tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/class-system-8225/articlesClass system – The Conversation2018-12-08T13:31:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1084072018-12-08T13:31:04Z2018-12-08T13:31:04ZWhat French populists from the ‘50s can teach us about the 'yellow vests’ roiling Paris today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249513/original/file-20181208-128214-1wwgf0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstrators march down Paris' Champs-Elysees Dec. 8.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/France-Protests/5ac333a6752c49bdb5790955d8b7f4d6/67/0">AP Photo/Michel Euler</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The populist protests roiling France remind me of a similar anti-tax revolt that occurred in Paris nearly 65 years ago. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.gettyimages.com.au/detail/news-photo/demonstration-at-the-porte-de-versailles-directed-by-pierre-news-photo/107409483">January 1955</a>, tens of thousands of French men and women gathered at the Porte de Versailles in Paris to express their disgust for the elites who had burdened their lives with crushing taxes. They had come to hear the populist icon <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38370962">Pierre Poujade</a>, a bookstore owner from the rural Lot valley and the leader of a movement that <a href="https://electionsfrance.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/the-poujadist-movement-in-1956/">tried to topple</a> the government of Pierre Mendès-France. </p>
<p>Today, the French government is <a href="https://theconversation.com/gilets-jaunes-why-the-french-working-poor-are-demanding-emmanuel-macrons-resignation-107742">again facing</a> an <a href="http://time.com/5472304/france-yellow-vests-macron-fragile/">existential threat</a> over an unpopular tax, but this time by the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/fr/topics/gilets-jaunes-62467">gilets jaunes</a>,” or <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/gilets-jaunes-63133">yellow vests</a>. And even though President Emmanuel Macron has since nixed his government’s plan, the demonstrations show no sign of abating.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Y58-EhUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I believe</a> that the Poujadist protests, which I am studying as part of a book project on the political economy of France, can shed light on today’s unrest – as well as on the many other <a href="https://medium.com/@lseideas/understanding-the-global-rise-of-populism-27305a1c5355">populist movements</a> agitating governments across the world.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249486/original/file-20181207-128220-ec7x0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249486/original/file-20181207-128220-ec7x0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249486/original/file-20181207-128220-ec7x0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249486/original/file-20181207-128220-ec7x0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249486/original/file-20181207-128220-ec7x0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249486/original/file-20181207-128220-ec7x0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249486/original/file-20181207-128220-ec7x0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Some of the protests have turned violent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-France-Gas-Price-Protests/2e4ec01db6e64ff1aab2fb858c95908a/65/0">AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu</a></span>
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<h2>The ‘gilets jaunes’</h2>
<p>The “gilets jaunes” movement <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/yellow-vests-protesting-france-181206083636240.html">started in November</a> as a response to a fuel tax hike meant as an environmental measure. </p>
<p>Cars, trucks and tractors play a critical role in the lives of rural and suburban French people, and the insensitivity of the government to this reality sparked the anger of these “non-metropolitan” citizens. They have long felt <a href="https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1340637898&disposition=inline">marginalized</a> by city-dwelling French elites, who would <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/french-minister-says-fuel-tax-protests-smaller-more-violent">barely be affected</a> by the rising fuel prices.</p>
<p>The yellow vest itself perfectly embodies the resulting sense of grievance. </p>
<p>All French drivers are <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-30/why-people-in-yellow-vests-are-blocking-french-roads-quicktake">required to keep</a> a yellow vest in their car for emergencies. Practically speaking, therefore, it is a cheap and readily available garment for supporters of the movement. </p>
<p>More than that, the yellow vest is a <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/french-protests-gilets-jaunes-yellow-vests-paris-gas-tax/577300/">potent symbol</a> because motorists don it to attract attention in an emergency. For many protesters, that is exactly what they are trying to do by marching through the streets.</p>
<h2>Revolt or revolution?</h2>
<p>But the protests have evolved from a pure tax revolt into something broader, combining a <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2018/12/emmanuel-macron-has-succeeded-uniting-france-s-different-groups-against-him">wide range</a> of political views. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://elabe.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20181128_elabe_bfmtv_les-francais-et-les-gilets-jaunes.pdf">recent poll</a> shows that about 42 percent of the protesters supported the far right candidate <a href="https://theconversation.com/macron-and-lepen-are-battling-for-frances-heart-and-soul-in-election-runoff-76966">Marine Le Pen</a> in the last elections. The survey also shows that 20 percent of them backed the far leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, while many others voted a blank ballot or even supported the conservative François Fillon.</p>
<p>And perhaps because the movement lacks a leader, its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/world/europe/yellow-vests-france.html">demands</a> have included everything from reinstating a wealth tax to increasing welfare protections. <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20181206-french-student-protests-intensify-alongside-yellow-vest-revolt">Students</a> are demanding that the government backtrack on proposed education reforms, while more radical elements want a fundamental transformation in government.</p>
<p>To top it all off, extremists known as “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/world/europe/france-yellow-vests-protests-macron.html">les casseurs</a>” – literally “people who break things” – and anarchists have added violence to what were primarily peaceful protests. As a result, <a href="https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/8xpm3a/paris-riots-yellow-vests-macron-fuel-tax">there have been</a> hundreds of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-08/police-arrest-317-in-paris-ahead-of-new-yellow-vests-protests?srnd=premium">arrests</a> and injuries.</p>
<p>Under tremendous pressure, Macron, on Dec. 5, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46460445">backed away</a> from the fuel taxes. But protests continued on Dec. 8, with more <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-08/police-arrest-317-in-paris-ahead-of-new-yellow-vests-protests?srnd=premium">violence reported</a>, and signs that they will continue. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/12/06/01016-20181206ARTFIG00352-eric-drouet-ce-leader-des-gilets-jaunes-qui-appelle-au-putsch.php">Loose talk</a> among some extremists of violently overthrowing the government, along with a small but growing current of <a href="https://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1505/Monde/article/detail/3502399/2018/12/07/La-grogne-des-gilets-jaunes-tout-profit-pour-l-extreme-droite.dhtml">anti-Semitism</a>, has done little to calm the situation.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249487/original/file-20181207-128190-wjzyz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249487/original/file-20181207-128190-wjzyz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249487/original/file-20181207-128190-wjzyz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249487/original/file-20181207-128190-wjzyz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249487/original/file-20181207-128190-wjzyz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249487/original/file-20181207-128190-wjzyz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249487/original/file-20181207-128190-wjzyz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A demonstrator holds a french flag at the toll gates on a motorway.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/France-Protests/d38913b95d494ee0bf037a343bd4bf4f/15/0">AP Photo/Bob Edme</a></span>
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<h2>The past and the present</h2>
<p>The perception of burdensome taxes as a symptom of unjust elite rule was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1406514">something shared</a> by Pierre Poujade and his followers in their day. </p>
<p>His protests – like today’s – represented a populist <a href="https://theconversation.com/gilets-jaunes-why-the-french-working-poor-are-demanding-emmanuel-macrons-resignation-107742">rejection</a> of “the system,” which the lower middle classes saw as serving only the elite and leaving them behind. </p>
<p>In the 1950s, <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/387/Transformative_Relationships_-_Journal_Article_-_Hankla.pdf?1544198980">France was just a few years past the suffering</a> caused by the Second World War, the German occupation and the quasi-fascist Vichy regime. In order to rebuild the country, the leaders of the new Fourth Republic adopted a system of economic planning to channel huge amounts of central investment to selected industries. </p>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/capitalism-and-the-state-in-modern-france-renovation-and-economic-management-in-the-twentieth-century-by-kuisel-richard-f-new-york-cambridge-university-press-1981-pp-xv-344-3750-cloth/3C8BB4F8E60A914484F3617BC1338730">historians believe</a> this helped drive the incredible growth that France experienced through the early 1970s. But it had a downside for millions of small business owners, especially those outside the big cities, who believed that their high taxes were being used to help privileged big businesses <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42843321">take over</a> the economy.</p>
<h2>Populism today</h2>
<p>The “gilets jaunes” are very much following in the tradition of the anti-elite movements before them, especially the Poujadists.</p>
<p>Today, as then, the French economy is <a href="http://www.oecd.org/economy/france-economic-forecast-summary.htm">doing reasonably
