Class, Culture and Social Change

by John Kirk

Class, Culture and Social Change: On the Trail of the Working Class challenges the notion of the 'death of the working class'. It does this by taking a broad historical and theoretical overview of the way class - in particular ideas of the British working class - has been represented in a range of cultural forms from ethnography and cultural theory, to film and the novel. The author examines a number of key issues for working-class studies: the idea of the 'death' of class; the importance of working-class writing; the significance of place and space for understanding working-class identity; and the centrality of work in working-class lives. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, Valentin Volosinov, Mikhail Bakhtin and others, the book seeks to revive ways for thinking about working-class identity and experience.