Moving on up? 2017) which followed a sample of 90 students who enrolled at the University of Bristol (UoB—a Russell Group university) and the University of West England (UWE—a post 1992 university also located in Bristol) in 2010. The students identified as either working- or middle-class and were matched by course of study (e.g. two working-class and two middleclass Law students at the University of Bristol, and two working-class and two middle-class Law students at UWE). The researchers followed them throughout their degree courses (2010–2013) and for a three year period following graduation (2014–2017). The aim was to explore how social class shaped their experiences throughout their time at university and their transitions post-graduation. In line with other research (e.g. as discussed above), some key findings were that working-class students (regardless of university attended, although more pronounced at UoB) struggled to ‘fit in’; they were also more likely to have needed to work in paid employment to supplement their income and therefore less able to join ‘CV building’ clubs and societies. Middle-class students were more likely to mobilise their social and cultural capitals, and the opportunities to do so were greater at UoB; middle-class students were able to use their economic and social capital to consider and take up unpaid internships or gain work experience through social networks in ways that working-class students were not. Finally, working-class students were less likely to go through the gruelling and lengthy recruitment processes for ‘prestigious’ and high paying graduate jobs in contrast to middle-class

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students who knew they could garner the help of their parents (Paired Peers Project: A degree generation? 2013). On the basis of the project’s findings, the authors made a number of recommendations for universities: • Regardless of class, most students found the transition from school/college difficult due to the reduced level of structured support and greater expectations for learner independence (although the authors suggested that middle-class, privately educated students felt this more acutely). On the back of this, it was suggested that universities should ensure the effective teaching of library search skills, provide formative feedback on essay plans and help develop skills in producing their own answers, moving them away from pre-prepared ‘model answers’; • Present students with a rationale for self-directed learning and provide independent study skills classes to aid in their shift towards this; • The provision of mentoring and timetabled academic tutorials; • Implement a buddying system between 2nd year and 1st year students to help support them with the challenges of transitioning to university; • It was also noted that the two universities (UWE and UoB) inhabited segregated worlds, geographically and socially, despite being located in the same city. The authors therefore suggested greater collaboration between staff and students between institutions (including the mixing up of student accommodation) in order to try and bridge this social divide. We appreciate the need for policies and practices within educational institutions that attempt to alleviate the challenges faced by all students, but in particular poor, working-class and other groups of marginalised students. Indeed, in our own place of work (a post 1992 university in the north of England which has a higher number of working-class students than, for example, Russell Group universities), we have adopted many of the recommendations listed above (e.g. mentoring schemes; one-toone academic advisor support; the incorporation of critical perspectives on social class into relevant modules, etc.). In addition, we also advocate for the importance of teaching staff (at all levels of education) to

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reflect on and recognise their own class positioning and how this forms a particular ‘class lens’—as we have argued elsewhere (Day, Rickett, & Woolhouse, 2014), middle-classness is normalised to the point that it goes unrecognised (this is discussed further in the following chapter), and ‘class’ is regarded as a matter for those who are not middle-class (which isn’t to say that all educationalists are middle-class, but are predominantly so). Failure to do so can inadvertently lead to making assumptions that are saturated with class values, for example, assuming that the student who is always late for class or frequently misses class is simply lacking in motivation, conscientiousness and so forth, whereas it could be the case (and frequently is) that they are juggling study with work and/or caring responsibilities or simply cannot afford the train fare to travel to university. Even worse, there is the danger of reproducing classism through ‘innocent’ remarks or jokes. One of the authors (Maxine Woolhouse), as an undergraduate student, originally attended a higher education institution in the south of England. In one of her early first year classes, she responded to a question posed by the lecturer, who then laughed and ‘corrected’ Maxine’s northern vowel pronunciation, to the amusement of all the other students. Thirty years later she can still remember the shame and humiliation of this and how she never answered a question in the class again. It is tempting to assume such things no longer occur but anecdotally and in our own observations this isn’t the case; ‘casual’ classist remarks and comments form part of the ‘everyday’ processes of exclusion and alienation and inadvertently send out the message that some students ‘don’t belong’. As noted above, a focus on ‘within’ educational institutions is a necessary and important step to help develop learning environments whereby all students feel equally included and valued. However, we agree with Owens and de St Croix (2020) who argue that what is ultimately needed is wider socio-economic structural change and exposure of, and challenge to, the myth of meritocratic discourse. They state: The need for a ‘level playing field’ is therefore obvious; but expecting individual students, teachers and schools to bear the burdens of achieving this in the long-term absence of effective policies for alleviating structural inequalities both cynically disregards the facts and cruelly leaves students

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and teachers with little option but to bear the burdens of meritocratic expectations and so to perpetuate cycles of stress, marginalisation and disadvantage. (Owens & de St Croix, 2020, p. 17)

Mental Health, Wellbeing and Psychological Distress It is well documented that working-class and poor people are more likely to experience psychological distress (e.g. Balmforth, 2009) and the prevalence increases in line with greater income inequalities within a society (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2017). For example, adults and children in the UK who are within the bottom 20% income bracket are two to three times more likely to experience poor mental health compared with those in the highest income bracket (Mental Health Foundation, 2016). A similar pattern can also be seen globally; in a review of literature from 23 different countries on social class (or some proxy of ) and the mental health of children and adolescents, Reiss (2013) found a consistent negative correlation between socio-economic status and poor mental health; when socio-economic status improved, so did the mental health of young people. Numerous ‘factors’ associated with poverty are known to be related to psychological distress, including debt (Richardson, Elliott, & Roberts, 2013), unemployment or precarious and low paid employment (Stansfeld, Clark, Bebbington, King, Jenkins, & Hinchliffe, 2016 cited in Mental Health Foundation, 2016), homelessness, poor housing and impoverished neighbourhoods (McKenzie, Jones-Rounds, Evans, & Braubach, 2014) and social isolation (Mental Health Foundation, 2016). And of course, all of these are compounded for poor and working-class people who are marginalised and subject to discrimination along other dimensions of difference such as ‘race’, gender, abilities, age, sexuality, immigration status and so forth (Zrenchik & McDowell, 2012). In addition to the structural conditions of poor and working-class people’s lives rendering them more likely to experience psychological distress, there is also ample evidence to suggest disparities in ‘treatments’ along the lines of class. For example, working-class people are more likely to be prescribed medication (e.g. anti-depressants) and less likely to be

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referred for ‘talking therapies’ (Holman, 2014). One explanation for this offered by Holman (2014) is that the middle-class norms and values that saturate therapeutic models and practices demand particular forms of capital (in the Bourdieusian sense) that working-class people tend not to possess. He conducted interviews with 18 (UK) participants who were either working-class, middle-class or socially mobile (working-class to middle-class—the ethnicity of participants wasn’t reported) exploring their views on ‘talking therapies’. Drawing on Bourdieusian theory, he identified four key dispositions that characterised the talk of the participants but in different ways according to their social class. These were ‘verbalisation and introspection’ (e.g. the working-class participants provided very short but direct responses to questions or tended to talk about other people’s experiences rather than their own in contrast to the middle-class participants who tended to be more introspective); ‘impetus for emotional health’ (e.g. the extent to which achieving good mental health is of concern, prioritised and actively pursued; the working-class participants were more likely to have been ‘pushed’ to seek help by someone else, whereas the middle-class participants were more likely to have self-referred); ‘relation to medical authority’ (the middle-class participants, using their cultural capital, were more critically and consciously engaged with services in contrast to working-class participants who indicated more deference to healthcare practitioners) and ‘practical orientation to the future’ (e.g. whether quick and practical solutions in the ‘here and now’ are preferred or longer-term solutions). Holman (2014) situates these dispositions as cultivated in and through people’s conditions of existence. For example, drawing on Taylor and Seeman’s (1999) work, Holman (2014) argues that the conditions of existence for many working-class people include living in overcrowded housing, having a lack of control over work, fear of crime, financial insecurity and so forth, all of which constrain ‘a sense of control, optimism and trust’ (p. 543)—yet, it is precisely these things which are pivotal to the therapeutic relationship. In short, the conditions of existence and the habitus produced by these conditions are counter to the middle-class norms, values, demands and expectations imbued within therapeutic models and counselling settings. As such, traditional therapy is, literally

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and metaphorically, rendered less accessible to poor and working-class people (Holman, 2014). As noted above, working-class people are less likely to be referred to talking therapies than are their middle-class counterparts. However, when working-class people do attend therapy, there is much evidence to suggest that they are often perceived and treated differently to middleclass (especially White and heterosexual) clients. For example, difficulties experienced by poor and working-class clients can be mistaken for ‘mental-emotional disorders’ when viewed through the ‘normalcy’ lens of people who are White, middle-class, heterosexual and financially secure (Zrenchik & McDowell, 2012, p. 110). Thompson, Chin, and Kring (2019) presented one of four different video vignettes of a White, female client (played by a professional actor) to mental health practitioners in the United States; the vignette either depicted the client as workingclass and straight, working-class and lesbian, middle-class and straight or middle-class and lesbian. They found that regardless of sexuality of the client, being perceived as working-class was linked to practitioners rating her as more depressed and anxious than the client presenting as middleclass. Reassuringly however, there was no difference in the practitioners’ ratings of severity of depression and anxiety according to the sexuality of the client (regardless of class) and practitioners rated the client portrayed as a lesbian as more attractive to work with. What this indicates then (at least in this particular study) is that the perceived social class of the client, when all other information is consistent (except sexual identity), impacts on the perceived severity of the ‘symptoms’ of depression and anxiety. In a paper by Zrenchik and McDowell (2012), McDowell discusses her experiences of witnessing classist practices in a private therapeutic setting in the United States. For example, she observed how wealthy and privileged clients were treated with greater respect than poor and working-class clients, such as the ways in which therapists talked about their clients’ problems, whether or not they were penalised for missing appointments or for being late, and the differing levels of state intrusion and control in their lives. She also argues that therapists can all too easily assume that all people desire upward mobility and that financial struggles are largely due to family, personal or interpersonal deficits,