well</a>, with its annual growth rate <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=FR">improving since 2012</a> and currently <a href="http://www.oecd.org/economy/france-economic-forecast-summary.htm">close to 2 percent</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249488/original/file-20181207-128196-10o16a7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249488/original/file-20181207-128196-10o16a7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249488/original/file-20181207-128196-10o16a7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249488/original/file-20181207-128196-10o16a7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249488/original/file-20181207-128196-10o16a7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249488/original/file-20181207-128196-10o16a7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249488/original/file-20181207-128196-10o16a7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249488/original/file-20181207-128196-10o16a7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Pierre Poujade led a movement that bears similarities to today’s ‘gilets jaunes.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-France-File-/2e8b5ca008f2da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>But, as in the 1950s, the times are not good for everyone. The unemployment rate remains stubbornly <a href="https://data.oecd.org/unemp/unemployment-rates-by-education-level.htm">above 9 percent</a> and is much higher at 15 percent among those without a high school diploma. <a href="http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/04/18/inequality-in-france/">Data</a> from the French economist Thomas Piketty shows that income inequality has widened since the 1980s.</p>
<p>More importantly, the rising cost of living makes it difficult for members of the lower middle class to make ends meet. And all the while they see the privileged enjoying a lifestyle that they cannot imagine. </p>
<p>All of this echoes the Poujadists, but the “gilets jaunes” of today are responding to economic challenges that are very different from the ones of the past.</p>
<p>Today, what matters most are the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300233766/twilight-elites">uneven gains</a> of globalization. Although deeply integrated world markets have benefited many in France, they have left behind workers and small-business owners who lack the skills to profit from them. </p>
<p>And Macron’s policies are seen as <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/yellow-vest-protests-macrons-failure-to-address-inequality.html">exacerbating</a> these inequalities and favoring the elites over the lower classes. Besides the fuel tax, his decision to abolish the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-could-keep-wealth-tax-in-bid-to-placate-yellow-vests-1544025588">wealth tax</a> and plan to make <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-reforms-education/no-kid-left-behind-macron-tries-to-fix-frances-education-system-idUSKBN1JV0MM">university admissions more selective</a> have added to Macron’s pro-elite image. </p>
<p>So how might it all end? Poujade’s movement, for its part, was able, at its height to win <a href="https://www.economist.com/obituary/2003/09/04/pierre-poujade">52 seats</a> in the French National Assembly. Poujadism did eventually disintegrate, but its longevity shows how it had tapped into something much deeper than a simple aversion to taxes. </p>
<p>This “something deeper,” a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/02/france-is-deeply-fractured-gilets-jeunes-just-a-symptom">suspicion of the system</a>, is shared by the yellow vests and explains why we should not be surprised that Macron’s backtracking on the fuel tax has done little to quiet the protests. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248873/original/file-20181204-34131-500r02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248873/original/file-20181204-34131-500r02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248873/original/file-20181204-34131-500r02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248873/original/file-20181204-34131-500r02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248873/original/file-20181204-34131-500r02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248873/original/file-20181204-34131-500r02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248873/original/file-20181204-34131-500r02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Riot police use a water cannon and tear gas against demonstrators.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-1st-december-2018-riot-1246495381?src=j1OCKrFnYEq3RY7foMcsfA-1-7">Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<h2>Populism around the world</h2>
<p>Their rage against out-of-touch elites also links the “gilets jaunes” protests with other recent populist movements in Britain, the United States and elsewhere.</p>
<p>In all these places, populism has emerged as a result of the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/chart-of-the-week-distribution-of-globalization-s-gains">uneven distribution of economic gains</a> that have accrued from globalization. </p>
<p>For example, while most elites <a href="http://fortune.com/2013/09/11/the-rich-got-a-lot-richer-since-the-financial-crisis/">have fully recovered</a> their losses from last decade’s global financial crisis, nearly everyone else has seen their income and wealth little changed. This situation is especially galling for the <a href="http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/global-crisis-rooted-in-systemic-failure-of-the-financial-and-political-elite/">many who blame</a> those very elites for causing the crisis in the first place. </p>
<p>When Macron upended the French political system to become president in 2017, many hoped that he could channel the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/anti-establishment-anger-drives-france-elections/3815593.html">anti-elite anger</a> brewing in France into his new, youthful party. But Macron’s paradoxical “centrist populism” has not delivered the change that many citizens sought, one reason the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20181205-french-back-yellow-vest-protests-despite-govt-u-turn-poll">vast majority</a> of the public supports the protests.</p>
<p>The “gilets jaunes” represent a reckoning. It is a reckoning that will take more than tax policy to avert, and one whose future impact will be difficult to predict. </p>
<p>After all, among the young legislators first elected on Poujade’s ticket was Jean-Marie Le Pen, a man who would go on to create the modern French far-right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108407/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Hankla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A populist movement that threatened to topple a French government more than 60 years ago has important lessons for today’s protests and why they represent a reckoning.Charles Hankla, Associate Professor of Political Science, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1015462018-08-24T08:49:41Z2018-08-24T08:49:41ZBritain’s real working-class voices are not being heard – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232664/original/file-20180820-30599-jdlio8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">imageedit</span> </figcaption></figure><p>One of the paradoxes of our age is that we are told all the time that we need to do more to listen to communities whose voices may not get heard – but at the same time we seem to have preconceived expectations of what they’re going to say. So, in fact, the myriad voices of the UK working classes in all their diversity are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/10/kit-de-waal-where-are-all-the-working-class-writers-">often getting lost</a> because we simply don’t recognise them – or simply refuse to listen to what they’re actually saying.</p>
<p>The stories people hear about themselves and their communities can have a significant impact on the ways in which they think about themselves and their lives. But the lack of ways for working class people to tell their stories means that they are either invisible in literature, or are frequently portrayed in ways that do not reflect their real experiences.</p>
<p>This raises the question of who does tell us about life in modern Britain? Based on an analysis of the 2014 British Labour Force Survey, <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66499/">Dave O’Brien and colleagues</a> estimated that almost half of all authors, writers and translators (47%) had parents in higher professional or managerial occupations, compared with just 10% of those with parents in routine or manual labour – the traditional indicator of being working class.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232673/original/file-20180820-30587-2g2vv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232673/original/file-20180820-30587-2g2vv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232673/original/file-20180820-30587-2g2vv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232673/original/file-20180820-30587-2g2vv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232673/original/file-20180820-30587-2g2vv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232673/original/file-20180820-30587-2g2vv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232673/original/file-20180820-30587-2g2vv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232673/original/file-20180820-30587-2g2vv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who do you think you are? An analysis of social origins of people in creative industries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dave O'Brien, Daniel Laurison, Andrew Miles and Sam Friedman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the past few years, there has been an increasing recognition that, as writer and blogger <a href="http://www.aplayfulday.com/about/">Kate O'Sullivan</a> <a href="https://www.nawe.co.uk/DB/events/where-are-our-working-class-narratives.html">has said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Writing that accurately reflects the diverse experiences of everyday life for the working class continues to go undiscovered, unpublished and unseen. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Projects such as <a href="https://deadinkbooks.com/product/know-your-place/">Know Your Place</a> from Dead Ink Books, a publisher focused on developing the careers of writers who might otherwise be overlooked by large trade publishers, and activism from writers such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/10/kit-de-waal-where-are-all-the-working-class-writers-">Kit De Waal</a>, author of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/03/my-name-is-leon-by-kit-de-waal-review">My Name is Leon</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/31/the-trick-to-time-by-kit-de-waal-review-life-on-the-fringes-of-sweeping-change">The Trick to Time</a>, are attempting to give a more accurate representation of voices from working-class communities. </p>
<p>But despite all this, the working class is still all too often seen from the outside as a monolith – uneducated, white, racist – whereas the reality is obviously much more diverse and complex.</p>
<h2>Using improvisation</h2>
<p>In an attempt to find ways to address the problem of most working-class narratives being imposed from “above”, we have been working with a number of groups to explore alternative possibilities for their stories. Our aim is to support people in working-class communities to rewrite their stories in new ways that better make sense of how they view the world and how they view themselves – and also to share these stories with others. We refer to this approach as “improvisation”. This involves the workshop leader stepping back and allowing participants to take control of their own narratives.</p>
