Vicarious Vagrants: Incognito Social Explorers and the Homeless in England, 1860–1910. Edited by Mark Freeman and Gillian Nelson

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to place the debate about affluent working-class people in the inter-war and post-war periods within the broader context of long-term economic and social change. It explores why important structural changes were ignored for a long time, and how they came into view as the focus of professional social inquiry shifted following the Second World War, only to be reconceptualized as a new ‘social problem’ in the politically driven controversy about ‘affluence’ in the late 1950s. The article argues that we need to pay more attention to the gulf between official and vernacular understandings of social class in twentiethcentury Britain, drawing a distinction between everyday usage and professional languages of class.