Abstract
If you thought that class is dead, think again. According to Sally McManus, ACTU Secretary, ‘Class in Australia dispels the myth that class division is not relevant to the contemporary age’. (Frontispage).
This book traverses the development of social theory and debates around class in Australia, linking them to contemporary labour issues such as employment precarity, professional-managerial conflict, the decline of trade unions and other issues relevant to industrial relations. In addition to theory, the book also presents empirical research around the everyday experience of class, education, unemployment, waged employment, popular culture etc. This body of research underlines both the significance and complexity of class as a conceptual tool for understanding the Australian context. As the Honourable Dr Meredith Burgman observes: ‘Class is central to Australians’ lives, but it is rarely analysed or even talked about’ (frontispage). Hopefully, by reading this book and using it in our teaching, research and practice, this problem may be alleviated.
The book traces the evolution of class from Marx's labour-capital divide to Bourdieu's more recent concepts of cultural and symbolic capital and their intersections with economic inequalities.
A strong case is made for an Australian conception of class that recognises the unique history of settler colonialism and the violent dispossession of indigenous owners in this country (Morris, p. 45). Beginning in the 1980s with Connell's seminal work on class structure in Australia, we are led through the progress of this Australian project, with contributions by Noble, Weston and others covered in the book.
At the same time, the rise of public discourse around ‘risk factors’ such as educational attainment, gender, marital status, ethnicity, geographic location, etc., is argued to have led to ‘scapegoating’ based on ‘individual markers’, thus obscuring the relevance of class analysis (Gerrard and Threadgold, p. 6). Media and political rhetoric, including public policy (think of Robodebt) have, in consequence, tended to characterise social inequality as ‘a series of personal individual failings’ (ibid.) Applying theories of class to these modern issues may help to avert distortions and bad policy. Against this backdrop, the industrial relations field has much to gain from the scholarly insights provided by research into class from disciplines such as sociology, history, education, cultural and political studies. Class in Australia provides a very useful and highly readable overview and analysis of this broad field of research, both around the concept and its implications for work/life in Australia.
The book is made up of fourteen chapters, organised around five major themes:
Part 1 – Situating Class Analysis in Australia Part 2 – Class, Labour and Employment Part 3 – Cultural Formations of Class Part 4 – Class and Education Part 5 – Interviews (with leading class theorists Larissa Behrendt and Raewyn Connell, titled: Reflections on Class in Australia)
Altogether, there are 22 contributors to the book, who are based at universities such as Sydney, Australian Catholic University, UNSW, Deakin, Newcastle, Melbourne, UTS, Tasmania, Western Sydney, Griffith, Macquarie and Queensland.
For an industrial relations scholar or practitioner, there may be a temptation to focus only on Part 2, but I would encourage readers to dip into all five parts, as each sheds light on the varied dimensions of class in Australia. These dimensions impact on the experience of labour and employment in ways often different from class related phenomena in other countries, such as Britain, the USA or Europe. Theorists have emphasised the ‘multiple dimensions of class’ – social and cultural as well as economic (25), a point that is particularly relevant to Australia's ‘looser’ or more fluid class structure than in Britain.
Chapters 1 to 4 in Part 1 cover Australian academic and public debates and research directions around class, the contradictory locations of class, and the emergence of the great property divide, between those who own property and those who do not. Some final comments on class analysis including the occupational structures associated with class are made in the fourth chapter.
In Chapter 1, Gerrard and Threadgold give an excellent overview for sociologists and non-sociologists alike that demystifies the complexity of theorising class, the history of scholarship around issues involving class in Australia, such as the rhetoric of ‘battlers’ and ‘ordinary Australians’, the normalisation and dominance of middle-class values and tastes and what most Australians think about class.
In Chapter 2, Noble highlights the absence of migrants and indigenous people in early Australian conceptions of class. He then discusses Bourdieu's ideas of ‘capitals’ (human, social, cultural, symbolic, etc.) which influence class location and possibilities. Bourdieu's relational approach to long-held debates between social structure and individual agency is also explained. Noble then presents findings from the Australian cultural fields project, a large-scale study of individuals and households. He concludes that: ‘classes still play a central role in the creation of taste, the distribution of cultural capital and the reproduction of inequalities in Australia’ (p. 29), but there is ‘complexity and nuance’ (p. 30) and ‘the experience of class in Australia is woven closely with the experience of ethnicity and race, as well as gender’.
In Chapter 3, Barry Morris chronicles the ‘Great Divide’ in Australian history, historically between the elite, male white colonialists and transported convict labour. The rise of the pastoralists led to the next class elite which flourished in the new colony. This was a time when males wielded all the power and work was used as ‘punishment’ to be dealt out under harsh conditions (p. 40). Floggings were common, on average 50 lashes per convict per year (p. 43). The chapter covers the dispossession of land from the indigenous owners, the rise of private schools for the children of the elite and the formation of class-based institutions such as the Melbourne Club. The gold rushes are reported to have brought ‘more meritocratic’ principles (p. 51) but in practice, the squatters still monopolised parliaments and society.
