Class Inequality in Austerity Britain Power, Difference and Suffering [Hardcover]

When the Coalition Government came to power in 2010 in claimed it would deliver not just austerity, as necessary as that apparently was, but also fairness. This volume subjects this pledge to critical interrogation by exposing the interests behind the policy programme pursued and their damaging effects on class inequalities. Situated within a recognition of the longer-term rise of neoliberal politics, reflections on the status of sociology as a source of critique and current debates over the relationship between the cultural and economic dimensions of social class, the contributors cover an impressively wide range of relevant topics, from education, family policy and community to crime and consumption, shedding new light on the experience of domination in the early 21st Century.Introduction: A Critical Sociology of the Age of Austerity; W.Atkinson, S.Roberts & M.Savage Economic Crisis and Classed Everyday Life: Hysteresis, Positional Suffering and Symbolic Violence; W.Atkinson "We never get a fair chance": Working-class Experiences of Education in the Twenty-First Century; D.Reay Banking on the Future: Choices, Aspirations and Economic Hardship in Working-class Student Experience; H.Bradley & N.Ingram "Aspirations" and Imagined Futures: The Im/possibilities for Britain's Young Working Class; S.Roberts & S.Evans Personalising Poverty: Parental Determinism and the "Big Society" Agenda; V.Gillies The Urban Outcasts of the British City; M.Clement The Devalued and Stigmatized Working Class: The State of a Council Estate; L.McKenzie Broken Communities?; M.Savage Facing the Challenge of the Return of the Rich; A.Sayer Conclusion: Three Challenges to the Exportation of Sociological Knowledge; W.Atkinson, S.Roberts & M.Savage

'A timely and welcome attempt to make a public debate about enforced austerity and amplified entitlements. Drawing on substantive research findings from experts across a wide lÃn