ABSTRACT
This book has provided a phenomenology of the relation between social class and the market for houses that differs, in key respects, from analyses of class formation in the housing market that have previously been undertaken. The purpose of Part I of the book was to examine approaches to contemporary class analysis, which, I argued, are constituted on ‘resource epistemology’ and a focus on consumption. My own view is that this work has provided invaluable insights into processes of class formation in the context of the housing market. However, it has also provided a limiting view. The development of class analysis within the parameters of the sociology of consumption has meant that the focus of recent class analysis has been on those who have a devotion to consumption (of houses etc.), in other words the middle class. Part I of the book therefore focused on literatures that have explored the issue of middle-class formation in the market for houses. Working-class people are largely missing from these literatures. Insofar as working-class people do appear in these literatures they do so in negative terms, that is, as ‘failed consumers’ or as ‘displaced’ by middleclass gentrifiers. Working-class formation is therefore theorised in relational terms whereas ‘the working class’ is seen to be constituted vis-à-vis the middle class (Sayer 2005; Lawler 2005a). Of course, there are good reasons for going down this route. The working class is a dominated and denigrated class that is dominated and denigrated by the middle class. This book has shown this too. However, this book has also shown that this is only part of the story.
