ABSTRACT
In this concluding chapter we will summarise the results of this case study and suggest possible directions for future research in the light of these results and in the context of current debate regarding the new middle class and contemporary cultural change. It has been argued that the sociological debate over the new middle class is one of the most pertinent to understanding the class restructuring currently taking place within British society. In addition we have argued that an examination of the changing cultural practices associated with this restructuring indicate that the new middle class cannot be understood as a single, unified collectivity but rather must be seen as essentially fragmented. However, rather than see such fragmentation as grounded in an existing hierarchy associated with an ‘economism’ which sees the occupational structure as the locus or orienting thematic from which cultural, taste and leisure preferences are understood, this study suggests that such cultural practices and tastes have an economy of their own, associated with occupational position but not determined by it. Indeed the analysis has suggested that a combination of variables, including social origin, education and gender, act to produce a ‘structuring structure’ – one dimension of the habitus – in accounting for what have been termed the social spaces of mobility, lifestyle and gender.
