Working-class Boys Research Articles

Clean Sharp Image

Canadian sports commentator Don Cherry is notorious for his outspoken opinions and flamboyant style, both attracting popular attention. This article examines his attention-grabbing on-air style as an extension of both his values for the game of hockey and his view of himself as a working-class boy made good. I argue that Cherry deliberately uses his suits to embody his social and personal values. Drawing on fashion studies approaches, I show that while not exactly fashionable in terms of trendiness, Cherry’s suits are examples of the ability of clothing to be indexical of working-class personality transformed.

Violence as an Environmentally Warranted Norm amongst Working-Class Teenage Boys in Glasgow

This study aimed to contribute to knowledge about contexts of violent assault perpetrated by white working-class teenage boys in Scotland. Despite studies exploring Scotland’s adolescent street gangs, there remains a gap in research where the collateral damage caused by gangs to others of the same class, age, and gender has gone unrecognized. Drawing upon insights from qualitative interviews with young, male, former offenders in Scotland we found that violence contained a strategic logic designed to foster bonding to a delinquent group, whilst offering a celebrity status and manliness. The co-presence of a violent culture worsened the likelihood of ameliorating mentalities associated with anti-social behaviors, which appear endemic to masculinity. That context of violence is associated with the criminal offending of boys who, though they may not be gang members, were nevertheless ‘contaminated’ by the aggressive shadow cast by the protest masculinity of gang-conflicted territories in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Working-class boys’ relationships with reading: contextual systems that support working-class boys’ engagement with, and enjoyment of, reading

ABSTRACTDrawing on interviews with 15 boys attending schools in low socioeconomic communities in Australia, this paper examines the multiplicity of contextual influences on boys’ everyday reading experiences. Implementing an ecological metaphor, boys’ narratives about (i) their attitudes towards reading at school (microsystem); (ii) parental beliefs about reading (mesosystem); (iii) masculinities within low socioeconomic communities (exosystem), and; (iv) reading as socially valued knowledge (macrosystem) are explored. The paper illustrates the textured nature of immediate and broader influences on boys’ engagement with, and positioning of, reading. In particular, the paper challenges dominant discourses about working-class boys’ reading practices, contributing to research into literacy in-situ to make visible the immediate and broader contextual systems that influence the ways working-class boys engage with, and enjoy, reading.

Can the subaltern \u2018speak\u2019 science? An intersectional analysis of performances of \u2018talking science through muscular intellect\u2019 by \u2018subaltern\u2019 students in UK urban secondary science classrooms

This paper draws on Judith Butler’s concepts of intelligibility and identity as performance to make sense of enactments of ‘subaltern’ (that is, subordinated) urban students within secondary school science. Understanding classrooms as constituted by complex power struggles for voice, authenticity and recognition, the paper offers an in-depth exploration of a particular dominant performance of science that was enacted across classes by some students—and which curtailed the possibilities for other students in terms of who can, and cannot, be intelligible in school science. Analysing data from 9 months of observations conducted with nine teachers and c. 200 students aged 11–15 from six London schools and 13 discussion groups with 59 of these students, a dominant performance was identified across the classrooms of ‘talking science through muscular intellect’. This was predominantly enacted by a small group of working-class boys from a range of ethnic backgrounds and was generally recognised as an authentic and legitimate performance of science by both teachers and other students. These performances comprised three main elements: competition; dominating and controlling class science talk; and policing the science talk of others. However, such performances were experienced ambiguously by teachers and were viewed negatively by Other students, notably girls and ‘quiet’ boys, due to silencing their contributions and limiting the range of ways that Others might be recognised as intelligible science students. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the dominance of performances of ‘talking science through muscular intellect’ for students, teachers and social justice approaches to science education.

White working-class boys: The challenges of translating widening participation policy into practice

White working-class boys: The challenges of translating widening participation policy into practice

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Theorizing race and cultural autonomy in education: An extension of differentiation and integration in Paul Willis’s Learning to Labour

This paper addresses a misreading of Willis’s Learning to Labour within the American sociology of education, arguing that his central theoretical move, the treatment of cultural production as autonomous from social reproduction, has been neglected. Willis’s concepts of differentiation and integration extend dominant cultural approaches to racial inequality in education, theorizing how youth’s oppositional countercultures emerge through conflict with the institutional logic of schools. However, Willis’s theorization must be extended to account for race in addition to class and gender. Using black working-class boys in American schools as a comparison case, this paper argues that race alters the temporality of differentiation, with black boys perceived as noncompliant and disruptive by teachers prior to participating in high school oppositional countercultures. In response, black boys develop strategies of integration, managing their cultural performances to re-establish the terms of the educational exchange. These strategies may help facilitate class mobility for black youth.

