Reifying class

The special issue on inequalities (July/August) was timely, but I was perplexed by the 'class-based' framing, and by several contributors attributing social and economic disadvantage primarily to having a working-class background.

I recall frequent debates in the 1960s and 70s about whether class in general, or working-class in particular, were valid or even useful constructs. Working-class has morphed over time from a fairly clear-cut economic category (its members having nothing to trade except their labour), to a category with complex social, occupational, linguistic, and cultural features. Not surprisingly, more than one contributor in the special issue noted the difficulty of defining it.

Framing specific disadvantages in terms of social class needlessly muddies the water.

Eleanor Rosch's work on categorisation might shed some light here. Rosch found that people categorise entities (concrete or abstract), around a prototype (as distinct from a stereotype) – an entity that displays all the features of a specific category. Prototypes are mental constructs; in real life there might be no entity that's entirely prototypical, and many members of complex highly abstracted categories such as working-class, might have very few features in common.

Being the first person from one's family to attend university is often used as an indicator of working-class origins, and some contributors attributed challenges they'd encountered with university and their career, to their working-class background. These included lacking relevant cultural knowledge, and not being taught to write an essay. I'd suggest the causes might be more immediate, such as being in a novel environment, and not having been taught to write an essay. Take, for example, the experience of myself and a friend.

My friend (father architect, mother secretary) wasn't the first in his family to go to university. He attended a public school and went on to Cambridge – but felt like a fish out of water in a culture that was unfamiliar, and one he didn't like.

I was the first in my family (father skilled manual worker, mother shop assistant) to go to university. It was a new environment that took some getting used to, but for the first time in my life I felt I'd found my tribe. And the first person to teach me how to write an essay was a friend reading through my MSc dissertation.

Working-class is a useful shorthand term for a broad demographic group, but reifying such a complex heterogenous category creates serious challenges for research, policy or practical purposes. There is absolutely no doubt that early disadvantage can have lifelong implications and should be addressed, but framing specific disadvantages in terms of social class needlessly muddies the water.