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E P Thompson on class: a relationship not something to be measured or claimed

In Uncategorized on January 18, 2021 by kmflett

LSE Sociologists have published research on social class arguing that in Britain a working class background, or a claim to one is still seen as important by numbers who in fact come from professional backgrounds and therefore middle class.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/18/why-professional-middle-class-brits-insist-working-class

I’m not sure its that simple even on that basis. Many professionals are badly paid with precarious employment relationships- ask many academics.

That said E P Thompson in the Preface to the Making of the English Working Class (1963) is not something that can be categorised. It is a relationship formed in social interaction

an historical phenomenon, unifying a number of disparate and seemingly unconnected events, both in the raw material of experience and in consciousness. I emphasize that it is an historical phenomenon. I do not see class as a ‘structure,’ nor even as a ‘category,’ but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships.

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