Review of Stahl's Identity, neoliberalism and aspiration: Educating white working-class boys

Review of Stahl's Identity, neoliberalism and aspiration: Educating white working-class boys

Salvage: Locating Lives in the Migration Museum

ABSTRACTThe ‘Locating Lives’ conference in Adelaide in December 2015 included two off-campus expeditions in its programme: a visit to the Adelaide Migration Museum, and a beach walk to Glenelg. Given the unique oceanic imaginary attached to the Asia Pacific region, museums, beaches and boats are key sites for locating life narratives here. A series of life narratives that feature memories of child migration to Australia in the early sixties are featured here: Jimmy Barnes’ memoir Working Class Boy; the testimonies in the ‘On Their Own – Britain’s Child Migrants’ exhibition that has featured in migration museums in Britain and Australia; Joe Sacco’s essay ‘The Unwanted’; and my own recollections as a British child migrant. Late last century, a turn to ‘human rights museology’ and ‘history from below’ facilitated new migration museums and exhibition spaces such as the Adelaide Migration Museum, that are open to personal testimony and artefacts that locate lives more intimately and experientially. On display, artefacts become evocative objects open to multiple stories of migration, both past and present.

Narratives in Reconstituting, Reaffirming, and (Re)traditionalizing Identities

The practice of othering has been widely documented in sociological research relative to social networks, ethnicity/race, sexuality, and place. This article considers othering as a strategy to mark identity boundaries and reaffirm the habitus in a small, qualitative sample of twenty-three white working-class boys from South London, aged fourteen to sixteen years, who self-identified as Boremund boys. The research relied heavily on visual methods and Bourdieu’s theoretical tools to explore how images of transgression influenced the boys’ conception of their own identity as centered upon a distinct version of normative race, class, and gender or othering the nonnormative behavior within their locale. The data show how white working-class boys monitor and police what they perceive as a normative white identity. As a result, the habitus of the Boremund boys engages with complex work to reconcile competing and contrasting conceptions of ordinary, white, working-class male in South London.

Aspiration paradoxes: working-class student conceptions of power in ‘engines of social mobility’

This paper examines the relationship between ‘aspiration’ and identity as rendered within discourses of power. Focusing on the deeply ingrained values of a group of 23 white working-class boys from South London (aged 14–16), the research critically considers the conception of power within a neoliberal era which produces both new subjectivities and new counter-narratives. The research examines a group of boys who fully acknowledge that post-compulsory education would enhance their power in society but who simultaneously articulated how accruing power made them feel uncomfortable. There exists a tension between the working-class values inculcated in the community and the neoliberal prerogatives of the school; as a result, their shared habitus engages in a continual process of reconciling competing and contrasting conceptions of what it is to be powerful.

Culture and the Working Class: Lee Hall’s Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters

Abstract In his work as a playwright, Lee Hall not only explores dramatically the troubled relationship between culture and the working class in Britain. He also seeks to challenge the stereotyped images of the working class in the media as being feckless, inarticulate and incapable of engaging in any cultural production on their own terms. In this paper I examine the ways in which this encounter between the working class and ‘high art’ is depicted in the film Billy Elliot (2000) and the play The Pitmen Painters (2008), both written by Lee Hall. In these portrayals of a working-class boy’s struggle to become a ballet dancer and of the collective efforts of a group of coal miners to express themselves as fine artists, I discuss how far Hall has succeeded in subverting received working-class stereotypes and what are the broader political and aesthetic implications of his cultural depictions of these coal-mining communities.

The practice of ‘Othering’ in reaffirming white working-class boys’ conceptions of normative identities

ABSTRACTThis paper considers how the practice of ‘Othering’ is used by white working-class boys in Boremund, South London to mark identity boundaries and reaffirm their habitus. Through unearthing themes of difference within the young men’s accounts, the work identifies various ways of ‘doing masculinity’ in two social groups, ‘Boremund Boys’ and ‘emos’, who contrasted greatly in style but who were of the same race, class, and ethnicity. Focusing on the identity negotiations of a small cohort, aged 14–16, the data indicate how a normative white male identity specific to this locale is policed and how ‘Othering’ is employed as a strategy. Using Bourdieu’s tools alongside the hermeneutic of heteronormativity, the research explores how emos, through inverting a traditional working-class masculinity, brought the habitus of Boremund Boys into disjuncture. Within the field of masculinity, the habitus of Boremund Boys, through a process of reorientation, reconciles competing and contrasting conceptions of what it is to be a white working-class male in South London.