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and therefore, treating these so-called deficits in therapy will help the client obtain the assumed goal of upward mobility. Further, she highlights the failure of some therapists in recognising the effects of class and classism and the contexts of their clients’ lives, and how this leads to the pathologising of behaviours and ways of seeing the world which may actually be perfectly reasonable responses to their circumstances. She therefore advocates working with clients in a way that locates their problems within broader systems of oppression in order to shift the ‘blame’ from the individual and internal, to wider socio-economic structural conditions and encouraging clients to view problems through a critical class consciousness framework. As theorised in Chapter 5 and argued throughout the book and noted above, social class is a taboo subject—something which shapes every aspect of our lives but often only spoken about in coded ways or remains a ‘normative silence’ (Appio, Chambers, & Mao, 2013, p. 155). This also plays out in therapeutic settings (Appio et al., 2013; Balmforth, 2009) whereby class differences may be very salient but are never spoken of, which hinders the therapist’s ability to fully appreciate the experiences of the client (Appio et al., 2013). Balmforth (2009) conducted interviews with six clients who identified as working-class and regarded their therapist as middle-class and one middle-class client who perceived her therapist as working-class in order to explore the ways in which clients regarded class differences as shaping the therapeutic relationship. For all the participants, class differentials had been salient in the therapy sessions. For the working-class clients (all of whom had a middle-class counsellor), the difference was something that made them feel uncomfortable, inadequate and powerless. For example, one of the participants said ‘I can remember looking at him and hearing his questions and getting smaller and smaller and smaller during the session’ (Balmforth, 2009, p. 380), while another participant talked of the shame she felt about her background, and others spoke about being very conscious of how they spoke and dressed. And yet, they also remarked that the class differences and power differentials were never spoken of nor were the feelings that such differences evoked ever explored. In contrast, the middle-class client whose therapist was working-class felt that she was the one in the more powerful position, commenting that she ‘could

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have flattened her [the therapist]’ had they ever got into an intellectual argument (ibid., p. 381). Other themes which arose were that the working-class clients felt misunderstood by their therapist and unable to develop a meaningful psychological connection; this resulted in some of them ending the sessions, despite the considerable time and money already invested. Balmforth (2009) argues that when class differences between the client and therapist remain unacknowledged in the therapeutic encounter, this results in the reproduction of class-based unequal relations of power such that, rather than therapy being beneficial to the client, it can ultimately be destructive and detrimental. Thus far in this section, the literature discussed above underscores a number of key points which we summarise here. First, in the UK and globally (Reiss, 2013) poor and working-class people are more likely to experience psychological distress, and the prevalence of this is greater within more unequal societies (e.g. Balmforth, 2009; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2017). Poor and working-class people who also belong to other marginalised and socially-devalued groups and therefore subject to, for example, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, ageism and so forth are even more likely to experience psychological distress (Zrenchik & McDowell, 2012). In addition, there is evidence that the ‘treatments’ offered to and/or taken up differ according to class; working-class people are more likely to be prescribed medication as opposed to talking therapies or other similar alternatives (Holman, 2014). According to Holman (2014), this is due to the middle-class norms and values imbued within therapeutic models and practices and demand particular forms of capital that working-class people tend not to possess. Further, when poor and working-class people do participate in therapy, their difficulties can be interpreted differently to those of middle-class clients. For example, their problems can be perceived as ‘more severe’ (Thompson et al., 2019) or may be regarded as an internal and individual deficit without considering the structural conditions within which their experiences are situated (e.g. the multiple effects of poverty and discrimination—Appio et al., 2013). Finally, social class differences between the client and therapist become particularly salient in the therapeutic setting (Appio et al., 2013; Balmforth, 2009; Zrenchik & McDowell, 2012), but when (as is commonly the case) such

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class and power differentials aren’t acknowledged and explored, this has detrimental effects on the therapeutic relationship and ultimately the efficacy of therapy (Appio et al., 2013; Balmforth, 2009; Zrenchik & McDowell, 2012). Based on the findings from the studies reviewed above, we summarise below the policy and practice recommendations suggested by their respective authors: • The need to make central issues of class and classed identities (and the intersections with other dimensions of difference) in clinical and counselling training (e.g. Balmforth, 2009; Holman, 2014; Thompson et al., 2019); • Training more therapists from working-class backgrounds to increase rapport and understanding between the therapist and client (Holman, 2014); • The raising of a critical class consciousness amongst mental health practitioners and an awareness of how classism operates in and outside of the therapeutic setting (Appio et al., 2013; Balmforth, 2009; Zrenchik & McDowell, 2012); • Listen to, take seriously, and respond to the concerns and recommendations from poor and working-class clients who have experience of participating in therapy (Appio et al., 2013); • Therapists should initiate conversations about their clients’ material needs to gain a more holistic understanding of their experiences and to signal to the client the relevance of this to the therapeutic process (Appio et al., 2013); • Breaking the silence around salient class and power differentials in the therapeutic relationship and exploring these differences as part of the therapeutic process (Appio et al., 2013; Balmforth, 2009); The above recommendations are certainly useful ways through which counselling and therapeutic settings and practices may be more welcoming, accessible and useful to poor and working-class clients who commonly do not occupy the same class location or classed-identity as the therapist (Zrenchik & McDowell, 2012). However, clearly these recommendations refer to ways in which therapeutic models and practices can adjust to or accommodate clients that sit outside of the

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middle-class norm, while arguably leaving the fundamental paradigm intact. Based on the comments of one of the working-class participants in Holman’s (2014) research, who said that she wouldn’t like the formality of going to see a counsellor but would like the opportunity to make contact with other local people to share their experiences, Holman suggested the provision of more informal, community-based peer support groups rather than traditional one-to-one therapy between the ‘professional’ and client. This point is emphasised by Mezzina et al., (2006) who underscore the importance of social contexts and social integration in the process of recovery from psychological distress. They argue that ‘peer-operated programs and mutual support groups may provide a distinctive bridge for people between the artificial settings of mental health programs and the naturally occurring activities and opportunities that exist in the broader community’ (ibid., p. 73). These sentiments align well with those of critical social and community psychologists who, as has been argued throughout the book, acknowledge the situated nature of people’s subjectivities and experiences (critical community psychology and community-based peer support are discussed in further detail in the following chapter). To end this section of the chapter then, we focus on a case study of a community-based alternative to the traditional one-to-one counselling located in the psy disciplines.

A Case Study of Good Practice Walker, Hanna, and Hart (2015) interviewed stakeholders (trustees, paid-workers, volunteers and service users) in an open-access, Unemployed Centre Families Project located in the south of England. The centre offered a range of community services including a free creche, low-cost meals, housing, welfare and employment advice and educational classes. At the time of publication, 61% of the centre users identified as experiencing mental health problems (particularly depression). The aim of the research was simply to explore the centre users’ experiences of the community centre. The interview data indicated that the centre users found that the practical services (e.g. creche, low-cost meals, housing advice, etc.) made a huge difference not only in practical ways, but relatedly, to their psychological wellbeing, and importantly, an opportunity

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for social connection, to be able to talk to other people and share their experiences. This resonates with Holman’s (2014) findings (discussed earlier) when one of the participants said she would prefer communitybased support meetings rather than traditional one-to-one professional counselling (‘I could imagine I’d quite like to have another three or four women my age, sitting here, we’d gossip all day [laughs]’—Holman, 2014, p. 538). Also noted was the way in which the centre offered a space without judgement or stigmatisation that many of the centre users experienced in their day-to-day lives through being out-of-work and/or experiencing mental health difficulties and their involvement with state institutions (Walker et al., 2015). As one of the participants powerfully commented, ‘You can come and be without having any of the stigma of being’ (ibid., p. 509). Further, the authors argued that the centre provided a space for people to connect with other people, eat together, take part in activities without having the ‘workfare agenda and its notions of citizenship’ associated ‘with impersonal institutions previously interested in moving them into certain identities regardless of their histories, capabilities or readiness’ (Walker et al., 2015, p. 509). The authors conclude by arguing that community centres such as this allow for an understanding of the socially-situated nature of psychological distress and recovery and reconceptualise the meaning of ‘therapeutic’. While they acknowledge that for some people, conventional interventions (e.g. medication and/or one-to-one professional therapy) may be beneficial, community-based resources that sit outside of the psy professions and welfare-to-work agencies should be central to mental health service provision (Walker et al., 2015).

Physical Health and Illness There is enduring and incontrovertible evidence that inequalities related to income and social class (and intersecting with gender, ethnicity, ability/disability and so forth—Marmot, 2020) produce health inequalities, within and between societies (World Health Organisation [WHO], n.d.). As with psychological wellbeing, the greater the magnitude

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of inequalities within a society, the greater the health inequalities (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2017). Globally, the poorest people in the world have the poorest health. For example, the infant mortality rate in Iceland (one of the world’s wealthiest countries—World Population Review, 2020) is 2 per 1000 live births compared to Mozambique (one of the poorest countries—World Population Review, ibid.) where 120 per 1000 infants die before the age of one (WHO, n.d.). Similarly, within countries, there are stark differences in life expectancies (amongst many other health-related outcomes). For example, indigenous Australian men and women can expect to live until the age of 59.4 and 64.8, respectively, whereas the non-indigenous population can expect to live until 76.6 (men) and 82.0 (women) (WHO, n.d.). In 2020, the Institute of Health Equity published a report detailing the health trends over the previous ten years in England (although the authors note that the picture is very similar in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). The report depicts a grim state of affairs, with life expectancy having fallen for women in the most deprived areas outside of London and also for men in some regions. In addition, the length of time spent living in poor health is increasing, and this is more so for people living in the most deprived areas, who already have shorter lives (Institute of Health Equity, Executive Summary, 2020). There is also evidence that ethnicity intersects with socio-economic status such that effects of deprivation are greater for some minority ethnic groups. The authors note that these health inequalities are entirely preventable, and while they cannot establish a causal relationship with austerity measures imposed during that period by the UK government, they argue strongly for a link, stating that ‘austerity has adversely affected the social determinants that impact on health in the short, medium and long term. Austerity will cast a long shadow over the lives of the children born and growing up under its effects’. (Marmot, 2020, p. 5). Bodies such as the World Health Organisation and academic literature on health inequalities (e.g. see Wilkinson & Pickett, 2017) consistently point to the structural and symbolic determinants of health (e.g. money, work, housing, food, education, neighbourhoods, power, control, etc.) and the necessity for reducing inequalities in people’s life circumstances in order to effect change in health disparities. However,

