A Phenomenology of Working-Class Experience

by Simon J. Charlesworth

Overview

Charlesworth examines themes of poverty and class by focusing on a particular town—Rotherham—in South Yorkshire, England, and using the personal testimony of disadvantaged people who live there, acquired through recorded interviews and conversations. He applies to their life stories the interpretative tools of philosophy and social theory, drawing in particular on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Merleau-Ponty. Charlesworth argues the culture described in this book is not unique to Rotherham and the problems identified in this book will be familiar to economically powerless and politically dispossessed people everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521650663
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/09/1999
Series:	Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.87(d)
Lexile:	1490L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: Dead Man's Town; 2. Introducing some concepts: practice, habitus, ethos, doxa, reflexivity; 3. Class and the objectifying subject: a reflexive sociology of class experience; 4. A landscape with figures?; 5. Understanding the barriers to articulation; 6. Necessity and being working class; 7. The culture of necessity and working class speech; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'An exemplary study of contemporary working-class life … intense and affecting.' Sociology

From the Publisher