Classifying matters

Abstract

Although the rhetoric of classlessness has never quite found the resonance that it has in North American mythology, there have been key moments in British culture when this proposition occupied a hegemonic role in sociological and cultural commentary. In recent years this position has strengthened so that a range of factors have displaced class and produced a more confident and strident rhetoric of classlessness in British society than heard hitherto. A focus in academic disciplines on identity politics and the rise of the consumer has meant a retreat from class analysis in a range of disciplines. This article aims to engage with ideas of classlessness through a reading of Beverley Skeggs recent Class, Self, Culture. It ends by making some suggestions on how class analysis might be resituated once more at the centre of cultural analysis.