an article by Matthew Sparkes (University of Cambridge, UK) published in The Sociological Review Volume 67 Issue: 6 (2019)
Abstract
Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry.
This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu’s class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class positions, nor the role of unsecured credit in facilitating consumption.
This article contributes to this area by examining how unsecured credit and problem debt influences consumption and class position amongst individuals with modest incomes.
Drawing on 21 interviews with individuals managing problem debt, this article details how class inequality emerges through affective states that include anxiety and feelings of deficit. It also shows how these experiences motivate participants to rely on unsecured credit to consume cultural goods and engage in activities in a struggle against their class position, with the intention of enhancing how they are perceived and classified by others.
The findings indicate that cultural class analyses may have overlooked the symbolic importance of mundane consumption and goods in social differentiation.
This article further details how these processes entangle individuals into complex liens of debt – which lead to over-indebtedness, default, dispossession and financial expropriation – illustrating how investigations of credit-debt can better inform understandings of class inequality, exploitation and struggle.
Showing posts with label capital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capital. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 November 2019
Tuesday, 2 July 2019
On the socially optimal labour share of income
a column by Jakub Growiec, Peter McAdam and Jakub Mućk for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
The worldwide decline of the labour share is worrying, because the labour share is thought to be too low.
This column attempts to derive an estimate of the socially optimal labour share. The calibration implies that the socially optimal share is 17% higher than the historical average.
Continue reading
Hazel&rsquo's comment:
I will freely admit that I did not manage to follow all the statistical analysis. I have been too long awau from the coalface.
The worldwide decline of the labour share is worrying, because the labour share is thought to be too low.
This column attempts to derive an estimate of the socially optimal labour share. The calibration implies that the socially optimal share is 17% higher than the historical average.
Continue reading
Hazel&rsquo's comment:
I will freely admit that I did not manage to follow all the statistical analysis. I have been too long awau from the coalface.
Thursday, 20 June 2019
Inequalities in the social use of the Internet of things: A capital and skills perspective
an article by Alex van dIssue 6 (June 2019)er Zeeuw, Alexander JAM van Deursen and Giedo Jansen (University of Twente, The Netherlands) published in New Media & Society Volume 21 (June 2019)
Abstract
In this article, we set out to explain different types of social uses of the Internet of Things (IoT) using forms of capital and Internet skills.
We argue that the IoT platform entices different manners of social communication that are easily overlooked when focusing on the novelty of smart “things.”
How people use the IoT socially is crucial in trying to understand how people create, maintain, or absolve social relations in a networked society. We find inversed effects for social capital, income and education on private use, and on sharing IoT data with a partner. Sharing with acquaintances and strangers is predicted by cultural activities.
Sharing IoT data with acquaintances can especially be attributed to social relations that escape the immediate household. We conclude that varying figurations of capital and Internet skills predict how the IoT is used socially.
Abstract
In this article, we set out to explain different types of social uses of the Internet of Things (IoT) using forms of capital and Internet skills.
We argue that the IoT platform entices different manners of social communication that are easily overlooked when focusing on the novelty of smart “things.”
How people use the IoT socially is crucial in trying to understand how people create, maintain, or absolve social relations in a networked society. We find inversed effects for social capital, income and education on private use, and on sharing IoT data with a partner. Sharing with acquaintances and strangers is predicted by cultural activities.
Sharing IoT data with acquaintances can especially be attributed to social relations that escape the immediate household. We conclude that varying figurations of capital and Internet skills predict how the IoT is used socially.
Monday, 17 December 2018
Labour market flexibility during financial crises: Firm-level evidence from Spain
a column by Luc Laeven, Peter McAdam and Alexander Popov for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
There are good arguments both in favour and against the idea that more labour market flexibility will deliver benefits to an economy during a downturn.
This column presents novel evidence on this question, using data from Spain during the 2008–09 credit crunch.
The results show that credit-constrained firms grow faster if they are subject to less strict firing and hiring restrictions, as long as they are technologically able to substitute labour for capital. The findings provide an argument in favour of more flexible labour laws.
Continue reading
There are good arguments both in favour and against the idea that more labour market flexibility will deliver benefits to an economy during a downturn.
This column presents novel evidence on this question, using data from Spain during the 2008–09 credit crunch.
The results show that credit-constrained firms grow faster if they are subject to less strict firing and hiring restrictions, as long as they are technologically able to substitute labour for capital. The findings provide an argument in favour of more flexible labour laws.
Continue reading
Wednesday, 9 May 2018
Traditional or non-traditional students?: incorporating UK students’ living arrangements into decisions about going to university
an article by Mark Holton (University of Plymouth) published in Journal of Further and Higher Education Volume 42 Number 4 (May 2018)
Abstract
Since the introduction of the post-1992 university, various, and ongoing, higher education (HE) policy reforms have fuelled academic, political, media and anecdotal discussions of the trajectories of UK university students. An outcome of this has been the dualistic classification of students as being from either ‘traditional’ or ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds.
An extensive corpus of literature has sought to critically discuss how students experience their transition into university, questioning specifically the notion that all students follow a linear transition through university. Moreover, there is far more complexity involved in the student experience than can be derived from just employing these monolithic terms.
This research proposes incorporating students’ residential circumstances into these debates to encourage more critical discussions of this complex demographic.
