Thinking with Bevereley Skeggs - Stockholms universitet

excluded from many exchange relationships, and its culture istherefore built more around use-values, such as loyalty, honourand fairness.But the working class is not a passive recipient of middle-classexploitation. The former also adopts strategies, distinction andresistance against the latter, e.g. in the form of anti-pretentiousnessand through ‘taking the piss’ (Skeggs 2004; see also 1997). YetSkeggs is quick to point out that the working class seldom has thechannels, influence, power, or symbolic capital to succeed in theresistance. As a consequence, resistance ultimately ‘works as amechanism to keep the working-class in place’ (Skeggs 2004: 114).We can see that Skeggs paints a picture where a centralelement in class formation is through exploitation of workingclassculture and where class struggle takes place mainly in thecultural realm. As she writes: ‘class struggle becomes not justabout the entitlement to the labour of others but the entitlementto their culture, feelings, affect and dispositions. This is a veryintimate form of exploitation’ (Skeggs 2005: 63).Concluding DiscussionEvaluating Skeggs’ account, I would argue that she presents asophisticated response to the two challenges to class theory – thedilemmas of individualization and exploitation – discussed inthis essay. The disidentification of class is itself a highly classedprocess entailing exploitative social relations mainly throughcultural means. And developing an understanding of class inthe light of the cultural turn she brings in affect, values and thesymbolic realm into class theory. Yet, there are a few tensions inher work.One is, as Bottero (2004) notes, that, although she movesaway from the traditional way of conceptualizing classes asantagonistic collectivities, sometimes her analysis slips into thiskind of notion. The old Marxist image of society composed oftwo classes acting in their respective interests springs to mind.26