ABSTRACT
Unlike Indigeneity and ethnicities, class has a long history of investigation in rural social science. However, the notion of class has often been confl ated with concepts such as poverty, property ownership, occupational ranking, and social location, or referred to obliquely through these concepts. As a consequence, we know little about how class is lived and experienced in rural settings. More recent theorizations of class have argued for the importance of its cultural and symbolic dimensions, as well as the material. As Abram (1998, 372) argues, ‘class is not a position on a scale,’ but a ‘symbolic reference, a multiple-layered sign whose meaning is encapsulated in encounters and signifi cant tastes and attributes.’ This is not to deny the material importance of class and the multiple inequalities that may be associated with a particular class position. It is, however, important to understand that class, in its material and cultural forms, is made or inscribed over the course of an individual’s life; ‘class cannot be made alone’ (Skeggs 2004, 3).
