Gentrification and the Return of Class

A spectre is haunting Britain, not the spectre of communism, and yet the UK’s most significant current challenges, from Brexit to austerity, from zero-hour contracts to changes in life expectancy, are all haunted by questions of social class and classes

'I probably would never move, but ideally like I’d love to move this week': class and residential experience, beyond elective belonging

This article critically engages with Savage et al.'s conceptualisation of 'elective belonging'. Drawing on research in a case-study site in central Salford, it argues that historical processes of deindustrialisation, slum clearance and social housing residualisation have been compounded by the subsequent strategies of gentrification and impact upon the forms of 'belonging' that can be constructed by marginal working-class populations. Correcting for the predominance of research on belonging from the perspective of middle-class incomers, findings are organised around the themes ‘the local/incomer distinction’, 'perceptions of and orientations to the neighbourhood', 'the power of economic capital', 'social others and social distance', and 'tectonic communities'. It is argued that the privileging of attracting inward investment into such locales necessarily entails that the elective belonging of the privileged is secured at the expense of the prescribed belonging of the marginal. Keywords : Belonging, Gentrification, Social Class, Social Distance, Tectonic Communitie

The reconstruction of primary teachers' identitities

Primary teachers have had to reconstruct their identities in response to the reconstruction of the education system. The holism, humanism and vocationalism of the old Plowden self-identity has been challenged by a new assigned social identity signalled in the assault on child-centred philosophy, the diminution of elementary trust, and changes in the teacher role. These challenges have thrown up new dilemmas for teachers, and represent 'fateful moments' in the careers of their identities. In trying to resolve the dilemmas, teachers have engaged in identity work, characterised mainly by identity talk, and a number of emotional and intellectual strategies. The result has been a partitioning of the old Plowden self-identity, with the 'real self' being largely withheld from the new personal identity and the sense of vocationalism being set to one side. The new personal identity in teaching represents a more instrumental and situational outlook, with the substantial self finding more expression elsewhere. Identity work is still in progress and seems set to continue while teachers have to find ways of relating to two or more competing discourses

Classificatory struggles in the midst of austerity: policing or politics?

This article reports findings on class identities amongst a small sample of mainly working-class residents in the City of Salford. We attempt to develop a Rancièrian framework for understanding class identities, centred on his key concept of dissensus, and how these ideas have been developed by Imogen Tyler through the notion of ‘classificatory struggles’. From this, we identify a continuum of responses that are discernible in relation to the neoliberal order of classifications: from those orientated to a ‘policing’ function, either accepting and internalising dominant discourses or attempting to displace abjection onto others, to those that tend more towards ‘politics’ in either asserting alternative circuits of value or through an appeal to the name of the proletariat as a political claim to radical equality. In examining our data, we note that although a majority disavowed an explicit working-class identity, they nonetheless engaged in a range of classificatory struggles

Phosphorus retention of sandy horticultural soils on the Swan Coastal Plain

Soils can be ranked according to their phosphorus retention capacity by the phosphorus retention index (PRI). This is the ratio of phosphorus adsorbed by soil to that remaining in solution under a set of standard conditions. Although it is a laboratory measurement, the PRI seems to be a good indication of what happens in practice

Trade union strategies to tackle labour market insecurity: Geography and the role of Sheffield TUC

This paper analyses the role of trades councils and trade unions in organising within local and regional contexts around the challenges facing and potential union strategies for addressing the needs of insecure and precarious workers. We deploy a case study on the Sheffield Trade Union Council and the Sheffield Needs A Pay Rise campaign as a way of exploring innovations and challenges for the trade union movement for organising the unorganised. We explore the potentials as well as limitations of local organising and campaigning around insecurity and marginalisation by trade unions to demonstrate theoretically and empirically within industrial relations research the role of strategic spaces for action by workers and trade unions and the set of institutional, economic, social and cultural resources that workers can draw on in developing their respective strategies

Tackling Labour Market Injustice and Organising Workers: The View from a Northern Heartland

This report, based on 42 interviews with workers, trade unionists and other stakeholders, examines the phenomena of low-paid and precarious work in Sheffield. It focuses on the factors driving the prevalence of such work (including the links with welfare reform), the experiences of workers in seven distinct employment sectors, as well as trade union responses to the challenges of organising in these areas. The report also includes a major addition of a postscript focused on the impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic and how this relates to the wider findings of the study

Through a Glass, Darkly:The CIA and Oral History

This article broaches the thorny issue of how we may study the history of the CIA by utilizing oral history interviews. This article argues that while oral history interviews impose particular demands upon the researcher, they are particularly pronounced in relation to studying the history of intelligence services. This article, nevertheless, also argues that while intelligence history and oral history each harbour their own epistemological perils and biases, pitfalls which may in fact be pronounced when they are conjoined, the relationship between them may nevertheless be a productive one. Indeed, each field may enrich the other provided we have thought carefully about the linkages between them: this article's point of departure. The first part of this article outlines some of the problems encountered in studying the CIA by relating them to the author's own work. This involved researching the CIA's role in US foreign policy towards Afghanistan since a landmark year in the history of the late Cold War, 1979 (i.e. the year the Soviet Union invaded that country). The second part of this article then considers some of the issues historians must confront when applying oral history to the study of the CIA. To bring this within the sphere of cognition of the reader the author recounts some of his own experiences interviewing CIA officers in and around Washington DC. The third part then looks at some of the contributions oral history in particular can make towards a better understanding of the history of intelligence services and the CIA