Tag: social class

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 10: The Paradoxical Temporality of Reflexivity & The Continuity of Class

February 12, 2019

“Reflexivity is paradoxical because it can only really be temporary, almost like a mode of habitus as it adjust to it’s new field, or is socially mobile in such a way that it moves into a more congruent field.
[…]
This paradoxical understanding led Bourdieu to theorise reflexivity as temporal, a kind of active mode which is triggered by habitus and field incongruence that reveals to a person the unwritten rules of the field they inhabited. However, this moment would always be temporary as once the incongruence is solved, practice becomes stable.
[…]
The fact that class is continuous and mobility is slow allows habitus more time to adjust itself to the new field and avoid the disruptive effects of hysteresis…” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 10: The Paradoxical Temporality of Reflexivity & The Continuity of Class

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 1: Introduction

September 10, 2017

“[Diane] Reay points out how some sociological theories consider class identities consist of the practices and accounts of such practices done by members of a class, but she believes that how members of a class think and feel about those practices is a key, yet overlooked, feature of class identity. […] there is a psychic economy implicit in the reproduction of social classes whereby social class causes psychic effects which contribute to the reproduction of class, which cause psychic effects on that class that reproduce it again, and so on. […] Reay shows how experiences [of school] might not show explicit knowledge of social class, but at least an implicit understanding about class differences which effect their attitudes and practices. [In this series] I will also be reflecting on some of my own experiences of school as I think they have effected my own thoughts and practices.” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 1: Introduction

The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 5

September 2, 2017

“I believe that the uncritical acceptance of such methods is a result of the inculcation of values of propriety and the normalisation of examination (practices which are so generalised in modern society, they led Foucault to call it “the disciplinarian society”). Having eyes upon you, whether of the state or one’s employer (in reductionist terms, both can easily be conceived as collaborators in class domination, hence enemies/dominators of the working class and so indistinguishable in that regard) is just a part of daily proletarian life in contemporary British society.” … More The indignity of service work | My experiences as a fast-food worker | Part 5

Mental Health Help Access: It helps to be middle-class. | New Empirical Evidence of Social-Class Based Discrimination

June 14, 2016

“A new study in the Sage Journal of Health and Social Behaviour reports that social class influences US independent psychotherapists’ decisions of whether to offer access to their mental health services. In this article I discuss some limitations which I feel may have been overlooked by the original author however, the authors writing includes important references to the scientific literature and there is plenty of discussion of the limitations of the study not mentioned by me, which show that the author is self-aware, and hopefully this article doesn’t imply otherwise. This work is both important and necessary for researchers of social inequalities and this potential research programme, although in its infancy, should be commended on designing a study which looks cheaply replicable- a rare feat in social sciences.” … More Mental Health Help Access: It helps to be middle-class. | New Empirical Evidence of Social-Class Based Discrimination