Idle Thieving Bastards? Scholarly Representations of the `Underclass'

Abstract

alienated underclass who take out their resentment in crime and vandalism. You can't really blame them.' 'You'd blame them if you were mugged going home tonight,' said Vic. (Lodge 1988: 241) It is rare for sociological terms to enter journalism, popular fiction and political debate, but the 'underclass' succeeds where others fail. Terms and concepts such as 'marginalized strata', 'excluded groups', 'reserve army of labour', 'the pauper class', 'the residuum' and, most recently, the 'under class' have all been used to describe a section of society which is believed to exist within but at the base of the working class (Giddens 1973; Sinfield 1981; Marx 1976; Jordan 1973; Gough 1979; Stedman-Jones 1984; Mann 1984, 1986; Wilson 1987, 1991). Very few of these terms are located within any coherent theory of social divisions, and most are descriptively vague. It might be argued that they are a form of sociological shorthand. A way of referring to a social phenomenon with which we are all very familiar. It is simply a matter of common sense, after all, to acknowledge that the working class has within it, or below it, strata that are particularly poor. That it is a matter of 'common sense' is precisely the problem. Should social scientists be in the business of reproducing 'common sense' ideas, particularly when these are ill defined and contradictory? It is doubtful that these terms mean the same thing to their respective advocates. There is considerable discursive 'leakage' between the respective meanings of each