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mainstream health psychology, with its focus on the individual and the internal (see Chapters 2 and 3), commonly draws on socio-cognitive or cognitive-behavioural models in order to explain people’s health-related behaviours and predict their likelihood for change (Rohleder, 2012). Social cognition models attempt to describe the important thought processes that differentiate between those who do and do not engage in ‘healthy’ behaviours (e.g. eat/do not eat a ‘healthy’ diet), with a focus on behaviour-specific cognitions (Abraham et al., 2008). For example, the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) (e.g. Ajzen, 1991) proposes that behavioural beliefs, normative beliefs and control beliefs combine to determine attitudes towards a particular behaviour, and the subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control associated with that behaviour. As we have argued throughout the book though, such a focus on the individual and the internal is over-simplistic and obfuscates the wider structural conditions of possibility for people’s lives and perpetuates rather than helping to alleviate health inequalities (Morison, Lyons, & Chamberlain, 2018). Furthermore, by examining individual thought processes and centring these as the locus of change (i.e. a change in beliefs and attitudes will lead to behaviour change) at the expense of wider contexts, it runs the risk of placing the blame on individuals for any ill health they experience. This, as we discuss later in the chapter, can have real-world implications for how poor and working-class people (and anyone not deemed to be health-compliant) are subject to biases in the healthcare they receive. Additionally, socialcognitive or cognitive-behavioural theories often inform public health campaigns, some of which have been the focus of much critique in the critical health and social psychology literature. Below, we draw on two examples of public health campaigns (the first related to breastfeeding promotion and the second to the British government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic) drawing attention to the ways in which these are individualising, pathologising and potentially victim-blaming. Around the world, breastfeeding is promoted as the optimal way of feeding young infants and has therefore been the subject of numerous public health campaigns, with mothers being their target (Hausman, Smith, & Labbok, 2012), but in particular, women of colour, low income, young and working-class mothers who are known to be least

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likely to breastfeed (see for example, Petry, 2013). Typically, the focus of such campaigns is to encourage attitude and behaviour change in mothers who may not be intending to breastfeed their baby (Hausman et al., 2012). Alongside promoting the health and psychological benefits for babies and mothers said to be gained from breastfeeding, materials commonly depict an able-bodied, White middle-class mother in an expensively furnished nursery staring lovingly down at her baby enjoying the ‘joyous natural bonding experience’ (Kukla, 2006, p. 161). However, for many women, this is far from the reality of their lives. For example, Kukla (2006) draws attention to a number of reasons why many women may not want to breastfeed or find the experience unpleasant or unsustainable and quit before the recommended period of six months (Petry, 2013). These include mothers who live in communal or cramped housing with little space, privacy and sometimes safety; the sexualisation of breasts and male partners’ beliefs that her breasts are exclusively for his sexual pleasure; the historically-rooted racist meanings attached to Black women’s bodies; the trauma that breastfeeding can induce for survivors of sexual abuse; the absence of paid maternity leave and/or work conditions conducive to expressing milk (Kukla, 2006). Making similar points, Chin and Dozier in the United States (2012) critique the individualising and pathologising nature of breastfeeding campaigns, which are presented as simply a matter of the individual mother’s choice and fail to pay attention to the structural and often ‘real’ violence inflicted on poor (and disproportionately African American) women. Many women live in inadequate or temporary housing, live in unsafe neighbourhoods with the risk of physical and sexual violence, experience food insecurity, have a lack of access to healthcare and experience poor maternal health, suffer due to the high levels of male/father incarceration (again, disproportionately African American men) and confront the very real risks of exposing the breast as a necessity for breastfeeding. As Chin and Dozier argue, when examined in this context, whether a mother believes or not that ‘breast is best’, there is very little room here for individual choice. The attitude and behaviour change models underpinning public health campaigns, as is apparent above, fail to expose and challenge the injurious conditions within which many people live their lives (or

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as Kukla says, they avoid ‘any interrogation of why women might not behave as they are asked to’—2006, p. 161). In turn, this creates a logic of victim-blame; it is those noncompliant, irresponsible and selfish individuals who are to blame for their own ill health and (in the case of parents, but especially mothers) for that of their children. And, as the logic goes, those who are to blame should be the ones to incur the penalty. This form of rationality is crystallised in the following questions raised by Petry (2013, p. 19) as part of research into ‘Breastfeeding rates amongst low-SES mothers’: Furthermore, if formula feeding causes the infant to get sick at a disproportionate rate than other infants or puts them at increased risk of environmental toxins like lead, this could lead to poor developmental outcomes. In this way, a mother may decrease the future capabilities of her infant by making this choice. If a mother refused to vaccinate her child for measles and polio, she might lose custody under state law. By choosing not to breastfeed, a mother places her child at a greater risk of GI infections and other illnesses. Should there be no repercussions for denying her child protection from these illnesses? Should there be laws that mandate breastfeeding for those who are physically and psychologically able?

Although Petry (2013) later states that she doesn’t agree that this should be an appropriate response to mothers who do not breastfeed, nevertheless, it powerfully illustrates the line of reasoning that neoliberal logics of health can lead us to. Similar lines of argument have been touted in the UK (where healthcare is taxpayer funded, available to all and free at the point of use through the National Health Service—NHS) with regard to the provision of healthcare to those deemed ‘obese’. In a survey conducted by FoodManufacture.co.uk, 60% of respondents said that ‘obese’ people should be charged for any treatment they receive through the NHS and that they did not want to ‘foot the bill for individuals’ poor lifestyle choices’ (FoodManufacture.co.uk, 2015). The same arguments have also been put forward regarding smokers (uni-med.co.uk, 2018). We are currently writing amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a public health crisis which has starkly illuminated the gross inequalities in the UK and undoubtedly around the world. Early data in the UK indicate

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that death rates from COVID-19 are more than double in the most deprived areas of the UK compared to those in the least deprived areas (The Health Foundation, 2020) and there has been a disproportionate number of cases and deaths amongst Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) populations (Public Health England, 2020). Early, yet plausible explanations put forward for the disproportionate number of fatalities amongst poorer and BAME communities relate to structural conditions including the greater likelihood of living in cramped, overcrowded and multi-generational households, often with little or no private outdoor space; being more likely to be ‘key workers’ (i.e. those whose services were required at the height of, and throughout the pandemic and brought them into direct contact with the public, such as health and social care workers, cleaners, public transport workers, food manufacture and retail workers, etc.); more likely to work in conditions where social distancing is not possible or not prioritised by their employers, are more likely to have existing underlying health conditions (Drury, Reicher, & Stott, 2020) and, for BAME groups, such structural conditions are also compounded by, and intersect with racism (Public Health England, 2020). Yet, Drury et al. (2020) argue that the government and some media outlets have been quick to psychologise and individualise people’s responses (and therefore accountability) to the pandemic and to public health messages. For example, the initial ‘stockpiling’ of food and other household goods prompted the mobilisation of a discourse of selfish and bad behaviour, whereas Drury et al. (2020) argue that the shortages on supermarket shelves actually exposed systemic problems in the food chain supply, but in blaming the so-called selfish behaviour of individuals, this created the competitive individualism which it attempted to condemn in the first place. In a similar vein, images of people crammed on public transport were portrayed as acts of idiocy, whereas Drury et al. argue that some people had no choice other than to travel on public transport to get to work. Finally, the authors point to the under-reaction of the British government (e.g. being slow to initiate ‘lock down’) and the mismanagement of communication with the public as key factors which warrant scrutiny in accounting for the high death rates recorded in the UK so far. The deployment of a discourse of ‘bad behaviour’ is ideological: ‘it distracts from the real causes and thus from who might be held

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responsible for mismanagement, instead blaming the victims’ (Drury et al., 2020, p. 7). Given the disproportionate death rates from COVID19 amongst poor and BAME communities, it is these groups who are interpellated more into such victim-blaming discourses and thus serving as a convenient distraction from addressing the underlying structural injustices that underpin these woeful and shameful statistics.

Critical Psychological Approaches to Health Critical psychological approaches to health (or ‘critical health psychology’) align with the values and goals of critical social psychology as outlined throughout the book (see Chapter 3 in particular) but with a particular focus on health. As discussed above, a key aim of critical approaches is to locate people’s health and health practices within their wider social, political, cultural and economic contexts (Morison et al., 2018). Critical health psychology also foregrounds the importance of social justice and social transformation and the need to move beyond critique and put critical knowledge into practice (Morison et al., 2018). The need for this seems ever more pressing in the light of the current (at the time of writing) COVID-19 global pandemic which has greatly magnified how social and economic inequalities are reproduced in health inequalities (Drury et al., 2020). To finish this section then, we discuss one such study which aimed to ‘move beyond critique’ as a means of illustrating the ways in which a critical social/health psychological approach to class can be applied ‘beyond the ivory tower’ by working with specific communities and stakeholders. The Family 100 project involved working with 100 families living in poverty in Auckland, New Zealand, over the period of one year (Hodgetts, Chamberlain, Tankel, & Groot, 2014) in partnership with the Auckland City Mission (a charitable organisation that attempts to address poverty through the provision of key services such as a food bank, medical services and housing advice, etc.). The researchers explored and documented with the participants issues related to poverty such as education, health, housing, food, debt and so on, while simultaneously working with local stakeholders. The findings were used as a basis for

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advocacy work, engaging with policymakers, government bodies, journalists and the wider public with the aim of effecting change at the structural level in order to address the underlying causes of poverty and health inequalities (Hodgetts et al., 2014). Working with the media is key, they argue, to reaching people who are socially distanced from poverty (and unsympathetic to people living in poverty), while also outlining practical solutions. The project has made considerable achievements in this respect, getting the issue of poverty on to the political agenda in New Zealand and thus moving from research at the local and particular level, to help shape and influence wider policy and practice (Hodgetts et al., 2014).

Summary In this chapter, we have sought to bring to the fore ways in which critical social psychological approaches may be used to go beyond academia and apply critical knowledge in the ‘real world’. In doing so, we focussed on three key domains—education, mental health and physical health— aspects of life which are acutely impacted by social and economic inequalities (but these domains are by no means exclusive). The first section highlighted the disparities in education, not only in terms of tangible outcomes (e.g. qualifications and career prospects, etc.) but also in the ways that education systems are navigated and experienced differently across social classes (while also intersecting with other dimensions of difference), such as feelings of alienation versus feelings of belonging. It was also argued that educational institutions, rather than being vehicles for social mobility (Owens & de St Croix, 2020), reflect, reproduce and reinforce systems of classification. To this end, although schools, colleges and universities can and should attend to their own institutional practices, we are mindful that they do not operate in a socio-economic and political vacuum, and therefore, long-term and impactful change is needed at the most fundamental politico-structural level. With regard to mental health and psychological distress, a similar pattern emerges to that of education. Poor and working-class people are more likely to experience psychological distress due to adverse living

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conditions (e.g. poor housing, food insecurity, debt, violence, unemployment, etc.) and the symbolic violence of classism. When working-class people are offered ‘talking therapies’, evidence suggests this is commonly an uncomfortable and unhelpful experience and sometimes harmful due to the class and power differentials in operation which often remain unexplored (e.g. Balmforth, 2009). Again, this indicates the need for reform in therapeutic training and professional practice and ultimately changes in the social structure. Finally, we focussed on inequalities and physical health, highlighting the much documented social gradient in health inequalities (i.e. rich people live longer and healthier lives; poor people have shorter and sicker lives—see Wilkinson & Pickett, 2017). As with all aspects of life, class intersects with ‘race’, gender, sexuality, ability/disability, age and so forth, all of which compound with the effects of income inequality. We outlined the ways in which mainstream psychological models (e.g. socialcognitive models) and theories have tended to inform public health campaigns, drawing on the examples of breastfeeding promotion and the British government’s messaging and rhetoric around the current (at the time of writing) COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we draw on critical literature to examine the ways in which such public health messages individualise, pathologise and psychologise people’s health-related practices and serve to detract from the structural and symbolic determinants of people’s health. The work of Hodgett’s et al. (2014) served as an illustrative example of what critical and community psychological research can offer to help shape policy and practice ‘from the grassroots up’ to enable people to live healthier lives. Critical community psychology is discussed in further detail in the following and final chapter.

