ABSTRACT
This chapter provides considerable scope for an assessment of the effects of the restructuring on class structure and formation. The concept of organisation assets is used by Wright to point to the significance of power relations within organisations as a major axis of class formation. School managers, administrators and teachers working in bureaucratic organisations, for instance, use their hierarchical position of power to secure advantages for themselves in relation to their subordinates within the same organisation. Social assets for teachers, as institutionalised social relationships, may take a number of forms: particular institutional arrangements such as teachers' unions or subject associations. The chapter argues that a realist methodological framework enables the people to develop a more complex account of teachers' class membership and class consciousness. Class is a critical aspect of the terrain and stakes of struggle and is central to the understanding of the dynamics that shape both the politics of education and the nature of education politics.
