Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T14:30:02.980Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Struggles of the social field

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Andrew Sayer
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Get access

Summary

Introduction

Class inequalities involve not merely differences in wealth, income and economic security, but differences in access to valued circumstances, practices and ways of life – ‘goods’ in a broad sense – and in the recognition or valuation of those goods and their holders. They produce and are shaped by struggles and competition, domination and resistance, as well as compliance, whether willing or reluctant. What is the nature of these struggles? What are they about? What are the goods that are being struggled for? What is the relation between the valuation of particular goods and the social position of the groups with which they are associated? The purpose of this chapter is to answer these questions. As we noted in chapter 1, lay moral sentiments and norms regarding how people should treat one another and how different behaviours should be evaluated imply assumptions about the nature of goods and the good life. We will deal with the latter first, moving on to moral sentiments and evaluations of behaviour in subsequent chapters.

I shall begin with the general nature of the struggles in question, what they are over, for and about, and what broad forms they take. To what extent are they instrumental struggles for power per se, or struggles over access to valued ways of life? To what extent do they involve contestation of the definition and evaluation of goods or competition for goods whose value is agreed upon but which are unequally distributed?

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×