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Introduction In this book, we have presented a number of key arguments. We have argued that social class should be the business of psychologists as this has a profoundly psychological dimension. Unfortunately, the ‘psy’ disciplines have something of a dark and troubled history in relation to how class has been studied and theorised and this has had a number of consequences. These include the justification of social and economic inequalities as the inevitable result of individual differences and the pathologisation of the working-class ‘Other’. As an alternative, we have argued that a critical social psychology of social class has and can produce more contextualised understandings of class that have the potential to advance rather than hinder positive change and social justice. The previous chapter has presented some examples of ‘real-world’ applications of critical understandings to demonstrate that a critical social psychology of social class need not be confined to the ‘ivory towers’ of academia. In this final chapter, we shall scrutinise a number of key, ongoing debates and issues in relation to the usefulness of poststructuralism for © The Author(s) 2020 K. Day et al., Critical Social Psychology of Social Class, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55965-6_7

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theorising social class and for social movements that are focussed on class inequalities and oppression. We do not claim to resolve such tensions here which would be highly ambitious. However, in advocating a poststructuralist/social constructionist/discursive approach to social class, we feel it is necessary to acknowledge and attempt to respond to these. We will also consider some possible future directions in relation to critical social psychological research on social class and review some recent work which is illustrative of some of the ‘threads’ and approaches that we describe and advocate.

The ‘Poststructuralist Left’ and Class Politics: Exploring the Tensions A number of theorists have highlighted unresolved tensions between poststructuralism and projects explicitly concerned with social transformation such as feminism and Marxism, as discussed in Chapter 3 (see Burman, 1991; Butler, 1990; Callinicos, 1990; Gavey, 1989; Gill, 1995; Jackson, 1992; Lovibond, 1992; McNay, 1992; Nicholson, 1990; Soper, 1990; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1995). In this section of the chapter, we shall consider some of the main criticisms levelled at poststructuralist approaches and the compatibility of these with social movements.

Relativism Criticisms have often centred around the deconstruction of grand narratives and the theoretical commitment to relativism within poststructuralist approaches. For example, Parker (1992) argues that relativism can lead to ‘a passive, cynical and ultimately obstructive view of politics’ (Parker, 1992, p. 25). This is a serious charge for a body of scholarship (such as critical psychology) that purports to be concerned with social transformation, with ‘challenging a status quo that benefits the powerful and works against the powerless’ (Prilleltensky & Fox, 1997, p. 7). A core problem here is the poststructuralist rejection of realism and positivism which makes it difficult to argue for any particular version

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of reality (Parker, 1992). Social movements arguably depend upon an acceptance of the ‘reality’ of the ongoing oppression and subordination of certain groups in society (such as the working-class). As argued by Kitzinger (1999), one of the most powerful mechanisms that is used to support oppressive practices is the denial that any such practices exist. Poststructuralism may be used in the service of this kind of denial as from a poststructuralist perspective, truth claims become provisional and susceptible to deconstruction (Edwards, Ashmore, & Potter, 1995). For this reason, it is argued that struggles against oppression and inequality have more in common with the goals of science to establish to the truth than with a poststructuralist theoretical tradition which challenges its very claims to produce knowledge (Kirkup & Smith-Keller, 1992). Similarly, Kitzinger (1999) argues that by adopting a constructionist position, critical psychologists ‘lose the power to intervene effectively in real world politics: they cannot issue authoritative statements (backed up by ‘science’) on matters of public policy’ (p. 57). However, other writers (e.g. Bruner, 1990; Edwards et al., 1995; Gavey, 1989; Gergen, 1985; Sampson, 1993; Wetherell & Potter, 1992) have challenged the contention that adopting a relativist position means abandoning values and therefore ushers in a ‘moral relativism’. Rather, adopting a poststructuralist position means that in the absence of ‘ontological guarantees’, questions of value are inescapable and so should be embraced and addressed (e.g. Butler & Scott, 1992; Soper, 1991). For example, Bruner (1990) argued that what is lost is not values, but ‘authorial meanings’ or some final authority which can decide the truth outside of argument, dialogue, debate and discussion. In other words, those adhering to a poststructuralist orientation can have values and political commitments, but must be aware that there is no sure way of guaranteeing or fixing them, or convincing others of their truth (Gavey, 1989). Due to this, Gill (1991) argued that a ‘politically informed relativism’ which holds values, commitments and politics at the heart of accounts in the absence of ontological guarantees can act as a principle foundation for discursive analyses that are underpinned by a commitment to social justice. In addition, as pointed out by those such as Gill (1995), Edwards et al. (1995), Flax (1992) and Butler (1992), there is no necessary connection between the quest for truth and social transformation

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anyway. The faith in science to uncover the truth and lead to a more socially just and equal society is arguably naive. This is demonstrated by the discussion of positivist research around class and SES discussed in Chapter 2 which (with some exceptions) has done little to nothing to promote the interests of working-class people but rather, has reinforced damaging cultural stereotypes and has justified the class system. Of course, there are additional and well-documented examples of the role of science in cementing and justifying social inequalities, including ‘scientific racism’ and the support that this lent to the eugenics movement (see Richards, 2012). Although relativism makes it difficult to argue for one particular version of ‘the truth’, the flip side of this is that poststructuralism and discourse analysis can be powerful deconstructive tools or interrogative practices (Boyne & Rattansi, 1990; Butler & Scott, 1992; Smart, 1993). If we regard psychological and scientific knowledge as constructed, this knowledge becomes inherently unstable and open to scrutiny, deconstruction and reconstruction. In other words, we can challenge and question that knowledge. From a constructionist perspective, psychologists and other scholars are not deemed to have some privileged access to the truth that is denied to ‘ordinary’ people; rather, the power of science and psychology as institutions and the powerful scientific rhetoric of (for example) mainstream psychology make it appear as though this is the case. Deconstructing psychological (as well as other forms of ) knowledge becomes particularly important where that knowledge has caused harm, as in the examples cited above and as discussed in detail in relation to class in Chapter 2. Questioning and challenging the kinds of class discourses discussed throughout the book that ‘do harm’ to working-class people, we believe, is a worthwhile endeavour.

Anti-Essentialism An additional (and related) characteristic of poststructuralist theoretical traditions that warrants some examination here is the denial of essentialism, that is, the notion that groups of people have fixed characteristics

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or a describable essence that is either innate or acquired developmentally (see Kitzinger, 1995; Kitzinger & Wilkinson, 1995). However, the denial of biologically-rooted, essential ‘realities’ has been critiqued as an example of Western intellectualising and privilege which does not speak to the realities of life for oppressed people in many parts of the world. For example, Raquel Rosario Sanchez (2017) argues that women and girls, particularly those who are poor and those of colour, are oppressed largely on the basis of their biological sex rather than because of discourse or identity. Their bodies are read in essentialist ways, for example, as dirty and libidinous (see Chapter 4), whether we accept the truthfulness of such readings or not. Further, Kitzinger (1999) pointed out—focussing in particular on lesbian women and gay men— that essentialist approaches have been employed to advance the rights of oppressed and marginalised groups, by positing a selfhood and essence that cannot simply be deconstructed out of existence. She also refers (critically it must be noted) to the use of ‘strategic essentialism’ (p. 62) whereby those concerned with social justice present politically useful claims rhetorically as ‘facts’ or ‘truths’ (without really accepting them as such). For example, as outlined in Chapter 4, one response to classist depictions of working-class people (e.g. in the media) has been to posit the existence of a more positive ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ working-class self that is not accurately captured by such cultural stereotypes and which are therefore dismissed as false (e.g. Jones, 2011—although whether Jones is employing such arguments rhetorically or not is unclear). Similarly, analyses of White, working-class masculinities have sometimes characterised these as rebellious and ‘more authentic’, as discussed in Chapter 5 (see Griffin, 1985; McRobbie & Garber, 1976; Skeggs, 1992, 1994; Tolson, 1977). While acknowledging the potential strategic uses of essentialism, as illustrated in Chapter 2, the notion of the working-class as having fixed, essential qualities has serious implications which can amount to symbolic violence. A further problem with utilising essentialist arguments, even where this well-intentioned, is that this can unwittingly reproduce categories of ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’, focussing on certain voices and experiences while excluding and dismissing others, and denying or glossing over the diversity of identities within a single group. A stark

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example of this is the ramifications of essentialist theorising for policing the boundaries of gender and the consequences that this has had and continues to have for trans women and men (e.g. Ahmed, 2017). Finally, the claim that people are defined by and experience oppression as if identities were essential isn’t incompatible with a poststructuralist perspective, the proponents of which question the empirical validity and reality of such claims rather than the lived experiences of oppression associated with them (see Day & Wray, 2018; Filar, 2013). Social categories and the identities that are associated with them are socially constructed, but this does not mean that people are not, often non-consensually, assigned identifications and assumed to have ‘traits’ based upon these (Filar, 2013).