<p>Improvisation might take different forms. At its most basic, it could be simply basing the themes for the session on whatever participants happen to be talking about that day. Alternatively, it could be opening the space up to a broad interpretation of what poetry or writing might be, with participants allowed to create visually or artistically, as well as with words, as the mood takes them.</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/resprojects/project_outline.php?project_id=180">Graphic Lives</a> project, for example, we worked with a group of British-Bangladeshi women from Hyde in Greater Manchester. The women met over a number of months with the aim of creating digital comics about their life stories. While the format of the final output was prescribed – the women were expected to create a some form of comic – the ways in which they wished to tell their stories was deliberately left open.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232678/original/file-20180820-30587-15k2tcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232678/original/file-20180820-30587-15k2tcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232678/original/file-20180820-30587-15k2tcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232678/original/file-20180820-30587-15k2tcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232678/original/file-20180820-30587-15k2tcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232678/original/file-20180820-30587-15k2tcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232678/original/file-20180820-30587-15k2tcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Finding their voices: the Graphic Lives project.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Manchester Metropolitan University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a result, the majority of their narratives do not follow the conventional chronological format that we might have expected. Instead, they are focused around <a href="http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/resprojects/reports/comicthemes.pdf">themes, feelings or ideas</a> that the women themselves considered important – for example, the role of families or mental health issues. They also combine different languages and different types of images to construct stories in ways that the women felt best represented their lives.</p>
<h2>Finding ‘experts’</h2>
<p>We also did a project in a secondary school in South Yorkshire which had been in special measures. The <a href="https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/takingyourselfseriously/home">Taking Yourself Seriously</a> workshop involved more than 100 students between the ages of 12 and 13. Here, we saw how narratives imposed upon individual pupils can affect how they are seen by staff and their peers. </p>
<p>But turning the focus towards a pupil’s expertise allowed to be repositioned as the “expert”. For example, one boy was on the verge of exclusion and had an unimaginably difficult home life – but he was also captain of the school football team. He stood at the front of the class and confidently explained how to write a poem about football. His should have been a narrative about leadership and strength, and – once we stepped back and allowed him to take control of his own story – that’s what it became.</p>
<p>Another moment took place in a workshop in Stoke-on-Trent with women who had been active in the miners’ strike in the 1980s. One of the participants told us that rather than being a time of struggle and despair as it is often depicted, it had been the best time of her life. Creating space for moments such as this bold rewriting of the imposed narratives of the strike is crucial if workshops are to offer the chance to critique, challenge and rewrite the narratives of working-class communities. </p>
<p>Both these examples demonstrate how, once people take control of their own narratives, they go from being victims to heroes of their own stories.</p>
<p>Our work has shown that, unless people have control of the language and narratives of their own lives, they will never be able to have full autonomy over how their imagined futures will unfold. In a time when we are seeing more discussion around “giving voice” to working class and other communities, this kind of work is showing us that voice is not something that should be given, from the powerful to the not, but rather that voice is something which already exists in the community. The job of researchers and artists is to create space, not to “give other people a voice” but to recognise those voices and listen to them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah McNicol receives funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew McMillan receives funding from The AHRC </span></em></p>The socially and ethnically diverse working classes are not being heard. A recent project aims to change that.Sarah McNicol, Research Associate, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityAndrew McMillan, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/984182018-06-19T13:39:14Z2018-06-19T13:39:14ZLove Island: audience reaction shows deep snobbery about accents<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223813/original/file-20180619-126550-1tu5p3f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV2</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Now that the current crop of inmates disporting themselves around <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-love-island-is-the-best-kept-guilty-secret-on-british-television-97409">Love Island</a> have settled in, members of the mainstream and social media have been passing judgement on the “islanders”. While I’m by no means a regular viewer of the show, as a sociolinguist, it is the comments that are being made about the way some of the contestants sound that have really caught my attention. </p>
<p>Linguistic discrimination, also called <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13613324.2016.1150827?journalCode=cree20">linguicism</a>, is discrimination against somebody based on their use of language. This can include their vocabulary, the sound of their accent, or their grammar.</p>
<p>When the show started at the beginning of June, 11 young people moved into their luxury accommodation on the island and immediately social media lit up with people passing judgement on their demeanour, their looks, body language and what they had to say. From a sociolinguistic point of view, it’s been easy to predict who of the 11 would receive the most criticism – there’s a <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/attitudes-language?format=HB&isbn=9780521766043#2jV0PjqZX16Hlue6.97">body of research</a> to back this up and, for anybody who has studied this, there were few surprises.</p>
<p>In general, speakers with more standard southern accents are less criticised, and those with accents that we are socially conditioned <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-accents-sound-better-than-others-77732">to think of</a> as funny, friendly, and socially attractive, such as Welsh, Scottish and Newcastle accents, also get off lightly.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-accents-sound-better-than-others-77732">Why do some accents sound better than others?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>However, the Liverpool accent is frequently found near the bottom of the list when people are asked to rate how much they like the sound of different accents. One young islander, Hayley – from Liverpool – has been widely criticised on Twitter. Viewers have variously stated that her voice is “annoying”, “cringeworthy”, “makes [your] skin crawl”.</p>
<p>Hayley’s speech prompted one viewer to ask the twitterverse: “What level of education does this girl have” because “it’s so difficult listening to [her] speak.” Another tweeter left this tweet:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1005929634511441920"}"></div></p>
<p>Now, if I were someone who discriminated against someone because of their language, I’d be pointing out that the last sentence in that tweet needs some punctuation – and by the way it’s “you’re embarrassing”. There’s more than a sprinkling of irony in someone being a language pedant and then getting it “wrong” while doing so. And while Hayley might <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/love-island-2018-brexit-hayley-trees_uk_5b1b87f8e4b0adfb82695492">say some surprising things</a>, it tends to be her accent that people queue up to criticise.</p>
<h2>Common complaint</h2>
<p>Links between a lack of education and use of language have long been used as justification for oppression and control of people by the dominant ruling classes throughout history. Whether it be putting down the Welsh <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/72d77f69-72a7-3626-9c19-469c91f45753">Treachery of the Blue Books</a> (where it was falsely concluded in 1847 that the Welsh were ignorant, lazy and immoral, and that their use of the Welsh language was partly responsible) or whether it is used as a tool of the class system, language snobbery is and has been used to oppress people.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hayley Hughes has been abused on social media because of having a Liverpudlian accent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV2</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, accent prejudice is now so deeply ingrained within us that it’s incredibly frequent to hear speakers describing themselves as sounding “common”. I spend much of my teaching time at university trying to get my first year students to understand that there is no such thing as a “common”-sounding or “bad” or “correct” accent – but in fact these are societal norms that have been imposed on us.</p>
<h2>Like it or not</h2>
<p>Back on Love Island, another islander who received negative attention was Niall from Coventry. His voice was criticised for being annoying – but, according to Good Morning Britain’s Piers Morgan, Niall’s biggest crime was his use of the word “like”. The presenter demanded that a clip of Niall be played several times. He also mocked Niall’s West Midlands accent by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kekLukjDLQ">doing an impression</a> that sounded more like a really bad stereotype of a West Country farmer (or Worzel Gummidge if you’re from my generation): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But like I didn’t actually like say to her like before she went like anything like I didn’t say like …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The use of the word “like” is currently one of the most stigmatised aspects of linguistic variation. Its use is generally attributed by non-linguists to adolescents and young people – when it is often perceived as a sign of lexical indecision, perhaps through having a small vocabulary or just not knowing what you want to say. However, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/the-evolution-of-like/507614/">research shows</a> that the use of like in utterances always performs a function. It frequently acts as a marker that may be used to sustain or repair a sentence, link information in the utterance together, or alternatively mark a boundary between the different points the speaker is making.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Niall, from the West Midlands: criticised because of his use of the word ‘like’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV2</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like receives so much attention that there’s even a book on “<a href="https://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs.187">800 years of like</a>”. In the book, Canadian linguist <a href="http://web.uvic.ca/%7Eadarcy/web%20documents/DArcy%202005.pdf">Alexandra D’Arcy</a> details the different uses of like, the fact that there is a long history of use of like by speakers of all ages, and dispels a number of the myths and stereotypes associated with it.</p>
