ABSTRACT
In this chapter we consider the nature of domestic labour within a significant proportion of middle-class households in contemporary Britain, focusing particularly on the growing tendency through the 1980s and into the 1990s for such households to use waged domestic labour for at least certain of their daily reproductive tasks. The empirical work we present here draws heavily on our much fuller exploration of waged domestic labour in middle-class Britain (Gregson & Lowe 1994b). However, in reworking this material for this volume our objective is to consider the implications of the resurgence in waged domestic labour within middle-class households for class analysis. Briefly stated, our position with respect to class analysis in this context is one that, while acknowledging the continued importance of class, maintains that class provides by no means the only explanatory framework for analyzing the nature of day-to-day social reproduction within middle-class households in contemporary Britain. Thus, although we see merit, for example, in both service class and performative versions of class for an examination of the use of waged domestic labour by the middle classes, at the same time we maintain that such perspectives do not allow US to see why certain middle-class households in Britain (but not all) use waged domestic labour. Moreover, although class analysis enables US to account for how and why middle-class British households have been able to satisfy their increasing levels of demand for waged domestic labour, it cannot account for why it is waged domestic labour that is being used by such households, rather than other (unwaged) forms of domestic labour. As we emphasize in this chapter therefore, other frameworks of analysis, most notably those of gender, are vital to the analysis of middle-class day-to-day social reproduction. As a consequence, our general position in relation to class analysis can be summarized as twofold. First, although we certainly do not want to dispense with a class framework of analysis, and indeed urge its continued importance (Emmison & Western 1990, Devine 1992b, cf. Pahl 1989, Saunders 1990), at the same time we feel it is important to stress the need to move beyond versions of class rooted in the labour market. Secondly, however, we take the view that class is never the sole determinant of social phenomena. Correspondingly, and counter to at least recent tradition, we maintain that class should not be accorded analytical privilege by social scientists. Rather, and as our empirical analysis here shows, we prefer a position that emphasizes the simultaneous and interwoven constitution of class with gender (and for that matter with race, ethnicity and sexuality). For us, therefore, gender relations are central to the constitution of the contemporary middle classes in Britain, to middle-class identities and to middle-class formation (Savage et al. 1992, Savage 1994). Much of this chapter is devoted to providing support for this position. However, in the final sections of the chapter we examine the political implications of the resurgence of waged domestic labour amongst the middle classes (highlighting the conservative gender politics that this tendency undoubtedly reveals) before moving on finally to consider the implications of our research for middle-class formation.
