ABSTRACT
This chapter sets the scene by presenting our own situated and reflexive experiences of class and describing and thematically analysing responses to this question, posed to key thinkers in the field of media literacy in the UK, from a broad range of perspectives and a diverse demographic. The key representatives of the field will be given the question and a set of quotations from Hoggart’s chapter to respond to in the context of media literacy in the UK at the time of writing. The function of this chapter will be to put another frame of reference alongside Hoggart’s in the chapters that follow, so we will ‘do Hoggart’ on contemporary media literacy, but at the same time refer back to and give voice to a plurality of perspectives on the concept of media literacy and ‘the working classes’. This will include women and black scholars, to ensure a richer and more nuanced conceptual and intellectual understanding of the term ‘working class’ than Hoggart was offering.
The views we capture here will be in dialogue with Hoggart and also with recent accounts of the complex ‘habitus clash’ experienced by ways of being across and between working class and middle class identities in the UK (e.g. Lynsey Hanley, Sara Ahmed) and the more orthodox academic literature on social class (e.g. Danny Dorling, Mike Savage, Diane Reay, Bev Skeggs). The question of who is the working class is very contested in 2019, as is the field of enquiry into the uses of media literacy and this chapter will both.
