Will Atkinson

Bio: Will Atkinson is an academic researcher from University of Bristol. The author has contributed to research in topics: Habitus & Cultural capital. The author has an hindex of 19, co-authored 51 publications receiving 1473 citations.

Beck, individualization and the death of class: a critique.

Abstract: Ulrich Beck has argued that the changing logic of distribution and, more importantly, the 'individualization' of social processes in reflexive modernity have killed off the concept of social class and rendered the analysis of its effects a flawed endeavour. The present paper takes issue with this perspective by exposing its key weaknesses, namely its ambivalence and contradiction over what exactly constitutes individualization and the extent to which it has really displaced class, its inconsistent and caricaturized description of what actually constitutes class, its erroneous and unsatisfactory depiction of class analysis, and its self-defeating reasoning on the motors of individualization. The intention is not to conservatively deny that social change is occurring nor to advocate any particular model of class, but only to illustrate the aporias of Beck's position with the aim of vindicating the enterprise of class analysis.

From sociological fictions to social fictions: some Bourdieusian reflections on the concepts of ‘institutional habitus’ and ‘family habitus’

Abstract: This paper expresses serious reservations regarding the increasingly popular Bourdieu‐inspired notions of ‘institutional habitus’ and ‘family habitus’ in education research. Although sympathetic to the overall theoretical approach and persuaded of the veracity and importance of the empirical findings they are used to illuminate, it argues that, from a Bourdieusian point of view, they actually present several difficulties that threaten not only to overstretch and reduce the explanatory power of the French thinker’s concepts but to stifle analysis of the kinds of struggles and complexities that both he and, somewhat contradictorily, the researchers in question spotlight. Bourdieu had his own ways of making sense of the themes raised, and although there is indeed a need to push him further than he went, to say what he did not and to emphasise what he would not, this has to be guided by consistent logic and not simply pragmatic empiricism.

Class, Individualization and Late Modernity: In Search of the Reflexive Worker

Abstract: Introduction: From Affluence to Reflexivity PART I: THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES Reflexivity and its Discontents Conceptualizing Class and Reconceptualizing Reflexivity PART II: SEARCHING FOR THE REFLEXIVE WORKER Educational Reproduction Today Topographical Trajectories Distinction and Denigration 'Class' as Discursive and Political Construct Conclusion: Rigid Relations through Shifting Substance Appendix: The Search Process

A new model of social class : findings from the BBC's Great British Class Survey Experiment.

Abstract: The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world. The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK’s National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status. This principally distinguishes between people working in routine or semi-routine occupations employed on a ‘labour contract’ on the one hand, and those working in professional or managerial occupations employed on a ‘service contract’ on the other. However, this occupationally based class schema does not effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions. We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC’s 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes. We demonstrate the existence of an ‘elite’, whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of ‘new affluent’ workers. We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a ‘precariat’ characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.