Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Dead Man's Town
- 2 Rotherham: history, demography and place
- 3 Class and the objectifying subject: a reflexive sociology of class experience
- 4 A landscape with figures?
- 5 Understanding the barriers to articulation
- 6 Necessity and being working class
- 7 The culture of necessity and working class speech
- 8 Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
1 - Introduction: Dead Man's Town
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Dead Man's Town
- 2 Rotherham: history, demography and place
- 3 Class and the objectifying subject: a reflexive sociology of class experience
- 4 A landscape with figures?
- 5 Understanding the barriers to articulation
- 6 Necessity and being working class
- 7 The culture of necessity and working class speech
- 8 Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Who taught you to hate the colour of your skin?
Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair?
Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips?
Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?
Who taught you to hate your own kind?
Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to, so much so that you don't want to be around each other?
You know … you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God made you.
Malcolm XOur relationship to the world, as it is untiringly enunciated within us, is not a thing which can be any further clarified by analysis; philosophy can only place it once more before our eyes and present it for our ratification.
(Merleau-Ponty 1962: xviii)This work is a description of lives in one of the old industrial areas of Britain. It is focused upon the town of Rotherham, part of what was once a whole network of interconnecting towns and villages that gave South Yorkshire its distinct culture. An area that has suffered de-industrialization and the attendant social consequences of poverty. It concerns deprivation and its wider consequences, personal and social, and looks to locate the problems socially and culturally.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Phenomenology of Working-Class Experience , pp. 1 - 31Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999