How Middle-Class Kids Want Working-Class Jobs

This chapter considers how, for young urbanites with hip tastes, the culture of the cocktail world exude cool. To them, visiting the hidden bar for craft cocktails and unique small-batch spirits, the lodge-like masculine barbershop for a classic-looking haircut and an old-fashioned shave, and the local butcher for a rare cut of locally raised meat are fundamental to life in the city. People with certain sensibilities toward what they buy and do for leisure seek out these new urban luxuries among the city's many other options. They represent fun, cool, and urbane alternatives to the more popular sports bars and loud nightclubs, branded booze, cheap and quick haircuts, and shrink-wrapped meat on Styrofoam trays.

Trends of Social Polarisation and Segregation in Athens (1991–2011)

Social Inclusion ◽

10.17645/si.v9i2.3849 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 117-128 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas Maloutas ◽

Hugo Botton

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Social Geography ◽

Main Question ◽

Social Mix ◽

Spatial Changes ◽

Social Polarisation ◽

Spatial Hierarchy ◽

Surrounding Areas ◽

This article investigates social and spatial changes in the Athens metropolitan area between 1991 and 2011. The main question is whether social polarisation—and the contraction of intermediate occupational categories—unevenly developed across the city is related to the changing of segregation patterns during the examined period. We established that the working-class moved towards the middle and the middle-class moved towards the top, but the relative position of both parts did not change in the overall socio-spatial hierarchy. The broad types of socio-spatial change in Athens (driven by professionalisation, proletarianisation or polarisation) were eventually related to different spatial imprints in the city’s social geography. Broad trends identified in other cities, like the centralisation of higher occupations and the peripheralisation of poverty, were not at all present here. In Athens, changes between 1991 and 2011 can be summarised by (1) the relative stability and upward social movement of the traditional working-class and their surrounding areas, accounting for almost half of the city, (2) the expansion of traditional bourgeois strongholds to neighbouring formerly socially mixed areas—25% of the city—and their conversion to more homogeneous middle-class neighbourhoods through professionalisation, (3) the proletarianisation of 10% of the city following a course of perpetual decline in parts of the central municipality and (4) the polarisation and increased social mix of the traditional bourgeois strongholds related to the considerable inflow of poor migrants working for upper-middle-class households.

Chicago’s Immigrant Working Class and the Rise of Urban Populism, 1867–73

10.5406/illinois/9780252036835.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

John B. Jentz ◽

Richard Schneirov

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Large Scale ◽

Control Measure ◽

Skilled Workers ◽

Fire Control ◽

Real Property ◽

Labor Reform ◽

Lower Middle Class ◽

This chapter examines Chicago's immigrant working class and the rise of urban populism. In January 1872—three months after the Great Fire—Anton Hesing, Chicago's German political boss, organized a protest against the city government's effort to ban new wooden housing in the city as a fire control measure. For Hesing, the fight against the “fire limits” was a battle against the proletarianization of Chicago's workers, whose distinctive independent status was based on the ownership of real property and a house. He fought to preserve a particular kind of working class independent of large-scale capital, and free of alien radicalism, particularly socialism. In leading the movement against the fire limits, Hesing then became the chief architect of urban populism in the city. With labor reform marginalized, urban populism helped politicize the city's immigrant skilled workers and lower middle class.

Land, Capital, and Race

Inland Shift ◽

10.1525/california/9780520289581.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Juan D. De Lara

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Development Project ◽

Public Debate ◽

Way Of Life ◽

The Public ◽

Global Capital ◽

Race And Class ◽

This chapter uses the Skechers megawarehouse development project in Moreno Valley to examine how the public debate about whether to allow megawarehouse development evolved into a much more profound struggle over who had a right to shape the city. The Skechers warehouse became a proxy struggle between groups who represented different lifestyles and approaches to what constituted a valued way of life. More specifically, the warehouse debate pitted a working-class Latinx population against a mostly white suburban middle class. The chapter concludes by interrogating how global capital must sometimes negotiate locally embedded histories of race and class when establishing new territory for development.

Ghetto Formation and Armed Resistance in East St. Louis, Illinois

Journal of American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021875807003544 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 41 (2) ◽

pp. 435-467 ◽

Author(s):

MALCOLM McLAUGHLIN

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

African Americans ◽

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Urban Community ◽

Race Riot ◽

Black Migration ◽

Armed Resistance ◽

The City ◽

Self Defence

This article explores African American armed resistance during the 1917 East St. Louis race riot in the context of black migration and ghetto formation. In particular it considers the significance of the development of the black urban community, composed of an emerging working class and a dynamic, militant and increasingly influential middle class. It was that community which came under attack by white mobs in 1917, and this work illuminates the infrastructure of resistance in the city, showing how African Americans drew upon the resources of the nascent ghetto and older traditions of self-defence to protect their homes and families.

