Should I pitch my tent in the middle ground? On ‘middling tendency’, Beck and inequality in youth sociology

Abstract

Abstract In 2009 Woodman has recently challenged youth sociologists concerned with inequality to evolve from what he describes as a middling orthodoxy that misrepresents the work of Ulrich Beck in an effort to emphasise the continuing relevance of class. In 2010 Roberts forcefully responds to Woodman, arguing that Beck's own words and empirical evidence contradict his argument. Woodman responds to Roberts, reasserting his position and asks for the debate to move beyond mere 'quote wars'. This paper engages with this debate, taking Woodman's challenge seriously while maintaining that Beck's jettison of class is problematic, and that the concept of class itself is still vital. The paper concludes with suggestions as to what youth sociologists concerned with socio-economic inequality might want to focus upon in the future. Keywords: youthBeckinequalityclassmiddling tendencyBourdieureflexivitymethodological nationalismzombie categorysocial class Acknowledgements Thanks to Terry Leahy and Emma Kirby for their comments on early drafts of this paper. Special thanks to the constructive and generous critique of the anonymous peer reviewers. Notes 1. Gibson-Graham's concept of individuals taking up roles in disparate class relationships is well-illustrated by their description of 'classing Sue and Bill' (1996, pp. 59–63). 2. Beck himself has sketched what he calls 'Legitimatory capital' (2005, pp. 240–243). In developing Bourdieu's work, others have theorised their own forms of capital through critique. For example, Pakulski (2004, pp. 109–122) implicitly argues for the concept of 'political capital' – an idea not expressed in Bourdieu's work. This lack is claimed to have diminished Bourdieu's ability to analyse notions of citizenship and the role of political and class elites. Kosut (Citation2006) develops 'professorial capital' to highlight an 'academic glass ceiling' of class exclusion based on her own experience as a working-class doctoral student in the USA. Weenink (Citation2008) argues for 'cosmopolitan capital' as a way for understanding the how some (more cosmopolitan) parents prepare their children for engaging with a globalised world. CitationReay (2000, Citation2004c) maintains that 'emotional capital' is a useful extension of Bourdieu's theorising to understand the juxtaposition of class and gender processes embedded in parental involvement in education. In a similar vein, Huppatz (Citation2009) proposes forms of gendered capital. Verter (Citation2003) has developed the concept of 'spiritual capital' to study religions as a competitive symbolic economy. All of these examples can be seen as dimensions or developments of cultural capital. 3. This terminology does allude to Castells' work on the power of identity (Citation1997). Nevertheless, it also sounds a lot like Bourdieu's notion of 'refusing what they are refused' or the excluded excluding themselves. 4. Beck notes that this affects women doubly: 'While men remain essentially untouched by family events in their biographies, women lead a contradictory double life shaped equally by family and organisations. For them the family rhythm still applies, and in the majority of cases the rhythm of education and career already do as well, which results in a conflictual crises and continuing incompatible demands' (1992, p. 132, emphasis author's own). 5. I do not put Pakulski and Waters (Citation1996) in this category, as their work is much more nuanced than the title suggests. 6. See Atkinson (Citation2008) for a critique of Bauman's use of class.