ABSTRACT

As indicated already this project represents a set of on-going concerns and a return to my sociological roots, to the examination of social class differentiation and the explanation of class successes and failures (see Ball 1981). It is unashamedly a modernist exercise and seems to me to be an exercise of particular importance within the era of New Labour (and its counterparts) and global education reform. The text can be read as part of a recent rediscovery of social class in educational research but is also set over and against various arguments which suggest that ‘class is dead’ (Pakulski and Waters 1996) (see below). Theoretically speaking, as indicated in Chapter 1, the viewpoint adopted might broadly be described as something like ‘Weber meets Bourdieu!’. This concatenation is certainly reflected in the main influences which play upon the analysis and interpretational framework.