Introduction

We are evaluative beings. Our streams of consciousness have an evaluative dimension which ranges from spontaneous, unexamined, unarticulated feelings about other people, objects and practices, and about what to do, through to more considered evaluations of those things (Archer, 2003). As we argued in chapter 2, emotions or sentiments should be taken seriously as they often provide highly sensitive evaluative judgements of circumstances bearing upon people's well-being and what they care about (Nussbaum, 2001). In using the term evaluation I shall henceforth stretch it beyond its normal scope to encompass the whole of this range. The intensity of these responses also ranges from the subtlest differences in ease or unease, preferences and aversions, through to strong identification and approval or revulsion and disapproval. They are central to the subjective experience of class and it is the purpose of this chapter to examine their normative structures.

In dealing with forms of inequality such as those of class, or gender or ‘race’, it is customary to focus on phenomena such as snobbery and elitism, sexism, racism, contempt, disgust, ‘othering’, and the like, that is, on sentiments and practices which are in various ways oppressive, immoral or, in more old-fashioned language, vices. This is understandable given social science's emphasis on the study of social problems; indeed, many – myself included – would have doubts about the point of social research that did not deal with social problems of some sort.