Chapter 4 by Mark Weston alerts us to the ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ manifestations of class, from the individual level through to institutions and public policy, such as income policy. He emphasises that ‘class structures are structures of social positions, defined via ownership of resources and assets that yield societal advantages…such as income, consumption, health and personal efficacy’ (p. 59). He notes that the decline of trade unions and the rise of new forms of work, such as gig work together with a greater emphasis on individual identity, have ‘undermined class formation’ (p. 60). In capitalist societies like Australia, three types of income generating assets prevail – productive property, organisational resources and occupational skills (p. 61), with class position being defined by the possession or lack of these assets. He then presents trend data on the distribution of Australians across these types of class assets. For example, more men than women are self-employed and a higher percentage of women are working class (p. 62). While income through employment remains the main source of income for 80% of the population, property ownership and investment provide a complicating layer of analysis and advantage/disadvantage, including across generations (p. 66). The chapter ends with a note on the ‘temporal’ element of class, such as unemployment and persistent disadvantage over time.
In part 2, Chapter 5 by Hannah Forsyth leads us to rethink class through a history of professions, a sobering account for the professional readers of this journal. In brief, the chapter traces the evolution and growth of the professions in Australia, from a miniscule percentage at the turn of the twentieth century to one in five workers by the 21st century and growing. Of particular interest is the narrative it gives of the rise of the professional class, not only in economic and political power, but in morals and values – such as duty, charity, probity, thrift, conscientiousness and truth (p. 80). This class invests in its own human capital and acts as gatekeepers to those seeking to enter and practise in its professions (p. 80). It wields moral and civic power vastly greater than its economic assets. Think of doctors, teachers, lawyers, accountants, social workers and civil engineers. And in so doing, it accrues ‘profits’ to itself such as ‘good jobs, growing incomes, high social standing, profound political influence and a role in social engineering’ (p. 80). By the post-war period this professional class had built powerful professional associations and global organisations such as the WHO, ILO and the World Bank.
The chapter ends with an overview of the uneasy alliance between the professional class and managerial capitalism (p. 86) and the increasing trend towards the extraction of greater and greater productivity from professionals (nurses, doctors, academics), a trend referred to as ‘proletarianisation’ of the professional class.
Chapter 6 takes a look at how class fares in the analysis of an industrial campaign involving precarious and regular waged workers in Australia. Tom Barnes and Jasmine Ali begin by questioning Standing's (2011) account of the privileging of the traditional working class by trade unions vis a vis the emerging class of precarious workers (p. 95). Applying Wright (2015), they emphasise the similarity of interests between these two classes of workers though different rules at the workplace may impact them differently at the ‘institutional’ and ‘situational’ levels (p. 97). The chapter then provides a case study of wholesale warehouse workers and negotiations leading to the closure of the warehouse in 2019. Examining the effects of the campaign on a combination of securely and precariously employed workers, including those on ‘labour hire’, the study shows how the union was able to engage with workers and effectively represent their various interests as they coalesced around core basic interests (p. 104).
Chapter 7 is a very interesting chapter about the unemployed and how they can act out ‘productive intensities’ through ‘mutual obligations’ built into the Australian job seeker support system. Titled: ‘Workers in Waiting? Work ethic, productive intensities, class and unemployment’ it is an account of how class is manifest through the lens of those who aspire to be part of the ‘working class’. Often referred to in public discourse as ‘dole bludgers’ or ‘welfare cheats’, this class is often viewed as ‘the dark underbelly of the productive, authentic and hardworking ‘worker’’ (p. 109). After reading the case study of ‘Kara’, an unemployed young woman in Newcastle between 2016 and 2018, it is unlikely this view can go unchallenged. Kara is working intensely through a series of TAFE courses, job applications and voluntary work, all in an effort to make herself employable and maintain her confidence (pp. 118–120). The chapter concludes that ‘Cultivating productivity amongst unemployment is … a way that the classed dimensions of the post-Fordist work ethic are articulated in the absence of paid work’ (p. 122).
In Part 3, Chapter 8, Deborah Warr, Keith Jacobs and Henry Paternoster analyse the language used about class in Australia. Referring to the term ‘bogan’ used widely by both the right and the left, they claim this jargon serves to obscure and ‘sidestep’ the issue of class (p. 127). Tracing the genealogy of the bogan (p. 131), they chronicle the dominance of working-class egalitarianism as the prevailing ethos from the 19th century to post-war Australia. The bogan is likened to the more likeable ‘larrikin’ which epitomised the quintessential nature of Australian maleness. Mateship and national identity became entwined around this core ethos. However, by the early 2000s, the term ‘bogan’ had replaced ‘larrikin’, imbuing a measure of ambivalence and inferiority. Through popular culture and media, the image of the bogan had descended into someone who is ‘unmodern, inferior, ignorant and irresponsible’ (p. 139). As such, the slur on the working class had been sealed and attention shifted away from inequalities as the underlying problem. The chapter concludes: ‘The right uses bogans to defuse the politics of class by distinguishing between aspirational ‘ordinary and hard-working Australians’ and the economically dispossessed, while among the left, the language of bogans reveals struggles to reconcile class and identity politics’ (p. 140). It recommends revitalising the language of class as the first step to ‘resisting’ such processes.
