The politics of the excluded: abjection and reconciliation amongst the British precariat

Mike Savage,Cynthia Meersohn Schmidt

doi:10.1186/s40711-020-00134-7

Abstract

In this paper, we use a powerful empirical resource to address what the popular politics of disadvantage might entail in contemporary Britain. We take advantage of the unusually rich qualitative data from the British National Child Development Study, a cohort of Britons born in 1 week in 1958, to focus specifically on the accounts of those who are particularly disadvantaged. By concentrating on these a small number of qualitative accounts, which have been rigorously selected from the wider nationally representative sample on the basis of their relatively small amounts of economic and cultural capital, we will explore in detail the accounts and identities of these disadvantaged Britons with a view to explicating their political frameworks, their social identities and more broadly their orientations towards mobilisation.

Highlights

The mushrooming of social inequality and the rise of new class inequalities in recent decades have posed major challenges for understanding the dynamics of contemporary political mobilisation and contestation
Since its inception, sociology’s core concern has focused on the “question of order”, and especially how this can persist amidst major structural divides, such as class, ethnicity or gender
The fundamental opposition has pitched those emphasising that material and structural forces weaken the capacity of the disadvantaged to contest the rule of the powerful, against those appealing to the role of cultural, institutional and political processes in instilling dominant values into the minds of the downtrodden

Summary

Introduction

The mushrooming of social inequality and the rise of new class inequalities in recent decades have posed major challenges for understanding the dynamics of contemporary political mobilisation and contestation.

Results

Conclusion