‘Identity Politics’ and Intersectionality The rejection of essentialism has ushered in the deconstruction of homogenous categories organised around a single form of social categorisation or identity. This emphasis on the diversity, multiplicity and fluidity of intersectional identities has become associated with ‘identity politics’. This is a fuzzy term (typically used in a derogatory manner) to refer to movements focussed on oppression and discrimination on the grounds of, for example, gender and/or sexual identities (rather than class) and has been used to refer to a range of struggles such as those against cuts to domestic violence services and trans access to healthcare (Harman, 2017). However, this has raised a number of concerns. One of the main objections to ‘identity politics’ from sections of the left is that such trends have resulted in the denial of sufficient common interests and experiences amongst the members of oppressed groups around which to organise struggle (e.g. Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1995). Rather, focussing on differences between members of such groups as opposed to what they share in common discourages ‘comradeship’ and solidarity which are important if struggles against oppression are to be successful (e.g. Fisher, 2013). Fisher (2013) has critiqued identity politics and what he refers to as ‘the poststructuralist “left”’, the members of which he describes using strongly-classed terms such as ‘petit-bourgeois’, ‘class-privileged’

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and ‘PoshLeft moralisers’. As discussed in Chapter 1, the ‘proletariat heroes’ are often White heterosexual men in the popular imagination. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that in his article Exiting the Vampire Castle, the figures who Fisher holds up as working-class heroes (Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Owen Jones, Russell Brand), are all men (albeit not all White or heterosexual). Further, Fisher dismissed online responses to one of these men’s (Russell Brand’s) sexist comments about women as occurring in a ‘febrile McCarthyite atmosphere’. It seems therefore that for Fisher, feminism and other brands of ‘identity politics’ are not just a distraction from the much more important class struggle, but are used to undermine and suppress it. Again, there are appeals here to ‘authenticity’ in that an ‘authentic left’, for Fisher, is one that must do away with ‘identitarianism’ and recentralise class. In response to Fisher’s article, Ray Filar (2013) argued that there can be no solidarity without intersectionality. They assert that those on the political left have not stopped talking about class but rather have insisted, for decades, that class analyses take into account intersecting forms of oppression from which class is indivisible, such as sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia. Filar points out that it is not just White men who are working-class; anti-racists, feminists and those who identify as trans and queer (amongst others) are often working-class as well. The insistence that ‘the left’ recognises and respects other identity categories and forms of oppression isn’t just a point-scoring exercise or a competition over who is more or less oppressed. Rather, women who have been involved in class struggles in, for instance, the labour movement and organisations such as the Socialist Worker’s Party, have had to battle against misogyny, sexual harassment and sexual violence (see Filar, 2013; Harman, 2017). Indeed, Harman (2017) notes that such accusations of ‘divisiveness’ and ‘identity politics’ have been hurled at those who have challenged such treatment of women on the left, rather than confronting the treatment and violence itself as the cause of division. A further point concerns the idea that class struggles are not a form of ‘identity politics’. Rather, as argued throughout the book, understanding class identities is an important, central component of a critical social psychology of class that seeks to challenge the status quo. One example is the ways in which available discourse informs the formation of class identities in a

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multitude of different ways. As discussed in Chapter 5, class discourse in Western capitalist societies can make the articulation of class identities, especially positive class identities, extremely difficult. It can also incur resistance to, and active disidentification from, the subject positions created by such discourse. The Marxist concept of ‘class consciousness’ is relevant here, particularly due to a belief that this was a necessary precondition for the transformation of social conditions (see Chapters 1 and 3). Perhaps class struggles have not been thought of as ‘identity politics’ because the identities of those that have dominated such movements are ones that are privileged and normalised (e.g. White men).

The ‘Extra-Discursive’ Finally, critiques of poststructuralism and discourse analysis have also been concerned with the status that is afforded the ‘extra-discursive’, that is, material beyond the text that is being analysed (Hollway, 1995). The ‘extra-discursive’ can refer to the ‘exterior’ world of social structures, institutions, practices and their material effects, or the ‘interior’ world of subjectivity, feeling and emotion (e.g. Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1995). More ‘purely’ relativist forms of poststructuralism and social constructionism have been characterised by claims that there is no real world outside of discourse (see Jackson, 1992). Montero (1987) refers to this as a form of ‘linguistic imperialism’ which, unsurprisingly, has caused a considerable amount of controversy and debate (e.g. Gill, 1995). Alternatively, the proponents of critical realism or new realism (e.g. Bhaskar, 1989; Parker, 1992), while remaining sympathetic to social constructionism, argue that discourses are grounded in social structures that have a real, external existence. Similarly, those such as Collier (1994) argue that socially constructed accounts (e.g. of groups in society) take the shape and form that they do because of real historical and social conditions, and so, it is important to map those conditions. For example, Foster (1992) discussed racist discourse in South Africa and how it is imperative to locate and understand this within the context of apartheid. In short, people ‘make’ and ‘use’ discourse, but not in conditions of their own creation.

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The kinds of discourses around class that have been described in the previous chapters (e.g. the working-class as feckless and lazy; inherently deficient and so forth) do not originate from nowhere; rather, these can be located within capitalist societies which are structured or stratified according to the social and economic power that groups possess. Of note here is the work of Grigoryan et al. (2020) discussed in Chapter 3. To recap, they challenged the idea that negative stereotypes of working-class people can be found universally (e.g. Volpato, Andrighetto, & Baldissarri, 2017 cited in Grigoryan et al., 2020) which, if was the case, would cast doubt on arguments presented by critical realists given the diversity of social and economic arrangements across the globe. Further, this perhaps might even suggest that such stereotypes are based on an objective truth and essential reality. Rather, Grigoryan et al. (2020) found that in former communist countries, working-class people were evaluated more positively and the upper-class more negatively than in capitalist countries. They relate this to the communist past of such countries and the legacy of communist ideology which held the working-class in high esteem as the heroes of society (see Chapter 3 for a more detailed discussion of this research). Such findings lend support to the arguments presented by critical realists that discourses are the product of historical and social conditions. In addition, as also discussed in the previous chapters, social class clearly has a material economic and social dimension or reality. Hunger, poverty, unemployment and precarious employment are amongst the real, material consequences of the class system and conditions of austerity. The emphasis within discursive approaches upon language and the micro-politics of power arguably downplays macrostructural inequalities and the way power installs itself to produce such real, material effects (e.g. Gill, 1995; Parker, 1992). As argued by Parker (1997), ‘there will be occasions […] when good quantitative research into the impact of exploitation, overcrowding and poverty on people‘s lives will be better than reams of textual analysis’ (p. 298). Indeed, positivist, quantitative studies on the negative impact of austerity on mental health (as discussed in Chapter 1) are a more recent testament to the utility of positivist, quantitative research in lending evidence to support struggles for social change and justice. Finally, if discourses (and the asymmetrical power relations that these reproduce and maintain) are constantly under

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the threat of subversion through active resistance and counter-discourses (as discussed in previous chapters), then how do we explain the continuity of the subordination and oppression of certain groups in society? This begs an analysis of unequal relations of power as existing above and beyond the discursive realm, as located in social and economic structural arrangements. As such, Skeggs (1997) argues that analyses of class need to take account of such material and structural realities, as well as conceiving of class as being a discursive and subjective phenomenon. Similarly, concerns have been raised regarding the neglect in discursive analyses of the ‘interior’ extra-discursive realm of thoughts, desires, emotions and fantasies (or more generally, ‘affect’). The anti-humanist decentring of the individual within poststructuralist work fails to give priority to individual subjective experiences as an aim is to approach phenomena on a more social and less psychologised and individualised level and to disrupt the individual/society dualism (Weed, 1989). The reasons for doing so have hopefully been illustrated in the previous chapters. For example, the reduction of class and associated phenomena (e.g. worklessness) to individual characteristics and affect (e.g. low self-esteem) has done little to challenge social inequalities and bolsters the idea that what are actually mass, social problems are the result of individual failures and character flaws. However, social constructionists such as Burr (2015) have described how this has raised concerns that approaches focussed on language and discourse incur ‘the death of the subject’ (p. 203) whereby our everyday experiences of being human are reduced to the effect of discourse. For example, Cromby (2004) argues that this neglect of subjectivity results in a psychology that is ‘devoid of much that is significantly and recognisably human’ (p. 799). Although discourse creates subject positions, people are often emotionally-invested in some positions and not others and understanding this may be particularly important in cases where people take up positions that are arguably not in their best interests (e.g. Willig, 2008). We can see how these arguments map onto social class by referring back to research literature discussed in the previous chapters. For example, Skeggs (1997) pointed out that the experiences of workingclass women contain important affective elements such as anxiety, fear and anger. This point doesn’t just apply to experiences of class; as

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discussed in Chapter 4, those such as Jensen and Ringrose (2014) and Tyler (2008) have argued that portrayals class (e.g. in the media) are also often shot through with strong and sometimes conflicting emotions such as disgust and desire. Similarly, the construction of classed subjectivities involves elements of both fantasy and projection. For example, desires (e.g. for freedom and rebellion) are said to be projected onto the ‘exotic’ working-class Other (e.g. Holt & Griffin, 2005; Skeggs, 1997; Walkerdine, 1989, 1990) and representations of normative femininity based upon upper and middle-class ideals (e.g. ‘the lady’) are argued to constitute, in part, a projection of male fantasies (e.g. Walkerdine, 1989). Due to such observations, class scholars Jensen and Ringrose (2014) have advocated a psychosocial approach to the study of class. According to Burr (2015), the term ‘psychosocial’ describes a project which has, at its heart, an intention to conceptualise the psychological and social realms as a synthesised whole, by, for example, addressing the problem of investment in discursive positions (e.g. Frosh, Phoenix, & Pattman, 2003). Those advocating a psychosocial approach have often drawn upon psychoanalytic concepts such as the notions of unconscious repression and projection. For example, Hollway (1983, 1989, 1995) and Walkerdine (1987) have argued for a greater incorporation of such ideas and concepts into poststructuralist accounts because experiences, emotions, desires and fantasies are often overlooked or not adequately addressed as a result of focussing on unequal, oppressive social relations and discourse, yet can reveal much about subjectivities and lived experience (e.g. Hollway, 1989; Parker, 1997; Parker & Spears, 1996). We believe that arguments presented by critical realists and those advocating a psychosocial approach to the study of social class are powerful and convincing. However, Wetherell and Potter (1992) argue that drawing an ontological distinction between the discursive and the extra-discursive is a mistake as the two are deeply interrelated. For example, Gavey (1989) argues that poststructuralist approaches do maintain an emphasis on the extra-discursive such as institutional practices, structural arrangements and the material bases of power by implicating these in the maintenance of discourses and power relations. For example, in Chapter 4, media discourse around class, worklessness and employability are situated within the social conditions of capitalism and austerity.

