Schooling,masculinity and class analysis: towards an aesthetic of subjectivities |
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Authors: | Mairtin Mac an Ghaill |
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Institution: | Educational Studies, Newman University College , Birmingham, UK |
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Abstract: | The retreat from social class within the sociology of education has been accompanied by the intensification of socio-economic and cultural inequalities. This paper seeks to draw upon cultural analyses of social class by addressing a classificatory shift of white English working-class males, who have moved from an ascribed primary socio-economic status to an embodied aesthetic performance. We examine the reconfiguration of social class within state schools and historical and contemporary shifting images of white working-class males within the education literature. We suggest the need to engage with a multi-dimensional explanatory frame in order to understand how working-class young men now inhabit a new cultural condition in the post-colonial urban space of inner-city schools. This shift is best captured by exploring the simultaneous articulations of multiple categories of difference – including class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and generation – in relation to contemporary representations of social class. |
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Keywords: | class schooling masculinity aesthetics inequality |
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