Raising an Army: The Geopolitics of Militarizing the Lives of Working-Class Boys in an Age of Austerity

This article examines the political and social impact of elevating military values in society in a context of austerity. Centering on discussions around two British government “military ethos” initiatives, I consider the idea that military service instills desirable qualities and values in military personnel, making them well suited to educating and socializing children, to the advantage of both children and society. Arguing that these schemes primarily target boys from disadvantaged backgrounds in an effort to turn them into “productive” members of society, I suggest that military ethos initiatives contribute to not only the “raising” of working-class boys but the raising of a class-based army. Moreover, rather than focusing solely on the implications of the military ethos in the British context, I argue that its underlying assumptions about military socialization as a social good have significant geopolitical effects. Through characterizing the military as a core institution of society and its values as moral and good for children, these initiatives obscure the military’s core violent functions. Thus, by both normalizing violence and militarism in everyday life and targeting boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, “military ethos” initiatives engender the subjectivities that provide the very political, social economic, and indeed practical resources that make war possible.

How “space” and “place” contribute to occupational aspirations as a value-constituting practice for working-class males

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to consider how working-class boys constitute themselves as subjects of “value” through a close examination of their occupational aspirations. The authors consider two significant influences on the aspirations of these young men: “space” and “place”; and neoliberal discourses which privilege a particular concept of individualized personhood. Contending with neoliberal conceptions of personhood and aspiration (that are primarily competitive, economic, and status based), working-class and working-poor young men either align themselves with the “entrepreneurial” or “aspirational” self or face the label of “low aspirations”.Design/methodology/approach– Employing space and place as conceptual lenses allows for a nuanced understanding of how aspirations are formed (and reformed) according to immediate locale. To explore the identity negotiations surrounding the occupational aspirations of working-class males, the authors draw on two qualitative research studies in deprived neighbourhoods located in South Manchester and South London.Findings– Based on the evidence as well as the wider research concerning working-class males and occupational aspirations, the authors argue that aspirations are formed in a contested space between traditional, localized, classed identities and a broader neoliberal conception of the “aspirational” rootless self.Research limitations/implications– This study focuses on aspiration formation in two specific neighbourhoods, and caution should be taken when generalizing the findings beyond these area contexts.Originality/value– This study problematizes the literature generated by government bodies and educational institutions regarding working-class youth as having a “poverty of aspirations”. Additionally, value lies in the cross-reference of two specific geographic areas using the conceptual lens of space and place.

Inclusive Masculinities in a Working-Class Sixth Form in Northeast England

This research examines the construction of masculinity among a group of working-class boys aged sixteen to nineteen in the northeast of England. Drawing on data collected from a six-week ethnography with boys in a religious (Christian) sixth form college, this study documents how only a small minority of these boys embodied the orthodox archetype of masculinity that has traditionally been associated with working-class youth. Instead, the great majority of participants adopted attitudes and behaviors that can be categorized as a set of inclusive masculinities: They espoused positive attitudes toward homosexuality, engaged in physical tactility and emotional intimacy, and used homosexually themed language without the intent to wound or marginalize other boys. These findings pose a considerable challenge to dominant narratives on working-class masculinities; narratives that must now be reconfigured to account for the proliferation of inclusive masculinities among working-class youth.

