If you’ve ever thought the social class system in Britain was a thing of the past, think again. Professor Mike Savage of The London School of Economics (http://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/whoswho/academic/savage.aspx) shows in this book, Social Class in the 21st Century, that it is as entrenched as ever. The author, with a team of sociologists responsible for the Great British Class Survey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Class_Survey#Established_middle_class), look beyond the labels to explore how and why our society is changing. They assess what the changes mean for the people who find themselves in the margins as well as in the centre of our society. Their new conceptualization of class is based on the distribution of three kinds of capital – economic (inequalities in income and wealth), social (the different kinds of people we know) and cultural (the ways in which our leisure and cultural preferences are exclusive) – and provides incontrovertible evidence that class is as powerful and relevant today as it’s ever been. At the end of it you might estimate how your own life has been enhanced, constrained or damaged by the British class system. This book is not recommended for anyone with high blood pressure.
Read this alongside The Establishment by Owen Jones (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Establishment-how-they-get-away/dp/0141974990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1445947020&sr=8-1&keywords=establishment) A read which is likely to make you very angry if you’re not ‘one of us’.
and Friends in High Places by Jeremy Paxman (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Friends-High-Places-Britain-Paperback/dp/0140156003/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1445947095&sr=8-8&keywords=paxman). Shows how the elite have got it all wrapped up, and you’re not one of them.
Enquire at your local library or consult http://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Class-Century-Pelican-Introduction/dp/0241004225/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1445947260&sr=8-1&keywords=mike+savage for full bibliographic detail.
480 pages in Pelican
First published 2015
ISBN 978-0241004227
Professor Mike Savage