Histories and Geographies of Social Class in United Kingdon: RRCEE Public Lecture
Channel: RRCEE DU
Date: 24/03/2015

About the Talk:

This presentation refers to a range of different empirical investigations into education and social class to illustrate the limitations of the categories traditionally used in social class analysis in the UK. While education structures and practices remain significant to the (re-)production of social class, these studies illustrate how this historical relationship has been obscured through neo-liberal individuation and veiled by practitioner discourses of denial and distaste. In the second part of this paper we move to consider more spatial understandings of social class with specific references to geographies of class identity based on on-going research on a social housing estate. Through this we highlight the significance of place, space and distinction to the (active) production/claiming of class belonging and identity. Finally, we reflect on the implications of this shift for research and analysis on social class in education and more broadly.

About the Speakers:
Máiréad Dunne is Professor of the Sociology of Education and Director of the Centre for International Education, University of Sussex. Her research interests are in social and educational inequalities and in the workings of power in global, national, regional, local and domestic relations. Máiréad uses theories from sociology, cultural studies, geography and education to explore the implications of dominant power positions & norms for identities (gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status and citizenship), place and space (global, national, institutional) and the production of knowledge (research, policy, practice). Her publications include co-authored books Becoming a Researcher: a companion to the research process (Open University Press, 2005) and Education, conflict and reconciliation: International perspectives. (Peter Lang, 2007) and a sole- edited book, Gender, Sexuality and Development: Education and Society in sub-Saharan Africa (Sense, 2008).
 

 
Sarah Leaney is an ESRC funded doctoral student in the Department of Education, University of Sussex. She has recently completed her fieldwork, an ethnography on a social housing estate in the UK. Sarah is interested in re-conceptualisations of class through post-structural Sociological theory, particularly class as a relational identity construction. Her research explores the social geographies of class which place subjectivities on the social housing estate.