<h2>Class act</h2>
<p>It would be easy to dismiss the comments about the Love Islanders as a bit of fun, but there is a much darker side to linguistic discrimination. In the US, a <a href="https://source.wustl.edu/2006/02/linguistic-profiling-the-sound-of-your-voice-may-determine-if-you-get-that-apartment-or-not/">study showed</a> that some potential employers, real estate agents, loan officers and service providers linguistically profile callers responding to adverts, despite this being against federal and state law. </p>
<p>Although we now hear more regional dialects on the TV and radio, more than a quarter of Britons <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/2013-09-25/28-of-britons-feel-discriminated-against-due-to-accent/">feel discriminated against</a> because of their accent. Teachers feel that they need to change their accent to be taken more seriously and teachers with northern accents have even been <a href="https://schoolsimprovement.net/teachers-northern-accents-told-posh-heres/">told to “posh up”</a>. Experts in their field face prejudice because of their accents – including my colleague Katie Edwards, who <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11270980/British-universities-Im-fed-up-of-being-ridiculed-for-my-regional-accent.html">has spoken out</a> over times she has felt that she can’t be taken seriously as an academic with her Doncaster accent. </p>
<p>Even masters of their craft have been typecast and discriminated against just because of the way that they speak, such as the acclaimed actor Maxine Peake – who was told to <a href="https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/maxine-peake-accent-interview-guardian-12963558">lose her Bolton accent</a> because the character she was auditioning for had been to university. The list goes on.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PcIX-U5w5Ws?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>So why can we not seem to shake our prejudices about dialects? Well, part of the issue is that by now, these attitudes are so deeply ingrained within us that we all tend to believe the hype. Our standard language ideology maintains that standard accents are associated with the upper classes, privilege, education and opportunity. </p>
<p>Despite John Major’s <a href="https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107871">1990 declaration</a> that the former prime minister wanted Britain to be a classless society, <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/05/03/the-long-read-the-working-class-hasnt-gone-away-by-ron-johnston/">more recent evidence</a> indicates that class divides are just as bad as before. And unfortunately, it seems that linguistic discrimination really is one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-love-island-is-the-best-kept-guilty-secret-on-british-television-97409">Why Love Island is the best kept guilty secret on British television</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gerry Howley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Viewers are taking to Twitter to display their prejudice about Islanders’ accents.Gerry Howley, Teaching Associate in Sociolinguistics, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/953192018-04-23T12:21:24Z2018-04-23T12:21:24ZToffee Dating: why I won’t be using the new ‘private school only’ app<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215914/original/file-20180423-133876-194z3z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/welldressed-couple-beautiful-alley-308974538?src=jSEBZidDMJ36WHtc5-gX-g-1-0">Nejron Photo via Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I do sympathise with Lydia Davis, who <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/83dbf3ae-429a-11e8-93cf-67ac3a6482fd">has launched a new dating app</a> called Toffee Dating, “for people on the posher end of the spectrum”. She was tired of feeling “overwhelmed” at the “dearth of potential partners” and thought others might feel the same. Others who, having been to private school, found themselves more alone than ever after endless internet-enabled dates with people that, one assumes, were educated at state school. </p>
<p>By its very name, Toffee Dating makes clear the sort invited to pay its £4.99 download fee and £4.99 monthly membership: not just those who were privately educated, but those who believe that their fee-paying school background is the very key to their essential being. Toffee is to help toffs better twiddle that key.</p>
<p>But as I say, I do sympathise. The sense of swimming through a sea of romantic junk food, subsisting on a diet of a piece of fried chicken here, a cheeseburger there, also hit me the second I turned to internet dating when a lengthy relationship ended in July 2016.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215915/original/file-20180423-133884-kkka4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215915/original/file-20180423-133884-kkka4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215915/original/file-20180423-133884-kkka4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215915/original/file-20180423-133884-kkka4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215915/original/file-20180423-133884-kkka4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215915/original/file-20180423-133884-kkka4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215915/original/file-20180423-133884-kkka4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Classy: screenshot of Toffee Dating’s Facebook page.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ToffeeDating/Facebook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After an initial and horrifying initial deep dive into a number of websites, as well as Tinder, the urge to cut out the dross was very strong indeed. At one end of the spectrum I didn’t think I could handle one more over-confident stud demanding instant sex, or at the other, another pretentiously lefty charity worker or architect deigning to arrange a date with me at snail-like speed and then, once on the date, telling me all about his love of some bearded songster I’d never heard of.</p>
<p>I too would have jumped at the chance to narrow down the field to people like me. My dream utterance would have gone something like this: “Zoe, you’ll never need to meet another pushy hornball or guitar-playing Oxfam strategist again. There’s this new app that caters to people exactly like you: intellectual snobs with lots of degrees who hate prosecco and love champagne and Margaret Thatcher!”</p>
<p>Somehow I persisted, though, and soon noticed something funny – whenever I tried a dating service that purported to be socially exclusive in any way, I made fewer and worse matches.</p>
<h2>Radley meets Roedean</h2>
<p>Which brings me to why Davis’s idea, however good it sounds, is doomed to fail. First, when it comes to dating, promises of social exclusivity are bunk. Not only was this evident in my experience, it also emerged in the <a href="http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/71609/">PhD research</a> I was conducting at the time about the British matchmaking industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The dating entrepreneurs I studied all boasted about how exclusive their outfits were, but when I interviewed people who had actually used these services, they all said their dates were no better – and often worse – than the ones they encountered in less exalted forums. </p>
<p>It is striking that 60% of my interviewees used personal ads and computer dating services designed for the “hoi polloi” and 40% used “exclusive” agencies. Of the former, roughly 75% found love in some form; of the latter, only about 25% did. In the internet era, digital scholars have <a href="https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/archive/downloads/publications/Me-MySpouse_GlobalReport.pdf">highlighted</a> the importance of the sheer quantity of options available online – it’s not by whittling down possible dates that people tend to find love. </p>
<h2>Perfect match?</h2>
<p>The reason, of course, is that dating is not like furniture or truffles or perfume – you can’t just get to the “right” shop and find the perfect product at the going rate. Dating services trade on people and, more specifically, on people’s perceptions of themselves and how they come across – which they get wrong most of the time. Narrowing the pool down to those who think they’re brilliant is therefore asking for trouble. When it comes to partner searching, you actually need the rough so that you can find the diamonds.</p>
<p>Then there’s the fact that schooling is a ridiculous metric for assessing someone’s suitability. As I’ve already made plain, I am a complete snob. But the idea that someone having paid to put you through Radley or Gordonstoun (or in my case, Bedales for A-levels) indelibly marks you with a unique kind of quality is painful. Anyone with half an ounce of decency must know that your school’s price tag has very little to do with your <a href="https://www.rd.com/advice/relationships/survey-reveals-top-dating-trait/">intelligence, character, humour, kindness and ambition</a> – the most important traits in a partner.</p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.smf.co.uk/publications/open-access-an-independent-evaluation/">studies have suggested</a> that private school equips pupils with a confidence that gives them a professional boost, but so what? Most of the best people I know – cleverest, funniest, most interesting – went to state school. By contrast, trying to get through dinner with “Henry, Wellington College” or “Toby, Charterhouse” sounds as if it may be a bit painful.</p>
<h2>Vive la difference!</h2>
<p>Yes, I’ve had my share of awful and degrading run-ins with the masses on Tinder, but I’ve also met fascinating men, including my most recent (ex) boyfriend – none of whom had remotely similar schooling to me. In the end, the best thing about Tinder and its ilk is their variety. Once you’ve waded through the dross, it can actually be enriching, mind expanding and very attractive to find someone from a different background. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609091/first-evidence-that-online-dating-is-changing-the-nature-of-society/">major recent study</a> backed this up by finding that dating apps have resulted in unprecedented rates of mixed-race marriages. When given the chance, the researchers asserted, it’s difference – not sameness – that we crave. Just ask <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/a9664508/prince-harry-meghan-markle-relationship/">Prince Harry and Megan Markle</a> – hardly a match made in Toffee Dating heaven.</p>
<p>I wish Davis and her band of lonely toffs well – but if they are anything like me, it may well not be long till they’re all back on Tinder again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95319/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoe Strimpel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research shows that it’s all about choice, not exclusivity, when it comes to finding a perfect match.Zoe Strimpel, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/687522016-11-15T03:27:18Z2016-11-15T03:27:18ZRaimond Gaita on Donald Trump’s America: a cloud cuckoo land devoid of fact, evidence and argument<p>Many people in America and elsewhere are scared of what Donald Trump will do. As I write, some are in the street protesting that he is not “their president”. Type “What did Trump say?” into Google and it will be obvious why.</p>
