ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the idea of a “property-owning democracy”, and at how the interviewees’ accounts constructed their ownership of property, their democratic responsibilities and their place in the polity. It locates the concept of property-ownership as a basis for citizenship in the liberal tradition of theory of a democratic polity. The chapter analyzes the kinds of property most relevant for citizenship in contemporary Britain, and examines how the interviewees interpret their access to these assets. It analyzes interviewees’ accounts of their children’s futures. Democratic theory has always included a tradition of criticism of property relations and of this basis of liberalism. The interpretative repertoires of individualism allow interviewees to account for their possession of jobs as part of their descriptions of what they have made of themselves by their own development of their talents.
