White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling: (Identity Studies in the Social Sciences)

Decades of neo-liberal reforms have established a market in secondary schooling, where 'choice' and 'diversity' are expected to drive up standards and maximize individual responsibility. This is known to favour middle class people. But what of those middle classes deliberately choosing ordinary and even 'low performing' secondary schools for their children? What are their motives, and how do they experience the choice? What is it like for the young people themselves? Where do they end up? And what does all this show us about contemporary white middle class identity and its formation? This groundbreaking study offers some answers to these questions. Based on detailed fieldwork with parents and children, it examines 'against-the-grain' school choices, looking in particular at family history, locality, the nature of 'choice' itself and associated anxieties, relationships to other ethnic groups and to whiteness, and the implications for democracy. The book highlights an inescapable acquisitiveness but also more hopeful dimensions of contemporary white middle class identity.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction: The White Middle Classes in the Twenty-First Century -- Identities Under Siege? White Middle Class Identity Formation: Theory and Practice Family History, Class Practices and Habitus Habitus as a Sense of Place Against-the-Grain School Choice in Neoliberal Times A Darker Shade of Pale: Whiteness as Integral to Middle Class Identity The Psychosocial: Ambivalences and Anxieties of Privilege Young People and the Urban Comprehensive: Remaking Cosmopolitan Citizens or Reproducing Hegemonic White Middle Class Values? Reinvigorating Democracy: Middle Class Moralities in Neoliberal Times Conclusion: Appendix 1: Methods and Methodology Appendix 2: Parental Occupations and Sector Appendix 3: The Sample Families in Terms of ACORN Categories References

About the Author :
DIANE REAY Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is executive editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education and on the editorial boards of Gender and Education, The Journal of Education Policy and Sociology. Her most recent publications include Activating Participation: Parents and Teachers Working Towards Partnership (co-edited with Gill Crozier). GILL CROZIER Professor of Education and Assistant Dean Research, School of Education, Roehampton University, UK and UK director of the Comenius project on Teacher In-service Training for Roma Inclusion. Her previous publications include Parents and Schools: Partners or Protagonists? and Activating Participation: Parents and Teachers Working Towards Partnership (co-edited with Diane Reay). DAVID JAMES Professor of Education at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK and co-director of the Bristol Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning and Education (BRILLE). His previous publications include the co-authored books Bourdieu and Education, The Creative Professional and Improving Learning Cultures in Further Education.

Review :
'A thoughtful and very interesting analysis by a talented group of researchers. - Professor Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania, USA 'White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling is a very important book. Looking at class practices and habitus as linked to family and schooling, the authors unpack the ways in which choice of secondary school is increasingly linked to the forging of social structure. In so doing, they bring the ability of the middle class to erect boundaries both symbolically and geographically into a new era of social class construction, while instantiating increasingly widespread choice of secondary school for one's children as a key and pivotal site for class formation and contestation. This is a 'must read' for anyone interested in contemporary class formation.' -- Professor Lois Weis, Graduate School of Education, University at Buffalo, USA