<p>Many of the same people are also bewildered, still incredulous that he became even the Republican candidate, let alone the president-elect. Never has a candidate in a Western democracy shown such contempt for the conventions upon which democratic accountability depends. Never has a politician seeking office insulted and threatened so many of his fellow citizens. Trump is praised for giving voice to the justifiable anger of a “forgotten” white working class, but in doing it, he encouraged contempt – even hatred – of many of their fellow citizens and reckless disregard of the kind of man he is and what he said he would do.</p>
<p>Commentators now describe him as an unconventional politician who ran an unconventional campaign. Is it merely unconventional to threaten to ban Muslim immigration? To lament the fact you cannot any more just take hecklers at a rally aside and “beat the shit out of them”? To express pleasure at the prospect of torturing suspected terrorists in ways “far worse” than waterboarding them? To lead crowds in the chant “lock her up”, when the person they are referring to is your opponent in the race for the presidency? To display such contempt for women that most prominent Republicans disowned him? </p>
<p>One could go on. To call him unconventional, or even radically unconventional, is to forget how important are the conventions, often unspoken, that enable decency in politics. He has poured a can of excrement over those conventions.</p>
<p>Trump also did something that, while it might seem less dramatic, is, perhaps more dangerous. His demagoguery took political discourse in America to a place where it lost contact with reality. We normally think of demagoguery as a threat to reasonable discussion because it whips up fear, resentment, hatred and prejudice to such pitch that it throws reason into a ditch. </p>
<p>But demagoguery can displace reason – or, as I prefer to put it, the conditions of sober critical judgement – more radically and more dangerously though it is not overthrown by emotion and prejudice. Trump did that. I shall try to explain why I say that.</p>
<h2>The end of reason</h2>
<p>We know politicians sometimes lie. Indeed, we know that political life would be impossible were that not so. But I do not remember anyone in mainstream democratic politics who lied so shamelessly, so often and so fast, that the <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/person/donald-trump/">fact-checkers</a> could <a href="http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/">not</a> keep <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/ap-fact-check-donald-trump-iran-nuclear-deal/">up</a> with him. </p>
<p>Trump’s disdain of facts and argument became so persistent and extreme, that he took his supporters - and America with them - into a place where he eroded the conditions that enable the application of concepts of fact, evidence and argument. Or, more precisely, to where argument can make, or fail to make, evidence out of facts. His demagoguery took from reason, not the calm necessary for its operation, but the concepts necessary for its application.</p>
<p>English writer G.K. Chesterton <a href="http://www.chesterton.org/lecture-12/">said</a> that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He said this in a polemic on behalf of imagination against reason, about which I have reservations. But his point can be put more generally like this: the proper functioning of reason depends on being in contact with reality, but it cannot secure that contact. </p>
<p>Think of a paranoid. His ingenuity in marshalling arguments, responding to claims that the evidence will not support his suspicions and fears are parodies of reason. Confronted with such a person, we realise that the concept of irrationality cannot capture what has gone wrong. It’s not just too weak; it’s in the wrong dimension. We reach naturally for the idea that he is out of touch with reality, and that reason cannot prevent anyone from being taken there or lead anyone back to reality.</p>
<p>Was Trump at least sometimes mad? Did he take his supporters to the edge of madness? My argument does not require that we conclude that. There are many ways of losing touch with reality – believing that the earth is flat, or even considering it a serious possibility or believing that Elvis is alive and working for the FBI, for example. But that his demagoguery had the effect not only of humiliating reason in the face of extreme emotion and prejudice, but also of taking people into cloud cuckoo land, is, I believe, partly the reason why he won the election. It helps explain the distinctive nature of the bewilderment about the fact that he did.</p>
<p>If someone like Ted Cruz, or someone with more charisma than Cruz, had won on the same policies, then people in America and around the world would also be frightened. Many Americans would also be protesting that he is not their president. But they would not be incredulous in the way they now are because they do not know where they are or how they got there.</p>
<p>In an attempt to explain that incredulity and also why pollsters got the results wrong, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/31/peter-thiel-defends-donald-trump-muslim-ban-mexico-wall">observers</a> have <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-makes-his-case-in-pittsburgh/501335/">said</a> the media and indeed the political establishment on both sides took Trump literally but did not take him seriously, whereas those who secured his victory did not take him literally but took him seriously. </p>
<p>But what can it mean to take someone seriously when he has taken you into cloud cuckoo land, when he lies so often and shamelessly and when he is so often inconsistent and doesn’t care that he is? The distinction these observers draw depend on one’s living in a conceptual, conversational, space in which the concept of sober judgement has not been eroded. </p>
<p>Cloud cuckoo land – out-of-touch-with-reality-land – is not such a space. To believe that someone is serious while believing that to be a virtue is to assume that they are sufficiently integrated as one person over time. That they have integrity in this literal sense - to be accountable, to be answerable to a call to seriousness: “Can you really mean this! How could you say that? How can I trust you when you lie again and again. For God’s sake, <em>think</em>!” And so on. </p>
<p>The trouble, as I said before, is not just that Trump wouldn’t listen or that he would duck and weave. That would merely make the call to seriousness unlikely to succeed, rather than to erode the conceptual space in which it is possible to make it. </p>
<h2>The conditions of accountability eroded</h2>
<p>It is one thing to be defeated by people with whom one strongly disagrees. It is another to be defeated by someone who eroded the conditions of accountability. Then it seems that one is reduced to babbling. Or shouting. Or screaming. Or, perhaps forced to violence. People are calling for wounds inflicted during the campaign to be healed. There can be no healing until there is a sober reckoning with that fact and what it implies.</p>
<p>Democracy as we know it depends on an ideal that one could always, in principle, call one’s fellow citizens to seriousness if they voted for polices that one found unjust, or demeaning or that simply affected one’s interests badly. In modern times it shows in the way we engage one another on talk back radio. But to call someone to seriousness assumes they can rise to it, that unless they are children they do not need more education to do it. It is not controversial that hostility to what are generally called “elites” is widespread amongst Trump supporters. It showed also in Brexit, and now shows in Europe where quasi-fascist parties have taken heart form Trump’s victory. It shows, here, in Australia, though its political consequences are far less dangerous.</p>
<p>To be very poor is one thing. To be unjustly forced into poverty is worse. To be forgotten is worse still. But to be looked down upon, to be treated with disdain, can inflame a rage so fierce that it cares nothing for the consequences of its expression. Hillary Clinton said that half of Trump’s supporters were “deplorables”.</p>
<p>She apologised, but those who felt they were her targets did not believe she meant it. Many of the people who voted for Trump were referred to as “non-college educated”. Who could resist the inference that the deplorables were also the non-college educated and that really they were, simply, uneducated.</p>
<p>Political theorist Hannah Arendt said that one should never engage with one’s fellow citizens as though they are in need of education. That would be arrogant, smug and incipiently authoritarian. University education does not of itself make one wise, or even very critically minded. If it did, there would not be such uniformity of opinion amongst its beneficiaries.</p>
<p>Nor does it of itself develop in its beneficiaries a concern for truth over the many vices – vanity, the need for approval, cowardice, careerism – that subvert a serious pursuit of it, the kind of pursuit that people like John Stuart Mill hoped would lead to a more enlightened politics. From the perspective of the uneducated, the deplorables, it is more likely to make you “politically correct”. Or, one of the chattering classes, in the derogatory sense of that expression. Those expressions are weapons in the culture wars.</p>
<p>I do not want to discuss those wars here. In their aggressive, mean spirited refusal to grant that behind the sometimes foolish expression of an opponent’s opinion, there is something serious to consider, often supported by a tradition of some depth, they poison everything they touch. But there can be no doubt that Trump won the culture wars, or at any rate a very important battle in them, decisively, as the Brexiters did before him.</p>
<p>Which is not to deny that the education systems here and in America failed to teach the elementary aspects of good argument - of being conscientiously attentive to relevant, factual evidence and of thinking logically, patiently careful about how to move from one thought to another.</p>
<h2>Developing a capacity to think critically</h2>
<p>But the capacity to think critically requires also that we develop an ear for tone, for what rings false, for what is sentimental, or has yielded to pathos and so on. The development of such a sensibility is not optional in reflection about the human condition, indeed about anything that matters ethically. Without it we are easy prey for demagogues, especially in turbulent times such as we now live in.</p>
<p>Education in the more basic forms of argument and the sensibility whose character I have just sketched should begin at primary school. This education should be conducted in such a way that someone who does not go on to university can never for that reason be suspected of being in need of further education in order to be fully respected as a fellow citizen, possessing all that he needs to be deserving of that respect.</p>
<p>Australia is not likely to produce a demagogue like Trump. We are, as someone said recently on Q&A, a “better society”. But in Australia, disillusionment with politicians is deep and turning to cynicism. Australians vacillate between disillusionment and cynicism. </p>
