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Book
ReviewClass
Back On the MapClass, self, culture. Beverley Skeggs, 2004. London: Routledge; ISBN 0 415 30085 1, 215 pp. £19.99
SAGE Publications, Inc.2004DOI: 10.1177/09675507040120030402
RayFielder
University of Kent/Mid Kent College
Not
much has been written recently about class. It appears to be a topic that
has been missing from the research agenda over the past few years. This book
successfully redresses the gap and, it claims, `puts class back on the map'.
Skeggs theorizes and explores the poss- ible conditions associated with the
concept of class. She sets out to show how class is constructed and given
value through different cultures and categories and the many ways that culture
is distributed and deployed as a resource and form of property.
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The
style of the book is surprisingly readable for a work that attempts to tease
out meanings, clarify and analyse notions of class, self and culture at an
academic and philosophical level. It is clearly structured and the reader
is provided with signposts that direct and guide the text. Language is not
overly jargonized and carefully and selectively referenced. The structure
of the book is based upon four central themes or pro- cesses, namely inscription,
exchange, evaluation and perspective, that constitute class in our present
society. Class is considered as a dynamic, subject to change, rather than
a given. The account examines the following: how certain bodies become inscribed; how categorizations of class are made in the contemporary; how it is spoken
and known in a variety of ways. It suggests class is always made by, and in
the interests of, those with power and it pos- sesses circuits of symbolic
distribution. This symbolic struggle then impacts upon value, national belonging,
interpretation of experiences and the propertizing of culture. Culture is
seen as a resource that is not equally available to all. Culture can be used
by the middle classes as a vehicle to increase their exchange value, establishing
a relation- ship with entitlement, but that same culture cannot be converted
for the working classes. Skeggs claims that value is attributed, accrued,
institutionalized and lost and that there is an underlying assumption about
who can have a self. Self is seen not as a subject position but as part of
an exchange system in which class personhood is produced through dif- ferent
technologies such as narratives and discourses. Specific per- spectives, theories
and methods are promoted as morally good, generating a self only for the privileged; thus value can be produced through different perspectives. It can be seen
from the account how symbolic exchange enables culture to be used as a form
of property, which cannot be accumu- lated by modern, possessive individuals,
therefore increasing their value and ability to move across social space.
These processes show how cultures are differently valued depending on who
can deploy them as a resource and how the processes are reliant upon fixing
some people in place whilst others can move. It challenges debates on reflexivity,
risk, rational action, individualization and mobility. Skeggs make use of
an analysis of Bourdieu's perspective on the sym- bolic economy (Bourdieu,
1986), offering a specific example as an application of these processes usefully
concluding into an analysis of self-formulation and how this is integral to
class making. Overall, the book offers a selection of carefully written but
compre- hensive analyses and interpretations that demystify the notions of
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class,
self and culture and contextualize their meanings in the contem- porary moment.
REFERENCE
Bourdieu, P. 1986: Distinction. London: Routledge.