Author: Tom Roscoe

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The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 8: Pessimism About Practices of Resistance and Social Mobility

December 18, 2018

“Further reflection on Reay’s pessimism […] has deepened the cynical turn in my thought and practices. In my notes for this series I had originally written to include a discussion of my individual practices of resistance to class stereotyping and stigma.

One of these practices was to retain my North-West English accent. […] this strategy was meant to diminish stigma by going against common stereotypes about what an educated person looks/sounds like […] however, I doubt the effectiveness of this practice.

Perhaps some readers will interpret aspects of this article as a confession that I have given up on the rationale most associated with critical theory. […] Yet, much as I am dismayed by much of what I currently see, I am still working on my own theories and I still do my best to follow Horkheimer’s famous dictum on the purpose of critique, that it is “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 8: Pessimism About Practices of Resistance and Social Mobility

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 7: What School Should I Send My Children To? Am I Also Choosing What Social Class They Will Be?

November 14, 2018

“Pursuing higher education as a means to become upwardly socially mobile also reflects the hyper-competitive individualistic culture of contemporary society and universities, especially their marketing departments, are partly to blame for this. For me personally, academic pursuits were not a means to the end of greater financial security, although when I was younger this was seen as an obvious benefit, but I was drawn to them because it is in my habitus. However, there is still a lingering feeling of anxiety and sometimes guilty shame about my choices regarding my education […]

Reay’s research shows how some parents felt guilty about not sending their children to the best school possible and how they struggled balancing their own values with normative notions about good middle-class parenting. […]

If I can afford it, I would send my children to private school. Does this make me complicit in this unfair system? Is the privilege of choosing a lower or middle-class school also a choice about what social class one’s children will be?” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 7: What School Should I Send My Children To? Am I Also Choosing What Social Class They Will Be?

Experiences in American Mental Healthcare: The Challenges |Guest Article by Dylan Yoki

November 11, 2018

“Three main issues seem to be plaguing the mental health care system.The most important issue is a lack of funding for mental health facilities […] poor training among those who work within the system […] and a shortage of psychiatrists. […]

The solutions to these challenges might just be as simple as increased funding, improved training, and raising awareness of the need for mental health professionals. These solutions, if they are to be successfully implemented, will have to start with spreading awareness of the prevalence of mental illness and combating the stigma attached to it. Part of the task of fighting the stigma of mental illness will be in changing cultural attitudes towards mental illness.” … More Experiences in American Mental Healthcare: The Challenges |Guest Article by Dylan Yoki

Macbeth Had a Cleft Habitus, Sometimes Propaganda is Moral, and Social Mobility is Like Killing the King

October 19, 2018

“Macbeth teaches its audience a moral lesson beyond killing is wrong, since it is unquestioningly alright to kill your fellow man at war, nor even regicide is wrong as King Macbeth is justly slain at the end (no spoiler alerts on a four centuries old play), but that it is wrong to disturb the social order. […]

Perhaps Bernays’ concept of propaganda is too broad? Can we consider, for example, Aesop’s fables as propaganda? […]

t is also difficult to examine how much luck was involved in creating my situation because, like Bourdieu who first theorised about habitus, my class mobility is an exception to the rule about how our inherited capitals, our origins, determine our destinations. […]

At what point does doing what modern society requires of one to get ahead, perhaps abandoning the class interests as a whole yet still working towards more justice and opportunities for those like myself that want to move up, equate to killing the king?” … More Macbeth Had a Cleft Habitus, Sometimes Propaganda is Moral, and Social Mobility is Like Killing the King

A Sociologist on Grime, the Sociology of Bugzy Malone | Album Review of B. Inspired

September 2, 2018

“Run ft. Rag‘n’Bone Man sharply returns to the central theme of B. Inspired- arguably social mobility, “making it”. This track again sets out the grim reality of life in the underclass and begins to bring in a critique of those at the bottom who in their own defeat, use what little energy they have after survival to keep others down. It is a lower-class parallel to the Thatcherism “let your poppies grow tall”. I think this especially appeals to Bugzy’s intended audience as a response to the lack of ambition fostered in people with working-class origins without the moralism or shallow workerism of today’s political left- again remaining at the blurry fringe between social and political. It is therapy to combat the psychological aspects of class neglected in mainstream discourses which admits that social mobility is a struggle, full of contradictions, but that’s life and Bugzy’s audience knows it.” … More A Sociologist on Grime, the Sociology of Bugzy Malone | Album Review of B. Inspired

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 6: The Beginnings of a Bourdieusian Analysis of Mental Illness (BPD)?