Drawing upon the experiences of a sample of students from a UK ‘post-1992’ university this research will develop a profile for each accommodation type to highlight the key characteristics of the ‘type’ of student most likely to belong to each group. In doing so this establishes a more detailed understanding of how a ‘student’ habitus might affect the mechanisms which are put in place to assist students in their transitions into and through university.
Abstract
Since the introduction of the post-1992 university, various, and ongoing, higher education (HE) policy reforms have fuelled academic, political, media and anecdotal discussions of the trajectories of UK university students. An outcome of this has been the dualistic classification of students as being from either ‘traditional’ or ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds.
An extensive corpus of literature has sought to critically discuss how students experience their transition into university, questioning specifically the notion that all students follow a linear transition through university. Moreover, there is far more complexity involved in the student experience than can be derived from just employing these monolithic terms.
This research proposes incorporating students’ residential circumstances into these debates to encourage more critical discussions of this complex demographic.
Drawing upon the experiences of a sample of students from a UK ‘post-1992’ university this research will develop a profile for each accommodation type to highlight the key characteristics of the ‘type’ of student most likely to belong to each group. In doing so this establishes a more detailed understanding of how a ‘student’ habitus might affect the mechanisms which are put in place to assist students in their transitions into and through university.
Friday, 12 June 2015
Pareto and Piketty: The Macroeconomics of Top Income and Wealth Inequality
an article by Charles I. Jones (Stanford University, California, and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts) published in Journal of Economic Perspectives Volume 29 Number 1 (Winter 2015)
First paragraph
Since the early 2000s, research by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (and their coauthors, including Anthony Atkinson and Gabriel Zucman) has revolutionized our understanding of income and wealth inequality. The crucial point of departure for this revolution is the extensive data they have used, based largely on administrative tax records.
Piketty’s (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the latest contribution in this line of work, especially with the new data it provides on capital and wealth. Piketty also proposes a framework for describing the underlying forces that affect inequality and wealth, and unlikely as it seems, a bit of algebra that plays an important role in Piketty’s book has even been seen on T-shirts:
Full text (PDF 18pp) not including appendix and data appendix
The same issue also contains an article by Thomas Piketty himself reflecting on his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century and an article The Window Tax: a Case Study in Excess Burden.
I could have sat and read all afternoon.
Wishing that I could afford the time to do so.
First paragraph
Since the early 2000s, research by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (and their coauthors, including Anthony Atkinson and Gabriel Zucman) has revolutionized our understanding of income and wealth inequality. The crucial point of departure for this revolution is the extensive data they have used, based largely on administrative tax records.
Piketty’s (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the latest contribution in this line of work, especially with the new data it provides on capital and wealth. Piketty also proposes a framework for describing the underlying forces that affect inequality and wealth, and unlikely as it seems, a bit of algebra that plays an important role in Piketty’s book has even been seen on T-shirts:
Full text (PDF 18pp) not including appendix and data appendix
The same issue also contains an article by Thomas Piketty himself reflecting on his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century and an article The Window Tax: a Case Study in Excess Burden.
I could have sat and read all afternoon.
Wishing that I could afford the time to do so.
Thursday, 27 September 2012
Spoilt for choice, spoilt by choice: Long-term consequences of limitations imposed by social background
an article by Vicky Duckworth and Matthew Cochrane (Edge Hill University, Ormskirk) published in Education + Training Volume 54 Issue 7 (2012)
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the choices learners have in steering their way through the educational system in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on data from two studies, one conducted in a state secondary school and the other in a Further Education College, both based in the north-west of England. Both used interviews (either individual or focus-group) to collect data, which were then analysed using a grounded approach.
Findings
In linking the two studies the authors highlight how the impact of symbolic violence and the relations between groups and classes at school continue into the “choices” the learners make during adulthood and also into the learner’s working life, and that these “choices” are often a large-scale consequence of many “micro-choices” arising from day-to-day situations. The acts of symbolic violence described in the college group are not of themselves very different from those described by the school group, though the consequences for the school group cannot yet be known.
Research limitations/implications
The participants in the two groups are unconnected in that they attend different institutions and are at very different stages of their education. However the authors contend that there is a connection in terms of the participants’ experience of symbolic violence.
Originality/value
The paper draws attention to the existence of symbolic violence in everyday school life, and highlights how these instances can have significant impact.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the choices learners have in steering their way through the educational system in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on data from two studies, one conducted in a state secondary school and the other in a Further Education College, both based in the north-west of England. Both used interviews (either individual or focus-group) to collect data, which were then analysed using a grounded approach.
Findings
In linking the two studies the authors highlight how the impact of symbolic violence and the relations between groups and classes at school continue into the “choices” the learners make during adulthood and also into the learner’s working life, and that these “choices” are often a large-scale consequence of many “micro-choices” arising from day-to-day situations. The acts of symbolic violence described in the college group are not of themselves very different from those described by the school group, though the consequences for the school group cannot yet be known.
Research limitations/implications
The participants in the two groups are unconnected in that they attend different institutions and are at very different stages of their education. However the authors contend that there is a connection in terms of the participants’ experience of symbolic violence.
Originality/value
The paper draws attention to the existence of symbolic violence in everyday school life, and highlights how these instances can have significant impact.
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