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A difference from traditional structural analyses is that from a poststructuralist perspective, the positioning of people within social structures and institutions is not conceived of as fixed, determined and immovable, but rather allows for some mobility and agency. For example, a societal structure stratified in accordance with material possessions, received education, occupation, etc., gives rise to certain discourses and subject positions, but how working-class people occupy these positions can vary (Skeggs, 1997), as demonstrated in Chapter 5. In addition, in defence of a social constructionist approach to psychic phenomena, Gergen (1997) argued that psychological events such as emotion, rather than existing within individuals, exist in the social realm, taking on meaning and form in relationship exchanges between people. Similarly, Harré (1982, 1989) argues that our understandings and experiences of ourselves and each other are given form and meaning via the discursive resources that are available to us in our culture and so affect, however ‘overwhelming’, is always inevitably identified, labelled and constructed through already available discursive categories and signifiers (e.g. Wetherell, 1995). Therefore, for these writers, being a person extends well beyond the physical boundary of that individual’s being (see Burr, 2015). As an example, in Chapter 4, the concept of disgust is discussed and how who is deemed disgusting is the result of social consensus. Averill’s (1982) social constructionist model of emotion is instructive here, whereby this is conceived of as the enactment of socially shared scripts. More recently, Wetherell (2012) builds upon this, arguing for a conceptualisation of affect as discursive practice whereby our experience and expressions of this are informed by social norms, discourses and already available ‘affective slots’ for actors (p. 125). ‘Emotion talk’ can therefore serve to construct and maintain a particular moral order which governs how people in certain social groups or subcultures (such as the working-class) are expected to behave (Burr, 2015). Similarly, feelings of ‘authenticity’ (as discussed in Chapter 5 in particular) can be understood as part of a socially and culturally-situated self-monitoring process (Burr, 2015). Those such as Wetherell (2012) therefore believe that tools such as discourse analysis can be applied to the study of affect-as-practice.

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Finally, a number of social constructionists have resisted the incorporation of psychoanalytic concepts due to concerns that this may promote a slide back into the kind of psychologisation and essentialism, and invoke the kinds of problematic dualisms (e.g. the individual/society dualism) that they have strived to move away from (see Burr, 2015). For example, Edley (2006) points out that psychoanalysis treats language as a route to the psyche or interior psychological space and therefore ‘is predicated on the very model of language that discourse theory has served to destabilise’ (p. 605). Rather, for Edley, the contents of our minds are simply ‘conversations turned inwards’ and the unconscious as voices that remain unspoken/unacknowledged or are silenced (see also Wetherell, 2012). Focussing on psychic phenomena as internal and separable from language and discourse also carries with it a danger of reducing the political to the personal (Parker & Spears, 1996). Finally, to complicate matters further, the distinction between ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ forms of the extra-discursive is also, to some degree, a false dichotomy. As an example, the social construction of certain conditions (e.g. worklessness) as being the product of subjective experience or emotion (e.g. a sense of hopelessness; low self-esteem) is a product of, and at the same time perpetuates and justifies, social policies and social conditions (austerity and cuts to welfare). In sum, language constitutes and is pivotal to what is being described here as extra-discursive. We hope that in this section of the chapter, we have presented a convincing response to some of the common criticisms that are levelled at poststructuralist and social constructionist approaches. We continue to further explore some of these issues in the following section of the chapter when we consider where critical research on class might go from here. The aim here is not to discount such arguments but rather to defend what we see as the value in a poststructuralist/constructionist/discursive approach to class. In addition, such points of tension and conflict should not be regarded as wholly negative; it is important to avoid closure to important debates, such as those outlined in this section of the chapter, and to embrace fragmentary forms of theory and activity (see Skeggs, 1997) which have the potential to make important contributions to critical work on social class.

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What Next? Future Directions for Class Research In this section of the chapter, we shall discuss what we regard as some promising and necessary directions for future critical and discursive research on social class. This discussion draws upon some recent research projects that we believe are important in pointing to new or underresearched research topics and/or which utilise under-used approaches to research and research methods in the study of social class. In addition, some of these examples may go some way in addressing some of the criticisms of poststructuralist approaches discussed previously. Hopefully, some of our suggestions will be taken up by students and scholars who wish to conduct critical qualitative research on social class with the sorts of aims in mind that we have articulated in this book. In the following discussion, we focus on three areas: deconstructing the discursive practices of the privileged; the utility of critical community psychology and participatory action research; and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scrutinising the Discursive Practices of the Privileged In 2009, Bullock and Limbert called for more research which examined the daily discursive practices of more privileged and affluent groups in society and the ways in which these maintain and protect their privilege and perpetuate class-based inequalities. A previous, UK study which addressed this is Walkerdine, Lucey and Melody’s (2001) research on the transition to womanhood which involved both working-class and middle-class girls and their families. They highlighted the discursive practices employed by middle-class parents that perpetuated social and economic advantage, such as the binding together of academic and professional success and ‘happiness’ in their talk. In other words, such success was promoted to the middle-class girls as leading to happiness in a way that wasn’t the case for working-class girls.

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More recently, a number of social psychological studies have attempted to highlight the discursive strategies employed by the privileged to justify this privilege and the unequal distribution of wealth. In Chapter 5, one such study was reviewed and discussed (e.g. Thomas & Azmitia, 2014) which demonstrated how upper-class students in higher education justify their privilege through appeals to the hard work of their parents. More recently, Carr, Goodman and Jowett (2019) employed a discursive social psychological approach to analyse the talk from an episode of the BBC radio 4 series ‘Moral Maze’, which involves public figures such as former politicians, journalists and religious leaders discussing the moral and ethical issues raised by recent news stories. The episode chosen for analysis was one which focussed on the issue of taxation in the UK. Taxation can function as an important mechanism through which the wealth of a country can be redistributed, and so, the authors were interested in how people taking part in the show construed the role of tax and its relationship with income inequality. It was found that some of the speakers drew upon a social justice repertoire to claim that taxation benefitted ‘the greater good’, had the potential to reduce inequality and facilitated important investment in future generations. However, a competing repertoire construed this as diminishing individual autonomy and discouraging ‘effortfulness’ (see Gibson, 2009, p. 400) on the part of poorer people. It was also claimed that subjecting the affluent to high taxation rates is ‘immoral’, amounts to the theft of individual wealth by the state and is a means by which to penalise those who are economically active. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the speaker drawing most notably on this repertoire was a wealthy public figure. Carr (2019) employed a similar approach to analyse depictions and the talk of the ‘super-rich’ on British television programmes. She found that the super-rich drew upon essentialist discourse to position themselves as more driven and resilient than others and, in the case of those who were born outside of the UK, as more so than British people. Accusations of vulgar displays of wealth were countered through the construction of ostentatious spending as deserved and their wealth as potentially available to all in a meritocratic society by employing a ‘rags to riches’ interpretative repertoire. As argued previously, an important component of a critical social psychology of social class is the scrutiny and deconstruction of damaging

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discourses, such as those that pass off social and economic inequalities as fair and related to ‘deservedness’. We have done this in the previous chapters, notably Chapter 2 (in relation to scientific psychological work on social class) and Chapter 4 (in relation to the mass media). An advantage of the research conducted by those such as Carr et al. (2019) and Carr (2019) is that the discourses and discursive strategies employed can be seen by readers as directly attributable to a powerful and wealthy individual (such as the wealthy public figure taking part in the radio show and members of the ‘super-rich’), so their stake in reproducing/utilising these is perhaps more transparent and stark. In contrast, some of the media texts analysed and discussed in Chapter 4 (e.g. ‘poverty porn’ television shows) have producers or authors that can be somewhat ‘faceless’, such as a TV production company. Further research that examines the accounting practices of individuals with more social and economic power may therefore be beneficial. In addition, scrutinising the discursive practices of middle-class people and the production of middle-class subjectivities has the potential to disrupt the ‘normalness’ of these and the idea that only working-class people, their behaviours and lifestyles, are classed. One of the important contributions that critical and feminist work on men and masculinities has made is to disrupt the idea that these are foundational, unquestionable and unproblematic (see Wetherell & Griffin, 1991; Wetherell & Edley, 1999; Willott, 1998). We believe that research with middle-class participants has the potential to achieve something similar in relation to class as middle-class ‘ways of being’ typically escape academic scrutiny and are ‘silently marked as normal and desirable’ (Lawler, 2005, p. 431). To refer once again to Walkerdine et al.’s (2001) research on the transition to womanhood, amongst their findings was that the discursive practices used by the mothers of the middle-class girls were aimed at regulating their emotional responses (e.g. anger) or transforming these into ‘rational’ arguments. In contrast, the mothers of the working-class girls were more likely to allow space for the passionate expression of emotions. As well as demonstrating the usefulness of conceiving of emotion as discursive practice (as discussed in the previous section of the chapter), it is not difficult to see how such practices could be regarded as problematic. For example, middle-class femininities could be read here

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as being more highly regulated and controlled. In addition, the notion of academic and career success as a route to happiness (as discussed previously) glosses over the kinds of stresses and strains that are associated with trying to compete in a capitalist society—even for those who are more socially and economically privileged—which can lead to ill health (e.g. Belle & Doucet, 2003). Indeed, there is evidence that capitalist societies that value individualism and destructive competition, while discouraging social cohesion, are bad for everyone and that being successful in this system does not guarantee wellness and happiness (e.g. Subramanian & Kawachi, 2006).

Critical Community Psychology and Participatory Action Research (PAR) While the deconstruction of problematic public and private discourses is an important part of critical social psychological projects, this can leave critical scholars with a feeling of ‘what now?’ or perhaps even ‘so what?’ In addition, as discussed previously in the current chapter, critics of poststructuralist approaches have questioned their utility in bringing about positive individual and social change. The previous chapter discussed some examples ‘good practice’ in terms of critical research on classism and the barriers to achievement and wellbeing that are associated with being working-class that has led to recommendations for practice and policy reforms. There have also been calls for psychologists to work actively to reduce poverty and the impact of poverty, and it has been suggested that this might be achieved via community psychological approaches (e.g. Carr & Sloan, 2003; Prilleltensky, 2003). Critical community psychology (e.g. Prilleltensky & Nelson, 2009), a more critical alternative to more ‘traditional’ forms of community psychology (Kelly, 1966), is a sub-discipline that has particular promise for scholar-activism in relation to social class. As with critical psychological approaches more generally, this is explicitly political/underpinned by a social justice agenda and there is an emphasis on producing contextualised understandings of problems such as poverty and psychological distress by locating these within a wider sociopolitical

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context. This is also presented as an alternative to the dominant individualistic psychology that is typically taught and practised in higher income countries (Burton, Boyle, Harris & Kagan, 2007) and which has been the subject of critique in this book. However, such problems are also situated within and considered at a local setting-level, for example, the surrounding local community and physical environment, which research participants will have intimate knowledge of. An important feature of critical community psychology is therefore a breaking down of the distinctions between ‘the researcher’ and ‘researched’ as the research is regarded as a partnership and expertise as co-created. Participants are also afforded an active role in addressing the issues that affect them, their families and their communities (e.g. Brydon-Miller, 1997). Importantly, as opposed to merely documenting social injustices, there are efforts here to tackle these through social action in partnership with disadvantaged communities and promote personal wellness as well as social critique (e.g. Prilleltensky & Nelson, 2009). As such, critical community psychology can be regarded as more ‘active’ in aiming to empower people and communities more directly. Participatory action research is particularly conducive to critical community psychology (Kagan, 2012). Indeed, Kagan (2012) argues that PAR in itself can be regarded as a critical community psychology intervention. This has been described as involving ‘systematic inquiry with the collaboration of those affected by the issue being studied, for the purposes of education and taking action on effecting policy change’ (Islam, 2020, p. 227). PAR is a process rather than a method, and one that can accommodate a range of research methods, including more traditional (e.g. surveys and interviews) and more creative (e.g. Photovoice) ones, but is typically qualitative. The key emphasis however is on empowerment through research participation. For example, the previous work on class and poverty that has employed PAR has given participants control over the research process and the messages to be conveyed (e.g. Beresford, Green, Lister & Woodard, 1999). It is anticipated that through these processes, participants will develop a knowledge base from which they can then pursue independent actions once the project is completed (Tilakaratna, 1990).