<p>The difference between cynicism and disillusionment is important. Disillusionment is informed by standards, holds politics to account to those standards, but reckons it has failed to be accountable to them. Cynicism has given up on the standards as even applicable to politics. At its worst, it mocks and even despises them.</p>
<p>To such people, the expression, “the dignity of politics”, or “morality and politics” are oxymorons. The sources of our disillusionment and cynicism are many, but one, I think, is our justified belief that politicians constantly insult our intelligence. Thankfully, if my ear for this is right, dismay about this crosses cultural, educational and economic boundaries. This is one reason why Australia will not find its Trump.</p>
<p>Some years ago when I returned to Australia after living in London under Tony Blair’s government, it struck me that though Australians tended to be cynical about certain aspects of politics, they believed they had the measure of their politicians. They expected them to lie, and provided that the lies did not seriously affect their material interests, they were not too bothered by this form of mendacity. </p>
<p>They felt they had their feet firmly planted on the ground. By contrast, it seemed to me that after being subjected for many years to very sophisticated spin, Britons could no longer locate the ground in order to plant their feet on it. </p>
<p>Spin is a form of mendacity more dangerous to politics than lying, unless the lying takes on Trump-like proportions. That will not happen in Australia. But spin can have a similar affect, as Britons realised. It does not, of itself, make one lose touch with reality, but it can make contact with reality less secure.</p>
<p>A few weeks after September 11, 2001, together with a specialist in Greek Philosophy, M.M McCabe, I conducted a seminar on Plato’s dialogue, <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html">Gorgias</a>, at King’s College London. In that dialogue, Socrates announces his affirmation that it is better to suffer evil than to do it. It has haunted Western thought about the relations between morality and politics. </p>
<p>The atmosphere in that seminar was electrifying. Everyone knew what was at stake in that affirmation. Recommendations that we should make torture lawful were already making ground. The dialogue begins with an attack on oratory (read spin). Orators, Socrates says, lose touch with reality and with themselves. Oratory (again, read spin) could never be neutral means to be used for good or ill: it is rotten though and through. </p>
<p>How astonishing, but also wonderful, that a little book written over two and a half thousand years ago, could teach us so much today.</p>
<p><em>CLARIFICATION: This article was updated on November 16 to clarify that the G.K Chesterton quoted used above was from a polemic on behalf of imagination against reason.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raimond Gaita does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump’s demagoguery took political discourse in America to a place where it lost contact with reality.Raimond Gaita, Professorial Fellow, Faculty of Arts and the Melbourne Law School, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/509152016-01-13T04:35:01Z2016-01-13T04:35:01ZWhy South Africa’s universities are in the grip of a class struggle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107277/original/image-20160105-29003-1hqlf4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most young South Africans can't afford tuition fees and are left out of the higher education system.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kim Ludbrook/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each year, hundreds of thousands of students enrol to study at South Africa’s universities. Of the 60% of black African students who survive the first year, only 15% will <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/DHET%20Statistics%20Publication/Statistics%20on%20Post-School%20Education%20and%20Training%20in%20South%20Africa%202012.pdf">ultimately graduate</a>. This is hardly surprising: these failed students come from an <a href="http://jae.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/5/849.short">oppressive, ineffective</a> public school system. Most of their classmates never make it into higher education and those who do come poorly prepared to the killing fields.</p>
<p>The post-apartheid educational system is not founded on what the poor and marginalised need. Instead, as <a href="http://www.rajendrachetty.com/assets/class-dismissed-youth-resistance-and-the-politics-of-race-and-class-in-south-african-education.pdf">research</a> shows, it is racial and class-based. This notion of class has great significance in a post-apartheid - but not post-racial - South Africa, not only in education but in all realms. Class, here, refers to the norms and experiences that come from living within a particular economic and financial resource base. </p>
<p>Access to basic shelter, adequate food, clothing and decent schooling all empower or disadvantage particular communities. There have been attempts to provide redress to previously disadvantaged South African communities, such as <a href="http://africacheck.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/You-and-Your-Grants1.pdf">social grants</a>, the provision of <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-sa/housing">low cost housing</a> and the introduction of <a href="http://www.education.gov.za/Parents/NoFeeSchools/tabid/408/Default.aspx">“no fee” schools</a>. But these have proved <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report-03-10-06/Report-03-10-06March2014.pdf">insufficient</a> to remedy their continued economic exclusion.</p>
<p>This, then, is the unchanging element of pre and post-1994 South Africa: black youths’ life chances remain significantly lower than those of whites. What role can academics and universities play in changing this? And might they finally be spurred into action by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/student-protesters-must-move-beyond-hashtags-to-real-change-51138">student protests</a> that marked 2015 - protests which, we would argue, are a class struggle.</p>
<h2>Inequality abounds</h2>
<p>Education is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africa-can-disrupt-its-deeply-rooted-educational-inequality-48531">unequal</a> at all levels in South Africa. There is deepening racial segregation at schools and universities. Higher education is increasingly racially stratified, and it is particularly apparent in the <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/DHET%20Statistics%20Publication/Statistics%20on%20Post-School%20Education%20and%20Training%20in%20South%20Africa%202013.pdf">concentration</a> of black and coloured students at historically disadvantaged universities. Most white students attend the previously advantaged universities, like the English liberal Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand, or more conservative Afrikaans institutions like the Universities of Stellenbosch and Pretoria.</p>
<p>Those universities catered almost exclusively to the white minority until 1994. They occupy top positions in local and international research rankings. That stems from their obtaining the <a href="http://www.nrf.ac.za/sites/default/files/documents/12666_NRF%20Register%20for%20Grants8.pdf">lion’s share</a> of research funding from statutory bodies such as the National Research Foundation.</p>
<p>They also charge much <a href="https://africacheck.org/reports/how-much-will-it-cost-to-go-to-a-south-african-university-in-2016/">higher fees</a> than the universities that were built exclusively for blacks during the apartheid era. This maintains the class structure of apartheid society. It is logical that universities which charge higher fees are able to provide a higher quality of education to middle class students. </p>
<p>But the status quo has been disrupted. In 2015 something shifted inexorably at South African universities. Students <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/feesmustfall">protested</a> against institutions’ language policies, high fees, structural inequalities and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32236922">colonial symbols</a>. </p>
<p>It was poor and <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/south-africa-fees-must-fall-protests-prove-post-apartheid-born-free-generation-myth-1526059">working-class</a> youth who <a href="http://www.thedailyvox.co.za/special-editorial-the-wits-protest-is-not-just-about-university-fees/">drove</a> the protests - a clear indication that it is a class struggle. This is further emphasised by the fact that most students who protest, whether during 2015 or on other occasions, are black. Race and class lie at the heart of opposition to South Africa’s existing, exclusive university system.</p>
<h2>Let’s talk about class</h2>
<p>But racism and class are largely excluded from any understanding of the current youth resistance in higher education. This is possibly because the education system has distributed relatively petty advantages within the working class through limited scholarships and loans. It also allows for entry into elite, predominantly white institutions based on academic achievement. This serves to disorganise the entire working class and allows the capitalist democracy to more effectively exploit the majority of poor youth. </p>
<p>Modern forms of class prejudice are invisible even to the perpetrators, who remain unconvinced of the class struggle of black youth. They dismiss it as unruly behaviour and a lack of respect for the new “progressive” order governing universities. Protesters are berated for not understanding universities’ financial pressures; they are viewed as being insensitive to their peers who just want to get on with their education without disruptions.</p>
<p>Where are academics in all of this? Sadly, we believe that the voice of thinkers in the academe has been discouraged and repressed. Many of the activists among us have been co-opted onto the university bureaucracy and unashamedly drive a neo-liberal agenda of colourblindness. </p>
<p>Our silence has given consent to the deepening crisis of inequality. Once again, it’s the youth that had the courage to resist the system, just as they did during the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto uprising</a> in 1976. They do so at great personal risk. But students should fear less the angry policemen with their rubber bullets than the racist academe that covertly discriminates against the poor. </p>
<p>The current black student resistance over fees, housing and limited intake clearly shows that higher education’s transformation agenda needs serious consideration. The professoriate, for instance, remains <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/south-africa-race-black-professors">largely white and male</a> with more gestures at window dressing than inclusion. Racism against black students and staff is <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/summit/Docs/2010Docs/Transformation%20in%20higher%20education-%20A%20briefing%20paper%20by%20Crain%20Soudien.pdf">prevalent</a>.</p>
<p>It is also evident that in spite of profound policy changes in higher education, a “new” racial structure is operating. This accounts for the persistence of racial inequality and must be challenged. Academics are well placed to lead the charge.</p>
<h2>Academics have a responsibility</h2>
