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- le Grand, Elias, 1976-
(författare)
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Class, Place and Identity in a Satellite Town
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The central aim of this study is to examine processes of identity formation among white, working-class youths in a marginalized area located on the outskirts of South London. It is primarily based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork but also on analyses of web sites, newspapers and popular culture. The study contributes to research on ‘chavs’, and on youth (sub)cultures and social class.Identity is conceived as constructed through the dialectical interplay between ‘external’ processes of social categorization and ‘internal’ processes of identification and boundary work. The context of the study is the recent moral panic in Britain over ‘chavs’. In public discourse, the term chav emerged as a way of pathologizing white working-class youths adopting specific visual markers of taste. The study shows that most respondents, and the area in general, were positioned in the stigmatizing discourse on chavs, and the spaces and places that they are associated with. When interpreting the meaning of chav, the respondents drew strong boundaries against the term, and used it to categorize others. In contrast to earlier research, the notion of chav is not related to a subcultural style adopted by socially excluded groups of youths, but primarily a form of categorization serving to pathologize important aspects of the working-class culture in the area.The findings support the contention that spatiality plays an essential role in the formation of classed identities. In light of the stigmatizing perceptions of the area, the study explores the often ambiguous ways in which the respondents negotiated their sense of belonging, community and safety. Moreover, in relation to taste and masculinity, the study demonstrates how the construction and performance of classed identifications and distinctions, and thus symbolic class hierarchies, are related to the spatial context.
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| 2. |
- Roumbanis, Lambros, 1976-
(författare)
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Kierkegaard och sociologins blinda fläck
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of this dissertation is to discuss the scope as well as the limits of sociological theory. This project is undertaken with the help of Søren Kierkegaard and his unique interpretation of human existence. Taking as its point of departure the existential reality of the single individual (den Enkelte), this study also addresses the fundamental question posed by Georg Simmel, “How is society possible?” It is argued that an answer to this question needs to take into account the existential concepts of choice, authenticity, subjectivity, anxiety, faith, and responsibility. The strategy – and the implicit method – of this study is to start out from the single individual and gradually move towards society, culture and history. After addressing some theories of everyday life, such as social phenomenology and dramaturgical theory, the investigation moves on to the central sociological problem of how to construct a synthetic theory of the relation between man and society. The final theory to be discussed is the social theory of Jean-Paul Sartre, which can be seen as a reformulation and modification of the Kierkegaardian perspective, now set in dialectical relation to society and history.The main argument of the thesis is that the message that can be found in Kierkegaard’s writings represents both a reminder and a challenge to every sociological project which seeks to achieve a synthesis between individual existence and social reality. Sociological theories can neither account for the existence of the single individual in an exhaustive manner, nor fully integrate this existence into some social system. It is impossible to reduce the existence of individuals to some socially and culturally given lifeworld, because authentic faith and infinite passion constitute an inner experience that is largely hidden from the sociologist observer. A sociological incompleteness theorem is proposed, which states that sociological theories are simply incapable of dealing with certain aspects of human existence. These aspects are, from an ontological point of view, unsettled and not social in nature. This theorem can also be expressed so that there exists a blind spot in every sociological theory that tries to account systematically for the single individual. By focussing attention on the existential tension between choice and inner experience, the sociologist can however push the limits for what can be accomplished with the help of sociological theory.
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