Introduction

This chapter introduces the central framework of this book. The lens of the everyday is presented as a heuristic device, the power of which manifests in fourfold ways. First, the everyday is an analytical lens which offers a specific class perspective to examine the continued relevance of class in the conjunctural moment. The everyday is historically salient, for it is a moment of emergence. Second, the everyday offers a vital mode of critique. This is an attempt to move class debates beyond the canon – of stratification measurements, class theory and the current Bourdieusian stronghold – to explore how class is recomposed in the everyday and the new injuries and new rewards that it brings (Strangleman 2005). Third, the everyday is profoundly political. The analysis taken in this book is one which thinks things through in a Gramscian way, as Stuart Hall advocated. This means seeing the historical conjunctures of crisis as moments of reconstruction and seeing power and politics in an expansive rather than a narrow way – practised in the everyday. Finally, the everyday is a methodological opportunity to bring into focus and sharpen our view on a scene in specifically classed terms. This approach seeks to reimagine ways of doing sociology which are lively and live. Using an everyday lens, this book examines the changes in the political economy underpinning the everyday conjunctural moment in classed ways, how such changes manifest, are negotiated and resisted and shape the working-class subject and communities.