<p>Universities and academics should be grateful for these protests, and to the students who took up the cudgels for change. The protests should be viewed as a positive initiative. They represent a chance for the academe to generate ideas that will address the racial and class divide in South Africa rather than entrenching it. Academics cannot abdicate their responsibility towards social change any longer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rajendra Chetty received a focus area grant from the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher B. Knaus does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The student protests that rocked South Africa’s universities in 2015 are part of a class struggle as poor and marginalised people fight for their place in an unequal system.Rajendra Chetty, Head of Research, faculty of Education, Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyChristopher B. Knaus, Professor of Education, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365192015-01-20T14:30:37Z2015-01-20T14:30:37ZNote to James Blunt: making it in the arts is easier if you come from the right background<p>James Blunt is upset. He has objected – in terms neither civil, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/19/james-blunts-letter-chris-bryant-in-full">nor particularly well-argued</a> – to the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/19/chris-bryant-accuses-james-blunt-missing-point-privilege-arts">suggestion</a> from shadow culture secretary, Chris Bryant, that people from working-class backgrounds seem to be finding it harder to get into the creative industries. </p>
<p>Bryant’s mistake – at least in Blunt’s eyes – was to name-check him, along with actor Eddie Redmayne, as part of a public school-educated elite “dominating” our cultural life (Blunt went to Harrow, Redmayne to Eton). Picking out individual examples as Bryant did is always likely to be problematic. For everyone who thinks Blunt was best left in the British Army, or mourns the absence of the “Albert Finneys and Glenda Jacksons”, as Chris Bryant does, there will be others who leap up to defend the acting talents of Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic West or Eddie Redmayne.</p>
<p>And understandably so, as they are all fine actors. But it would take a monumental suspension of disbelief to argue that the majority of acting, singing or writing talent in this country “just happens” to be being fed through an infinitesimally small funnel of elite public schools.</p>
<p>So what’s going on? Contrary to Blunt’s argument that such concerns are just populism or that old right-wing favourite, “the politics of envy”, there is increasing evidence that the UK cultural industries are becoming more exclusive. This is not just in terms of class, but also gender and ethnicity. Such concerns have been raised both by academics and activists for some time. </p>
<p>Publicly available data shows part of the picture. The representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) workers in the media industries was just <a href="http://creativeskillset.org/assets/0000/5070/2012_Employment_Census_of_the_Creative_Media_Industries.pdf">5.4% in 2012</a>, down from 7.4% six years earlier – and in both cases a shocking under-representation given the concentration of these industries in London and the south-east, where the ethnic minority population is <a href="http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/2011-census-diversity">over 40%</a>. </p>
<p>Women are also under-represented: around <a href="http://creativeskillset.org/assets/0000/5070/2012_Employment_Census_of_the_Creative_Media_Industries.pdf">36% of the media workforce were women in 2012</a>, and they are concentrated in lower-status and lower-paid areas such as make-up, wardrobe and hairdressing. They are also more likely to be freelance and younger than their male counterparts, suggesting that the strain of staying in precarious work becomes unbearable as women age or take on caring responsibilities. </p>
<p>Publicly available data on class-based exclusion is much harder to come by, but studies of particular sectors show a clear pattern. As <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/educational-backgrounds-leading-journalists/**">the Sutton Trust has reported</a>, an increasing number of journalists, for example, are privately educated (54% as opposed to 7% of the population overall). And while the average journalist born in 1958 came from a family with an income 5.5% above the average; those born in 1970 came from families with an income 42.4% above average.</p>
<p>There are a variety of reasons for these deepening inequalities. Higher education now comes with a serious price tag attached. And while applications have not shown a dramatic fall-off overall (other than for part-time and mature students, among whom working-class students were often found) big debts make people think twice about entering risky professions. Pay in the cultural sectors has always been low for the majority, but the increased insistence on unpaid internships as an entry criterion is a deterrent for those with no family money to fall back on. </p>
<p>Trade unions have <a href="https://www.journalism.co.uk/news-commentary/is-the-nuj-still-relevant-to-new-generation-of-journalists/s6/a553385/">diminished in the media sectors</a> as more casual employment patterns have taken hold. This leaves an oversupply of anxious individuals desperate to get a foothold in what are still seen as glamorous industries. The concentration of these industries within London and the south-east of England, the most expensive part of the UK for housing, increases this imbalance. Class exclusion is becoming a feature of cultural work, even as the sectors themselves expand in terms of employment. </p>
<p>Bryant’s solution is to get “everyone to take part in the arts”, a long-term Labour cultural policy aim and not an ignoble one. But without better pay, conditions and subsidised access to higher education and training it’s hard to see how taking kids on school trips to the theatre will solve the problem. There still won’t be a realistic chance of them making a living up there on the stage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36519/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Oakley receives funding from
Arts and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p>James Blunt is upset. He has objected – in terms neither civil, nor particularly well-argued – to the suggestion from shadow culture secretary, Chris Bryant, that people from working-class backgrounds…Kate Oakley, Professor of Cultural Policy, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/282452014-06-20T12:28:44Z2014-06-20T12:28:44ZThere is no quick fix for white working class underachievement<p>Last week a <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/news/white-working-class-report/">report</a> from the Education Select Committee called new attention to an old problem: white working-class children <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27886925">consistently do especially badly at school</a>.</p>
<p>In response to a persistent cycle of underachievement – only 31% of white British children entitled to free school meals got five A* to C grades in 2012, <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21594986-bad-schools-and-low-aspirations-used-be-inner-city-problems-not-any-more-island-mentality?frsc=dg%7Cc#sthash.eEyw6fYL.dpbs">fewer than poor children from any other ethnic group</a> – influential MPs have proposed so-called “revolutionary” solutions such as <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/white-working-class-boys-do-worst-in-school-claims-major-new-report-9543843.html">longer school days to improve test scores</a>, incentives to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/18/top-teachers-needed-to-help-poor-white-pupils-say-mps">get better teachers into disadvantaged schools</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27904205">free schools targeted specifically at the white working-class population</a>. </p>
<p>Sir Michael Wilshaw, always a fan of “no excuses” solutions, has even called for head teachers to be <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/white-working-class-boys-do-worst-in-school-claims-major-new-report-9543843.html">given the power to fine parents</a> who fail to ensure their children turn up to school on time or complete their homework. </p>
<p>These are all nothing more than tweaks to much larger and more complex problems. There is no avoiding the fact that white working-class underachievement is symptomatic of much larger social, cultural and economic issues with the British education system, in which pupils’ performance has an extraordinarily strong positive association with social class. </p>
<h2>Think bigger</h2>
<p>Typical explanations of why white working-class pupils in particular underachieve usually point to uninvolved parenting, the effects of poverty, low literacy, low aspiration, post-industrial generational unemployment, and the relative absence of targeted support. These are, of course, all significant factors – but what gets left out of the equation are the larger structural factors. </p>
<p>The majority of white working-class children attend persistently inadequate, low-calibre schools. The UK’s education system is beset by deep problems: a lack of progress and innovation, <a href="http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/990">pessimism</a> about students’ ability, a fetish for never-ending surface-level change, and inadequate teacher training (to name a few). While some initiatives have been implemented (for example <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/11/london-challenge-turned-poor-schools-around">London Challenge</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/14/why-is-teach-first-scheme-so-controversial">Teach First</a>), there is nothing in United Kingdom similar to the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) model in America, which consistently takes low-income students and pushes them to Ivy League universities. </p>
<p>This chronic lack of innovation fosters class prejudices and a pervasive, pernicious complacency – “what will be, will be”.</p>
<p>Even if effective teachers were fittingly rewarded and school days were meaningfully extended, the UK school system, with its relentless (and misguided) emphasis on exam results, pass rates and league tables, confounds what these accountability measures were <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21594986-bad-schools-and-low-aspirations-used-be-inner-city-problems-not-any-more-island-mentality?frsc=dg%7Cc">originally intended to achieve</a>. </p>
<p>Within the state sector, all students contend with what has been called bureaucratic, institutional, and classroom “<a href="http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/0335203604.html">educational triage</a>”, where some students benefit from dedicated attention while many others are written off from the moment they enter the school building. Too often, education is rationed.</p>
<p>And to compound things further, that all-too-obvious rationing sits within a system that stacks the deck against most pupils anyway. As has been known to the Department of Education <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/4705/">for a long time</a>, while the white working-class may perform particularly poorly on national exams, nearly half of all young people in the United Kingdom still do not achieve five good GCSEs, while even more do not reach that standard in English and maths. </p>