Mixed Messages

Mixed Messages

Feed My Lambs: The Reverend Thomas Drew and Protestant Children in Early Victorian Belfast

Feed My Lambs:The Reverend Thomas Drew and Protestant Children in Early Victorian Belfast Sean Farrell On Easter Monday, 1844, an estimated eight hundred children gathered at Christ Church in Belfast for the church’s annual children’s day festivities. Divided into girls and boys divisions, the children marched behind a church official bearing the school’s white silk flag, marked with a Bible and a crown and the school’s motto: “Feed my lambs.” The children moved from Christ Church to the Botanic Gardens and then marched on to the Twelve-Acre Field in Stranmillis. They remained there for the afternoon, enjoying “the most extensive views” of the city while listening to hymns and psalms performed by the church’s singing class. The Belfast Commercial Chronicle later reveled in the scene: “The free bounding air of the hills as it breathed upon these children of the loom and the factory, was welcomed with delight; and many a one exclaimed—’Ah how healthful it must be here?’” After a few hours, the party returned home via Sandy Row, where the children met their parents before heading back to Christ Church in College Square. The Reverend Thomas Drew, the minister of the church, brought the day to a close, pronouncing that “he never had enjoyed a day of such unalloyed happiness. The order, kindness, self-denial and patience of all were deserving of great praise. He felt it a duty to call upon then, one and all, to give thanks to God, through Christ, for such a happy privilege as they had enjoyed that day.” After Drew concluded his remarks, children from the outlying parts of the district were given supper and the rest were dismissed to go home with their families.1 Children occupied a central place in both the social world and cultural imaginaries of the Rev. Thomas Drew and his large and important congregation at Christ Church. This should be no surprise. Scholars have long understood that children lay at the heart of the social and spiritual plans of Victorian evangelicals, [End Page 43] who often saw them both as particularly capable of receiving God’s grace and as a vehicle for the moral rehabilitation of their parents. Recruitment was another factor, as most supporters saw Sunday and day schools as key attractions for potential congregants, an increasingly important issue in an era of deepening denominational competition. This practical consideration was certainly at work at Christ Church, where the focus on children reflected both Drew’s defensive determination to strengthen the Church of Ireland in this largely Presbyterian city and his fervent desire to protect its members from the threat of Roman Catholicism (an ever-present danger in the Rev. Drew’s mind). Numbers mattered, and Drew’s outreach initiatives seemed to work quite well. Opened in 1833, Christ Church quickly became the largest Church of Ireland congregation in Ulster. More Anglican boys and girls received their education in its extensive network of Sunday and day schools than at any other institution in mid nineteenth-century Belfast. The vast majority of these children were the sons and daughters of textile workers, the primary engineers of industrialization in the Victorian city. But this was not simply a matter of providing religious education for Protestant working-class boys and girls. Christ Church’s commitment to poor children sharpened the church’s appeal to both middle- and working-class congregants, strengthening the cross-class ties in this sizeable Protestant community in central Belfast. Irish historians long have noted the social complexity of the Christ Church congregation, which featured a significant core of professional and middle-class members to go with its plebeian majority. Although 1852 church census highlights the rather banal truth that a majority (56 percent) of the men and women worked in jobs connected to the textile industry, the data also underlines the congregation’s remarkable social diversity, listing men and women with 158 different occupations ranging from millworkers to lawyers and a professor of music.2 Christ Church was one of the first sites of substantial Protestant cross-class interaction in the city, a reflection of the Rev. Thomas Drew’s pastoral and preaching talents as well as...

Aidan Chambers’ Breaktime: Class Conflict and Anxiety in the Work of a Scholarship-Boy Writer

Aidan Chambers’ Breaktime (1978) is famous for its unique narrative style and sexual content. This focus has obscured another significant aspect of the novel: the role of social class in Breaktime and Chambers’ working-class background have rarely been explored. Chambers was an example of what Richard Hoggart calls “the scholarship boy,” a working-class boy educated in a grammar school in mid-twentieth-century Britain. In this article, Haru Takiuchi argues that Chambers’ scholarship-boy experiences are crucial for understanding Breaktime. For his analysis of the cultural and psychological aspects of class that concern representations of scholarship boys in British children’s literature of the 1960s and 1970s, he draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of class habitus, more focused studies of class in Britain and research into the experiences of scholarship boys. Using material from the author’s archive supplemented with interviews, Haru Takiuchi highlights Chambers’ unique representation of the scholarship boy and social class in the book.

Working-class males and engagement with high school education

This study explores working-class males' engagement with high school education as statistically this group are underachieving and the chosen city in the North-West of England has been highlighted as an area of particular concern. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used in an attempt to establish which issues affected their engagement in school, allowing a critical insight into their attitudes towards education. Findings indicate that there are a range of factors causing the educational disengagement of working-class boys in the city, ranging from deprivation to the content of the curriculum. The combination of causes is complex and varies between individuals, although the most common obstacle seems to be relationships between teachers and participants, with the issue of ‘relate-ability’ particularly evident.