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In order to illustrate what can be achieved by employing such approaches in research on social class and poverty, we shall use a recent project as a case study. Sandle (2020) conducted research informed by the principles of critical community psychology with a group of lone mothers in receipt of state benefits from the same socio-economically deprived community in Leeds, UK. In doing so, she utilised participatory methods such as Photovoice (e.g. Wang & Burris, 1997) which involves participants taking photographs as a way of enabling them to reflect on their individual and community’s strengths and concerns. This has been used to inform policymakers of potential areas for change (Wang & Burris, 1997) and is recognised as a particularly useful tool for accessing the viewpoints of those who are marginalised in society (e.g. Krieg & Roberts, 2007). The aim of the project was to identify key issues relating to austerity (see Chapter 1), wellbeing and lone motherhood, to identify areas for positive change, and to empower this community. The participants collectively identified areas where they would like to see changes occur, including changes to a benefits system that they found incredibly difficult to navigate and an increase in the funding of community resources such as more youth centres. This was then disseminated (amongst other methods) via an exhibition of the photographs that the women had taken of their local community which local policymakers and stakeholders were invited to attend. In addition, the project facilitated social cohesion and the forming of an informal support and self-help network amongst members of the community, something which has a life outside of the project. Liberation psychologists have argued that one of the ways to reverse the negative effects of oppression is to form a community amongst the oppressed persons (e.g. Moane, 1999, 2011). Indeed, as discussed in the previous chapter, other studies (e.g. Holman, 2014; Walker, Hanna, & Hart, 2015) have found that such opportunities for social connection at a community level can make an important difference to the psychological wellbeing of disadvantaged and marginalised people, and as such, should be central to mental health service provision (Walker et al, 2015). In addition, several projects have documented the benefits of collectively advocating to change oppressive situations (e.g. Watkins & Shulman, 2008). Finally, the project was co-facilitated by a Mental Health Support Worker from

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the mental health charity Mind who provided advice, support and access to resources for the participants, many of whom reported experiencing poor psychological health. Participatory and creative methods can also be employed in order to conduct joint deconstruction of the kinds of negative discourses around working-class people that have been described in this book. Moane (2003) argues that in individualistic societies such as the UK and United States, disadvantaged people often ‘internalise’ dominant cultural narratives which hold them responsible for the problems that they experience which in turn can lead to self-blame and self-denigration. Oliver (2004) refers to the reversal of this process as ‘decolonisation’ of the psychic space, the process by which the targets of cultural diminution resist the negative inscriptions attributed to them by the dominant culture which in turn can facilitate positive identity formation. Sandle (2020) also attempted to achieve this in her work with lone mothers by presenting them with the kinds of negative media discourses around lone mothers and welfare recipients that were discussed in Chapter 4. Discussion groups created a space for the participants to reflect on, resist and deconstruct these cultural narratives. It was found that there was consensual anger amongst the participants over the poor representation of lone mothers on British television, and participants took pleasure in collectively subverting these. The participants also insisted that mothering was and should be viewed as valid labour, thus directly challenging discourses (as discussed in Chapter 4) that construe only paid labour as legitimate labour. Prilleltensky and Nelson (2009) argue that combining a collective project of decolonisation with a personal project of positive identity formation is a ‘prototypical’ critical community psychology intervention, but one that is sorely lacking in the present landscape of interventions to improve health and wellbeing. Finally, Sandle (2020) found that while the participants were able to identify and describe the changes that had taken place in their local community since the start of austerity in 2010 (see Chapter 1), such as the disappearance of community resources, they articulated a sense of alienation from the term ‘austerity’; they typically did not employ this term or have an understanding of what this means. Freire (1970; 1972) and Fals Borda (1979), drawing upon post-Marxist critical theory,

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referred to a process called ‘conscientisation’ or ‘critical consciousness’. This involves an awareness of oppressive elements in one’s life, such as the damage that social and government policies have done to workingclass people and their communities. It is anticipated that the process will move in stages from growing awareness, to linking with others, to participation and then to social action. As discussed in the previous chapter, McDowell (Zrenchik & McDowell, 2012) recommended that therapists should work with working-class clients in ways that promote ‘critical class consciousness’ by, for example, encouraging them to locate their problems within broader socio-economic structural conditions and systems of oppression. Further, as discussed in the previous chapters, research findings have revealed that working-class people often do not identify with class struggles or the social categories to which they are assigned, even if they are objectively poor and disadvantaged. Therefore, an important goal of critical work on social class and poverty could be the facilitation of conscientisation which would arguably lead to more tangible outcomes. A problem with conscientisation is that this involves a fall back on realism in acknowledging the ‘realities’ of oppression and intervening in that reality in order to make positive changes (Freire, 1970). As argued previously in the current chapter and Chapter 3 in particular, a characteristic of poststructuralist approaches is a rejection of realism. A potential problem with an appeal to realist accounts here is that those that are subjected to oppression and oppressive ideologies and discourses can be positioned as having ‘false consciousness’ (e.g. Gavey, 1989; Squire, 1995) or worse still, as complicit in their own oppression (e.g. Kitzinger & Thomas, 1995). Appealing to notions of ‘false consciousness’ suggests that the researcher has an epistemic insight that the participants lack which is at odds with the dismantling of distinctions between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’, ‘expert’ and ‘non-expert’. However, the active inclusion of participants at all stages of the research project (as is characteristic of critical community psychology approaches and PAR) would hopefully diminish the dangers of a discrepancy between the accounts of ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ by allowing participants to set the agenda and through the sharing of knowledge and the collaborative construction of research findings. When we employ such approaches, it is not

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the researcher but the participants who identify what needs to change in their lives. On a logistical level, a problem with projects employing participatory methods is that these can entail a big commitment from people whose lives are already difficult and so attrition can be a problem. However, as Kagan (2012) notes, when such research is disrupted, we learn important things about the context in which the research is taking place and the lives of those that we are working with. Similarly, Macquarrie et al. (2011), who conducted participatory research with teen mums in Canada, noted that the process of ‘derailing’ or ‘going off topic’ on the part of the participants (e.g. during group discussions), which they found was often the case, can be analytically revealing and interesting in and of itself rather than ‘dross’ or ‘useless data’. For instance, on closer examination, they found that this often occurred when the topic of ‘change’ was introduced and realised that this was because the participants found this difficult to discuss. This was because, according to Macquarrie et al. (2011), they associated this with the negative judgements of others and felt that it was something that they had not been successful with. As such, what could initially look like ‘failure’ during a research project could actually be an important lesson.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Working-Class People and Communities At the time of writing, we are currently in the midst of a public health crisis in the form of the coronavirus (or COVID-19) pandemic. The World Health Organisation declared this to be a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020 and a pandemic on 11 March 2020 (World Health Organisation, 2020). To date, more than 8.13 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in more than 188 countries and territories and 445,185 deaths have been recorded (John Hopkins University, 2020). As discussed in the previous chapter, the pandemic has illuminated stark social and economic inequalities in the UK and across the world. To recap some of the key points presented previously, early data from the UK has indicated that deaths

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from COVID-19 are more than double in socio-economically deprived areas than they are in more affluent areas (The Health Foundation, 2020) and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) populations have been disproportionately affected (Public Health England, 2020). Amongst the explanations for such disproportionate fatalities amongst these groups are living conditions (the greater likelihood of living in cramped living spaces with little to no opportunity to social distance), being more likely to be ‘key workers’ (e.g. health and social care workers and retail workers), having no other option but to use (overcrowded) public transport to travel to and from work, and being more likely to have a pre-existing underlying health condition (Drury, Reicher, & Stott, 2020). In terms of the economic impact of the pandemic, The Institute for Social and Economic Research (2020) has conducted research that has estimated that unemployment will rise by 5 million workers in the UK from 1.34 million to more than 6 million as a result of ‘lockdown’. This will take the UK unemployment rate to around 20%, more than 5 times its current rate at 3.9%. In the United States, unemployment rates have hit their highest since the Great Depression, with more 40 million US citizens registering as unemployed since the start of ‘lockdown’ (Aratani, 2020). Those sectors of the British economy predicted to be hit the hardest by coronavirus, according to the Government’s Independent Economics Watchdog, are said to be education, construction and hospitality (Partington, 2020). This will have a severe impact on the lives of working-class people. For example, many of the 3 million people employed in the accommodation and food services industry (i.e. hotels and restaurants), many of whom were already on low wages, face job cuts (Office for Budget Responsibility, 2020). Similarly, most construction work in the UK has come to a halt during lockdown and factories around the world have been forced to close or run limited hours, causing mass disruption to global supply chains (Office for Budget Responsibility, 2020). Footfall in retail outlets in the UK (such as fashion chains and furniture shops) has collapsed by 85% since the start of lockdown (Hern, 2020). In the first chapter, we discussed the devastating impact of austerity policies on working-class communities and low-income families, and the

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fallout in terms of poor mental health and reduced psychological wellbeing, the effects of which are still being felt by many. Yet, it is estimated that the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will be 20 times faster and deeper than the global economic collapse of 2008/2009 (National Institute of Social and Economic Research, 2020). This is extremely concerning. The full impact of COVID-19 is yet to be known, but it looks fairly certain that the consequences will be dire and, as usual, it will be disadvantaged communities who will be hit the hardest. There will therefore be a fairly urgent need to map and understand how this has impacted the lives and communities of working-class people and for local-level community and broader social action in an attempt mitigate the effects.

