Fig. 1.1
‘Rucksack’
Introduction
A working-class scholar is perceived to be contradictory, even romantic descriptor. But this ignores the multi-faceted nature of ‘a working-class identity’ (Loveday 2015). Working-class academics make an interesting case study on class inequalities. They challenge yet support notions of social mobility. They are heralded as the poster boys/girls of widening participation policies when they enter higher education, but their achievements (and struggles) are lost (or ignored, for the cynical among us), once they enter the academy. They occupy a unique social space. Some describe this lived experience as an ‘outsider within’ (Hill Collins 1986), others argue that academics from disadvantaged backgrounds are only conditionally accepted in the profession (Grollman 2014). This book provides a more nuanced depiction of working-class academics by
- 1.taking an intersectional approach to the experiences of working-class academics, and;
- 2.talking about the range of ‘capital’ working class academics bring to academia.
Working-Class
Commonly understood as a demographic characterized by relative similarities, the classic definition by Marx (1867/1990) focused on ones ‘relationship to the means of production’. If you purchase labour power, you belong to the bourgeoisie: if you sell your labour (whether it be via your hands, bodies or minds), you are part of the proletariat. Marx’s dichotomous view of society is overly simplistic. We have an extensive middle class and in Britain, 65 percent of which have ‘economic assets’ such as owning their own home (Parliament 2017). Occupational definitions of class were popular during the 1970s onwards, where the chief income earner in skilled or professional occupations were defined as the ‘higher’ classes, and those in semi and unskilled employment at the far end of the scale (Savage et al. 2013). This schema was unsatisfactory as it ignored the position of women. Also, class positioning should be seen in relation to other indicators e.g. education, taste, affiliations, and cultural values.
Over the past twenty years research on social stratification has been heavily influenced by the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, himself of working-class origins. Derived from a combination of theory and research, Bourdieu talks of how social differences are based on one’s different access to specific resources and power otherwise known as capitals: i.e. economic capital (e.g. income and wealth), cultural capital (e.g. education, intellect, style of speech) and social capital (e.g. social ties and networks) (Bourdieu 1984). These forms of capital can be transferred from one arena to another (Navarro 2006). Groups who have the desirable form of capital in a specific field will hold an advantage over those who do not possess it. Previously a degree qualification would have been an indication of cultural capital, and one’s position in society. But as working-class young people are now much more likely to have gone to university compared with previous generations, a measure of one’s cultural (as well as the other forms of capital) is now which university they graduated from.
The Great British Class Survey (GBSC ), a collaboration between the BBC and Savage et al. (2013) utilised Bourdieusian theory with survey questions relating to income, one’s social circle and hobbies/interests. Their findings demonstrated that social class is more than household income. It’s the friends you have, the music you like and the school you go to. In other words, cultural and social capital play a considerable role in distributing people into class positions. The survey also provided evidence of a fragmentation between the middle and working classes. The survey illuminated highbrow practices such as attending elite educational institutions, a spatial concentration in London and around the South-East, and a proclivity towards sophisticated cultural activities. A criticism of the GBCS was that managers and professionals were vastly overrepresented (Savage et al. 2013). But still, this provided social mobility researchers with a unique data set to explore upward mobility into, and “distinction and differentiation within, elite occupational groups” (Devine and Snee 2015: 255).
Despite a decline in the number of routine and semi-routine workers in Britain, sixty per cent of people who took part in the British Social Attitudes survey defined themselves as being working class. A statistic that has remained unchanged since 1983 (Evans and Mellon 2016). There can be a nostalgic attachment, a romanticism even, to a working-class identity: think ‘starving artist’, ‘grammar-school boy’, the ‘heroic worker’ (Lawler 2014). It is perhaps no accident that there are few positive female working class representations. The working classes are also positioned as inherently “lacking”’ (Quinn et al. 2005: 13), depicted as “chavs” (Tyler 2008: 1), or “benefit scroungers” (Lawler 2005: 431), and latterly, the ignorant Brexiter. But this ignores that there are intersections of a working class identify.
One’s class position is not the sole determinant of people’s life opportunities as we simultaneously occupy multiple social positions. Middle-class professional women are relatively insulated from the costs of a capitalist society, and working-class men benefit from a masculine construct of class. Whereas working-class women experience, and must come to terms with both. (Ferree 1990: 187–188). DiAngelo (2012) talks of having to push twin “boulders” of classism and sexism. She saw these barriers leading to her experiencing internalised oppression, for instance, a lack of self-confidence, and external limitations, for instance, institutional barriers. DiAngelo (2012) concedes that her white privilege has helped her ‘manage’ the class and gender inequalities she has faced, and “has elevated me over others, some of whom were also raised poor and female, but not white”. Whereas white men and women, whatever their class biography, are insulated from the costs of racism. Bhopal (2014) reported that Black academics, especially BME women from working-class backgrounds, faced a triple oppression—gender, ethnicity and class (pp. 11–12). The Social Mobility Commission (2019) found that women, disabled people and minority ethnic groups from working-class backgrounds experience multiple disadvantages in occupational outcomes”. People with a disability, even if from more privileged backgrounds, are 30 per cent less likely to enter professional occupations in comparison to their non-disabled peers. It is telling that when you ‘search’ for information or research on the ‘disabled or BME working class, these ‘groups’ as seen as separate entities.
Academic
Definitions of an ‘academic’ appear in dictionaries with very little expansion. One may be left trying to understand what academics actually do, in a way we do not, when reading a definition of a nurse. Key words in definitions include ‘intellect’, ‘expertise’ and ‘academic freedom’. Intellect is a concept steeped in class as working-class cohorts who are ‘clever’ are perceived to move up the social mobility ladder, ‘leaving’ their class background behind (hence why the concept of a working-class academic is so problematic). Speaking to my respondents (more about them later in this chapter), most talked of how prior to working in higher education, they did not understand what academics were, or the work that they did. Entering into any field requires a practical sense for what needs to be done in any given situation—what Bourdieu describes as “a ‘feel’ for the game” (Edgerton and Roberts 2014: 200). This emerges via the acquisition of capital and the specialized knowledge of a field derived from a matrix of familial, educational, and social structures and institutions (McCormick 2006). Thus, those with family from academic backgrounds are likely to navigate the ‘field’ with relative ease.
Broadly speaking, an academic is someone who works in the domain of academi...