July 31, 2018

“Risking reducing parts of Bourdieu’s socioanalysis from a philosophical enquiry into the essence of his own being through examining his becoming, and certainly hoping not to appear to pathologise his reflexivity, there is a kind of constant flux of self-image as it is constantly re-examined. The difference between Bourdieu and one who suffers with BPD perhaps is, as many psychologists would agree (at least in my experience with fellow students many of which are now practising psychologists in some form) is that his reflexive actions did not cause him social problems and/or psychic distress enough to be considered pathological. ” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 6: The Beginnings of a Bourdieusian Analysis of Mental Illness (BPD)?

Joke Or Not: Does It Matter When The Solution Is Censorship, Social Or Legal? | Does Liking MDE Humour Prove You Are Right-Wing?

July 16, 2018

“Whether or not MDE are part of the alt-right, and whether one enjoying its humour can be taken as evidence of one having certain political views has been discussed before. The consensus varies around the latter point, but for the most part, it seems the MDE boys really are sometimes, somewhat white supremacist and misogynistic. Nevertheless, as much as I might sometimes consider MDE’s views wrong, I still enjoy their content. Unfortunately, to some this is a sign that I secretly harbour similar views.” … More Joke Or Not: Does It Matter When The Solution Is Censorship, Social Or Legal? | Does Liking MDE Humour Prove You Are Right-Wing?

“There is No Magic Money Tree”, Let Them Eat Cake | On the 70th Anniversary of the NHS

July 9, 2018

“There is no magic money tree they say, but they will put money in. They hope us plebs don’t know about how it’s probably not going to be enough in real terms to cover the massive gaps already which have been worrying executives for years. They wear their little badges in parliament to show off their pride in a service that wouldn’t exist had the decision been solely up to them. They covertly privatise services by simply contracting them out to private companies and getting the NHS to foot the bill. […] The NHS is under attack, but at least some of the workers got some cake last week…” … More “There is No Magic Money Tree”, Let Them Eat Cake | On the 70th Anniversary of the NHS

The Responsibility of Public Intellectuals in Holding Governments to Account | The Diffusion of Responsibility in Bureaucracy | The Connection Between the Holocaust & Welfare Cuts | Dedicated to Hannah Arendt

May 31, 2018

“The diffusion of responsibility is the phenomena whereby one considers that one is less responsible for some action when others are present- they absorb some of the responsibility or another might even be perceived to take it all, for example in cases where an authority is present. The government is not only not the bystander it wants us to think it is, but it has the knowledge and power to act so is responsible nevertheless. Public intellectuals, including social scientists, need to reinforce this idea or things will never change and we similarly act as irresponsible deferrers of responsibility. Those individuals responsible for disability assessments that label dying people fit for work, cut their benefits, and might as well just kill those they assess, should be vilified until held to account. As an extreme example, but using the same logic, if we don’t hold these people to account, then the Nazis who “just drove the trains” are not culpable for their role in the holocaust.” … More The Responsibility of Public Intellectuals in Holding Governments to Account | The Diffusion of Responsibility in Bureaucracy | The Connection Between the Holocaust & Welfare Cuts | Dedicated to Hannah Arendt

Hereditary Meritocracy Is Not Meritocracy | Critical Commentary of The Economist

April 23, 2018

“The idea of a “Hereditary Meritocracy” is provocative and not dissimilar from, albeit a quite reductive form of, one of the main ideas by our favourite Frenchman Pierre Bourdieu- we in the advanced economies of the world, although not subject to the arbitrary inequality of hereditary transmission of power legitimised by divine right, are still far from the ideal world in which “the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life”. Actually, the transmission of power and privilege is still quite arbitrary, largely hereditary but now it is disguised in other forms… If we really want to (I can’t believe I’m going to quote Thatcher!) “let our poppies grow tall”, then we need to accept the reality that some of those poppies are getting extra fertiliser and some are born in the shade. ” … More Hereditary Meritocracy Is Not Meritocracy | Critical Commentary of The Economist