Abstract
How middle-class families choose childcare arrangements matters not only for the early educational advantage which quality childcare may provide, but for what choices reveal about how parents see themselves in class terms and their relationship to the wider society. This chapter aims to re-think and re-conceptualise a set of data drawn from an ESRC-funded study of middle-class, or more precisely, service-class (Goldthorpe 1995) families in two London localities. The study focused on these families choosing childcare, but in this paper we are not so much interested in the families’ childcare arrangements per se as in aspects of the relationships among and representations of the class fractions within this middle-class sample which are illuminated by this choice-making. Particularly in the conclusions, we shall think aloud and offer some speculative possibilities for thinking about class relations and class representations and explore some of the ways in which middle-class families ‘insert’ their children into the social world differently through the ‘language’ of ‘consumption practices’ (Baudrillard 1998: 60).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ball, S.J., Bowe, R., & Gewirtz, S. (1995). Circuits of schooling: A sociological explorations of parental choice of school in social class contexts. Sociological Review, 43 (1), 52-78
Ball, S. J. (2003a). Class Strategies and the Education Market: The Middle Class and Social Advantage. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Barber, B. (2003). Strong Democracy. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Ball, S. J., Vincent, C., Kemp, S., & Pietikainen, S. (2004). Middle class fractions, childcare and the ’relational’ and ’normative’ aspects of class practices. The Sociological Review 52 (4), 478-502.
Baudrillard, J. (1998). The Consumer Society. London: Sage.
Bernstein, B., (1990). Class, Codes and Control: Vol. 4. The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse, London: Routledge.
Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy Symbolic Control and Identity.London: Taylor and Francis.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research of Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood.
Bourdieu, P. (1987). What makes a social class? On the theoretical and practical existence of groups. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 23 (1), 1–17.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice: Cambridge, Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1996). The State Nobility. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brantlinger, E. (2003). Dividing Classes: How the Middle Class Negotiates and Rationalises School Choice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Butler, T., & Robson, G. (2001). Social capital, gentrification and neighbourhood change in London: A comparison of three South London neighbourhoods. Urban Studies, 38 (12), 2145–2162.
Butler, T. & Robson, G. (2003). London Calling. The Middle Classes and the Re-making of Inner London. Oxford: Berg.
Charlesworth, S. (2000). A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crompton, R. (1998). Class and Stratification: An Introduction to Current Debates. Oxford: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1998). The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Goldthorpe, J. (1995). The service class revisited. In T. Butler & M. Savage (Eds.),Social Change and the Middle Classes. London: UCL Press.
Hampshire, S. (1993, August 13). Liberalism: The new twist - a review of Rawls’ ’Political Liberalism’. London Review of Books.
Jordan, B., Redley, M., & James, S. (1994). Putting the Family First. London: UCL Press.
Kymlicka, W. (1989). Liberalism, Community and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon.
Longhurst, B., & Savage, M. (1996). Social class, consumption and the influence of Bourdieu: Some critical issues. In S. Edgell, K. Hetherington & A. Warde (Eds.), Consumption Matters: The Production and Experience of Consumption(Sociological Review Monograph Series). Oxford: Blackwell.
Low, S. (2001). The edge and the center: Gated communities and the discourse of urban fear. American Anthropologist, 103(1), 45-58.
McKenzie, E. (1994). Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Governments. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Nagel, T. (1991). Equality and Partiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Popcorn, F., & L. Marigold (1997). Clicking: 17 Trends That Drive Your Business–And Your Life. New York: Harper Collins.
Savage, M., Barlow, J., Dickens, P., & Fielding, T. (1992). Property, Bureaucracy and Culture: Middle Class Formation in Contemporary Britain. London: Routledge.
Sedden, T. (2001) Revisiting inequality and education; A reminder of class; a retrieval of politics; a rethinking of governance. Melbourne Studies in Education, 42(2), 131–144.
Taylor, C. (2004). Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Teese, R. (1981). The Social Function of Private Schools. Melbourne Working Papers 1981. Parkville: University of Melbourne.
Teese, R. (2000). Academic Success and Social Power. Examinations and Inequality. Carlton: Melbourne University Press.
van Zanten, A. (2002). Educational change and new cleavages between head teachers, teachers and parents: Global and local perspectives on the French case. Journal of Education Policy, 17 (3), 289-304.
Vincent, C., & Ball, S.J. (2001). A market in love? Choosing pre-school childcare. British Educational Research Journal, 27 (5), 633–651.
Wacquant, L.J.D., (1991). Making class(es): The middle classes in social theory and social structure. In S. McNall, R. Levine, & R. Fantasia (Eds.), Bringing Class Back in: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives. Boulder, CO: West View Press.
Williams, R. (1983). Towards 2000. London: Chatto and Windus.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ball, S.J., Vincent, C. (2007). Distinction, Representation and Identities among Middle Class Fractions in London. In: Teese, R., Lamb, S., Duru-Bellat, M., Helme, S. (eds) International Studies in Educational Inequality, Theory and Policy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5916-2_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5916-2_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-5915-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-5916-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)