<p>Even those who do achieve those precious grades and intend to pursue a university qualification hardly have it easy – especially with the Coalition government cutting financial support to families from poorer backgrounds, trebling university tuition fees and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61964/opening-doors-breaking-barriers.pdf">failing to acknowledge</a> the stagnant development of professional and managerial jobs.</p>
<p>In a situation like this, underachievement, in many diverse forms, can hardly be considered surprising.</p>
<h2>Damned if you do, damned if you don’t</h2>
<p>As the report sees it, compared to other ethnic groups, white working-class British children are less resilient in the face of poverty, deprivation and low socio-economic status. After all, students of other ethnic backgrounds attending the same schools and experiencing the same poverty do perform marginally better on national exams. While this may or may not be true, in my own research on white working-class boys’ aspirations, conducted in South London schools, I saw things in quite a different way. </p>
<p>The boys in my study were fully aware of their disadvantaged socio-economic status, and, furthermore, they knew they were getting a deficient education. In response, they excluded themselves from the school’s “aspirations” agenda. Internalising their potential failure, they preferred employment that was for “the likes of them”, where they would feel comfortable. </p>
<p>My time spent with these white working-class boys in an era of high-stakes testing and extreme pressure showed me how fear and shame can haunt working-class relationships to education. </p>
<p>I also saw how the boys were caught between two kinds of stigma and risk: they clearly had a fear of academic failure – and, given the deprived state of their school, that fear was entirely rational. But on the other hand, they also feared academic success. Good exam results would mean pressure to further their education, and to enter fields that would make them uncomfortable.</p>
<p>This clash left the boys I knew consciously fighting to guard and protect their self-worth against the dominant school culture, which threatened to stigmatise them whether they succeeded or not. </p>
<p>So while the Education Select Committee’s report should be commended for proposing any solutions at all, there is little hope for tweaks and nudges. The core structural and cultural issues must be acknowledged if the white working-class children that worry the government so much are to make real progress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28245/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Garth Stahl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Last week a report from the Education Select Committee called new attention to an old problem: white working-class children consistently do especially badly at school. In response to a persistent cycle…Garth Stahl, Lecturer, Secondary English/Literacy Education, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210462013-12-04T06:31:30Z2013-12-04T06:31:30ZCurrent notions of success do little for white working class<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36835/original/sftbnz4x-1386097726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Whose aspiration?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Devers/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The underachievement of white working-class schoolchildren in the UK continues to be a subject of contentious <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/news/white-working-class-first-session/">debate</a>. </p>
<p>It is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03055698.2010.506341#.Up2l1VVX-pg">well-documented</a> that white working-class pupils do less well and suffer low social mobility, when compared to other ethnic groups of similar class backgrounds. Their deprivation is characterised by poor attendance, low parental <a href="http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/54/">expectations</a>, feelings of <a href="http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/1703/">marginalisation</a>, low literacy levels, and a lack of targeted support to help break cycles of poverty and disadvantage. In the context of the UK’s highly stratified school system, the white working classes are often characterised as unmotivated and unambitious. </p>
<p>But in my experience as an educator, I have seen how high levels of “disaffection” towards education are the result of the continual struggles white working-class children face. </p>
<p>It has become increasingly difficult for these young people to establish a so-called “good life” while being measured against a very particular concept of success. In my own ethnographic research in south London I explored the collision of aspiration and identity, and found white working-class boys struggling to reconcile their own aspirations with their socio-economic positions and limited cultural and economic resources. </p>
<p>Similarly, in my interviews with working-class parents, it was consistently clear that they wanted the best for their children – but also that they were often hesitant about the best course of action and how to marshal resources strategically to stack the cards in their children’s favour.</p>
<p>Clearly, while white working-class children certainly suffer from an achievement gap, a lack of “aspiration” in the broadest sense is not the problem. The fact is that any discussion of what aspiration “should” look like demands attention to political and social context. </p>
<h2>What aspiration really means</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36825/original/yjywwpyq-1386090428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36825/original/yjywwpyq-1386090428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36825/original/yjywwpyq-1386090428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36825/original/yjywwpyq-1386090428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36825/original/yjywwpyq-1386090428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36825/original/yjywwpyq-1386090428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36825/original/yjywwpyq-1386090428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Aspiration guru Michael Gove.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joe Giddens/PA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Aspiration has been high up the social agenda for some time and particularly for the coalition government. In November 2010, the secretary of state for education, Michael Gove, called for the UK to become an <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_9223000/9223638.stm">“aspiration nation”</a>, with schools <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-announces-pupil-premium-to-raise-achievement">restored</a> to their role as “engines of social mobility” – providing every child with “the knowledge, skills and aspirations they need to fulfil their potential”. The then shadow education secretary, Andy Burnham, echoed these calls, addressing the Labour party conference with the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/sep/28/andy-burnham-ucas-apprenticeships">mantra</a>, “aspiration, aspiration, aspiration”.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in their responses to the riots of July 2011, policy makers <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/211617/Govt_Response_to_the_Riots_-_Final_Report.pdf">cited</a> a deeply embedded culture of low aspiration and academic underachievement as a significant cause of antisocial behaviour – an explanation <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090114000528/http:/cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/109339/aspirations_evidence_pack.pdf">advanced</a> under the previous government as well.</p>
<p>But simply put, this is a very particular explanation of how “aspiration” is shaped, and how it in turn shapes behaviour. After a long period in which Britain’s education policies have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qlmlg">governed</a> by a neoliberal focus on individual achievement and getting into university, the so-called “aspiration problem” has become increasingly individualised.</p>
<p>Even as the pressing problem of white working-class achievement has been clearly identified, policy makers have failed to recognise the powerful contexts which shape students’ identities. Instead they have stuck with a model of aspiration that focuses on what is “wrong” with students themselves. The result is that we deem working-class students deficient and morally lacking unless their sense of self matches some very specific measures – for which exam results and professional performance are our principal proxies. </p>
<p>Schools still regard middle-class forms of aspiration very highly. In understanding aspiration, it is essential to address how white working-class students, like any others, construct their own values and establish a “good life” within various constraints and against wider societal expectations.</p>
<p>On the government’s current measure of aspiration, working-class pupils are judged as having “bought in” or “bought out”, depending on whether or not they accept the socially mobile middle-class aspirations the educational, economic and political systems prescribe. As I found in the course of my own fieldwork, these ideas – where to study, what to do, where and how to live – are often in extreme tension with students’ own concepts of aspiration. </p>
<p>The net effects of this tension have, of course, been on the radar for some time. Many have <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/sep/23/school-academy-challenge-white-working-class">recognised</a>, for instance, the phenomenon of “tall poppy syndrome”, where certain institutions, such as post-compulsory education, are seen as “not for the likes of us”. But the point is that what we too often describe as an individual “failure to aspire” is largely the product of our blanket enforcement of particular aspirations – and our damning judgement of those who don’t measure up.</p>
<p>On our current measures, the underachievement of the working-classes will continue as long as they are denied sufficient access to those resources (tutoring, extra support, enriching cultural activities) which would allow parents to invest further in their children’s development. But even if such resources were available, their use would demand the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9052173/Pushy-middle-class-parents-dont-trust-schools.html">confidence and entitlement</a> that middle-class parents and students possess in spades. For as long as we continue to stigmatise working-class aspirations and goals, we are working to undermine that confidence.</p>
<p>In short, the central government’s failure to recognise that this particular population has specific needs that are not being met by the school system must be addressed. But to address it explicitly would be to forensically examine the ways we think about “class”, “disadvantage” and “achievement” – all dangerous subjects in British politics.</p>
<p><em>Photograph by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdevers/">Chris Devers</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21046/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Garth Stahl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The underachievement of white working-class schoolchildren in the UK continues to be a subject of contentious debate. It is well-documented that white working-class pupils do less well and suffer low social…Garth Stahl, Lecturer, Secondary English/Literacy Education, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.