The Sociological Review Monographs 71/2

Class, Emotions and the Affective Politics of Social Inequality

Class is firmly back on both social scientific and political agendas, bound up in debates over culture wars, socio-spatial inequality and their political and social effects. This collection of research papers and interventions is about feeling class. It presents critical work engaging with social class through the recent turn to affect, with contributions from a broad range of disciplines, including History, Urban Studies, Education and Geography, as well as Sociology. Collectively, established and emerging scholars contribute new empirical, theoretical and methodological insights into class processes viewed through an affective lens and with an attentiveness to temporality and space. Topics covered include the affective intensities and politics of displacement, love, stigma, legacies, work, identification, laughter and solidarity. Together, the collection sheds new conceptual light on contemporary class analysis, both connecting it to the past, as well as assessing the continued significance of class-affect relations in understanding social inequalities and imagining alternative futures.