Da Esperança ao Triunfo: o estudo da formação de uma nova classe trabalhadora de Goiânia (GO)

Ateliê Geográfico ◽

10.5216/ag.v11i3.43766 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 193

Author(s):

Renatha Cândida da Cruz ◽

João Batista de Deus

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Economic Change ◽

Urban Land ◽

City Center ◽

New Middle Class ◽

Northwest Region ◽

Resumo:O objetivo principal deste artigo é tratar do processo de formação da Região Noroeste de Goiânia. Para tanto, realizou-se um amplo levantamento bibliográfico acerca das ocupações urbanas na capital goiana e elaborou-se uma periodização sobre a ampliação do espaço urbano a noroeste do centro da cidade. Os resultados obtidos permitiram verificar como uma comunidade deixa de ser um grande bolsão de pobreza para ser considerada uma representação da nova classe trabalhadora de Goiânia. A temática torna-se pertinente, visto que os bairros da Região Noroeste têm origem em sucessivas lutas coletivas pelo solo urbano e passam por um longo processo de mudanças sociais e econômicas. O aumento da renda ganha destaque nos estudos sobre a localidade, em que se debate se há uma nova classe média ou uma nova classe trabalhadora.Palavras-chave: Nova classe trabalhadora. Goiânia. Ocupações urbanas. Abstract:The main purpose of this article is figure out the process of formation in the Northwest Region of Goiania. To achieve this goal it conducted a comprehensive literature about the urban occupations in Goiânia and the development of a timeline on the expansion of urban areas to the northwest of the city center. The results of this research allowed us to understand as a community stops being a large slum to be considered a representation of the new working class of Goiania. The theme becomes relevant in sense that neighborhoods of the Northwest Region originates in successive collective struggle for urban land and go through a long process of social and economic change and how the increase in income is an important factor in studies about this place and being perceived the discussion above new middle class or new working classKeywords: New Workin Class, Goiânia, Urban Occupations. Resumen:El principal objetivo de ese artículo es la comprensión del proceso de formación de la Región Noroeste de Goiânia. Para alcanzar esa meta se ha realizado un amplio levantamiento bibliográfico sobre las ocupaciones urbanas en la capital goiana así como la elaboración de una periodización acerca de la ampliación del espacio urbano al noroeste del centro de la ciudad. Los resultados obtenidos por esta investigación permitieron comprender como una comunidad deja de ser parte de un gran cinturón de pobreza para pasar a ser considerada una representación de la nueva clase trabajadora de Goiânia. La temática se vuelve pertinente puesto que los barrios de la Región Noroeste tienen origen en sucesivas luchas colectivas por el suelo urbano y pasan por un largo proceso de cambios sociales y económicos haciendo con que el incremento de la renta sea un factor relevante en los estudios sobre la localidad, percibiéndose el debate sobre una nueva clase media o nueva clase trabajadora.Palabras clave: Nueva clase trabajadora. Goiânia. Ocupaciones urbanas.

Resistance

10.1332/policypress/9781447329183.003.0011 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 341-366

Author(s):

Paul Watt

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Right To The City ◽

Housing Associations ◽

Politics Of Place ◽

The World ◽

The Right ◽

Trench Warfare ◽

This chapter assesses the socio-spatial, organisational, and ideological nature of resistance to estate demolition in London. It begins by analysing housing activism with reference to council housing, and situates recent anti-demolition campaigns in relation to earlier campaigns against stock transfer to housing associations. The anti-demolition campaigns are not solely based on council tenants via a politics of tenure, but instead embrace owner-occupiers (in some cases middle-class) and exemplify a politics of place based upon maintaining existing homes and communities. Campaigners’ prior activism is assessed and these are revealed as being mainly novices to the world of housing politics. Despite such vibrant activism, lack of engagement was also prominent as some tenants felt that resistance was a waste of time, because ‘they’ (social landlords) had already decided that demolition will happen, indicative of felt working-class and tenant powerlessness. Contestation is often long-term – a form of trench warfare – reflecting the interminable nature of regeneration itself. The final section assesses what success might mean in these long-running campaigns, and illustrates this with reference to both ‘big wins’ and ‘little victories’. Anti-demolition campaigns have become prominent and are in the front-line of London’s struggles over the right to the city (Harvey).

