In July 2011 Professor Beverley Skeggs became the joint managing editor of the journal The Sociological Review, a major journal which has just celebrated 100 years of shaping the field. The podcast is taken from the Annual Lecture of the Sociological Review in 2015 where Dr Imogen Tyler gave the Keynote address.

1. Against:
Exploitation
Domination
Dispossession
Devaluation
CLASS STRUGGLES

2.  A more general massive redistribution of wealth since 1979 (small blip under
labour). Miner’s strike – class struggle central
(http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110795
 We have had the longest depression of wages since 1979
 Top rate of income tax has been halved (it was 83% in 1979) for the richest.
Britain’s richest increase their wealth by £69billion in 2014 alone
 Real incomes for the poorest have fallen 40%. (33% of families lack basic
resources). Cost of living has risen by 25% in last 5 years
 There are more servants now working in the London area than there were 200 years
ago
 Most people have huge debts (eg students – control). The average total debt per
household – including mortgages – was £55,223
 Slow death (Berlant) eg Western obesity – profit from poor
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 CONSTANT STRUGGLE- TU’s, Living Wage
EXPLOITATION

3.  Domination via the dominant symbolic (legitimating power and
authority)
 Mechanism = when judgment is institutionalized (eg law,
welfare, media)
 When value is institutionalized
 When speech (and analysis) is delegitimated eg class denial over
30+yrs
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 Refusal to accept- de-authorization/de-legitimation
 Struggle to generate alternative forms of culture eg ‘world-
making’, not culture as consumption
CLASS STRUGGLE AGAINST DOMINATION

4.  Accumulation through dispossession (Harvey – primitive accumulation
–enclosures – since 16thcentury)
 In London class cleansing eg E15, NewEra (gentrification)
 In the UK a family is made homeless every 15 mins
 Global –movement of migrant labour
 State punishment of the ‘unproductive’ (biopol disposability) (eg £18b
cuts in welfare to date; disabled will lose total £28b by 2017
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 Many struggles to live, dwell, inhabit outside of the profit imperative
STRUGGLE AGAINST DISPOSSESSION

5.  Eg entertainment through devaluation –Reality TV – being forced to
perform your need for transformation (defined by the dominant middle
class symbolic)
 Class divisions drawn between ‘subjects of value’ eg enterprising,
accruing and ‘abject subjects’(reproduced in sociological theory! See
CSC, Imogen’s ‘revolting subjects’)
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 Refusal
 Alternative values established (eg solidarity, non-instrumental, ‘just-
talk’)
 Keeping class on the agenda- because it connects the affects of
devaluation and injustice to an idea that can explain why and how
 Class is performative – bringing struggle into view
STRUGGLES AGAINST DEVALUATION

6.  About exploitation, power, domination, dispossession,
devaluation
 Not stratification, not about consumption likes/dislikes
 Constant, on many fronts, constituted and disrupted through
other classifications of gender, race, sexuality, age, etc.
 We have to keep fighting – it’s a struggle
CLASS STRUGGLES