Pearl Jephcott and the politics of gender, class and race in post-war Britain

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores the intersection of gender and race in Pearl Jephcott's sociological thought by exploring two of her works of the early 1960s side by side: Married Women Working (1962), a study of working wives in Bermondsey, and A Troubled Area (1964), which explored housing and community relations in Notting Hill in the aftermath of the 1958 race riots. The article reflects on Jephcott's professional and intellectual trajectory prior to the 1960s and draws out her distinctive approach to the sociology of women and race relations. It suggests that Jephcott's work does not fit easily into existing historical narratives of British social science, blending as it did elements of Victorian ‘moral geography’ with emerging post-war interest in studying the ‘everyday’. The article concludes that reassessing Jephcott's work not only shines new light on histories of gender and race in post-war Britain, but complicates our understanding of the cultural work performed by social science in modern societies.