Embodying Deficiency Through 'Affective Practice': Shame, Relationality, and the Lived Experience of Social Class and Gender in Higher Education.

Vik Loveday

doi:10.1177/0038038515589301

Vik Loveday

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038515589301

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Journal: Sociology	Publication Date: Jul 11, 2016
Citations: 81	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Goldsmiths University of London

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Based on empirical research with participants from working-class backgrounds studying and working in higher education in England, this article examines the lived experience of shame. Building on a feminist Bourdieusian approach to social class analysis, the article contends that ‘struggles for value’ within the field of higher education precipitate classed judgements, which have the potential to generate shame. Through an examination of the ‘affective practice’ of judgement, the article explores the contingencies that precipitate shame and the embodiment of deficiency. The article links the classed and gendered dimensions of shame with valuation, arguing that the fundamental relationality of social class and gender is not only generative of shame, but that shame helps in turn to structure both working-class experience and a view of the working classes as ‘deficient’.

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Situating Social Class, Value and ‘Affective Practice’ in Higher EducationThe article begins from the premise that social class is intimately tied to processes of valuation that operate through ‘devices of distancing and distinction’ (Skeggs and Loveday, 2012)
The Office for Fair Access reported recently that ‘the most advantaged 20 per cent of young people were 2.5 times more likely to go to higher education ... than the most disadvantaged 40 per cent’ (OFFA, 2014: 2), and social class background affects the type of institution attended2 (Reay et al, 2009), retention (Quinn et al, 2005) and overall outcome (Stuart et al, 2012)
This article has explored the role of shame in mediating the experience of working-class staff and students in English higher education institutions (HEIs) through the use of two different examples of embodiment: accent and pregnancy

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Situating Social Class, Value and ‘Affective Practice’ in Higher EducationThe article begins from the premise that social class is intimately tied to processes of valuation that operate through ‘devices of distancing and distinction’ (Skeggs and Loveday, 2012). I take a feminist Bourdieusian approach to social class analysis in order to explore one particular dimension of the lived experience of staff and students from working-class backgrounds in English higher education institutions (HEIs): shame.

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