Back to Bed

Coming Home ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190232511.003.0002 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 9-33

Author(s):

Wendy Kline

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Home Birth ◽

The Other ◽

White Middle Class ◽

La Leche League ◽

Hospital To Home ◽

Chapter 1, “Back to Bed: From Hospital to Home Obstetrics in the City of Chicago” analyzes the home obstetrics training practiced at the Chicago Maternity Center alongside the emergence of what would become an international breastfeeding organization, La Leche League. One focused on the inner-city’s working-class population, while the other catered more to the suburban white middle-class. Both the Chicago Maternity Center and the La Leche League relied on the promotion of home birth, but for very different reasons. Under the CMC, home birth provided essential training for obstetrical students, while under the LLL, it enabled mothers to breastfeed and bond with their babies. The different rationales underscored the extent to which race, class, and context shaped ideas about home birth. Taken together, these two examples reveal the complex origins of what would become a contested yet increasingly popular practice by the 1970s.

The organisation and activism of Dublin’s Protestant working class, 1883–1935

Irish Historical Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021121400018770 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 29 (113) ◽

pp. 65-87 ◽

Author(s):

Martin Maguire

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Royal College ◽

General Meeting ◽

Annual General ◽

Annual General Meeting ◽

Early Nineteenth Century ◽

Lower Middle Class ◽

Protestant working-class loyalists have been found not only in Belfast, behind the painted kerbs and muralled gables of the Shankill Road and Ballysillan. Recent research has found working-class loyalism in the Ulster hinterland of mid-Armagh. However, most of what has been written on southern Protestantism, beyond Belfast and Ulster, has been on the gentry class. Yet Dublin was once the centre of organised Protestant opinion in Ireland and had, in the early nineteenth century, an assertive and exuberantly sectarian Protestant working class. This paper is based on a study of the Protestant working class of Dublin, and examines its organisation and activism as revealed in the City and County of Dublin Conservative Workingmen’s Club (henceforth C.W.C.). The club owned a substantial Georgian house on York Street, off St Stephen’s Green where the modern extension to the Royal College of Surgeons now stands. The club was sustained by a core of activists numbering around three hundred, the usual print-run for the ballot papers at the annual general meeting. The Protestant working class numbered 5,688 in the city in 1881. The county area numbered 4,096, making a total of 9,784 Protestant workingclass men. The city and county total of about 10,000 remained stable up to the census of 1911. Combined with the Protestant lower middle class of clerks and shopkeepers, the potential to be mobilised by the C.W.C. numbered over 20,000. The club records are used to relate the experience of the Dublin Protestant working class firstly to the more familiar working-class loyalism of Ulster, and secondly to working-class Toryism and the concept of the labour aristocracy.

Middle-Class Victorian Street Arabs: Modern Re-creations of the Baker Street Irregulars

International Research in Children s Literature ◽

10.3366/ircl.2012.0042 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 36-50 ◽

Author(s):

Dominic Cheetham

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Children's Literature ◽

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Street Children ◽

Children’S Literature ◽

The United States ◽

Sherlock Holmes ◽

Upward Shift

In three of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories there are brief appearances of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of ‘street Arabs’ who help Holmes with his investigations. These children have been re-imagined in modern children's literature in at least twenty-seven texts in a variety of media and with writers from both Britain and the United States. All these modern stories show a marked upward shift in the class of the Irregulars away from the lower working class of Conan-Doyle's originals. The shift occurs through attributing middle-class origins to the leaders of the Irregulars, through raising the class of the Irregulars in general, and through giving the children life environments more comfortable, safe, and financially secure than would have been possible for late-Victorian street children. Because of the variety in texts and writers, it is argued that this shift is not a result of the conscious political or ideological positions of individual writers, but rather reflects common unconscious narrative choices. The class-shift is examined in relation to the various pressures of conventions in children's literature, concepts of audience, and common concepts of class in society.

The Peer Group’s Agency in a Brazilian School

Boyhood Studies ◽

10.3167/bhs.2020.130206 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 71-86

Author(s):

Cinthia Torres Toledo ◽

Marília Pinto de Carvalho

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

School Engagement ◽

Peer Groups ◽

Ethnographic Research ◽

Brazilian Literature ◽

Academic Literature ◽

Educational Trajectories ◽

Schooling Process ◽

The City ◽

Urban State

Black working-class boys are the group with the most significant difficulties in their schooling process. In dialogue with Raewyn Connell, we seek to analyze how the collective conceptions of peer groups have influenced the school engagement of Brazilian boys. We conducted an ethnographic research with students around the age of 14 at an urban state school in the periphery of the city of São Paulo. We analyzed the hierarchization process between two groups of boys, demonstrating the existence of a collective notion of masculinity that works against engagement with the school. Well-known to the Anglophone academic literature, this association is rather uncommon in the Brazilian literature. We have therefore attempted to describe and analyze here the challenges faced by Black working-class Brazilian boys to establish more positive educational trajectories.