Summary In this final chapter, we have attempted to address some of the common criticisms that are levelled at poststructuralist approaches in terms of the level of analysis (e.g. discursive, micro-politics of power) and their usefulness in facilitating social change and social justice. In doing so, our aim was not to close down such debate and/or to dismiss these concerns, but rather to acknowledge these and defend what we believe has and can be a useful framework for class analysis. We have also discussed critical community psychology and participatory action research as approaches that may lead to more tangible outcomes for scholar-activists working with disadvantaged people and communities and thus address a key criticism of discursive analyses which is that these often fail to affect change. We believe (as argued) that the deconstruction of discourses that justify and rationalise or obscure social and economic inequalities is a worthwhile endeavour, and in this chapter, we have examined the daily accounting practices of privileged groups in order to illustrate this, an important and promising direction for future discursive research. However, we also believe that such work needs to be conducted alongside that which benefits individuals and communities more directly. Finally, we have discussed the current public health crisis in the form of the coronavirus (or COVID-19) pandemic and the devasting impact that

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this will have on many working-class people, families and communities. Worryingly, the fallout from this is predicted to be far worse than the fallout from the global economic crash. Documenting and understanding the impact of this and taking positive action at varying levels (individual, community and sociopolitical) is therefore a priority for critical class researchers.

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Index

A

Academic performance/achievement 4, 12, 38, 41, 55, 74, 76, 125, 174–176, 196, 219 Affect 8, 15, 25, 122, 123, 144, 212, 214, 220, 226 Agency 14, 52, 58, 71, 151, 152, 163, 189, 214 Alcohol 47, 122 Anti-welfare common sense 108 Austerity 7, 8, 11, 15, 102, 108, 114, 116, 119, 122, 190, 211, 213, 215, 221, 222, 225 Authenticity 112, 115, 150, 152, 154, 158, 160, 174, 209, 214

B

BAME communities 194, 195 Behavioural genetics 40

Benefits Street 108, 114, 117, 119 Biological determinism 35 Blair, Tony 18, 125 Bourdieu, P. 9, 10, 12, 16, 85, 149 Breastfeeding 191–193, 197

C

Capitalism 3, 5, 80, 81, 123, 213 Chavs 9, 107, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115 Class bias 54 Class consciousness 3, 8, 19, 149, 185, 187, 210, 223 Class identities 23, 107, 115, 127, 142, 144, 163, 209, 210 Classism 24, 25, 54, 58, 77, 106, 138, 142, 154, 157, 164, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179, 181, 185, 187, 197, 219

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Day et al., Critical Social Psychology of Social Class, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55965-6

281

282

Index

Classlessness 13, 19, 142 Class struggle 126, 209, 210, 223 Class transitions 16 Cognitive neuroscience 38, 40 Cognitive psychology 36 Communism 82 Conformity 48, 72 Conscientisation 223 Consumption 6, 9, 11, 12, 24, 46, 48, 49, 108, 155, 159 Coronavirus 25, 224–226 Critical community psychology 25, 188, 197, 216, 219–223, 226 Critical health psychology 195 Critical race theory 34 Critical realism 210 Cultural capital 9, 10, 79, 92, 118, 154, 157, 176, 179, 183

Drug use 122

E

Education 4, 5, 9, 17, 24, 37, 40, 43, 47, 72, 78, 84, 85, 105, 108, 109, 117, 118, 137, 140, 145, 148, 154, 159, 163, 165, 173–178, 180, 181, 190, 195, 196, 214, 217, 220, 225 Embourgeoisement 18, 19 Engels. F. 80, 81 Essentialism 35, 206–208, 215 Ethnicity 1, 7, 13, 15, 17, 115, 183, 189, 190 Eugenics 58, 206 Eysenck, H. 35

F D

Debt 6, 7, 182, 195, 197 Deconstruction 105, 151, 204–206, 208, 217, 219, 222, 226 Deferred gratification 46 Desire 18, 25, 48, 76, 92, 141, 150, 157, 160, 184, 212, 213 Disability 120, 189, 197 Discourse 8, 11, 18, 20, 22–24, 34–36, 40, 44, 45, 47, 49, 52, 53, 57, 58, 76, 78, 84, 88–93, 101, 102, 105, 106, 109, 111, 113–117, 119, 123–126, 137–147, 150, 151, 153–164, 173, 174, 177, 178, 181, 194, 195, 206, 207, 209–215, 217–219, 222, 223, 226 Discourse analysis 206, 210, 214 Disgust 23, 53, 113, 139, 213, 214

False consciousness 81, 223 Families 7, 8, 15, 25, 37, 41, 48, 49, 120, 137, 140, 159, 161, 175, 177, 188, 195, 216, 220, 225, 227 Fatherhood 161 Femininities 111, 138, 152, 157, 218 Feminism 22, 67, 92, 204, 209 Food/foodwork 24, 105, 123, 137, 149, 152, 155, 156, 190, 192, 194, 195, 197, 225 Foucault, M. 34, 35, 85, 87, 88, 103, 115, 116

G

Gender 1, 7, 12, 13, 15, 17, 39, 75, 76, 78, 84, 89, 91, 103, 111,

Index

139, 150, 151, 153, 161, 163, 178, 182, 189, 197, 208 Genealogy 34, 106 Giddens, A. 124 Global financial crash 7 Gramsci, A. 3, 11, 19, 23, 125, 138 H

Health inequalities 4, 52, 53, 189–191, 195–197 Homophobia 7, 186, 209 Housing 19, 140, 155, 177, 182, 183, 188, 190, 192, 195, 197 I

Identity politics 208–210 Illness 24, 25, 49, 104, 173 Individualism 14, 33, 35, 52, 58, 68, 69, 82, 145, 147, 177, 194, 219 Intelligence 21, 22, 36, 38, 39, 41–43, 54, 57, 145, 161 Intersectionality 7, 75, 90, 151, 209 IQ tests 39, 55

283

M

MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status 17 Mainstream psychology 14, 33, 34, 37, 40, 57, 58, 67, 73, 74, 79, 80, 113, 206 Marxism 13, 22, 67, 80, 84, 92, 204 Marx, K. 3, 80, 81, 85, 149 Masculinities 138, 152, 159, 160, 207, 218 Mental health 15, 20, 24, 119–123, 126, 165, 173, 182–184, 187–189, 196, 211, 221, 222, 226 Meritocracy 21, 23, 24, 37, 40, 41, 43–45, 54, 57, 58, 78, 82, 125, 142, 143, 145 Moane, G. 14, 15, 21, 221 Motherhood 109, 110, 116, 153, 156, 157, 221 My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding 110–112, 114, 117

N

Neoliberalism 123, 125 New Labour 110, 124

J

Jones, O. 5, 6, 11, 18, 19, 114, 115, 207, 209 L

Lazzarato, M. 6, 11 Liberal humanism 50 Liberation psychology 14 Lone mothers 109, 110, 221, 222

O

Occupation 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 16, 17, 37, 41, 42, 50, 55, 152, 214

P

Parker, I. 13, 25, 47, 49, 73, 75, 80, 81, 102, 116, 126, 204, 205, 210, 211, 213, 215

284

Index

Participatory action research (PAR) 25, 216, 220, 223, 226 Perceived class status 16 Photovoice 220, 221 Physical health 17, 24, 165, 173, 178, 196, 197 Positivism 34, 204 Postmodernism 86 Poststructuralism 85–87, 203–206, 210 Poverty 4, 6–8, 11–13, 15, 25, 33, 40, 52, 76, 102, 117, 121, 122, 124–126, 161, 175, 177, 182, 186, 195, 196, 211, 219–221, 223 Poverty porn 108, 218 Power relations 88, 90, 160, 211, 213 Psychoanalysis 215 Psychocentricism 122 Psycho-compulsion 122 Psychologists Against Austerity 15 Psychologists for Social Change 15 Psychosocial approaches 213

R

Racism 7, 24, 78, 90, 161, 174, 186, 194, 209 Rational mind 37, 44, 45, 47 Realism 204, 223 Reality TV 108, 119 Reductionism 40, 68, 69 Relativism 204, 206 Resistance 24, 83, 88, 106, 116, 117, 125, 127, 137, 138, 151, 152, 154, 158–160, 162–164, 210, 212 Rhetoric 40, 113, 123, 197, 206

S

Scientific classism 39, 58 Scientific racism 39, 206 Self-control 44–46, 49, 122, 162 Self-improvement shows 110 Sexism 7, 78, 90, 120, 154, 186, 209 Sexualities 1, 75, 76, 84, 91, 103, 109, 111, 115, 154, 182, 184, 197 Skeggs, B. 10, 11, 13, 16, 84, 85, 89, 90, 103, 118, 119, 127, 147, 148, 152, 154, 164, 207, 212–215 Social capital 9, 179 Social cognition 49, 191 Social constructionism 22, 85, 86, 210 Social Darwinism 35 Social identity theory 24, 150, 163 Social mobility 13, 24, 41–43, 57, 76–78, 142, 145–147, 160, 174, 176, 178, 196 Social policy(ies) 215 Social protest 158, 159, 162 Socio-economic status (SES) 3, 4, 13, 15–18, 20–22, 36, 39, 41, 42, 46, 50, 51, 53, 58, 102, 122, 182, 190, 206 Stereotypes 24, 54, 55, 81, 82, 105, 115, 139, 140, 162, 164, 165, 206, 207, 211 Stereotype threat 22, 54, 55 Stigmatisation 138, 189 Structuralism 87 Subjectivity 87, 118, 210, 212 Subject positioning 112 Submerged identities 23 Super-rich 217, 218

Index

285

T

U

Taxation 217 Teen pregnancy 110 The crisis in social psychology 68 The entrepreneurial self 124 The extra-discursive 25, 210, 212, 213, 215 The media 22, 23, 93, 101, 103– 106, 108, 110, 112–117, 123, 138–140, 196, 207, 213, 218 The middle-class imagination 141, 150 The National Statistics SocioEconomic Classification (NS-SEC) 3, 4 Transphobia 209 Traveller communities 110–112 Treatments and therapies 182–184, 186 Tyler, I. 11, 13, 23, 58, 102, 107–110, 112–115, 124, 139, 140, 213

Unemployment 90, 120, 122, 159, 182, 197, 211, 225

W

Walkerdine, V. 16, 20, 23, 24, 35, 44, 52, 75, 84, 106, 110, 118, 139, 140, 150, 174, 213, 216, 218 Welfare 7, 11, 108–110, 114, 115, 120, 122, 188, 215, 222 Wellbeing 4, 14, 24, 25, 105, 117–123, 126, 173, 174, 178, 188, 189, 219, 221, 222, 226 White Dee 115, 116, 119 Women of colour 90, 120, 191 Working-class women 8, 24, 37, 52, 77, 91, 109, 113, 120, 127, 152–155, 157, 158, 164, 212 Worklessness 23, 102, 108, 116, 117, 121, 212, 213, 215