Penny Rossiter writes in Chapter 9 about the popularity of TV ‘poverty porn’ such as the SBS series Struggle Street, set in the outer suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. She is critical of the lack of context given to the lives of people in these suburbs, along with selective editing which she contends leads to poor people looking lazy, dirty or worse. Communities opposed the filming, fearing it would shine a poor light on their lives. Rossiter concludes that if not handled well, such reality TV can further stigmatise and marginalise working class neighbourhoods.
In Chapter 10, Barbara Pini and Laura Rodriguez Castro describe the rise of ‘rural romance’ as a literary genre and the opportunities it provides to reexamine class and gender in a rural context. Focussing on the novel Bridie's Choice by Karly Lane the chapter investigates how race, class and gender play out in the book. The association of ‘hard work’ and middle classness assigned to white rural farmers immediately places them in a superior position to others who ‘lack industry’ (p. 169). Social and cultural capital are also unevenly spread throughout rural communities (p. 170). It is contended that neo liberal feminism is the dominant framework used to understand these capitals.
Yet the notion of class is discounted in the novel as pertaining to urban communities or only to older generations (p. 166). Or social class is ‘rendered unimportant’ because of the hardships faced by all in rural areas. Yet class is played out in the farming community through allusions to the moral shortcomings of a poorer family in the district (p. 170). It is as if class is a matter of personal choice (p. 171). The chapter concludes, in Moreton-Robinson's words that white feminist discourse on ‘difference’ is ‘underpinned by a deracialised but gendered universal subject’ (p. 1730). As such, rural romance can be seen to do ‘significant ideological work’ by privileging the dispositions and tastes of white middle-class women and reproducing the view that class is somehow separate from structural disadvantage (pp. 173–174).
Part 4 deals with Class and Education, and starts with Julie McLeod and Lyn Yate's Chapter 11, Schooling and Class as a Longitudinal and Psychosocial Process (p. 179). The chapter describes the rationale and findings of a longitudinal study of school children between 12 and 18 years of age, starting in 1993. A qualitative study, it followed 26 young people at four schools from their last year of primary school to post-school life (p. 180). It identifies how feminist theory ‘disrupted the frameworks for understanding both class and school inequalities’ (p. 183) and raised issues around the intersectionality of both gender and class processes (ibid.). The role of private schools in Victoria is discussed and the disparities of opportunities between private and poorer public schools covered. Early on, the young girls’ dreams for their futures were optimistic and alive with energy (p. 189). At the private school, all girls were expected to have careers. Indeed, one girl interviewed for the project was apologetic about wishing to become a wife and mother. A regional secondary school is examined for is strong sense of discipline and hard work, and a belief in a meritocratic system (p. 190). The chapter ends with a sense that class is being formed and reformed in a fluid way with those in the middle being less studied than those at either end (elite, poor).
In Chapter 12, Rose Butler, Christina Ho and Eve Vincent examine the attitudes of white middle-class parents of school children in Sydney between 2014 and 2018, contrasting ‘community minded’ white parents who value cultural diversity in their areas and who question the competitive ethos of Sydney's ‘highly competitive public schooling system’ (p. 204). In a second study, white middle-class parents are critical of tutoring, used by Asian migrants to support their children's studies (p. 205). While white parents considered this practice to afford Asian-Australian children an unfair advantage, Asian parents felt they had little choice, since as newcomers to the country education was the only way to ensure ‘future security and social mobility’ (p. 207). The chapter concludes that ‘Australia's urban middle class is today a complex, contradictory, tense and deeply racialized space’ (p. 208). The moral positioning of ‘community minded’ white middle-class parents around the issue of tutoring reveals ‘deep contemporary class tensions’.
Finally, Class in Australia ends with two very interesting and engrossing interviews – with Larissa Behrendt and with Raewyn Connell. Connell's is the more historical narrative, given Connell's major role in the development of class theory and analysis in Australia. It is fascinating to ‘hear’ firsthand how overseas concepts were discussed and reworked in the Australian settler colonial context. Behrendt's interview gives an inside account of the development of an indigenous woman's experience of class, race and gender in Australia and the ongoing tensions around notions of merit and social mobility for indigenous people.
Overall, I commend this book for its thoroughness, diversity and freshness around an issue which is rarely discussed directly in popular culture and public life. The book makes a strong and cogent case for the ubiquity of class and its various manifestations, not only in economic terms but also cultural and moral, in virtually every layer of Australian society, from employment through to social policy, professional services, education and literature. Further it shows us that class tensions rarely exist in isolation, they intersect with race, gender and the colonial settler legacy in ways we often take for granted, positioning those with privilege in spheres of influence that may extend well beyond their individual economic means. That class is different in Australia – with its own history, language and vernacular – and its intersections with gender and race reflect the ongoing aftermath of indigenous dispossession, the immigrant legacy and urban/regional divides – is just one of the many facets of class analysis which make it worth reading this book. I hope that in doing so we can take the scholarship further, into our own work in industrial relations.
