Social change and the middle classes

First Published in 1995. The study of the middle classes actually poses a variety of interesting challenges. Traditionally, the social scientific gaze has been directed either downwards, to the working classes, the poor and the dispossessed, or upwards, to the wealthy and powerful. For all these reasons, a collection of original papers on various aspects of the British middle classes seems an important venture that will cast valuable light on the course of social change in Britain more generally. This book is designed to bring together a series of accessible, high-quality research papers on various aspects of the British middle classes.

Introduction Marking out the middle class(es) Part One Orientations 1 Glass analysis and social research 2 The debate over the middle classes Part Two Class, gender and ethnicity3 Gender and service-class formation 4 Women's employment and the middle class 5 Black middle- class formation in contemporary Britain Part Three Restructuring, employment and middle-class Formation 6 Managerial and professional work-histories 1 The bureaucratic career: demise or adaptation? 8 The remaking of the state middle class 9 Too much work? Class, gender and the reconstitution of middle-class domestic labour Part Four Place, space and class 10 Migration and middle-class formation in England and Wales, 1981-91 11 Gentrification and the urban middle classes 12 A middle-class countryside? 13 The new middle classes and the social constructs of rural living Part Five Consumption and the middle classes 14 Taste among the middle classes, 1968-88 15 Home-ownership and the middle classes Part Six Politics and the middle classes 16 Political alignments within the middle classes, 1972-89 17 Middle-class radicalism revisited Part Seven Conclusions 18 The service class revisited 19 Reflections on gender and geography 20 Assets and the middle classes in contemporary Britain