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'A fish out of water?' The therapeutic narratives of class change
[journal article]
Abstract Young people from working class backgrounds remained mostly excluded from the widening educational participation which characterised postwar Britain. Based on 20 semi-structured interviews which were part of a wider study about ‘Social Participation and Identity’ (2008–2009), this article explores t... view more
Young people from working class backgrounds remained mostly excluded from the widening educational participation which characterised postwar Britain. Based on 20 semi-structured interviews which were part of a wider study about ‘Social Participation and Identity’ (2008–2009), this article explores the unusual learning trajectories of a group of working class adults born in 1958, who participated in higher education (HE) in a context where most people from the same socio-economic backgrounds did not. Drawing on Bourdieu’s social theory, the findings suggest that different types of retrospective accounts were mobilised to reconcile working class habitus of origin and the perceived habitus as adults. Most research on working class and higher education focuses on the experiences of youth. By contrast, the use of retrospective accounts of adults has enabled the study to capture the implications that the educational trajectories have later in life. The authors consider these accounts a part of wider narratives that they define ‘therapeutic’. Therapeutic narratives were employed to come to terms with the ambivalence produced by social mobility. Therefore, respondents were negotiating the sense of exclusion attached to class change, and the acknowledgement of the opportunities associated with a working class habitus accessing new social fields viaeducation.... view less
Keywords
Bourdieu, P.; habits; participation in education; educational opportunity; course of education; university level of education; social background; working class; social mobility; change of status; educational motivation; Great Britain
Classification
General Sociology, Basic Research, General Concepts and History of Sociology, Sociological Theories
Sociology of Education
Free Keywords
social field; therapeutic narratives
Document language
English
Publication Year
2016
Page/Pages
p. 353-372
Journal
Current Sociology, 64 (2016) 3
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/10419/171933
ISSN
1461-7064
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Deposit Licence - No Redistribution, No Modifications
With the permission of the rights owner, this publication is under open access due to a (DFG-/German Research Foundation-funded) national or Alliance license.